The post office was a small brick building with a flagpole and a flag and the flag was at half-mast for a reason no one could remember, and Daniel stood at the counter and pretended to check his mail and actually listened to the postmaster curse under his breath at the sorting machine.
The postmaster was a round man with round glasses and a round voice, the particular voice of a man who had been sorting mail for twenty-eight years and had opinions about the system.
“Misfiled,” the postmaster said, to no one in particular.
“Deployment notice, clear as day, routed to the wrong bin.
It’ll be a week before it gets back into the system.
By then the kid’ll have missed his window.
You’d think the government could sort a letter.” Daniel did not say anything.
He stood at the counter with his hands in his pockets and the hum under his sternum was a quiet hum, a satisfied hum, the particular hum of a machine that had done its work and was waiting for the payment to process.
The tightening behind his sternum was a new sensation, a pulling sensation, the particular pull of a price that was drawing near but hadn’t yet arrived.
The price was in transit.
The price was being selected.
The price was a choice the magic was going to make at the worst possible moment, and the worst possible moment was coming.
He collected his mail.
He had no mail.
Dan-the-cannery never got mail, and this was a fact that the cursed-extra memory supplied without being asked, the way the cursed-extra memory supplied all the facts that weren’t facts.
He walked out of the post office into the thin November light and the light was still yellow and the yellow was still wrong, and the tightening behind his sternum was a steady presence now, the particular presence of a thing that was going to get worse before it got better.
Mrs.
Hennessey was at the diner when he arrived.
She looked at him over her tea and said, “You look like you haven’t slept.” He hadn’t slept.
He hadn’t slept since the handshake, because the tightening was loudest at night, because the hum was quietest at night, because the quiet hum and the loud tightening were the two halves of a contract he couldn’t stop thinking about.
“I’m fine,” he said.
He was not fine.
He was a dealer waiting for a price to hit, and the waiting was worse than the price was going to be, and the price was going to be terrible.
“Mrs.
Beasley’s son got a reprieve,” Mrs.
Hennessey said.
“Clerical error.
The letter was misfiled.
He’ll miss the deployment window.
He’s staying home.” She said it the way a woman said a thing she didn’t quite believe, and she looked at Daniel the way a woman looked at a man she suspected of something specific.
“Funny how clerical errors happen right when people need them.” “Funny,” Daniel said.
He drank his coffee.
The coffee was still wrong.
The tightening was still there.
The crime had been committed.
The payment was processing.
The victim had not yet been chosen.
He was a dealer, and he had dealt, and the dealing was done, and the price was coming, and all he could do was wait for the invoice to arrive.
He walked home through the town that was too quiet, past the pawnshop where Mr.
Gold was watching through the curtains, past the library where Mary Margaret was shelving books, past the diner where Graham was drinking coffee and not knowing that the magic had already written his name on the invoice.
The price was going to be Graham.
Daniel did not know this.
The hum knew it.
The hum was a satisfied hum, a fed hum, the particular hum of a counterparty that had chosen its price and was letting the price ripen.
At the library window, Mary Margaret looked up from her shelving and saw him passing.
She raised a hand.
He raised a hand back, the automatic response of a man who had been waving at Mary Margaret Blanchard for four years according to the cursed memory, and the automaticness was the curse working through him, and the curse was convenient, and the convenience was a trap.
He stopped.
He didn’t mean to stop.
His feet stopped and his mind followed, and he was standing at the library door, and the library door was open, and Mary Margaret was at the counter with a stack of books and a smile that was genuine, the particular genuine smile of a woman who hadn’t yet remembered she was Snow White.
“Dan,” she said.
“I haven’t seen you in the library before.
Do you read?” “I used to,” Daniel said.
The truth slipped out before he could stop it.
Dan-the-cannery did not read.
Daniel Ashford had read everything — Propp, Bettelheim, Zipes, all the fairy-tale scholars, all the theoretical frameworks he had been going to use in a thesis he was never going to finish.
“I don’t have much time now.
The cannery.” “The cannery takes a lot of people’s time.” She slid a book across the counter.
It was a thin book with a blue cover, a book of fairy tales, the kind of book that was always in libraries in cursed towns.
“This one’s short.
You can read it in a night.
It’s about hope.
I think everyone in this town needs to read about hope once in a while.” Daniel looked at the book.
The cover had a bird on it.
The bird was blue.
The blue was the blue of a fairy tale, the same blue as the bird on the book Mary Margaret had been carrying the first day he saw her in the diner.
“You give this book to a lot of people?” “Everyone who comes in without a library card.” She smiled again, and the smile was the smile of a woman who had been giving hope to a hopeless town for twenty-eight years without knowing she was doing it.
“I think you could use a library card.
It’s free.
It doesn’t cost anything.” The hum under his sternum stirred at the word “cost.” Everything cost something.
The hum knew it.
Daniel knew it.
Mary Margaret didn’t know it yet, and the not-knowing was a mercy, and the mercy was the shape of a curse that was also a protection.
“I’ll take the book,” Daniel said.
“Thank you.” “You’re welcome, Dan.” She handed it to him and their fingers didn’t touch, and he was grateful for the not-touching, because if their fingers had touched he might have seen her heart, and he wasn’t ready to see Snow White’s heart, not yet, not while the tightening was still pulling at his own.
He walked home in the thin November light with the fairy-tale book in his pocket and the tightening behind his ribs and the understanding that he was building relationships with every major character in the story without meaning to, without trying to, without wanting to.
The hum was moving him through the town like a piece on a board, and the board was a storyboard, and the story was the one he had watched twice through in Brooklyn, and the story was still playing out, and he was a new character who had been written into an old script, and the script didn’t have a part for him, and the script was going to hurt him for trying to find one.
He walked home through the town that was too quiet.
⟦ THE LEDGER HE CANNOT READ ⟧ STILL OWED — one price, on the entry closed two days ago.
TAKEN — nothing.
Nothing is what a price looks like while it travels.
AGAINST HIM: a thumbprint on the heart.
No more than that.
Not yet.
⟦ THE LEDGER CLOSES ⟧