The Forgetting of Beginnings had been gradual and was not yet fully understood. Theories accumulated: the decline of social scripts for opening, the shift to asynchronous everything, the general preference for the sustained over the initiated. The result was a population that could maintain almost anything once it was started, but had increasing difficulty with the moment of starting. Initiators were licensed, certified, and in consistent demand. Leth worked with a practice of six. She had three appointments today.
The first: a couple who had needed a particular conversation for two years. Their names were Rem and Lehn. They sat across from each other at their kitchen table. Leth sat between them. She had read the brief. She said: "Rem. There's something Lehn has been trying to tell you." Then she stood and walked down the hall to wait by the front door.
Her practice was not to stay. Only the beginning was hers. She had decided this early in her career and had not revisited it. What came after belonged to the people who were still in the room.
She waited eight minutes and then said through the door: I'll show myself out. She heard, from the kitchen, one voice continuing a sentence, and then another voice responding. She left.
The second: a man named Arev, fifty-two, who had been writing a letter for six months. He had a version he was satisfied with. He could not send it. He stood at his desk and looked at it. Leth read it. Then she sent it. She handed his device back to him and left.
Some clients asked whether this counted as them having done it. She said yes.
The third was different. A woman named Ord, sixty-seven, whose husband had died fourteen months ago. His study. The door had been closed since the morning he died and she had not opened it.
Ord met Leth at the study door. They stood in front of it for a moment. Leth put her hand on the handle. She opened the door. She stepped aside.
Ord went in. Leth did not follow. She stood in the hallway with her back to the open door, looking at the far wall. The practice was to initiate and withdraw and never to witness the continuation. The beginning was hers; everything after it belonged to someone else.
She waited in the hallway for seven minutes. Then she heard Ord say, from inside the room: thank you. Leth said you're welcome. She left the building.
Walking home she thought about the conversation she had needed to begin for three years. She knew what needed to be said and who needed to say it. She had not hired anyone. She was not sure she could make herself become a client of her own profession.
She reached her building. She opened the front door. She went in.