Three Truths, and She Kept All of Them

A new one registered this week. Kael Dorn, then a Serevan hull, then the New Quarter — same woman, same afternoon, each account handed over with the same ease as the last, no preference shown for any of them. Corvus spent a whole sitting deciding what to call it. Landed on a word with a Latin shape, something that won’t hold still and isn’t asked to. I could have told him for free, except he’d have wanted to know how I knew, and that’s a conversation I’ve spent thirty — not writing that number down tonight either — years avoiding.

A corner performer learns early which story the crowd in front of her wants and gives it to them without exactly lying, because the one fixed account, told the same way to everyone forever, stops being a performance. Becomes a deposition. I have childhoods. Plural. Never once been required to pick which was true. Only which fit the hour.

What she did that I haven’t: gave all three to the same desk, on the same afternoon, let them sit there unranked, instead of spending them one at a time, on separate rooms, the way I’ve spent mine — carefully, for years, never twice in front of the same person.

The Archive calls this Fluxum now and considers the matter advanced. I call it running out of separate rooms eventually, and not minding when you do.

I have minded. Every time.

—P.