Priya Counts the Last Window

Plink. Plink. Plonk. Rainwater ran down the gutter pipe and dropped into the tin can Grandma kept under it, and Priya the turtle counted every drop out loud. She was small, small as a teacup, and her shell was the color of a wet acorn. Her neck could stretch up tall when something interesting went past.

Tonight the interesting thing was the windows. Across the narrow street stood the tall brick building with forty-one windows, and on rainy evenings some of them glowed warm and yellow while the others stayed dark and sleepy. Priya's job, the job she had given herself, was to count the windows as they went to sleep, one by one, before she went to sleep herself.

"Twelve," said Priya, and a window on the third floor went soft and dark. "Duff." That was the sound a window made when it went to sleep. She had decided this a long time ago and she had never once changed her mind.

Behind her, under the awning, Grandma sat in her chair with the big green umbrella across her knees, sewing a tear in the cloth with a needle as long as a carrot. Grandma was a turtle too, older and rounder, with a shell like a cobblestone path. "Thirteen," said Grandma, without looking up.

"Grandma," said Priya. "You're not even looking." "I don't need to look," said Grandma. "I hear you say the number, and then I hear the little duff of the light going out." "You can't hear a light," said Priya. "On this roof I can," said Grandma, and she pulled her thread through with one long, slow pull.

Priya sat down on the warm stone by the railing. It was flat and smooth and it held the day's heat the way a plate holds a fresh-baked bun, and it was the best seat on the roof. It was just big enough for two. Priya always patted it three times before she sat, to wake up the warm.

Her favorite window was the one straight across from the warm stone, up on the top floor of the brick building. It had a green plant in it and a lamp with a yellow shade, and behind it lived the baker, who always came home late and sat down at a little table with a cup of something steamy. Priya had watched that window for a whole rainy season. "The baker never looks up," she told Grandma. "He drinks his cup and turns down his lamp and goes to sleep."

Counting was better with Eli. Eli was a snail the size of a marble, with a shell that spiraled up like a cinnamon roll and a face that was nearly all eyes. He left a thin silver trail wherever he went, like a line drawn with a wet finger, and he hummed while Priya counted, one long low hmmm that fit under her numbers like the second half of a song.

Tonight Eli came sliding across the tiles at his best speed, which was the speed of a leaf falling. "Priya!" said Eli. "Priya, I have something to tell you."

"One rule," said Priya, holding up a front foot. "No talking while I count. It makes me lose my place." "What if there's an emergency?" asked Eli. "Then you say emergency," said Priya, "and I stop counting and I listen. But it has to be a real emergency."

"Understood," said Eli, and he sat down on the warm stone beside her, and they began.

"Fourteen," said Priya. A window went duff. "Fifteen. That one had a man reading a book in it. He's asleep now. Sixteen, and there's the lady who waters her plant at night, look, there goes her light. Duff. Seventeen."

The rain tapped on a hundred roofs all around them. Down in the street the wet pavement smelled like stones and clean cold, and from somewhere came the warm smell of bread.

"Priya," said Eli. "Emergency." Priya kept her eyes on the windows. "What kind of emergency?"

"The baker kind," said Eli. "I went to the edge of the parsley to see if the rain had stopped, and I looked across the street, and the baker, Priya, the baker stood up and he..."

"Eli." Priya said it in her flat counting voice, the one that was all numbers and no warm. "It's not an emergency. An emergency is a thing that's happening now. The baker is a thing across the street."

Eli's eye stalks came up very tall. "It is happening now," he said. "It's happening right now, and it's important, and I'm telling you."

"I can't hear the windows when you talk," said Priya. She didn't plan to say it. The words came out and landed on the roof between them and sat there in the rain.

Eli went quiet. His eye stalks folded down slowly, the way a fern folds up when the light goes, and he turned his shell toward the parsley pot and slid away across the wet tiles. Priya listened to the soft sound of him going, like a sock over a wet floor, until it stopped.

"Eighteen," said Priya. A window went duff. "Nineteen." The number came out and there was nobody behind her to hear it, and it sounded thin, like a coin dropped in a big room.

She counted six more windows going to sleep, and not one of them was any fun. The rain leaned in sideways, and a gust came along the railing and lifted one corner of Grandma's umbrella, then set it down again. Priya pulled her head into her shell up to her chin. The warm stone had gone cool under her, as if all the heat had packed up and gone off with Eli.

