Item Forty-One

The Vervain Street Puppet Theatre closes tonight, and tomorrow Verlan & Sons will auction everything a lot number can be chalked onto. You were Odile's apprentice here for eleven years, and Tarragon — the green dragon the two of you built plank by scale — is Item 41 on the manifest. Odile is gone since the spring, and the theatre was never yours to keep. Piet, the stage-door keeper of forty years, sits at the front with his copy of the manifest, checking everything that leaves the building — kindly, and completely. You have come to say goodbye, and you already know goodbye is not going to be enough.