Shapers of Worlds

by Edward Willett

  “Bus fare?” she asked.

  “Got it,” I reassured her, patting my pants pocket. There were actually almost fifty bucks in that pocket at the moment. Which is why it was carefully safety-pinned shut.

  “Good. Don’t be late for supper—one of your favourites!” She rolled her eyes. “Refried beans and hotdogs.”

  The shelter served that menu a lot. It was cheap, and it could be thrown together in job lots by relatively unskilled labour . . . such as myself. It helped that I really did like it, but four or five times a week did get a little old sometimes.

  “I’ll be here,” I told her. It wasn’t like I had much of anywhere else to go, after all.

  “Good,” she repeated, and leaned closer for me to give her a peck on the cheek before I headed for the bus stop. That cheek only got offered to her genuine favourites, and a wave of warmth washed over the cold emptiness deep inside me.

  I was glad, as I climbed the steps of the townhouse, that I’d at least had the opportunity to replace my original wardrobe. I was still in running shoes and cargo pants, but like my T-shirt, they were both new, purchased with the first cash I’d earned on one of the Sam-and-George jobs. Given the affluence of the neighbourhood, that was probably a good thing.

  I pressed the doorbell button and listened to the sound of musical chimes, receding into the depths beyond the green-painted front door. Several seconds passed, and then a smallish fellow—he was almost a foot shorter than I—in a three-piece suit, minus the jacket, opened the door.

  “Mister Ninazu?” I said. “My name’s Boyd. Sam and George Dellinger sent me. I understand you need some yardwork?”

  “Yes!” He beamed at me. “Yes, I do, actually. Although ‘yardwork’ may be a bit of an understatement.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I looked around the small yard between the townhouse and the edge of the large residential square’s sidewalk. The west side was the expensive side of town, and it looked it. Every yard I could see was immaculately landscaped.

  “Oh!” Ninazu chuckled. “It’s not the front yard, Mister Boyd. It’s the back.” He rolled his eyes. “Come on—I’ll show you.”

  He stood back, waving me into the house, and I took off my Red Sox cap and followed him through the vestibule and down a central hallway to the back door. He opened it as we got there, and waved.

  “That’s what I need taken care of,” he said.

  The backyard was much deeper than the front yard. It looked as if Ninazu or one of the previous owners had bought the backyard space of both of his townhouse’s neighbours, as well. Or possibly they all shared it. At any rate, the triple-sized yard was centred on a brick gazebo with a somewhat listless fountain in front of it. Fountain and gazebo alike were surrounded by a sprawl of tangled rosebushes that obviously hadn’t been pruned in a while, and drifts of dry leaves were knee-deep in places.

  “I need all the leaves cleared,” Ninazu said. “I understand there are actually flowerbeds under them somewhere, too, and if you can find them, I’ll need them cleared, spaded, and replanted. You can see what kind of shape the roses are in, and I’ll need them pruned back hard. And, assuming you’re game for it after all of that, I need the gazebo’s trim cleaned and painted. If you happen across the plumbing for the fountain during your excavations, I probably need to get it looked at, too.”

  “As I said,” he smiled up at me, “‘yardwork’ may have been just a little misleading, Mister Boyd.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” I smiled back, and not just in answer to his expression. This looked like at least three days’ work—maybe four—even for me.

  “Would . . . twenty dollars an hour seem reasonable?” he asked.

  “That’d be fine,” I said, happily putting aside any temptation to haggle. That was the next best thing to six bucks an hour above the going rate for yardwork by documented workers, which I wasn’t.

  “Good! Tools’re in the shed.” He pointed at a small storage building built out from the side of the townhouse’s rear porch. “If there’s something you need that’s not there, let me know. I’ll be working out of the house today myself.”

  “Sounds fine,” I said, and he took the key to the storage building’s padlock from a ring in his pocket and handed it to me.

