“It's getting to be quite a pocket,” Ruth remarked.
“I might have to check it as baggage.”
The captain came over the speakers. They were passing Mount Hood on the left. A little girl across the aisle could not see over her father's arm, and he lifted her up to look. Daniel stood aside to let somebody get a photograph through his window. June leaned toward hers. It was a fine blue afternoon, the mountain white from shoulder to crown, the snow so bright it erased some of the rock that held it up. When she'd been small she had supposed Mount Hood belonged to her mother, because her mother spoke of it with the proprietary tone she used for her own clothesline. Look how my mountain has its hat on today. Look at the shadow my mountain makes in the afternoon. How many things, June wondered, did you keep calling yours long after you had left them?
They landed at three minutes to three. June could make the video hearing if she got the cassette player, the phone, and herself to a quiet place with a door. In principle this ought to have been quite possible in a building large enough to have its own railway. In practice there were people waiting at the gate.
They were easy to spot. Three dark jackets in a row behind the desk, a woman wearing a Northstar scarf standing one pace ahead of them, a pair of plastic badge holders with an orange stripe across the bottom. Standing farther away, without any apparent connection to the first group, were two people with cameras and a woman holding a microphone with a blue foam cover.
June waited until Ruth had retrieved her book. Then she pulled down her case, put it on its wheels, and gave her attention to steering it. Daniel walked a few steps behind. She could have melted into a crowd if the crowd hadn't already been looking at her.
“Ms. Ellis? I'm Gloria from passenger experience. We're glad you're here safely. Do you have a minute?”
“No.”
“There's a room for you just this way.”
“Does it have a door that closes?”
“Of course.”
“And can you promise to be on the other side of it until I open it?”
Gloria's face rearranged itself. She began to say that Northstar wished to show its appreciation for June's patience. At that point Daniel did the first genuinely useful thing he'd done that day. He put his hand on the handle of a door marked QUIET ROOM, pushed it open, and held it with his foot.
“Not a company room,” he said. “It's for anybody. It's empty.”
June steered her case through. Ruth slipped in behind her. Just before the door shut June caught a glimpse of Inez coming out of the jet bridge carrying a lunch bag shaped like a duck's head. The whole duck business had a depth to it she hadn't anticipated. Inez was looking straight ahead, not at any of the people who wanted a piece of her. June wanted to call to her, but the door shut and her phone began to ring.
It was the clerk. “Can you hear me, Ms. Ellis? The hearing will begin in about seven minutes.”
“Yes, I hear you. I've got the link.”
There was a desk, three vinyl chairs, and a little fountain attached to the wall. The fountain had no water. June sat at the desk and got out the player. She inserted the cassette, tested the volume on the song just before the one they wanted, and set it down. The tiny wheels were turning but the speaker made a dry shuffling sound. She turned the volume up. She heard about half a bar of music in a remarkably low key, followed by a slow inglorious groan.
“Batteries?” Ruth suggested.
“Bought them new yesterday.”
June opened the machine. A thin brown loop had slipped out of the shell. When she touched it the tape kept coming, and a strip about six inches long fell like a curl of ribbon into her palm.
At twenty-two, when her mother died, June had been the person who answered the night call, identified the body, and chose a dress in the right size. She had ordered a vegetable tray at seven in the morning. At thirty-one she had held Libby's coat tight around a neighbor's head while waiting for an ambulance and kept her daughter occupied by counting red cars out the window, so she wouldn't see the blood. At forty, holding a piece of music that weighed less than a paper clip and could be destroyed by one unthinking movement of her hands, she burst into tears.
“Is it broken where the music is?” Ruth asked.
“I don't know where the music is. I don't even know where I am.”
“You're in a room with me. Put the machine on the table.”
June did. Ruth took an ordinary yellow pencil out of her tote. She instructed June to hold the little door on the cassette out of the way and put a finger under the loose tape without pinching it. Then she fitted the pencil into one of the two reels and began to turn it a quarter turn at a time. The tape had creased in two places. It had not broken. As it passed her finger June could feel it trying to flip in the wrong direction. Ruth held a corner of her library card against it and coaxed it flat. It was the most delicate piece of work June had ever watched another person do in an airport.