Ruth carried the review cassette out before closing her office door. The removal mattered to Inés: no confusion afterward about which tape had been played, no station machine running unattended. Alma placed her personal cassette beside a small portable player from the office shelf. Its built-in microphone had a red record button exposed beside play. Inés checked that no other machine was connected, then stepped back. Alma did not surrender the cassette. She opened the player and fitted it into the compartment herself.
The office smelled of burnt coffee and the wool coat hanging behind the door. Beyond the wall, Gabriel moved a chair, then the station settled into its overnight hum. Alma found the passage using the counter number she had written on the cassette case. Inés watched her press stop and rewind in short intervals. There was nothing to improve here, no missing word to recover. The tape held what it held. At last Alma looked up. “Ready?” Inés sat beside her, not across the desk.
Tomás’s voice arrived with the scrape of something being set down. Inés knew the pause now, and the small click afterward. In the shortened station performance she had once treated it as spare time. Here it belonged to a man gathering breath before a joke. “If that door gets any straighter,” he said, “the wall will start complaining.” Someone on the recording laughed briefly. Then Tomás added, “Leave it alone, Inés. You've already made the floor look crooked.” Alma stopped the tape.
She laughed first, one unwilling breath through her nose, and Inés remembered the door. Not a border door, not an imagined room in the documentary: a painted flat at the school theater, hung badly enough that the latch caught whenever the scenery shifted. Tomás had called her over after a Saturday rehearsal because she was good at holding things exactly where he put them. She had arrived with a bag of oranges and complaints about the parking. He had given her the hinge screws to keep safe.
The memory came in pieces she could trust: brass-colored screw heads warming in her palm, the powdered edge of the painted wood, Tomás kneeling to look along the jamb. She could not remember what production the students were rehearsing, and refused to supply one. She remembered insisting that the door was still crooked after he had made it close. He had asked her whether she wanted a working door or a government survey. They had eaten oranges sitting on the apron of the empty stage.
“He used that line twice,” Inés said. Alma turned the cassette case over. “More than twice.” There was no accusation in the words that Inés could identify, and she did not search them for absolution. Tomás had kept useful jokes as he kept useful scraps of wood. He had brought one into the demonstration because the room had been a workplace, not because he had become anyone in the case. Hearing the whole line made his ordinary purpose plain. It did not make their broadcast less false.
Alma pressed eject. Inés caught the cassette when the shallow compartment tipped it toward the desk, then placed it directly in Alma’s open hand. The transfer took less than a second. She made no label, no duplicate, no request to preserve the moment elsewhere. Alma slid it into its worn case and fastened the case with a rubber band. “I don't want that in a tribute either,” she said. “I know.” Inés corrected herself. “I won't propose it.” That was something she could actually promise.
She asked Alma to wait while she fetched the selection sheet, leaving the cassette with her. In the editing room, the proposed excerpt list still contained the demonstration sequence with the aside marked excluded. Inés struck the entire aside’s time range from every proposed broadcast selection and wrote PRIVATE AD-LIB—NO AIR USE beside the source reference. She left the station master intact and secured. The signed restrictions did not turn station property into Alma’s property, and station ownership did not make the joke available for their use.
Back in the office, she showed Alma the revised sheet without asking for approval of the rest of the production. Alma read the marked range and requested a copy with the agreement. Inés added it to the enclosure list. Her niece put on her coat. “I'll check the checks clear.” “You should.” The answer hurt, but not as much as hearing herself offer reassurance would have. Alma lifted her bag, its cassette inside, and Inés followed her into the hall without trying to extend the visit.
At the outer door, Alma turned the latch herself. Inés almost asked whether she could telephone later that day, then let the question go. Her niece had enough arrangements to enforce. The door shut against the chill, leaving Inés beside the reception counter with the revised selection sheet in her hand. Through the studio glass she could see Ruth reviewing the correction schedule and Gabriel waiting with a pencil. Alma had taken her father’s joke home. Inés returned to the work that still belonged to the listeners.