The Crossing of Second Street

Chapter 1: After the cross night sleep

Rain taps the window at 7 a.m. ⟨Character 1⟩ stands at the stove in a stretched t-shirt, one sock missing, watching an egg slide across the pan.

⟨Character 1⟩: Two eggs. Toast under the grill. Tea in the blue cup. That is the entire plan for today, and it is a good plan.

A soft knock at the door. He does not move to answer it, but he does nod at the counter, as if the counter asked a question.

⟨Character 1⟩: I heard you last night. Not thanking you, exactly. But my bed was warm and nobody woke me at three to say thanks. That counts for something.

There is another knock. He shifts the egg off the heat, wipes his hands on a towel, and opens the door.

⟨Character 1⟩: Yes. What.

Ruth Nagarkar: Ruth. I sit on the traffic board for this district. I don’t want to poke into your private business, and I won’t. Just one question, and then I’ll go. Did you see a white ambulance on Ross Street last night?

⟨Character 1⟩: I saw plenty. Benches. Rain. A green light doing nothing for anyone. My whole evening was a lot of nothing.

Ruth Nagarkar: A car was missing from Balhan Hospital until just after midnight. Empty road, driver shaken. The board was told the signals had been cutting green through the river bend, which is odd, because the machine that does that was blinking out samples. I thought, who would sit on that call?

⟨Character 1⟩: Whoever it was, they are probably asleep tonight. And they eat at nine. Thank you for stopping by, genuinely, but the eggs are turning.

Ruth Nagarkar: I made far too many of these. My evening got broken up too. Have a good morning, neighbour.

The door closes. ⟨Character 1⟩ sits and unwraps the parcel: four slices of semolina cake, still faintly warm.

⟨Character 1⟩: Neighbour. First person in six months to say why she was at my door and then actually go away. That is a rare order, and I can respect it.

Later, the phone rings. He answers it with his mouth full.

Dhruv: Is it a bad morning, or a normal bad of every Monday, or a fun one? Give me one word, boss, I have a client on hold.

⟨Character 1⟩: Normal. Cake on the counter. No, don’t ask who from, it is a canteen arrangement. What is broken now?

Dhruv: Nothing! That is the report. Repairs held all night, no rolls missing, no one calling, everybody home safe at two. I don’t even know why I’m relieved. A police line near the riverside kept several numbers waiting on loops, that’s all. And the database looked at us the right way. Which is only funny if you were awake at three.

⟨Character 1⟩: I was asleep. Or near enough. I sleep very well, usually, in case that surprises you, between two and seven. I stand by my sleeping, Dhruv. It’s the one talent nobody charges me for.

Dhruv: I will not speculate. But the board paperwork says a car was missing from Balhan last night. Nineteen minutes on open road, then the answer came from somewhere: brightest intersection, sharp left. Well, not paperwork. I’m making funny noises at a phone. The car was found whole. Goodbye, you should go back to sleep.

⟨Character 1⟩: Right. Goodbye, double portions, call me on the cold kettle side, not on the breakfast side. Bye.

He clears the plates, counts the cake slices twice, and sits down. Outside on the street, a child’s chalk drawing of a bright red streetlight crosses the pavement.

By 9:20 he is horizontal on the sofa, and on his left, over the murmur of wet green signal at the far end of the street, the black phone blinks twice and goes dark.

Chapter 2: Riverside Signal Turning Road: Everything Misses Sun Ending Mystery

The sun drops behind the river on Thursday, and at 7:42 p.m., the crossing at Second Street glares down at the wet asphalt.

⟨Character 1⟩: There you are. Green, six seconds, red. Green again. Same count as the day I first set you up. The software here still works, at least. Everything else can be red for all I care.

A white and green signal lamp glows at the far left of his desk, wired to an old radio aerial. It flickers once, twice, then glows steady, a deliberate little pulse, like a hand raised and put down.

⟨Character 1⟩: Hello. Nobody's called you in years. Not officially. So who is ringing my own lights, and at nine at night, in weather like this?

Juniper: North at the crossing of Second Street by the river. There was water on the road, and a sign glows red where there shouldn't be a sign, and I followed a bridge I know and it led me wrong. Above the echo, another voice, calmer now, answers that there is a controlled signal order for a lost vehicle and the direction eastward won't hold. This is the second time I have said ‘second’ between the trees and the traffic controllers and I have had no car in reply. Please confirm. Please.

⟨Character 1⟩: Right. First off, you are talking to the man who wired the north approach. The green you saw is mine. Second, if the east gate is closed, do this: sit at the red exactly thirty seconds. I'll hold the whole line for you. The other lights will pass it on.

Juniper: Light signals to signals. The grid noise confirms what you say has already been picked up by your station. They hold the intersection four blocks down, the one under the bridge with the yellow stripe. I am new tonight and I put you through. It was the only honest route.

⟨Character 1⟩: Honest routes. Nobody, nobody calls a blink honest enough to save today. A caller came through to the whole city station from Second Street. My signals passed a trail through the whole city, like polite notes shoved under doors.

Juniper: The white car will move. The lights are sorry about the wait.

