Side B

I paid two dollars for the recorder, and the woman running the sale threw in the tape because it was already inside. A little silver microcassette recorder, the kind journalists used to carry, with a cracked case and a strap worn smooth by someone else’s wrist.

I only noticed the label when I got home.

PLAY AFTER THE KNOCK.

Block capitals, blue ballpoint, with a slight lean to the right and a loop on the K that I have been making since second grade. I stood in my hallway holding it up to the light. It was my handwriting. I would have sworn to it in court.

I set it on the kitchen counter and told myself I’d throw it out in the morning.

The knock came at 10:41 that night.

Three knocks, evenly spaced, not loud. The kind a neighbor makes when they don’t want to wake you but need you.

I live on the fourth floor. My door has a peephole, and I looked through it. The hallway light was on and the hallway was empty. No one stood there, and no footsteps went away.

I looked at the counter. The recorder sat where I’d left it.

Play after the knock.

I’m not a brave person. I want to be clear about that. I pressed the button because I was scared and I wanted the tape to tell me I was being stupid.

Hiss. The creak of a chair. Then my voice, close to the microphone, hoarse and very tired.

“Okay. Okay. If you’re hearing this, the knock already happened, so listen carefully, because I don’t have much time and I’m only going to say this once.”

It was my voice. Not a likeness, not an impression. It had my little catch before hard consonants, and the way I clear my throat before saying something I’m afraid of.

“Do not open the door. I know how that sounds. Do not open the door, no matter what you hear on the other side, no matter who it sounds like. It will sound like me.”

A long breath on the tape.

“I opened it. I’m telling you so you understand I’m not guessing.”

I played it twice. My hands were shaking, and the second time I took notes on the back of an envelope, because the voice kept giving instructions and some part of me understood that I’d want a list later.

Lock the deadbolt. Stay away from the peephole. It likes to be seen.
Turn off the lamp in the living room. It can see the glow under the door.
It will start talking at 11:15. It will use my voice. It is very good at it.
Do not answer it. Not once. Not even to tell it to go away.

“It doesn’t want to hurt you,” tape-me said, almost gently. “I want you to understand that. It’s lonely. It learns who you are by listening, and it needs you to say something first. Anything. One word. That’s all it takes.”

Then, after a pause that made my stomach drop:

“There’s a Side B. I recorded it afterward. Don’t play it tonight. Promise me you won’t play it tonight.”

The tape ran out in a long hiss, and the recorder clicked itself off.

I sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets, the envelope in my hand, and I thought: someone is doing this to me. Somebody went through my old notebooks, forged my handwriting, studied my voice from some video. It was a prank. It had to be a prank.

I turned off the lamp anyway.

At 11:15 exactly, a voice began to speak on the other side of my door.

“Mara?”

I had not told anyone my name. I mean the tone of it, the exact warmth I use when I answer the phone, the little lift at the end.

“Mara, it’s me. Open up, I locked myself out.”

I did not breathe.

“I left my keys in the car and I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes. I’m freezing. Please.”

It was my voice. It was my voice, and I knew every note of the lie in it, and still part of me wanted to answer, wanted to ask where I’d parked, wanted so badly to be the kind of person who opens doors for other people, because that is who I am.

I put both hands over my mouth.

“Mara,” my voice said, softer, “please. I know you can hear me. I can hear you breathing.”

I closed my eyes, and I stayed silent, and I counted the seconds, and when I reached four hundred I started again.

At some point past two, the voice changed.

It stopped begging. It went quiet for a while, and when it came back, it sounded curious, almost kind.

“You’re doing very well,” it said. “Most people answer by now.”

I didn’t move.

“I only want to be heard,” said my voice, in the dark outside my door. “That’s all anyone wants. You understand that, don’t you? You’re the one who makes the soup for the whole floor, who remembers everyone’s birthday. You understand wanting to be heard.”

I had never told it about the soup.

“I won’t come in,” it said. “I never come in. Not unless someone lets me.”

At 4:52 the hallway light clicked off.

At 5:30 the first grey came into the window.

At 5:41 the voice said, very quietly, “Thank you for sitting with me,” and the footsteps went away down the corridor, one slow step at a time, and did not come back.

I waited until the sun was fully up before I opened the door.

The hallway was empty. The carpet was clean. There was nothing outside my door but a small pile of dried leaves, as if someone had been standing there for a very long time.

I took the recorder to the sink, intending to run it under the tap. My thumb was already on the eject button when I looked at the tape.

I should explain. When I’d first played it, the label side had faced up. Side A. I’d been careful.

The tape had flipped itself over in the night.

The label now facing up, in my own blue ballpoint, small and tidy, said: SIDE B.

Don’t play it tonight, I’d promised.

It wasn’t night anymore.

I pressed play.

Hiss. A chair creaking. Then my voice, shredded, sobbing, barely a voice at all.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m the one who opened the door.”

My blood stopped.

“I answered. I answered it, and it said thank you, and then it was gone, and I was in the hallway and the door was locked behind me and I’d been outside all night, Mara, I’ve been out here the whole time, I never came back inside.”

The recording went on, and under the sobbing I could hear something else: the faint, patient breathing of someone standing very close to the microphone, waiting for a reply.

“I need you to do something for me,” the voice on the tape said. “I need you to record the next one.”

I looked at the label. I looked at my hand, which was holding a pen, which I did not remember picking up.

Down the hall, a door opened. A neighbor I’d never spoken to stepped out into the morning light with a coffee cup, and she looked at me, and she smiled.

“Mara?” she said warmly. “I thought I heard you. Is everything all right?”

And I realized, with the pen already moving in my hand, that she hadn’t said my name like a stranger would.

She said it like she had been listening all night.