My Apology Has a Body Count

How it begins

At nine fourteen, I apologized for a man who had not yet fallen off a balcony.

At nine twenty-six, he fell.

I was adjusting the phrase deeply distressed when the alert appeared on my phone.

Martin Pelt, fifty-two, taken to hospital following an incident at the Bellweather Hotel. Police investigating.

I looked back at the draft.

We are deeply distressed by the incident involving Mr. Pelt at the Bellweather Hotel.

I had written balcony in the first version. My director had removed it.

Too specific, she said.

The client was still on the call.

"Have you seen this?" I asked.

A short pause. The soft scrape of a cup being placed on a saucer.

"Yes."

"You told me it was hypothetical."

"It was."

Our office looked down on a shopping arcade where a woman was trying to carry a palm tree through a revolving door. I watched her abandon the tree. It seemed important to continue looking at something ordinary.

"Who is Mr. Pelt?"

The client breathed into the silence.

"Someone who deserves privacy."

On my screen, a comment appeared beside the final paragraph.

Remove reference to family.

I had not mentioned a family.

I opened the document history. There it was, in a version saved at seven this morning. A paragraph about his wife. A paragraph about his adult son. My name beside both.

I had been asleep at seven.

I moved the cursor to the top of the page and typed a sentence nobody could mistake for a standard response.

The blue umbrella was a regrettable distraction.

The client stopped breathing.

Down in the arcade, the woman returned for her palm tree.

"Ada," he said, very carefully. "Please don't improvise."

The hospital alert updated.

Police seeking a person seen leaving the hotel with a blue umbrella.

I had never wished so urgently to be a worse writer.

The new comment arrived before I could close the file.

We need to discuss your sister.