There are few places more tranquil than a city cemetery in the early morning. A pond in the middle of a wilderness might claim the prize, but it has the advantage of not being surrounded by a hundred thousand people on the move. How does this work? Do people reflexively speak in hushed voices as they pass? Do engines suddenly become more efficient in the presence of the dead? Does the graveyard fence exert some mysterious force that dampens sound and blurs motion?
Whatever was going on, Roy Vachon fully approved of it, though he was annoyed to be here at all. Who holds a reunion in a cemetery? He strolled along the path, listening for brief whispers of wind. Birds quietly kept each other up to date on gossip and small mammals foraged in the grass. In the distance he could see the brick townhouses and the people hurrying past them, but the figures moved in silence, as if they were spirits themselves.
He paused and stepped off the path to examine a headstone. HARRIET AND LILITH FROMME, FROM ONE FROMME TO THE OTHER FOREVER. Though he thought it romantic for couples to share not only a name but a grave, he would have suggested spending a little more time on the epitaph. First impressions, and all that.
“Roy?” The voice was tentative and unsteady, as if its owner expected to be punched for speaking out of turn. Roy glanced behind him.
The man was pale and was wearing a brown sweater and plaid slacks. The sweater was too big and the slacks too loud and combined with his anxious demeanor gave the impression of a man who had been pulled into a back alley and forcibly dressed by his own grandparents. He blinked at Roy and opened his mouth, glanced back and forth, as if trying to prompt Roy into speaking.
“Tobey,” said Roy, trying not to make it a question.
The man nodded with sudden vigor. “Yeah. Thanks for coming. It’s been a while.”
That was no small understatement. Roy had not seen Tobey for a few years, and had certainly never seen him this unglued. “It has,” he said, trying not to add to the awkwardness in the air. “Thanks for getting in touch. What’s new?”
More nervous glances. “I’m in some trouble, Roy.”
“Oh?” Roy shifted from foot to foot. “Sorry to hear it. What’s the matter?”
“Last three packages got sent back.”
“That is some trouble, Tobey.”
By unspoken agreement they started down the walkway together, leaving the Frommes to their eternal rest.
You tried not to think of them, of course. The picker and the client never communicated directly. The requests from the client were relayed through a sequence of intermediaries and brokers and were vague and elusive, seemingly on purpose. They want chairs. They want red things. Fruits. Funny things. Balls. Airy things. You took this and made a forecast; the ancient art of augury had turned out to be incredibly useful in predicting what items might actually satisfy these requests.
Of course, you couldn’t always get it right, and the package would be sent back. And you didn’t get paid, and neither did anyone else in the chain. And all of them would get upset about this. No one could get it right all the time, of course, and no one was expected to. But a picker who blew three jobs in a row wasn’t going to get many more.
“The first one,” said Tobey as they walked along, “was pretty standard. They want happy things. The reading was Al-Ha’im 12:3/8. Something about a fish.”
Roy tried not to sigh at this. His colleague was a follower of the Ephemeral school, which taught that time was short, memory was fleeting, and what was wrong with just looking things up when you needed them?
“The river does not safeguard the trout,” he recited, “but neither does it injure her.”
“Yeah, that’s it. Hard to get a good sense of happiness from that.”
“I don’t know.” Roy tried to feel his way through it. “Maybe it implies the happiness of making one’s own way without help. Finding the best path through an indifferent world.”
“That’s one interpretation,” said Tobey, sounding doubtful, “but mine was more about the fish.”
“The fish?”
“You know, the trout. It sounds like a pretty happy fish, right?”
“You didn’t send them a fish.”
“Oh, no! I mean, not a live one. I know the rules.”
They walked on in silence for a few moments. Beyond the gates, the city was waking up, creeping past as if trying not to wake the dead.
“Then,” said Tobey, “there were the docks.”
“They wanted…?”
“Docks.”
Roy tried to imagine packing a seaside shipping dock into a shipping box. Or could you ship it via itself?
“I had a hell of a time with that one. I don’t even remember what the reading was, not that it was much help. I settled on a photograph of the Evanside Dock in Sudmaison.” Tobey shook his head. “That rejection got an apology, at least. Miscommunication further up the chain. It was locks they wanted.”
“Oh, well. Not your fault, then.”
“Still counts against me.” Tobey was pouting like an angry child. “Broker said I should have come back for a clarification, which is silly, and she knew it.” He had a point. Handling strange requests was part of the job, and you couldn’t go back for every single one. “But I said okay, things happen, and sometimes you get a run of bad luck. Then the government happened.”
For a moment Roy thought he was saying he had gotten so bad at his job that the city council had been forced to intervene. “The government?”