He sets the headset down, then reaches over and flips the lamp on the desk to steady white. Outside, twelve lights along the second stretch blink green, red, green, all at once, all the way to the station.

⟨Character 1⟩: Until tomorrow, then. After that, I am going home. Anyone who needs the whole grid walked east can learn to knock like a person.

Chapter 3: Hush of Third: Red No Car. Until Whistle Arriving No Sleep Witness

At 12:49 a.m., the phone on ⟨Character 1⟩'s desk lights up with a call from a number he does not have in his contacts.

⟨Character 1⟩: If that is another pharmacy robot I am not boiling the kettle for it. I don't care how polite the robot sounds at half past midnight.

The caller is not a robot. It's a woman at a switchboard two blocks over, her voice full of the whole busy night.

Ayaan's supervisor: ⟨Character 1⟩? You are the man on the Ross Street light channel. The night came in with a white car under the third street heading for a lost house, all its knees crossed. They gave me the private line to everything from the panel in your name. Trust, after all that.

⟨Character 1⟩: Wait. Slow down. What car has a white light and a lost house at midnight? My light had a request there, but finished. Anybody says quick to the trees, over.

Ayaan's supervisor: Quite lost. The driver is safe; she brought the car over and it is the ward that is missing its crew. The radio was chattering all through. But what she wanted most, she said, was an address. A number on the south side of Third Street. We have nothing under that flag. That is why she asked you.

⟨Character 1⟩ sets his headset on the corner of the desk. In the corridor above, a lamp is still burning, and his kitchen clock is a quiet green ring.

⟨Character 1⟩: Third Street. Every night I built that block under red for no reason except quiet. Read the whole thing back to me as a shopping list: name, light, hurt.

Ayaan's supervisor: Third Street. Left side, just past the parking bay. The white car is asked to hold that lane near the side door, west end, with two blinking orange cones out. She wants to stop and let the crew in. The closest cones glow faint through all this. She asks for a whole middle line all the way to the North Bridge call.

⟨Character 1⟩: Third Street. West curb. Hold the lane. It hums at me under the city, like the whole street is one quiet building with the lights asleep. All right. Tell her this: hold the cross on Third. My lights are going to say green, stay green, until she is through.

He opens the panel on the small screen. Twenty little lamps along the old road, and he turns each to green as he says the names, counting them aloud like a list of old friends.

⟨Character 1⟩: Ayaan's got it. There she goes, red, green, green, green. All of Third. Then back to sleep. When I sleep, I normally get to noon. That has been my record for months. Sleepwalking to North Bridge, however, is a new low.

Ayaan's supervisor: I will keep the light turning up that road for a loop or two. She has a strong white light showing toward the hospital. First lost patient this week. No one else on the stretch. Get some rest, ⟨Character 1⟩. Then you really must give us our night back. It looks like the district will tell the paper the crossing woke us all.

He sits for two minutes holding his cold cup of tea. Outside, the sky over the north bridge starts to gray, and inside, one office lamp is still red, a small warm dot in a window where a white ambulance has just come home.

⟨Character 1⟩: I should sharpen my shoes for a house visit tomorrow, since everyone has started using the little line to my street.

Chapter 4: By Noon, Everything Goes Green

At noon on Saturday, sun draws a bright line across ⟨Character 1⟩'s kitchen counter. A pot of soup, not scrambled eggs, sits steaming in the middle of it.

⟨Character 1⟩: Coriander, ginger, too much salt, since you cannot taste it anyway. I made enough for a street full. Which, thinking about it, is about what I have been talking to all week.

A foil parcel from Ruth sits empty by the sink. On the desk, the white lamp is dark and quiet. The phone rings once. He does not rush to answer it.

Ruth Nagarkar: This is the whole report, and I will not make it long. The car came back to the ward before dawn. The driver said her light asked the street for help and the street answered, which the board wrote down twice and underlined. The paperwork will call it luck. It doesn't matter. You're on the day shift now, you can eat.

⟨Character 1⟩: If it comes up on the stretch toward Third, I was already remembering some of those lights, from years ago. Building something that people count on, that they trust to turn for them, is quieter work than it sounds. I would like there to be one more of those today, if the city will have me.

Later, at the crossing by Ross Street, he stops and eats his soup on a bench because a small sign on it says so. A light goes red, yellow, green, red, sixteen years old and still in rhythm.

⟨Character 1⟩: Hello, old friend. Green for me, then? Very kind. I'll carry it from here.

He walks back to the flat before half past four, which is earlier than he has been out of it in weeks. The white lamp flickers once as he passes, as if checking that he is still there.

⟨Character 1⟩: Now we rest. Tonight the windows cool down, the north got green, the bridge got fog, and the ward got a driver home before the whole city woke. The next thing that lights up my street gets to wait until morning.

He draws the curtain. The last green at the end of the road blinks on and off, slow and steady, until it is shading the room green through the slack. On the counter, two eggs sit waiting for the morning.

⟨Character 1⟩: Stay green. Then we all sleep until noon, and tomorrow there will be two more of us.