You’re a new one was the first thing the client, his first client, said to him. Roy Vachon had spent several hours in a cab with a silent driver, winding along a coastal road so curved and twisted that at one point it had seemed to spiral in on itself, to arrive at a brick wall half-eaten by vines. A pair of iron gates set into the wall looked strong enough to hold back divine fury, and yet they eased open without a sound as the driver stopped beside them.
Standing at the perfect midpoint of the entranceway was the most obese man Roy had ever seen. A tailor had worked magic to make him seem merely large, but the man’s rhythmic swaying back and forth destroyed the illusion, the contours of the suit betraying the distribution of mass under them. He watched as Roy exited the cab and walked up to him.
“You’re a new one,” said the client, squinting in apparent confusion.
“I’m Roy Vachon.” He reflexively offered his hand, then dropped it immediately. “I’m your agent.”
The man stared at him, still swaying. “And before that?”
“Ah, well, before that I was a liaison. It was Gaber who connected us–”
“And before that?”
Roy had not been expecting to provide a resume, but he rolled with it. “I was a broker. After Dani–that’s Dani Kasmir, she was my broker for–”
The man was still swaying, the different parts of him moving out of phase. “And before that?”
“A picker. I fulfilled requests.” Roy paused to avoid being interrupted again.
“And before that?”
“Er, nothing. A student, I suppose. Then nothing.”
The client stared at him. His oscillation slowed and stopped, his body returning to rest.
“I see,” said the client. “That’s how you measure time.”
Roy had no idea what to say to this, so he just nodded.
“Bottom Garble Butler,” said the client. It matched the name Roy had been given. He had a sense that this was not the client’s real name, or that the client might not even have a real name. He had no idea exactly where this man was from but he knew from long experience in the business that all clients had one foot in the world, while the rest of them came from somewhere else entirely.
“Nice to meet you,” said Roy, resisting the urge to stick out his hand again.
“Yes,” said Bottom, or Garble, or Butler. With a sudden motion he yanked open his coat to reveal a leather belt threaded through the loops of his trousers. The leather was stretched and strained, with the prong pulling the furthest notch into an oblong. “Another one about to go. When it breaks, I’ll hang it up on my wall.”
Roy had no idea what to say to this either, so he just nodded again.
“It’s how I measure time.” The client swayed into a turn and started walking up the path. “Bring it.”
Roy understood that, at least. It was the reason he was here. He hurried back to the car and opened the rear door, then collected the box on the far side of the seat. It was heavy and its contents shifted as he maneuvered it out of the car. “I may be some time,” he said to the driver. “Will you wait?”
The driver only nodded in a distant and unconcerned way. Roy supposed it was the best he would get. He grunted as he tucked the box under his arm, then shut the door and hurried after the client.
The walkway beyond the gate was sandwiched between two shoulder-high brick walls that seemed to be extensions of the wall outside, but he could see bushes and grasses and shocks of wildflowers growing across the surface beyond. Either the walkway had been dug into the ground or the ground around it had been raised up. What he couldn’t see were any actual structures; no cottages or cabins or gardening shacks or even a house or two. He steadied the box under his arm with his other hand and hoped the walk ahead wasn’t a long one.
The client wasn’t slowing down and seemed to have no idea anyone was trying to catch up to him. Roy quickened his pace and ignored his complaining legs. He’d been in a car for hours and a walk was just the thing, he told himself. He had walked for hours when he was just starting out, when he was on the outskirts of all this.
And before that?
As a picker, you got requests from your broker. They want blue things. Bright things. Things that make noise. You did your best to interpret what that might mean, using augury to light the way and dumb luck to fill in the blanks. And you didn’t ask who they were or why they might want things. It didn’t matter, not that far away from it all. You took your fee and slouched away.
As a broker, you were at the center of a web, a bifurcated web of shadowy liaisons on one side and shabby pickers on the other. The liaisons pretended to have an intimate understanding of the needs of clients they had never met and you had no choice but to listen. The pickers pretended the same thing and also complained all the time and you had once been one of them, so you listened. You took a percentage and listened.
As a liaison, you navigated a sea of ghouls who claimed to have access to clients and followed up their dead-end leads and compared their lying accounts until you emerged with a sliver of surety. You played favorites with the brokers, even to the point of shutting out old friends, because some could deliver and some couldn’t. The ones that couldn’t vanished and you never heard from them again. You took a percentage and smiled and waited for rescue, for someone to pluck you from the sea.
As an agent? You’re the new one. Roy took a deep breath and hurried toward the retreating back.
It was some time before he caught up, and the client took no notice of him. The walls seemed to be inching higher around him, but whenever he sidled up to one or the other they were still level with his shoulders. The client’s bulk was sufficient to block any useful view of what was ahead. The box under Roy’s arm started to dig painfully into his flesh, a pain that was hard to ignore when no relief was in sight.
He stopped to shift his grip, watching himself carefully to ensure he didn’t slip. When he looked up again, the client was watching him with an expression of genuine concern.
“I forgot about you,” he said.
Roy smiled, trying to save his client from embarrassment. “Not a problem at all.”
“It is a problem.” The client waved his hand in a way that might have been intended as meaningful. “You’re following the wrong me.”
“The wrong you?” Roy knew better than to laugh. “Are you more than one?”