  I’d had far less pleasant jobs in the brief lifetime I could actually remember. It was July, but the temperature was unseasonably cool, and the Japanese Maples that had produced the deeply piled leaves also produced a welcome shade. The work wasn’t what anyone could call mentally challenging, but I’d discovered that I liked working with my hands, and the perfume of blooming roses and the smell of freshly turned earth, once I found the buried flowerbeds, filled my nose.

  I didn’t know what Ninazu did for a living. I’d originally guessed banker or lawyer, and I might have been right. He could have been a financial adviser, though. Whatever his profession, he saw a fairly steady stream of clients, and he apparently liked fresh air. The townhouse’s third floor was only half as deep as the two lower ones, and the top of the second floor was a roofed-over elevated terrace. That was where he ended up with most of the people he saw that day, and he looked down and waved to me a couple of times.

  I didn’t think he was keeping an eye on me to be sure I was earning my twenty bucks an hour. I think he was just being friendly. And even if he was monitoring my progress, I was fine with that. I believed in an honest day’s work for an honest dollar, and he was paying me well, under the circumstances.

  He kept his promise about feeding me lunch, too. Didn’t even have to go find it somewhere; he had deli subs delivered and even sat on the rear porch with me, eating a sandwich of his own, while I ate. Like I say—nice guy. Friendly.

  I didn’t finish all the yardwork that day, but he was obviously pleased with what I had gotten done.

  “This is really nice, Lazarus,” he said to me, looking around the mostly cleared yard as darkness flowed into the sky. “Should I assume you’ll be interested in doing the painting, as well?”

  “For sure.” I nodded. “And if you can get me a couple of pipe wrenches and a few bucks for supplies, I think I can get that fountain flowing for you the way it ought to, too. Looks like about an eight-foot section of rusted-out pipe needs to be replaced. Probably need new couplings as well as the pipe.”

  “If you can take care of that, too, that’d be great,” he said enthusiastically.

  “Here’s what I think we’d need.” I handed him the paper bag my sandwich had come in, with the jotted notes about the pipe and fittings. “If you want to order them, probably be simplest to have them delivered. I’m afraid I left my car in my other pants—” I chuckled “— so I can’t pick them up for us!”

  “I’ll take care of it.” He nodded. “See you tomorrow, then. Nine o’clock?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Good. Here you are.”

  He handed me three fifties.

  “Mister Ninazu, I was only here about six hours,” I said.

  “Don’t have any twenties,” he told me with a twinkle. “Besides, you got a hell of a lot done today, Lazarus.”

  “Well . . . thank you!”

  I un-pinned my pocket and slid the folded bills into it.

  “Tomorrow, then,” he said, and I nodded.

  “Tomorrow,” I replied, and headed for the bus stop.

  I was back thirty minutes early the next day, and I was hesitant about ringing the bell at eight-thirty. But I was also hesitant about sitting on the front steps in that neighbourhood. So, I went ahead and rang the doorbell, and he opened it as quickly as he had the day before. He was much more casually dressed today, I noticed—he’d left off his vest—and he gave me a welcoming smile.

  “Sorry I’m early,” I apologized. “Bus schedule.”

  “Not a problem,” he assured me, and led me through the townhouse to the backyard once more.

  I put in another solid day of it, and I did have the fountain splashing merrily away by the time
I was done. I hadn’t quite gotten around to painting the gazebo, but I was regretfully aware that I would definitely finish up the next day. This job had been one of the most pleasant in my admittedly short memory. Not only was the pay excellent, but I’d discovered that I liked Ninazu.

  “This is really good, Lazarus,” he said, inspecting the results of my labour as evening rolled closer. “You do good work.”

  “I try,” I said.

  He cocked his head, looking up at me, and his expression was thoughtful.

  “I have to say, you’re not quite what most people think of when they hire someone from a shelter for yardwork,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t offend you.”

