My uncle had just found out the truth. His forty million views on clips.com were not a gift from his niece. They were a mistake in a dropdown menu.
He did not shout. He did not cry. He walked out of Firm, past the coffee machine with the config problem, and out through the lobby under Thirty Seconds of Everything.
He did not take the elevator. He took the stairs, all four flights, in the good jacket. I followed him down and then stood in the lobby, because I didn't know what else to do.
At two o'clock, Corwin Ash texted me. "Chief. Is he coming to rehearsal?"
At three, Gil texted. "Lighthouse is in. Pink gel confirmed!!"
At four, my uncle texted. He typed with one finger, so it must have taken him a while. "I WILL NOT BE DOING FRIDAY. PLEASE TELL THE LADY WITH THE SLEEVES."
I told Desmond first. We were in Pillow Top, which had finally been booked, because nobody else would be in there.
"He's out," I said.
Desmond nodded slowly. He had his seed jar but he wasn't eating from it. He was just holding it, like a man holding a small, crunchy grudge.
"You know what this is," he said.
"Don't say config."
"I wasn't going to say config." He paused. "I was going to say it's a people problem that looks like a config problem. Those are worse."
"How do you fix one of those?"
"You go to where the people are," he said. "Not where the logs are."
I looked at my phone. It was Thursday, six-forty in the evening.
"I know where he is," I said.
The Copper Kettle is on Wharf Street, between a tackle shop and a laundromat. It smells of fries and old varnish. The floor sticks to your shoes in a way the regulars describe as "character."
On Thursdays it does karaoke, and it has done karaoke on Thursdays since 1996. The machine sits on a shelf behind the bar. It is a gray box called the SongMaster 9, and it is older than me.
Agnes Halvorsen runs it. She is seventy, owns the bar, and keeps the sign-up sheet on a clipboard she does not allow anyone else to touch. She wears a cardigan with a pencil in every pocket. I have never seen her use a pencil.
That night, the Copper Kettle was packed. There were people outside on the sidewalk. Some of them were holding phones up at the window, as if the window might sing.
"Clips people," Agnes said, when she saw me. She did not say it warmly. "They've been here since Tuesday. They order one soda and film the light."
"I'm sorry."
"You're the niece."
"I'm the niece."
"You're the one who put him on the internet." She looked at me over the clipboard. "By accident, he says."
"By accident," I said. "I should have told him. I told everybody else something else instead."
Agnes studied me. Then she pointed with the clipboard at the end of the bar.
My uncle was sitting on the last stool, in the good jacket, with a small basket of fries he wasn't eating. His name was not on the sign-up sheet. Agnes told me later it was the first Thursday in eleven years that it wasn't.
I sat down next to him. He didn't look at me. He looked at the pink light over the little stage.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't pick you. You're right. I needed a video under thirty seconds, and you were the only one on my phone."
He ate a fry. It seemed to cost him something.
"But I had you on my phone," I said. "That's the thing. I don't film anything.
"I have pictures of error messages and a radiator. And I have you, on a Thursday, at the bridge. I filmed it because it's the best part."
He was quiet for a while.
"And then I lied," I said. "To your face, in front of the chief executive. Because you looked proud, and I didn't want to be the person who made you stop."
"You didn't make me stop," he said. "You let me find out somewhere else. That's different."
I thought of Desmond saying the same words, about not knowing yet. Everyone I knew seemed to agree on what was different. Nobody agreed on what was the same.
"Yes," I said. "It's worse."
He nodded. He ate another fry. This one seemed to cost him less.
"Can I ask you something?" I said. "Why do you do the key change?"
"I told you. It's the best part."
"But why did you start?"
He laughed. It was a small one, but you could hear it.
"Ask Agnes," he said.
Agnes was already there. She had been listening the whole time, which I would learn was what Agnes did instead of using pencils.
"The SongMaster," she said. "Track 114. 'Harbor Lights Tonight.'"
"What about it?"
"It's broken." She jerked her head at the gray box on the shelf. "Been broken since before your uncle's first night.
"There's a pitch setting that sticks. Halfway through that track, at the bridge, the machine jumps up a key on its own. Every time.
"I've called the company. The company doesn't exist anymore."
I stared at her. Then I stared at the SongMaster 9.
"His first Thursday," Agnes went on, "eleven years ago, he gets to the bridge, and the machine goes up. Anybody else would've stopped. He didn't. He closed his eyes and went up after it."
"I thought it was a mistake," Uncle Teo said. "But it was the machine's mistake. So I helped."
"And that's why he lands it," Agnes said. "Here, and only here. The machine goes up with him.
"Your fancy band played it the right way, and he's never sung it the right way in his life."
I sat very still on the bar stool.
The key change was not in the song. It was not in the karaoke track.
It was in the machine. It was a wrong value in a gray box on a shelf, stuck there for eleven years. And my uncle had been singing along to it every Thursday.
It was a config problem.
Desmond had been right about everything, which I knew he would find unbearable.
"Sing it," I said.
My uncle looked at me.
"Not for clips.com. Not for anybody. Just sing it. Like a Thursday."
He looked at the pink light for a long time. Then he stood up, buttoned the good jacket, and walked to the clipboard. Agnes, who does not let anyone touch the clipboard, handed him a pencil.
He wrote his name at the bottom of the list.
They called him at nine-forty. The bar went quiet. The clips.com fans outside pressed against the window.
The SongMaster 9 made a noise like a small airplane. The opening of "Harbor Lights Tonight" came out of a speaker held together with tape.
He sang the first verse. He sang the second. He reached the bridge and closed his eyes.
The machine went up. He went up with it.
He landed it.
Not near it. On it, clean, like a bus pulling exactly into its stop. The whole Copper Kettle went up with him. A man at the pool table put down his cue and applauded with his hands over his head.
I filmed the whole thing, all four minutes. I did not post it. I put my phone in my pocket and I cried a little into the fries, which Agnes allowed.
Afterward, my uncle sat back down next to me.
"Friday," he said. "I'll do Friday. On one condition."
"Anything."
"Here." He tapped the bar. "Not in the basement at clips.com.
"Here, with the pink light. With Agnes. With the broken machine."
I thought about Gil's lighthouse. I thought about nine lights that cost more than my car, and the Overnight Shift, and a budget code. I thought about a company built on thirty seconds deciding to stream four minutes from a bar with a sticky floor.
Then I took out my phone and called the CEO of clips.com. It was ten-fifteen at night. She answered on the first ring.
"Ms. Castellano," Harriet Vosk said.
"It wasn't a test," I said. "It was an accident. I misread the dropdown.
"I'm sorry I said anything else. And I need to move Friday to a bar."
There was a pause on the line. It wasn't angry. It sounded like someone deciding how much to say.
"I know it was an accident," Harriet said. "I've known since three-oh-six on Tuesday."
"Then why did you let me—"
"Come in at seven tomorrow," she said. "Memory Foam. I want to show you who else made that mistake."
Up next: Are You Sure?
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