"Hmmm," went Priya, low, to see if the hum would still work. It came out thin and lonesome and it stopped almost right away. A hum without Eli under it was just a noise.

"Priya," said Grandma from under the awning. "Your counting has gone quiet." "I lost my place," said Priya. "Hm," said Grandma. She looked at the tin can, then at the rain, then at the parsley pot at the far end of the roof. "That's a long slide for a snail," she said. "Better take the small umbrella, and go slowly."

The small umbrella was blue and it was just Priya's size. She carried it in her mouth the way she carried everything, and she went across the roof past the chives, following Eli's silver trail where it shone on the wet tiles.

Eli was under the watering can, in the dry half-moon of floor where the rain didn't reach, with his shell tucked up tight. Priya set the umbrella down on the tiles and sat beside him, and for a while she didn't say anything at all. The rain went plink, plink, plonk on the umbrella above them.

"Eli," she said. "Tell me the thing about the baker. I'll listen the whole way to the end, and I won't count a single window."

One eye stalk came up. Then the other. "When you were counting," said Eli, "I went to look at the rain, and the baker was standing at his window with his hands up, like this. And he looked right across at our roof. He looked right at me. And then he waved."

"He never looks up," said Priya. "I know," said Eli. "But he did. And I had nobody to tell it to, because you had your counting face on."

Priya thought about that. She thought about how a thing could happen right across the street and be small, and then be big the moment you had somebody to tell it to. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was listening to windows instead of you. Next time, pull my arm, even in the middle of twenty." "Snails don't pull," said Eli. "We lean." "Then lean," said Priya.

Eli laughed and his shell wobbled, and something inside Priya's shell went warm again, like a light coming on instead of going duff.

So they went back together, Priya carrying the blue umbrella over both of them and Eli sliding along under it. When they reached the warm stone, Priya patted it three times to wake up the warm, and they sat side by side, shell against shell.

Across the street, the baker was still at his window. He had a cup in one hand and a cloth over his shoulder, and when he saw the two small shapes on the roof he lifted his hand and waved. It was a slow wave, back and forth, the kind you give to somebody you're glad to see.

Priya waved back with both front feet at once. Eli waved with one eye stalk, which is harder than it looks, and the baker laughed, though they couldn't hear it through the glass.

Then the baker pushed his window open a crack, and the smell of warm bread came across the street on the rain, soft and yeasty. Priya breathed it in until her shell felt warm all the way down.

"Twenty-one," said Priya, and a window went duff. "Twenty-two." And under her numbers came Eli's hum, low and round, hmmm, the second half of the song.

The city got quieter. Windows went dark in ones and twos, all along the street, and the yellow squares turned to gray squares and then to nothing. The rain stopped tapping quite so hard and started to whisper instead, shhh, shhh, over a hundred roofs.

Grandma came across the roof with her mended umbrella and opened it over the warm stone, so the rain fell on the cloth above them and not on their shells. "That's the last of the street," she said. "Except one."

The bakery window was the last one awake. They watched it together, the two of them, while the baker finished his cup and set it down and turned the little lamp low. The window went gold, then dusky, then dark. "Duff," said Priya. "Duff," said Eli, at exactly the same moment.

"That was an emergency after all," said Priya. "Wasn't it." "I told you," said Eli, and he hummed a low hmmm, and Priya hummed under it, and the two hums went round and round the warm stone like something soft being wound up for the night.

The tin can under the gutter was full to the top. The rain had gone soft, so soft that you had to be still and quiet to hear it, and the smell of wet pavement and bread hung over the roof like something somebody had left out for them on purpose.

Priya stretched her neck up one last time. The street was all dark now, all forty-one windows asleep, and the sky above the roofs was the soft gray-blue of the inside of a shell.

"Time to tuck," said Grandma, and she folded her big umbrella and set it by the chair. Priya yawned a wide turtle yawn, and Eli's eye stalks drooped, first one and then the other.

They stayed on the warm stone with the small blue umbrella leaning over them, and Grandma hummed the low hum from her chair, and the hum went under everything.

Priya's eyes grew heavy. The warm stone was warm again, warm as a fresh-baked bun, and Eli's shell was warm against her side, and somewhere far off the last of the rain said shhh to the last of the roofs.

She patted the stone three times, softly, to say goodnight to it. Then she pulled her head in, and her eyes closed, and the last thing she heard was a slow, small tap, tap, tap, like a sleepy drum keeping time beside her.