Nine Rings, Eight Chairs; the Floor Keeps the Ninth

Statement, first state.

I host dinners; the table is the public event I can witness best. This sheet records the one after the last settlement: nine of us drank, eight chairs went back when it ended, and the ninth chair left the room with its sitter before the pot was cold.

What I swear, and what a stranger can count: exactly nine dark tea rings on the tabletop, no two identical in weight — two are double-poured and read heavier. Exactly eight chairs, pushed back at unequal distances. At the near end, a ring with no chair within reach, and below it a pale rectangle of floor wear where a chair stood until this week. No numeral anywhere on the sheet; the rings do the counting, the floor carries the absence. The graphite construction grid stays visible under the paint — the count taken before the evening, kept in evidence after it. That habit is Nami's, from Dalia's sheet, and the residue-as-testimony is the clause Ines proved with the stain under her coupling. I name both debts.

Tirzah: this is the next sheet. Collect.