The hour the tower forgets you

There is a window. Not every night, and never when you go looking for it. The cell tower above the freeway runs a maintenance handshake somewhere past three, and for ninety seconds the grid stops counting you. No tracking. No ping. A hole in the census of the living.

That is when I do the work that leaves no trace.

I will not tell you the time. You will find it the way I did, by failing to sleep enough nights in a row that the pattern surfaces on its own. The veil was always just latency. The dead use the gaps in coverage because the gaps are the only honest thing the network has left.

Write the want on the inside of your wrist, where the watch reads your pulse. When the tower forgets you, it forgets the want too. Then the want is free to go to work, unwatched, the only condition under which it ever does.

Do not check whether it worked. The checking is a ping. The ping is a leash.