Vol. XXI — 14 July 2003

Contact this evening at 23:47. Truck at the end of the road, headlights off as is customary. Two men. The senior was Castaneda from the Alamogordo desk — he has put on weight since Easter — and the other was the visitor.

The matter on the table was Marisol. Her cohort. The visitor asked whether she should be folded into the standard substrate-rotation schedule beginning age 11 — which is to say beginning this summer. I had been expecting the question since April and had prepared.

I asked for terms.

I asked them to keep her in a cohort with reduced procedure frequency. They agreed. She will receive the maintenance four times in the standard scheduling, then her cohort will be retired by her late thirties. They asked for what they always ask for, which is that I continue to keep her uninformed. I agreed.

It is the bargain I would have made for any of mine. I have made worse ones — the November entry on the Hauschild boy was a harder evening than this one, and that arrangement was not properly mine; the family-side intake came to me because his people came in and out of El Paso and no one in Carolina had clearance to sit with the parents, and so the parents-room work was mine while the procedure itself was carried out by another desk. I never met the boy. I hope he is well.

Lucha was on the porch with us. She did not growl. She knows them by now. La perra ya no se asusta — she lay at the second step with her chin on her paws and watched the visitor the way she watches the propane man. I do not know what Lucha understands of any of this. I do not know what I understand of any of this.

Marisol is asleep. Duerme tranquila, mija. I will not tell her mother — Elena is not built for this sort of knowledge and the desk has never asked her to be. She is one of mine now. I will keep her quiet.

One small thing for the record. The visitor's name in his own language — I cannot reproduce it, the throat will not do what is asked of it. But I will write it here as it appeared to me on the page he showed me, so that the next handler, whoever opens this drawer after I am finished, will at least see the shape of him:

That is the best I can do. I have looked at it twice now and cannot say I understand any more of him by the looking. He is patient with me. They are all patient with me.

Bed. The desk will want the standard write-up by Friday. This page stays in the drawer with the others.

— R.M.