  “It doesn’t offend me.” I shook my head. “You might be surprised by some of the other folks in the Dellingers’ shelter, though. One of them used to be a surgeon, before he lost his licence to practice. And there’s another guy who taught literature over at the College.” I shrugged. “They’re good people, the Dellingers. They believe in second chances . . . and they know folks fall off the grid for a lot of reasons.”

  “And yours?” he asked almost gently.

  “Mine’s a little . . . out of the ordinary.” I shrugged again. “Probably, anyway. I don’t really know what happened to me.”

  “All right, that one needs a little explanation, I think!” He shook his head with a smile. “You don’t know?”

  “Actually, it’s more a matter of not remembering.”

  Bitterness edged my tone, and his smile disappeared.

  “I didn’t mean to step on any sore toes,” he said. “I’m sorry, Lazarus.”

  “Oh, it’s not anything you said!” I assured him, and then, to my surprise, I found myself telling him the story of my life . . . such as there was and what I remembered of it.

  “Oh ho,” he said softly when I’d finished. “Maybe there’s a reason Ms. Dellinger recommended you to me when I called in.”

  “She knew I needed the work.”

  “Besides that, I mean.”

  He folded his arms and regarded me with a very thoughtful expression.

  “Such as?” I asked.

  He didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then he gave himself a little shake and unfolded his arms.

  “You aren’t the sort of client I usually see, Lazarus,” he said in a much more serious tone. “In fact, under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn’t think of you as a potential client, at all. But I’m tempted to make an exception.”

  “Exception?” I cocked my head at him. “Mister Ninazu, I don’t know what you do, but I doubt a shelter guy could afford to pay you for it, whatever it is!”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said with an odd smile. “No, Lazarus. The problem isn’t that you couldn’t pay me. It’s that I wouldn’t normally offer to pay you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sit down,” he invited, settling onto the porch’s top step.

  I looked at him for a moment, then sat.

  “What I do,” he said then, “is to provide . . . services. All sorts of services. I can guarantee my clients anything they need.”

  “Oh?” I smiled crookedly. “Including lost memories?”

  “I should’ve said almost anything they need,” he replied with a slightly apologetic smile.

  “Not surprised.” I shrugged. “But, like I say, I don’t see how I could pay you for anything, much less ‘anything I need.’”

  “You’re wrong.” He shook his head. “You can. The question is whether or not you’d want to.” He leaned back. “Assume that I could give you anything—literally anything in the world—except your memory. What would you want?”

  “What anyone would, I guess.” I shifted on the step. “Money—enough to be comfortable, at least. More than that, if I could get it!” I grinned quickly. “Somebody to care about, and to care about me. Kids, probably. And maybe the chance to pay back some of the good things people have done for me. People like Sam and George. Heck, people like you!”

  “Somehow I’m not surprised to hear that. Especially that part about ‘paying back.’”

  He looked at me with that same thoughtful expression for a long time—two or three minutes, at least—then shrugged.

  “Okay. Suppose I told you I could guarantee you the chance to build new memories in a life in which you’d be wealthy, have the same excellent health you appear to have right now, live to a ripe old age, have the opportunity to find a woman who loved you, have kids and grandkids. What would you pay for that, Lazarus?”

  I started to laugh it off, but his eyes were level and his tone was very serious.

  “For all that?” I looked back at him. “Just about anything, I guess.”

  “Would you be willing to sell your soul for it?”

  For a moment, the question completely failed to register. I mean, he’d asked it in a completely serious tone, as if it were actually a rational inquiry. But then it did.

  “Sure!” I said with a laugh. “Why not? Where do I sign?”

  “Not so fast,” he said. “It’s a serious transaction, you know. One with which you might call long-term repercussions.”

  “I can see that,” I replied, still grinning. “Assuming I believed in souls, and I’m not sure I do, ‘long-term’ is probably a pretty good way to describe it.”

  “Absolutely. So, seriously, would you pay that much?”

  “And you seemed like such a sane, rational person.”

  I shook my head, and he smiled oddly in the gathering twilight.

