nobody was behind the glass.

Every evening, a voice said his name through the control-room wall. He would straighten his back before he knew he had moved. The old studio had been closed for years, but somebody in there still sounded disappointed.

One night he forced the swollen door. An empty console. A tape machine plugged into the corridor supply. On its reels, a scrap from a session he barely remembered: his name, a cough, then “Again, from the top.” The rest was hiss.

He sat beside it until the phrase came round. His shoulders rose. Then settled. He had spent so long preparing an answer that he had never heard the cough.