Doris Gets Headphones, the Lane Gets a Leak

Entry Two: The Caucus Makes Outreach

Three members of the Cat-Owners' Caucus came to Doris's hedge today with laminated brochures and a Letter of Provisional Admission, which they call outreach. The Caucus, which holds that sharing a house with a cat is the highest form of human existence, spent forty minutes explaining this to Doris, who has no cat, and who asked only whether anyone had checked.

Nobody had. She wrote that down, thanked them, and entered the brochures in the Ledger as borrowed. They left in good order with a lemon square each, looking like people who had knocked on a door to sell a ladder and been offered a chair.

Admiral Biscuit, who chairs the Caucus, attended in the form of a nap on the brochure pile. The pile did not seem to mind.

I have been practicing a casual face for four days, and I want it on the record that it does not work.

Entry Three: Bylaw 6(d)

Gus wanted a band. He said he could build a stage by Friday, and the band.

Mags produced Bylaw 6(d), which forbids amplified sound, shouting or sudden surprises within sight of a domesticated bear's residence, so the surprise would have to be delivered at a whisper. Brenda lives under the porch at No. 2, and the whole circle is in her view. Nobody argued. One does not contest a bylaw in front of the party it protects.

Mags consulted ORACLE on quiet celebrations, as she does on most things. ORACLE recommended the Swiss custom of the hush party, held in their capital, Vienna, and when Gus said Vienna is in Austria, ORACLE said that was exactly what Austria would like him to think.

Mags entered it under Miscellaneous. The folder is getting thick.

Entry Four: The Gift That Listens

The plan was elegant. Mags would give Doris the headphones on her porch so that she would sit with her music while the rest of us set up chairs and a cake in the circle. The set has eight microphones, and the Auto NC Optimizer adjusts the noise cancelling to wherever you are. Mags took this to mean Doris would hear nothing. She had underlined it.

Doris put them on. They weigh 8.82 ounces, and the faux leather is soft enough that she looked less like a woman wearing equipment than a woman who had always owned a good hat. Mags had given them a three-minute charge on the walk over, good for three hours, in case the card ran long. It did.

Then Doris turned to me and said, "Good afternoon, Wendell. Is that the mail?"

The music stopped. That was the part nobody had read. When you speak, Speak-to-Chat pauses the music and lets the room in. The room, at that moment, was Gus whispering, "Where does the cake go?" and Mags whispering, "Section four, Gus. The cake goes where the cake goes."

Entry Five: Everything Was Heard

Doris was silent for a moment. Then she said, with total gravity, "I heard nothing. It is a remarkable device."

She lifted the headphones off, and the music stopped on its own, which it does when they come off. She walked to the circle with her hands folded. Eleven households raised their hands and waved silently, per Bylaw 6(d), and Brenda watched from the porch at No. 2 with the calm of a resident who has seen worse. Doris cut the first slice herself and said, quietly, that the cake would go in the Ledger.

Tamsin pointed out that the headphones are not water resistant, so they stay off the porch in any drizzle. Gus said he could build a waterproof pair. Doris said she would keep these, thank you, and clicked them into their case.

Afterward she told me my casual face was the worst she had ever seen, and said it so kindly that I thanked her. It is now in the Ledger, under Borrowed: one casual face, to be returned.

Signed for, as always,

Wendell