Give Me Six Hours

The two officers who come are polite, tired, and very clear.

"A photo of a front door from a public sidewalk," the older one says, writing in a notebook he doesn't seem to need. "No threat in the caption. No contact. I'm sorry, ma'am. It's creepy. It's not a crime."

"He was across the street." You're standing in your kitchen in socks, arms wrapped around yourself. "Tonight. Those are tonight's leaves."

"We'll have the car swing by." He looks at the porch light through the storm door. "Might want to turn that off."

You don't answer. You haven't turned that light off in three years. Your babcia hasn't turned hers off in forty.

After they leave, Sabeen arrives in an Uber in pajama pants and a leather jacket, takes one look at you and starts throwing clothes into your gym bag. "You're sleeping at mine. Don't argue. I have the good pillows."

"I wasn't going to argue."

"You were going to argue a little."

In Sabeen's apartment in Rogers Park, with the radiator ticking and the El rattling past the window, you lie on her couch under a crocheted blanket her mother made and stare at your phone. The photo is gone everywhere. You've searched. You've searched the way you search for missing people, with quotes and dates and stubbornness, and there's nothing left. Just the screenshot Sabeen took before it vanished.

You open the Porch. You open the DM.

thank you, you type. i called. they said it's not a crime.

The reply comes in seconds.

they're not wrong about the law and they're wrong about everything else. are you somewhere safe?

my producer's couch. she has good pillows.

good. pillows are underrated security.

You laugh, out loud, a wet, startled sound in the dark. Sabeen grunts from the bedroom.

how did you get it down so fast?, you ask.

reported every copy through each platform's safety team. posting someone's home without consent breaks almost all their rules, it just usually takes them a week to notice. i'm loud. also i saved everything first, with times, so the police have it if they need it.

you saved it?

evidence disappears. men like this delete when they get nervous. i don't want him to get to delete.

You read that three times. Men like this. Like there's a type, and he knows it.

who are you?, you type, and then delete it, because it feels like asking a guardian angel for a driver's license.

Instead you write: i'm scared.

i know. you're allowed to be. you don't have to be brave on the porch, it's after hours.

You talk until four. About nothing, mostly. About the episode you're editing on the Marquette Park disappearance. About his opinion that the Platters are the only acceptable diner music. About how he moderates at night because he doesn't sleep much, which he says the way people say they don't eat breakfast, like it's a quirk and not a sadness. He writes in lowercase, all of it. He's funny in a dry, sideways way that sneaks up on you. When you finally say you should try to sleep, he writes:

go. lock the door you're behind, even if it's hers. i'll be up.

You fall asleep with the phone on your chest.

Fulton Audio at nine in the morning smells like burnt popcorn and panic. Ilona has called a meeting. You walk into the Fishbowl on three hours of sleep with your hair in a crooked clip and find Xavier Eckhart at the head of the table with a stack of printouts.

They're you.

Your kitchen window, March. Your kitchen window, July, the street sign circled in red pen. Your coffee order. Your car. The neighbor's dog, a sweet old beagle named Kapusta, with his tag enlarged so the address is readable. A clip from last year's live show where you laughed about the "worst bus in Chicago" and named the route.

"It took me forty minutes," Xavier says to the room. "Forty minutes, from public posts, to find her front door. lightkeeper didn't need to be clever. She did the work for him."

Someone from marketing coughs. Ilona's assistant looks at the table. Sabeen, beside you, goes very still.

You stand up. "Can I talk to you outside?"

"We're in a glass room. There is no outside."

"Then I'll talk to you in here." Your voice comes out low and shaking, which is worse than shouting. "I didn't sleep. A man stood across the street from my house last night and took a picture. And you've turned it into a slideshow of how it's my fault."

"I didn't say fault." He hasn't raised his voice either. "I said it's findable. Those aren't the same thing."

"They feel the same."

For half a second, something moves in his face. He looks at you properly, at the shadows under your eyes, the crooked clip, and his jaw shifts like he's biting down on a word. Then it's gone.

"Feelings aren't my department," he says. "Your door is. I need you to take down the posts on the list. Today."

"Fine."

"And stop doing behind-the-scenes from your home studio."

"No."

"And the porch light."

You go so cold your fingers ache. "What about the porch light?"

"It's how he photographs you. It's a spotlight on your door." He says it almost gently, which is somehow the cruelest part. "Turn it off."

"Get out of my show's meeting."

"It's the network's meeting," Ilona says. "Sit down, both of you. Xavier, the list is good. Ava, take the posts down. Piet, Sabeen, nothing from her apartment until further notice."

At the end of the table Piet raises a hand, apologetic, his sandy hair still damp from his bike ride. "I'll pull the closet-studio intros from the back catalog. It's no trouble." He gives you a small, sorry smile. "Stroopwafel?"

You take one. You don't look at Xavier again.

You spend the afternoon in Studio B deleting three years of your life. The kitchen window. The dog. The bus. Every deletion feels like scrubbing a little bit of yourself out of a photograph. At four, Sabeen opens the door without knocking.

Her face tells you before her mouth does.

"He posted again," she says.

It's not a photo this time. It's text. Your full street address, apartment number and all, under a screenshot of your face from the hundredth-episode banner.

she wants to be found. let's find her.

It has been up for nineteen minutes. It's already been shared forty thousand times. Your name is trending in Chicago next to a pizza place and a Bears trade. You make the mistake of tapping the replies, and the first one is a stranger saying he's three blocks away.

The room tilts. Sabeen's hand closes on your shoulder.

Your phone buzzes. The Porch. GHOSTLIGHT.

i see it. give me six hours. don't read the replies. please, Ava, don't read the replies.

You look up through the glass of Studio B, across the office, to the Fishbowl.

Xavier Eckhart is on his feet. He's got his phone to his ear and his laptop under his arm, and as you watch, he walks out of the Fishbowl without a word to anyone, past the burnt-popcorn kitchen, and straight out the door.