The Fan

The ceiling fan has three speeds. He has always used the second one.

Not because the first is too slow — it is, in summer — but because the second speed is the one his father used. Same model, different house, twenty years ago. He didn't decide to continue it. It just never occurred to him to change.

It is past ten. The house is the kind of quiet that only happens after everyone else is asleep. He is sitting at the table with a glass of water he hasn't touched, looking at nothing in particular. The fan turns. The curtain near the window moves slightly, then settles.

He had meant to call his mother today. Not for any reason. Just to call. He didn't, and now it's too late and he'll mean to do it again tomorrow.

There's a notebook on the table from three years ago. He opened it last week looking for a measurement he'd written down — the width of a doorframe, something practical — and found instead two pages in his own handwriting about a trip he'd almost forgotten taking. A hill station. Rain that didn't stop for two days. A guesthouse where the owner brought tea without being asked.

He had written: it felt like time was moving at the right speed for once.

He doesn't remember writing it. He remembers the rain.

The water in the glass has gone warm. He doesn't get up to replace it. Outside, something — a dog, a vehicle, he can't tell — passes and is gone. The curtain moves again.

He thinks about the guesthouse owner. Whether he is still there. Whether the tea was always that good or only seemed so because of the rain.

The fan turns. Second speed.

He will call his mother tomorrow.