“No. My time isn’t your time.” He made the hand gesture again, elongating and broadening it, and Roy realized he was trying to express something about the length of the walkway, or the time spent on it, or something like that. He suddenly envisioned himself as an old man, stumbling down that walkway with the box sagging in his arms in pursuit of a client that didn’t understand why the new one didn’t simply show up when and where he was supposed to.
The client cut short any further speculation. “Now,” he said, taking a few steps down the walkway. “Here,” he said, stepping aside to reveal something new.
It was a place that functioned as a place and little else. There were a couple of soft chairs in the middle and a table between them. There was a plaster wall and a bit of ceiling. There was nothing else except the high brick walls surrounding them and the greenery beyond. The whole space had a feeling of being just enough, no more than it needed to be.
“Sit,” said the client, taking the chair in front of the wall. Roy expected it to groan under the man’s weight, but it didn’t. He took the seat opposite and gently placed the box onto the table. When he tried to catch the client’s eye he noticed that the wall was riddled with holes and hooks. Leather belts were hanging on some of the hooks, each ripped and shredded at the ends.
The client followed his distracted gaze. “My clocks,” he said, nodding. “My calendars.”
“Yes, of course.”
Apparently satisfied, the client reached for the box and eased the lid open. Roy watched, his nerves ringing as each item was removed and contemplated: a framed photograph of a wedding couple, a single running shoe, a thick hardback book, a cracked mug. Sad things had been the request that Gaber had entrusted to him, they want sad things and he had delivered the request to the brokers, and the brokers had contracted the pickers, and the pickers had gone into junk shops and rummage stores and come up with this lot.
The last item was a tarnished necklace. The client held it up in the air and let it dangle, stared up at it for a moment, then laid it down on the table beside the rest of the contents of the box. He did not seem disappointed or put out, but neither was he reacting like a collector with a fine new haul.
Roy decided to risk it. “Are they to your liking?”
“I don’t like them,” said the client immediately.
“Oh,” said Roy, barely holding his expression steady, “I’m so sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” The client looked confused. “They’re satisfactory. Aren’t they?”
“I, well–”
“They’re sad things?” The client leaned forward, picked up the book, and held it out to Roy. “This is sad?”
“Sad?” Roy shook himself and squinted at the title. “Emory’s Will? Oh, yes, I’ve read it. It’s very sad. Well-written, very popular. Well-known. But yes, very sad.”
The client nodded and leaned back in his chair, still holding the book. “Then I’ll be satisfied.”
“Satisfied,” said Roy, putting on a smile that he hoped didn’t look as foolish as it felt.
“But I won’t like it.” The client lifted the book into the air by its front cover and let it fall open as he peered at it. The pages rippled and dangled. It wasn’t a kind way to treat a book. “I don’t like sad things.”
Roy had spent his entire adult life in the trade, and this was a bit of a revelation. “You don’t?”
“I do not.”
“Then why…?”
“Request them?” The client closed his hand around the book, slamming it shut. “To remove them from consideration. To elimate the sadness they represent.”
“You want to eliminate sadness,” said Roy, trying to catch up, “by buying up the world’s supply of sad things?”
“Yes. You can’t imagine what you can’t experience.” As Roy was pondering this, the client stuffed the book into his mouth. His jaws stretched and bent around its edges in ways that a human mouth should not, and his neck expanded and contracted as it passed, and then he sat back in his chair as if nothing unusual had happened.
“How was it?” said Roy, breathless, his eyes wide and twitching.
The client shrugged. “Satisfactory. Your payment will be sent.”
“Ah. Yes. Thank you.” Half would go to Gaber to pay out the brokers and their pickers. The other half represented more money than he had ever made in a year. The reward of his life’s efforts, if he wanted to think of it that way, or simply another means of measuring time.
“Of course.” There was a loud snapping noise and the client’s coat popped open.
Roy flinched and backed into his chair. “What–”
“Another milestone.” The client reached down and pulled his belt out of his pant loops. The buckle and the strap had completely separated, and the end of the strap was split in two. Holding the waist of his trousers in place with one hand, he stood up from his chair and slipped the buckle of the ruined belt onto a hook on the wall with the others. “You were right. It was a very popular book.”
“And now it’s gone.”
“Yes. And the world is a happier place.” The client tugged at the waistband of his trousers. “If you will excuse me…?”
“Certainly,” said Roy, with a polite nod, and waited quietly in growing discomfort until it became obvious that the client had intended Roy to leave, rather than excusing himself. He jumped up from the seat, bowed slightly, and hurried toward the walkway, then paused and turned back to the client.
“What do I do?” he said, making the same elongated gesture that the client had made earlier.
“Leave,” said the client gently, without malice.
Roy did. He found that without the client’s bulk in the way, he could see to the end of the walkway, even to the gate itself, and he quickly found himself outside the vine-eaten brick wall where the car was waiting.
“Have you ever read Emory’s Will?” he said to the driver, as he settled into the back seat.
The driver glanced back, revealing himself in profile. He frowned. “I can’t remember.”
Roy watched as the bricks and the vines slid past, seeming to merge into something neither mineral nor vegetable. He wondered where he had just been and where a big man might find a sturdy belt, one suitable for a brace of days or a belly’s worth of sadness.
“Neither can I,” he said at last.