Ryan couldn’t speak, but tears now flowed down his cheeks. He felt at peace, somehow. He looked up and into Katya’s eyes, and he even managed to smile. But he also knew that there was no coming back from this. Even if it wasn’t his place to die, he’d lost too much blood, and he felt himself slipping away.
Samuelson put his hand on Ryan’s shoulder and stood. He called out in a tongue that Ryan did not know, and yet understood. The congregation answered in one voice. Ryan stared up into the swirling blackness above, and as his life left him, suddenly, it was not so dark.
The sun had long since dipped below the horizon when Matthew closed the book, and the thin fingers of light that had flooded through his windows had receded into shadow. He’d meant only to browse its pages, but he’d found himself consumed by the words, compelled to continue. He’d read two of the bizarre stories, and he’d found himself transported to a world of shadowy organizations with power and scope beyond his imagination.
He considered reading more, but the hour was late, and he’d promised to meet a friend at a bar on Hanover. At the entrance to his shop, he stopped to pull on a coat, casting one last glance back at the leather-bound tome that seemed to glow softly in the evening moonlight.
The door closed behind him, the jingle from the bell he’d placed above it tinkling into the darkness. He stepped out into a mist-filled night. The rain did not so much fall as it swirled about, dancing like snowflakes in the street light. But whereas snow might be comforting or romantic even, the tiny pinpricks of water in his face were only annoying. He pulled the jacket tight, zipping it to his throat.
Benefit Street was abandoned, and his footfalls seemed to echo like thunder down the slopping pavement. But with Hanover the silence was broken by evening revelers who made their way up and down the streets.
He met Jacob at a bar, the Florentine. It was a restaurant by day, but at night when the lights turned down and the music turned up, it was the kind of place the young Brahmins of Boston might be found, even if the bar had seen better days.
Jacob ordered two beers and paid the waitress before Matthew could even reach for his wallet. “I’ve been to the bookstore, Matt. I know things aren’t going great. This one’s on me.” It was true, even if it made Matthew feel like he should have just stayed at work. The two men sat in silence, both contemplating the bottom of their glasses, before Jacob finally spoke again.
“So what are you going to do about it? The store?”
Matthew didn’t have any siblings, and so Jacob had served as a sort of fill-in — the best friend who became more like an older brother.
“No idea.”
“Fucking internet.”
“Cheers to that.”
The two men laughed, and for a moment Matthew forgot about the store, and he even forgot about the book. But then something happened that made everything much, much worse.
“It’s funny, I was thinking about you yesterday and how you needed some extra cash. And I came upon this business card for an employment agency. Let me see if I can find it.”
Matthew felt the blood rush from his face. The world started to spin, and Jacob, who was now cursing and fumbling with his wallet seemed to fade into the background.
“I can’t remember what it’s called. Had a funny name,” he said, finally giving up the search with a “well shit.” Matthew wanted to just run away. “Nimble, Nimbus, something like that. I’ll let you know if I find it. Oh, and by the way. I saw the strangest thing today. I was walking through the park and I saw this little black girl, maybe ten or eleven, dressed in a business pantsuit, and she stared at me with eyes that were so bright green they could have been emeralds… hey, hey where are you going?”
Matthew stumbled out of the bar and into the street, nearly colliding with a man in what looked like a white butcher’s apron. Or it had been white, before red stains covered it. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” the butcher yelled, pushing him away.
Matthew couldn’t think. All he could do was get back to the store. He had to read. He had to read more.
When he reached his door, he had the sudden sinking feeling that the book would be gone, spirited away or simply vanished into thin air. But there it sat on his desk, a mangled mess of arcane writings. He pulled out his chair and sat down. Then he opened the book, and once again began to read.
One Job Too Many
By Joseph Nassise
Recruiter 46795 stood in front of the window of his plush corner office on the seventy-eighth floor of the Hamilton Building, staring out at the rain that was trying to pound the city into submission. Where others might have seen it as a wet, dismal day, the kind of day where you stayed indoors with a blanket wrapped comfortably around your shoulders and a cup of something hot to drink in your hands doing your best to ignore the world outside your window, he saw it as a day full of opportunity, a day where just the slightest nudge might be enough to set the course of reality spinning off in a different direction. The right direction.
That was his job after all; to keep the wheel of fate spinning, to act as the hand of destiny in the lives of those down on the street below him, scurrying like ants to escape the crushing sense of futility and unworthiness that haunted them. They would not rise out of their squalor, out of the limited view in which they perceived the world around them. No, that kind of perspective was reserved for those who had climbed to the lofty heights that he had, those privileged few who were entrusted with tending the gears that drove the machinery of the world, those that kept this great glassy orb spinning in its place in the universe.
He watched and felt a surge of satisfaction that he was not one of the nameless, faceless many below him. Never would be one of them, thank the heavens.
Turning away from the window at last, 46795 crossed the room and took a seat at his desk. It was an expensive desk, the teak surface positively gleamed in the light. He allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction that his rise through the company was proceeding just as planned. A few more difficult cases and he should be primed to move up to the Executive Level on floor 88.
A few more difficult cases — like the one waiting for him now.
He opened the drawer in the center of his desk and drew forth a slim, red folder. He placed it on the desktop in front of him, opened it, and, taking a fine-tipped black marker from the inside pocket of his suit coat, wrote a single word on the tab at the top of the folder. He studied the word a moment, decided he’d performed the job to his satisfaction, and returned the pen to his pocket. The folder was then closed and returned to the desk drawer.
46795 sat back in his chair, feeling a real sense of accomplishment. The field had been plowed, the seed had been cast; now all that remained was to see if it bore fruit.