The Black Hatted Man follows me around work all day, lately. He wants to tell me his new stories... not new, exactly, but new to me. I don't mind, I guess, but it's dangerous to try to do anything about it there, at work and all.

"This," he says, tapping the stacks of tapistries with his long, pale fingers, "is the one place I can be sure to get your attention."

And that's true enough. He's far more interesting than work, and I'm not free to ignore him with Someone Else's Stories-- that is to say, books. And I really do want to hear what he has to say. It's quite important, for reasons which are threatening to become clear.

"The difference between us," I tell him shortly, re-folding mangled tapistries with a sigh, "is that I know when to end a story. That's what I'm good at: beginnings and endings. I can take it to the place where you want to stop a moment anyway, panting or with a satisfied smile. You, you're all about sequels, continuing, keeping on. You don't know when to quit."

"That is my nature." He nods, and this is true. It's his big immortal point. If I listen, I can hear the syncopated THRUMP! of hundreds of hearts in his breast pockets, under his cloak, in his black bag, possibly even hiding under the blackness of this terrible top-hat.

"You keep walking into everybody's stories." I add, "you're around the corner, whatever I do."

"That is also my nature." He smiles not his styx smile, but something else, very like licorice and dreams. He's happy, here.

He likes my place of business because there's nothing there anyone really needs, but they all think so. They come in and stare longingly at items; Potential Heart's Desire. Though there are so few Real opportunities for his business here, and the one that we had at our fingertips got botched. Though I really tried, I did. I look at him and he looks at me and he tells me it's all right, I did the best I could.

For someone with only one heart, after all.

"But I have you," I say, "to tell me when to look closer."

"You do." He says wistfully, as we stroll through the Byer's Choice carolers towards glassware, hang a right, swing towards Executive Gifts (my department) and Jewelry. "And you're the one who wants to create the Desiderata deck for true, vicariously through this Witch of yours." There's a stirring somewhere in the back of my mind, but we don't want to let the Witch come out and speak. I know what becomes of her, after all, and so does he. "Do you realise what you are doing, and what you will do, if you manage this through to completion?"

I think about it a moment, and I half-nod. "I think so," I say. "Isn't that my payment?"

"Have I made a Deal with you?"

"Not... exactly yet, I don't think."

"Then. Let me tell you about the Perfect Boy and the Perfect Girl and how the name of the heart that desired them was Everyone, and the nature of that transaction. And we shall see what kind of card that little Witch will make out of it..."

He tells me bits and pieces of it as I unload vietnamese pots in garden, wide-eyed and grinning, fingers itching for a pen, and somewhere in the back of my mind thinking that this garden section satisfies something deep in September Shumaha's breast, and snapping back to my Murfius when he tells me all the many things he's done for them, the Perfect Boy and the Perfect Girl, and how he's going to make them pay.

<<agé chose>>

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