Page 45 of Coram House

“I don’t think that’s actually a thing.”

“It’s definitely a thing!”

“All right.”

“All rightyou’re gonna go?”

“All righta champagne fountain might be a thing.”

“I’m just saying—once in a while you can do the crazy thing.”

“Well, as long as we both agree it would be crazy.”

Laughing makes me feel lighter. I like talking like this—at a distance. Like how the thread that connects us is just what we choose to share.

“By the way, I’ve got next weekend off. I was thinking I could come visit.”

I sink back onto the couch. “Visit? Here?”

“Yeah. That’s the idea.”

The thought fills me with panic. Like a piece of my old life comingto haunt me. Then I feel terrible because I love Lola. “But what about the show?” I ask.

Lola works in marketing for a theater company. The pay is shit, but the people make up for it, she always says. And it’s true. She’s constantly surrounded by actors, always has an art opening to attend and knows where the coolest bar is before it’s the next big thing. It also usually means that her weekends are fully booked from September to May.

“Tech problems,” she says. “It got pushed out a week. So what about it?”

“I would love that,” I stutter, “but things are just so busy right now. I’m just starting to dig in. I’m working weekends, always on the phone, you’d hate me. Plus it’s freezing. Come in a month or two—it will be better then.”

I cringe at the way I’m throwing a barrage of reasons at her when one would have been enough.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure.” Her voice sounds hard.

“You know I’d love to see you.” And I mean it. I do. Sort of.

“Yeah,” she says again. “Sounds good. Anyways, it’s getting late. I should go.”

We say our goodbyes and she hangs up. My phone is hot from being used for so long. Then I pick up the box of receipts and keep reading. As if Sister Cecile might have scribbled some vital clue between the lines of an invoice for canned goods.

The next day my stomach feels greasy and hollow. Guilt over all the things I didn’t tell Lola. Or possibly a protest that everything I’ve eaten over the last week has come out of a foil wrapper. Today will be different, I vow. Today I will eat a vegetable. So I get dressed and head for the grocery store a few blocks away.

The aisles are clean and brightly lit, filled with a bounty of boxes in the muted greens and browns that promise local and organic. In the bulk aisle, I decide between seven kinds of granola, and then stop by a refrigerator case stocked with homemade soups and quiches—homemade by other people, my favorite kind. My basket is overflowing by the time I make it to the checkout, but remembering my vow to eat something green, I wedge in a spinach salad covered in goat cheese.

On the way back, I cradle the paper bag, determined not to let a hundred dollars’ worth of organic granola I can’t afford fall in the snow. Inside, on the top step, I trip over something, barely catching myself before I plummet backward. My spinach salad goes sledding down the stairs.

When I look down to see what nearly killed me, I find a large cardboard box with a note from my landlord explaining it had been delivered next door by mistake. For a second, I’m puzzled. Then I remember. I unlock the door and push the box inside, groceries be damned. My key slices through the packing tape and there it is: the VHS player.

Twenty minutes of plugging and unplugging and swearing later, I’m staring at a glowing screen on the TV sayingAUX input. I unearth the box of VHS tapes and lay them out on the floor one by one. Most are labeled with a name and a date, but so faded I can barely read them. I find Sarah Dale’s testimony, pop it in, and press play. I’ve already read the transcripts—I know I’m not going to learn anything new, but I want to see her face and hear her voice. It feels like I’m about to meet a friend, back from the dead.

The only sound in the room is the whir of the tape. I realize I’m holding my breath. At first it’s just static, but then a woman’s face appears, her mouth moving, but the only sound is a loud crackle. Then the whole picture distorts and turns green. The screen goes black.

“No.”

In my head it’s a scream, but it comes out a whisper. I want to rip the thing out of the wall and throw it out the window. Instead, I eject the tape and start searching.

According to the internet, either the tape or the heads are dirty from thirty years in a box. I might be able to clean them or they might be too degraded to ever work again. I head out to get supplies.

An hour later, my instruments are laid out like I’m prepping for surgery. Cotton swabs, alcohol, a tiny screwdriver to remove the tape casing. I start with Sarah Dale. A fine white powder coats the tape.Mold. I swab every inch of it, slowly, painfully. Then I eat my salad standing over the sink while the tape dries. Salad demolished, I wind the tape back onto the spools.

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