Tobey stopped and turned to face him, planting his feet into the soft ground on the side of the path. Something building up in him had been released at last. “They want governments.”
“That’s a rough one.” It was the sort of request that Roy would have regarded as an interesting challenge of his abilities, and a failure wouldn’t have bothered him much. But he wouldn’t have been doing it on the back of two failed jobs and dwindling resources. “The reading should have pointed you in the right direction, at least.”
The other man jammed a fist into the pocket of his slacks and yanked out a crumpled piece of paper, then trust it at him. “See where that points you.”
Roy took it from him gently and unfolded it. The scrawl was barely legible. “Chastise not your sons and daughters,” he said, reading aloud, “when there are thieves in your house.”
“Yeah,” said Tobey, “don’t do that. Now I know we have different stances on this, Roy, but I can’t believe there’s any relevant way to interpret that reading.”
He was right; they did differ on this point. “You can’t know what’s relevant and what isn’t.”
“That’s why you spin the dials,” said Tobey, whipping a finger in the air, “until you get something that makes sense.” They also differed on this point. “But that’s not what’s important. It’s clear that I’m getting all the duds.”
“The duds?”
“You know. The jobs no one wants.”
Roy pondered this. He might have a case on the third one, but the second one seemed to have been a genuine mistake, and the first was a fairly standard job by his own admission. Though he didn’t want to say it, he felt that Tobey’s real problem lay more in his methodology than any conspiracy against him, and that he didn’t have much experience confronting himself over his shortcomings.
Roy had always envied him that.
“Look,” he said, hoping to talk Tobey out of his funk, “what if it’s just a run of bad luck? Like you were saying. Brokers don’t set their clients up to fail. They can’t make any money that way.”
“Someone further up the chain, then.” Tobey jammed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. The nervous energy that had driven him to his outburst was subsiding, and he was beginning to mope, shuffling his feet aimlessly over the grass. When Roy set off back down the path, he followed like a morose child. “They don’t have to worry about money.”
“True, but they also aren’t known for holding grudges against random pickers. Even for mistakes.” Roy winced as a few choice memories came back to him. “I should know.”
“At least you didn’t send them a fish.” Tobey was starting to smile a little. “That’s where it all went wrong.”
“Must be. What did you send for the third one?”
“Third one?”
“They want governments.”
“Oh, that.” Tobey took a deep breath and sighed it out. “I sent a lock.”
“A lock.”
“Yeah. Because of the thieves in the house.”
They turned from Tobey’s troubles to picker gossip, and whether the shipping rates were going to go up again, and which useless idiot on the city council would be responsible for that, and if the new radio serial Celestine Blunt, Detective of the Damned was worth the accolades that critics were throwing at it. They were both on the fence on that one, but had to admit it was compelling.
“Who knows what happens out there in the endless nightmare, where the world is thin and the Forest leaks in?” said Tobey, quoting the opening announcement of the serial. “I wonder that myself, from time to time.”
As they passed a crumbling mausoleum with the name HERNANDEZ carved above the arch at the entrance, Tobey broached the subject once more. “It’s hard not to think of them out there.”
“Who? Out where?”
“Them. Not them, but the other them. The ones who decide who gets what.”
“Oh.” Roy had a vague sense of how it worked Out There, as Tobey put it. The clients (Them) retained their own agents (the Other Them) who took requests and bundled them into package deals for brokers to bid on, chop up, and assign to pickers (himself and Tobey). “What do you think they’re doing out there?”
“Figuring out how to screw me out of a career.”
“How would they do that?” Roy was beginning to realize this was no ordinary funk. “They don’t decide what you get. Your broker does. On both ends of the deal.”
Tobey kicked at a rock and sent it spinning. “Maybe he’s getting a kickback.”
“To do what, lose money?”
“How should I know what the deal is? I’m not some chyver, Roy. Not that I’m saying you’re one but I’m definitely not one.” He waved a hand in frustration. “You keep looking at this like the reasonable man that you are. Like you always do. But this business of ours, it’s beyond reason. How can I explain something that’s beyond you?”
While Roy was doing his best to formulate a reply, Tobey continued. “I’m out. Thanks for the talk.” It was a curt statement, lacking either warmth or gratitude. He quickened his pace and made for the cemetery gate ahead on the right.
“Hold on.” Roy followed in sudden alarm. “What’s the rush, what’s the rush?”
“I have to catch a tram.”
“I’ll come along, if that’s all right.”
Tobey shook his head, but without much conviction. “You don’t want to go where I’m going.”
“Ular?” said Roy, taking a stab at humor. It was a running gag on the Dandy D Show.