  “‘Rational’ is an overused adjective,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This,” he said simply, and his brown eyes turned suddenly a deep, dark red and glowed.

  “Whoa!”

  I twitched back in astonishment. I suppose I should have been scared shitless, too, but I wasn’t. Probably because he’d seemed so normal over the last couple of days. And maybe because of how much I liked him.

  “I notice you aren’t running for the hills,” he observed after a moment.

  “Not yet, anyway,” I said a bit cautiously, and he chuckled. Then the glow vanished, and his eyes turned brown again, as if he’d thrown a switch.

  “Who are you—really?” I asked.

  “Ninazu will do,” he told me. “That actually was my name, once upon a time. But in answer to what I think you were really asking, I’m the fellow who can buy your soul by giving you everything I described above. All of it, Lazarus.”

  “For my soul?”

  “Yep.” He leaned back against the back steps’ banister. “That’s it.”

  “And what, exactly, is a soul?” I asked. “People throw that word around a lot. What does it actually mean, though?”

  “I’m not surprised you’re a little puzzled about that. Once upon a time, it was something everyone had—and recognized, for that matter. But today? The twenty-first century?” He shook his head. “Not very rich hunting grounds for properly nourished souls, I’m afraid. It’s like most people’ve forgotten they still have one.” He sounded remarkably rational, I thought. “But, in answer to your question, souls are what make mortals who they are. Good, bad, indifferent—it all goes back to the soul, in the end. Like I say, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be in a position to make you an offer for yours, but since you don’t even remember who you were before, or what you might have done, yours is in what you might call a pristine state. And I like you. So, I’m willing to make an offer for it.”

  “And what happens to it after I die?”

  “I collect it,” he said simply. “I cart you off to the hereafter.”

  “To Hell?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I don’t think it’d be exactly what you’re thinking just now, though. Oh, it wouldn’t be Heaven, but in my personal—and possibly somewhat prejudiced—opinion, Heaven isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either.”

  “You do realize this has to be one of the most . . . bizarre conversations ever, right?”
I asked.

  “Oh, trust me! I’ve had quite a few like it over the years. Not quite like this one, perhaps, now that I think about it. I mean, it’s not very often a pristine soul as old as yours comes along.”

  “I guess not.”

  I frowned at him, and rather to my astonishment, I discovered I was actually taking this entire weird conversation seriously. And that I wasn’t panicking. For that matter, I wasn’t automatically writing it off, either!

  “So, let me get this straight. No eternity of torment?”

  “No,” he said. “Although, I have to confess, you would spend eternity in Hell, you understand.” He shrugged. “That part’s not negotiable, I’m afraid. But Hell doesn’t have to be all that horrible. And at least this way, you could make some good memories along the way.”

  “That might be nice,” I said a bit wistfully.

  “I understand this has all come at you rather . . . unexpectedly,” he said. “And the last thing you should do is rush into an agreement like this one. So, I think what you need to do is go home and think about it. We’re not quite done with the yardwork,” he smiled briefly, mischievously, “so there’s a perfectly good reason for you to come back tomorrow, whatever you decide. And no hard feelings from my side, either way. Like I say, I like you, and I’m not on a quota system or anything like that. For that matter, I may not be the most unprejudiced judge of how bad or good things are in Hell, and you should probably bear that in mind, too. So, what say you go catch that bus and then come back tomorrow morning and give me your answer? Or not come back at all, which would be an answer of its own, I suppose.”

  “I’ll . . . think about it,” I told him, and realized even as I spoke that I really would. Which was, in many ways, the strangest thing of all, I suppose.

  I did think about it that night—after refried beans and hotdogs, yet again. I thought about it long, I thought about it hard, and to my ongoing surprise, I thought about it seriously. Thought about it as if it were a real decision. There were moments when I was tempted not to. When I was tempted to think of Ninazu as an especially personable lunatic. But then I remembered those glowing red eyes, and how earnestly he’d urged me to consider the consequences of his offer.