TELL
A bedroom desk under a lamp at night, a corkboard of pinned cards above it, a man writing one of the cards by hand.

Every chapter opens with two lines.

Four acts. The two lines under each title are the author’s epigraph for that chapter, copied exactly.

Act one

The Open Book

Sam cannot read anybody. By the end of these seven chapters he can, and the first thing he does with it is ruin a man who was only frightened.

  1. Chapter 01 Transcripts
    Seeing is not understanding;
    being seen is being loved.
  2. Chapter 02 Closing Time
    Every bar is honest at closing time.
    Every body, a little before.
  3. Chapter 03 The Portrait Gallery
    A face is a room
    its owner tidied for visitors.
  4. Chapter 04 Weather Report
    Nobody makes their own weather.
    It arrives from other people.
  5. Chapter 05 Happy Feet
    The face is a diplomat.
    The feet never joined the service.
  6. Chapter 06 The Nervous Man
    Comfort sits quiet.
    Discomfort keeps clearing its throat.
  7. Chapter 07 Collection Notice
    The body keeps its own accounts,
    and everything is collected.

Act two

Clusters

One signal is never enough. Every chapter here offers a confident answer first and the rest of the cluster afterwards.

  1. Chapter 08 What You'd Testify To
    An honest witness reports the gesture,
    never the verdict.
  2. Chapter 09 Open Floor Plan
    Space is a sentence.
    Distance is its grammar.
  3. Chapter 10 Two Cups
    Two cups cool at one table
    at two different speeds.
  4. Chapter 11 The Sentence
    There was never going to be a sentence.
    There was always a body.
  5. Chapter 12 The Elevator Test
    Put strangers in a small box
    and the truth turns sideways.
  6. Chapter 13 The Null
    Some pages are not blank.
    They are written in held breath.
  7. Chapter 14 Mirror, Mirror
    A mirror gives back everything
    except the reason.

Act three

The Mask

The bill arrives while he is busy elsewhere. His best friend has been carrying something for most of the book, at home, where nothing ever prompts you to look.

  1. Chapter 15 Territories
    Every room is divided
    long before anyone speaks.
  2. Chapter 16 Lead and Follow
    One body asks, one answers.
    Then they trade.
  3. Chapter 17 Kitchen Table
    The smallest tables
    carry the heaviest talk.
  4. Chapter 18 The Mask
    A mask fits best
    on the face that practised it.
  5. Chapter 19 The Performance
    Rehearsed feeling moves first.
    Real feeling arrives late.
  6. Chapter 20 Static
    When the signal jams,
    the sender is standing too close.
  7. Chapter 21 The Ledger
    Nothing a body gives is free.
    The account stays open.

Act four

The Payment

No new ways of seeing. The last two faculties are stances rather than sight, because the ending has to be his and cannot be handed to him.

  1. Chapter 22 Prior Borrowers
    Everything worn was worn before.
    Skin remembers its lenders.
  2. Chapter 23 The Honest Scale
    Weigh what was shown against what was said,
    and stand still for the result.
  3. Chapter 24 Everything Must Go
    At season's end
    everything true is suddenly affordable.
  4. Chapter 25 The Borrowed Skin
    Return what you borrowed
    the way you found it: warm.
  5. Chapter 26 What's Left of the Book
    When the book runs out of pages,
    read the reader.
  6. Chapter 27 Terms
    Read the terms before you sign.
    The terms are reading you.
  7. Chapter 28 Closing Time (Reprise)
    Every bar is honest at closing time.
    Tonight, nothing needed saying.

The shape of it

Chapter two and chapter twenty-eight open on the same line and part on the second. That is the shape of the whole book, and it is set down in the epigraphs above before any of it happens.

Play chapter oneHow a reading works

Twenty-eight chapters are finished. The first one is open.