“Them.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and rattled it in front of Roy’s face. Though Roy couldn’t read the writing he didn’t need to. It was clearly a shipping receipt.
“Don’t do it,” said Roy, as they exited the cemetary, and all the sounds of the city rose in his ears.
All the way across the city he tried to think of a way to dissuade Tobey from doing what he was about to do. You don’t know what you’re getting into was hardly convincing as that seemed to be the whole point; he didn’t know and wanted to. Think of your career was similarly unlikely to motivate him. But your reputation! didn’t even move the needle.
What about your family? Inwardly, he shrugged. Worth a try. “Did you ever get married?”
Tobey, who had been staring straight ahead, turned to him with a frown. “No.” He waited to see if there was any followup question, then went back to staring straight ahead. The tram car made a little bump, sending both of them bouncing in their seat.
The shipping receipt was for the lock, that much Roy was certain of. The lock that he had sent to them, the Other Them. The lock that had been rejected. The shipping address would be on it.
The rule was, you never went to the address. Every once in a while, a new picker might joke about going to the address, just to see what the place looked like. Nobody would laugh. But Tobey wasn’t a new picker, and he was not making a joke.
“Where is it?” said Roy, wondering if there was any other way to talk him out of it.
“What?”
“The address. Where are we going?”
“You don’t have to go.”
They were both staring straight ahead. The city sailed by, lurching from time to time as the tram went over a bump. Early morning was slipping away, shortening the shadows and leaving streets sparse as pedestrians found their destinations.
“I know,” said Roy at last, “though I have to admit I’m curious.”
It was an odd gambit, and he wasn’t certain he really understood it himself, and the only sign that it had succeeded was Tobey slowly relaxing in his seat.
“I just want to see it,” said Tobey, in a low voice that was nearly lost under the sounds of the road.
“Yeah.”
“I want to see what screwing people over gets you.”
“Sure.”
“Probably a fucking estate.”
“I’ll bet,” said Roy, trying to soothe without making it obvious, but there was no further comment.
Ennis Table was not a prosperous address. The sun was still low enough in the sky to cast shadows, but nothing here was tall enough to matter. Roy followed Tobey across cracked pavement as he set his gaze on house after house, shaking his head in disbelief. “Can’t be,” Roy heard him say. “Can’t be.”
“Servant’s quarters?” said Roy, but not loud enough to be heard. Even with his own limited means, all of these houses looked temporary, each the sort of place he might have rented to spend a week in a strange city. But he wouldn’t have stayed here. It was quiet in an restless way. It was silent.
Tobey stopped, pulled the shipping invoice out of his pocket, stared at it, looked at the house they had stopped in front of, looked down at the slip again. He shook his head, then handed the paper to Roy. “Tell me this isn’t it.”
“Ennis Table, South Sands, Gerd Way 202. This is it, Tobey.”
“This can’t be it.”
The house was no different from any of the others on Gerd Way. It was an off-white shitbox with no discernible features beyond a door and two windows, both shuttered. It felt more than empty.
Tobey stepped up to the door. There was no stoop, or step. There was the pavement, then a door. He put out his hand as if to knock.
Roy opened his mouth to object, then shut it again. No one is here. The thought came with utter certainly. Maybe no one has ever been here.
“That there’s a fuck house.”
They turned to see a boy grinning at them from the street. He was not old enough to grow a wispy mustache but something in his bearing implied that he would as soon as he was. He was wearing a rollup hat with a badge pinned to it and a jacket that made him look like a minature announcer. As they stared at him in confusion, he made a fist and started thrusting the index finger of his other hand in and out of it in a jerky rhythm.
“What?” said Tobey.
“People go there to fuck,” said the boy, and grinned wider.
“Get lost,” said Roy. The boy ignored this until it was obvious that he would leave whenever he wanted to, and then he did.
Tobey watched him strut away, then turned back to stare at the door. He put his hand to the knob and turned it slowly. The door opened a crack. Roy craned his neck to look into the house through the crack, took note of the bare walls and empty shelves.
“Fuck house,” said Tobey, who had evidently seen the same thing. He shut the door.
Roy shrugged. “Mail drop, I guess.”
“Yeah.” Tobey seemed lost for words, and when Roy handed him back the shipping invoice, he took it mechanically. “Yeah.”
“Want to look around?”
“No,” said Tobey, after a moment. “Nothing here.”
A week later, Roy received a new message from Tobey. Finally got a break. Thanks. He stared at the screen for a few moments, then closed the session and went for a walk. It was, he supposed, the best possible outcome: one win in a lifetime of loss.