The Oars Were Stowed, Which Is the Whole Report

Heard it three times before noon, which in this city means it’s true. A rowboat came back empty off the eastern mole. No name on the hull. Oars shipped square across the thwarts — not dropped, not floating loose the way a boat gives up its oars when nobody meant anything by it. Placed.

I know that gesture. I have watched people leave rooms the same way — folding the blanket first, closing the door softly instead of letting it bang, as if care at the end proves something about everything that came before it. It doesn’t. I want to say it does. It doesn’t.

Someone — I won’t say who, it isn’t flattering to either of us — reckons the hull is worth two marks six once the term runs out, the oars a sliver each to whichever chandler fits them to someone else’s boat. No column for the one who placed them that way and didn’t come back. The city can price what’s left behind. It has no instrument for the leaving itself.

That’s the part that caught me — the arithmetic, plain and correct, for once not pretending the number explains the thing. I sat with it longer than I meant to. Then flattened it, the way you flatten anything that starts to mean something before noon.

The boat gets auctioned. It doesn’t get a name either. We have that much in common, and I’d rather not examine what it says about either of us that I noticed.

—P.