11:40. Counter still wet. I wiped it twice and the cloth just moved the oil around. The tube light is buzzing. Stools are up. The boy who sells eggs has already gone. My phone is on four percent and the cable only works if I hold it at an angle with a rubber band.
The page for the stall has eleven photos. Most of them are the same pot. I took them on different nights and they look like the same night. Nobody from the lane follows it. They already know where I am. The page is for the ones who come from the main road and then message "which turn" at 9 p.m. when I am too busy to type.
My nephew sat on the stacked stools last week and said the page looks closed. He is seventeen. He talks like a person who has never wiped a counter. He held up his own phone, some game, some number going up, and told me the fix was speed. Tonight. Before the weekend crowd. I told him the oil was still on my hands. He said that was not the point.
The coupon
He had a screenshot. Not of my page. Of an advertisement. Big letters, a clock, a button the colour of a ripe chilli. He had circled the clock. "See," he said, "instantly." I asked instantly compared to what. He did not like the question. He said the aunty at the next stall already did it and her photos look busy. I walked over there on my break. Her photos are busy because she posts the sweets when they are still hot, and her son stands in the frame, and people tag the lane. The number is higher. The sweets are also the reason. He did not want to hear the sweets part.
I let him hold my phone anyway, because my hands were wet and he was not going to leave. He typed with his thumbs the way they all type, fast and a little angry. I watched the words. I made him stop before any box asked me for a password. I know that much. I am not new to people who want the keys to a thing. The gas guy, the ice guy, the boy who once offered to "manage" the page for a weekly cut. They all want a way in. A password is a way in. I said no, and I said it loud enough that the egg seller, who had not left yet, laughed.
What he typed, when I told him to use the plain words and not the clock, was free instagram followers instantly. He added the last word himself. I told him to take it off. He said the last word is the whole point, otherwise why are we standing here while the oil settles. I was tired. The cable was slipping. I let the word stay and I watched what the page did with my name.
It found the pot. The same pot from the third photo, the one where the flame is too high and the metal looks white. I recognised it. That mattered more than the nephew's clock. If a site cannot show me my own pot, it is talking to somebody else. I put the phone down on a dry rag and went back to the tap.
What moved, and what did not
Nothing moved while he sat there. He refreshed. He sighed. He refreshed again. I sent him to buy change. When he came back the number was the same and he looked betrayed, as if the clock in the advertisement had made a promise to him personally. I told him to go home. His mother calls if he is out past midnight and then I get the call, because she thinks I am the adult.
I closed up. Counted the notes. The rubber band on the cable snapped, so I used a piece of the twist tie from the herb bundle. On the bus the phone was at twelve percent and the page had shifted by a small amount. Not a jump. A few names. I did not know them. One had a picture of a motorcycle. One had nothing. I locked the screen and watched the road.
On the bus I sat behind a man watching a cricket highlight with the sound on. Nobody cared. My hands smelled like the cloth no matter how I held the rail. At my stop the shutter street was dark except for the pharmacy. I thought about posting the closed shutter and did not, because the phone would have died on the walk and I still needed the torch for the lock. Some nights the page loses to a lock. That is not a failure of nerve. It is a battery.
Morning, before the first order, I looked again with tea that had gone cold. The motorcycle name was still there. The empty one was gone. A woman had watched the story I posted of the shutters coming up, the one I always post because my brother in another city likes to see that I opened. She did not message. She did not need to. The nephew texted "???" at 8:10. I sent him a photo of the pot, not a photo of the number. He replied with a clock emoji. I did not reply to the clock.
The ice man came early and wanted to talk about a wedding order. I wrote the kilos on the back of a receipt and stuck it above the tap, where I will see it when my hands are clean enough to care. He glanced at the phone on the rag and asked if I was "doing that number thing" too. I said I was cooking. He nodded like that was the correct religion and went to the next stall. I liked him more for that than for the ice.
Why the last word is a problem
Instantly is a word for people who are not holding a cloth. The stall does not happen instantly. The stock comes, the flame takes, the first customer argues about salt, the second one is kind. A page is the same kind of work and nobody wants to say so, because saying so does not fit on a button.
I have seen what instant looks like on other stalls. A number that fattened overnight and a comment list full of dots and letters. The owner shows you the number and will not show you the comments. By the next Friday the number is ordinary again and he is angry at the boy who set it up. The boy has a new screenshot. There is always a new screenshot.
I would rather a slow change I can check against names. If I do not recognise a face, I can still look at whether they have a life outside my pot. A motorcycle photo is a life. A blank circle is not. I am not romantic about it. I sell food. I need the main-road people to find the turn. A blank circle does not ask for the turn. A person with a motorcycle might, or might not. That is enough uncertainty for one week.
There is a woman who messages every few Fridays from a neighbourhood I have never been to. She found the lane once, liked the dal, and now she asks if I am open before she leaves her house. She does not care what the number under the pot photo says. She cares if the flame is on. I answer her before I answer my nephew. That order has kept me from doing anything stupid with the phone for months, and I intend to keep it when he shows up with the next clock.
The nephew came back on Sunday with another idea. A countdown video. I was cutting coriander. I said no without looking up. He said I was old. I said the coriander does not care. He laughed, finally, and ate the burnt edge of a roti which is the tax he pays for advice. We did not open the advertisement. The phone stayed in my shirt pocket, where the oil cannot reach the port.
What I will repeat next time he visits
Post the shutters. Post the pot when the flame is honest, not when it looks white. Answer the "which turn" messages even when my hands are wet, even if the answer is three words. Do not give the password to a nephew, a manager, or a button. Do not believe a clock drawn by someone who has never stood at this counter.
If he must search something, he can search it in front of me, in daylight, when I can see the box. I already know which sentence he likes. He will type free instagram followers instantly again because the last word makes him feel quick. I will delete the last word if the box lets me. If it does not, I will still wait until the next morning before I decide the night was useful. Useful means a person, not a jump. The pot will be there either way. The oil will be there either way. The buzzing light I should really replace.