The man with Pryce's handshake

A man I have never seen before knew my name before I said it. That's the thing I can't get past. Pryce sends his best, he said, like they were sharing a table at a wake, and I smiled and shook his hand and walked to the lift and the humiliation was so physical I thought I'd be sick on the carpet. Not because the set went badly. Because it went well and someone was there to measure it.

Yara's text sits in the thread like a sentence I haven't finished. I heard you did it. That's not congratulations and it's not a joke. It's something in between that I don't have the language for yet. She heard. Who else heard? Pryce's man heard. The room heard. The red light heard. I walked home on the Northern line with my thumb pressed into the plaster and the plaster pressed into the Moleskine and I thought: how many people are in on this now?

Three lines for October and they feel different. I don't know if different is better. The Drabble book — Rae brought it, I underlined the line twice — something about circles closing and opening and I sat on that for ten minutes before I wrote the third line. The thumb is healing. I looked at it in the bathroom mirror and decided the October slot is mine, and I almost believe it.

Almost.