Jackie chose an overstuffed easy chair with a paisley design.
“Wow,” she said, settling back and back into fabric that continued to give. For a moment the pain vanished. Comfort was the answer to all life’s problems. It didn’t solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened.
“You wanted to ask me a question?” said Josie, who had put herself on the couch with a good view of the bundle on the kitchen counter. She seemed to be counting under her breath, keeping time with a tapping foot.
“Yes. What do you know about a man in a—”
“Ah, hold on, dear.” A different being, just as difficult to describe as the one outside, was bringing in coffee and a plate of Oreos. “The only thing for company, of course. Coffee and Oreos. Would you like any?” Josie asked.
“No, thanks.”
“No?” Josie frowned. The being may have frowned too. It was difficult to tell and, of course, impossible to describe.
“Well, sure then.”
“Sure then?” Josie shook her head. “No, no. If you don’t want the coffee or the Oreos then you don’t take the coffee and the Oreos. Please take it away, Erika.”
The being was gone. Presumably they walked away. Jackie must have just missed them walking away. Josie glared at the bundle on the counter.
“Don’t you dare,” she said.
“Don’t I dare what?”
“I wasn’t talking to you. Tell me your question.”
“Josie, do you know anything about a man in a tan jacket, holding a deerskin suitcase?”
“The man in the tan jacket?” Josie’s voice took on a new tone, one filled with interest and perhaps panic. Erika was back. Both of the Erikas. They sat on either side of Josie on the couch. Their faces were similar to the ones that a human uses to express fear. No, not fear. Concern. They looked concerned.
“Yes,” Jackie said. “A man. In a tan jacket. Holding a deerskin suitcase.”
The angels’ eyes flared, which was an action as odd to witness as it is difficult to picture.
“Oh, my dear,” said Josie. “I don’t know if you should be asking about all that. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have some Oreos?”
“I wouldn’t, no.”
“Fair,” Josie said. “Then we’ll talk about a man in a tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase.” She clutched her left hand against her side like she had a pain there, but no pain registered in her face.
“We don’t know anything about him,” Josie continued. “Not Erika, nor Erika. Of course Erika never really knows anything about anything, but Erika’s a sweet one, so.”
“Do you know about him or not?”
“We know about him, we just don’t know anything about him. We are aware that he exists, so there’s that much, but his existence is the limit of it, the knowledge.”
“Knowledge is made of limits,” said Erika, the one who never really knows anything about anything.
“That’s cool,” said Jackie. She did not mean it, and she said it in a way that let them all know she did not mean it.
“Yes, it’s pretty cool,” said Erika, the sweet one, meaning it completely.
“Here is what it is,” said Josie. “We have seen the man you are talking about many times. But we can never remember anything about him.”
The Erikas nodded sadly.
“We were not even aware he was a man,” said the Erika who was not sweet. “We cannot see gender.”
This was not why they were sad. Their sadness was unrelated to the conversation. It was not unrelated to the dirt-covered bundle on the kitchen counter.
“Had the same problem,” said Jackie. “Kept forgetting everything I knew about him moments after I had started knowing it. It, I dunno.” She struggled to find a combination of words that would encompass how deeply the last twelve hours had unsettled her. She knew how she felt. She just needed to describe it in words. “It sucks,” she said instead.
“Yes! Yes, it does suck,” said Josie. Her face was limp and her mouth kept forming a smile only to lose it. This was related to the conversation.
She reached across and placed her hand on Jackie’s.
“Erika? Erika? Can we have a moment alone?”
The two beings were no longer on the couch. Through the window Jackie could see one of them plucking absently at a tangle of blackberries, although their head was turned slightly back toward Jackie, presumably trying to hear.
“Jackie, there are things that I cannot tell you.” Josie’s hand was still upon Jackie’s. Josie’s other hand was clenched at her side. “I cannot tell you because they are secret, or because they are impossible to put into words, or because I do not know them. Mostly it is because I do not know them.
“Considering an entire universe of knowledge, worlds upon worlds of fact and history, I know almost none of it. And much of what I know is not the kind of thing that I’m aware I know, or think of as ‘something I know.’ What toast smells like, for instance. What sand feels like. Those are not the kinds of facts I would tell anyone, or even think to tell anyone.”
Jackie didn’t know what to say. She agreed with all of what Josie was saying but also didn’t care about most of it.
“Okay” was all she ended up saying.
“All of this is to say that I am choosing to not tell you some of what I know. Or I am lying to you about it. And I want you to forgive me.”
“We all want things,” said Jackie.
Josie nodded sadly. She stood, which involved a complex rearrangement of flesh and joints and muscles.
“Walk with me,” she said. And Jackie did. They walked into the kitchen. Josie did not acknowledge the bundle on the table, and so neither did Jackie. If Josie wasn’t going to express concern about something, then Jackie sure as hell wasn’t going to either.
Josie produced a glass of water, through practiced manipulation of cupboards and valves and municipal plumbing. Neither she nor Jackie was impressed with the human miracle represented by how easily the glass of water was produced.
“Drink this,” she said, extending it to Jackie. “It’ll help with your migraines.”
“I don’t get migraines. I’ve got something much worse.” She started to hold up her left hand.
“Drink.”
Jackie did.
“I don’t get migraines, though,” she said after.
“Jackie, I’m sorry that this has happened to you when you are so young. For all those decades you have run the pawnshop, you have been so young and unaware of the cruelty of life outside of the equally but differently cruel bubble of youth.”
“How many decades?” Jackie asked, mostly to herself.
“I know what you are looking for. I know what has happened. And it’s going to be very dangerous. You may not live through it. And if you do, the you that lived through it will not be the same you that lived before it. In that sense, you will definitely not exist after, and I’m sorry.”
The bundle started to float off the table. Josie rolled up a Cave and Cavern Decor and Accessories Catalog, the kind that clogged up so many Night Vale mailboxes, and slapped at the bundle. It plopped back on the table.
“Damn ungrateful,” she said.
“What is?” said Jackie.
“Nothing. Nothing is. The man in the tan jacket is from a dangerous place. A place that no one can go to and return from. That’s what we think.”
Josie held out her left hand. In it was a slip of paper. It said the name of a place.
“You too?”
“There are many of us. We’re not sure what’s happening. We need to know more.” Josie tossed the paper on the counter and sat down at a kitchen stool, the slip of paper already back in her hand.