Work Text:
The diner changes, but the Man is the same. He sits in the booth farthest from the door, facing the door — thus allowing his guests to study him as they make the approaching walk. The Man often doesn’t return the courtesy, for his attention is usually kept by the coffee he’s drinking or the notebook he’s writing in, but that is only until the seat opposite him is occupied. Then his time belongs to his guest, and entirely his guest. He’s always polite, and he always tips well.
Ferne
She’s more restless than usual for this visit, her leg jiggling up and down underneath the table. The Man eyes the movement but doesn’t comment.
“The worst part,” Ferne says, “is when they hear me, but they don’t respond. You know, they just… I say those things to them and they just take it, like it’s real, like I said something real.”
“Just a minute ago you said that…” the Man glances down at the notebook, “…that the act of confronting people is harrowing enough.”
“Yeah, that’s terrifying, but that’s different, that’s the fear of taking the first step to engage them. It's like I don't fully understand that I'm connecting with a person until I've done it. When they look back at me, I'm looking into their eyes and I can see their hurt. If they get angry it's like they're absorbing the hurt, but when they take it... it bounces back into me. I prefer it when they get angry.”
“Do you worry about them? These people?”
“Of course I do.” Ferne’s earrings rattle when she nods. They’re long and sparkly, matching her lipstick and small jewels at the corners of her eyes. “I know how words hurt, that’s how this whole thing started, isn’t it?”
Randall
He orders a bagel this time, though he seems to be more interested in pulling it apart than eating it.
“It’s working, I’m getting closer,” Randall says. “I don’t know how I know exactly, but I can feel it.”
“What does that mean?” the Man asks. “This 'feeling it'?”
Randall gazes off to the middle distance, the thick lenses of his glasses reflecting the sunlight as he turns to the window. “Everything seems… simpler. Clearer. The world’s always felt so big and messy, especially in these last few years. But now that's all just fallen away. I can finally see the road ahead, where it’s taking me, and I feel steady.”
“That’s good,” the Man says kindly.
“Yeah. I was scared, before. The first time I came here, I didn’t know what I was – I mean, I knew what I was asking for, but I couldn’t believe that I actually said it, and that you would listen to me. So many people don't listen.” Randall sighs. "It’s close now, and I feel good about that.”
“That’s great,” the Man says. “Then you’ll get what you’re asking for.”
Randall smiles. He has a few teeth missing.
Irene
She slips into the booth with purpose. The Man sighs, though knows that this is his own doing (bend the rules once and the rules stay bent) but that doesn’t mean he has to be nice about it.
“I hear the pastrami sandwich is really good here,” Irene says.
“You might want to get another table,” the Man says.
“I’ve heard that you can make things happen.”
“Fairy godmothers are two blocks over.”
“No, it’s you.” Irene puts her backpack down and makes herself comfortable. “I know it’s you. You helped Jimmy’s swim teacher’s cousin, he said you made everything better.”
The Man has a hand on top of the notebook, which is still closed. “I didn’t make everything better, he did. You would have to. Do you understand what that means?”
“I have to do a task,” Irene says.
“And it can be anything.” The Man leans forward, holding her gaze. “How good is your imagination?”
Irene blinks a little, nervousness leaking through her confidence, but then she puts both hands on the table as though to anchor her in place. “I heard that you can back out, too. So if it’s… if it’s really bad, I can stop, and it’s okay? I know it’s okay. So you should listen to me first, and then… and then you can tell me if it’s okay.”
Although children are relatively new in the Man’s booth, most of them give up after a while. Irene is not one of those, and she stays patient and quiet even when the Man ignores her through another cup of coffee. Through the opening behind the counter the cook peers at their booth, wondering why a girl no older than eleven is staring determinedly at the Man that is the diner’s constant regular.
“All right,” the Man says. “What is it that you want?”
A smile of relief lights up Irene’s face, until it’s swept aside for a focused scowl. “There are some people at my school. I want them to stop picking on me.”
“Some people at your school to stop picking on you?” the Man says. “You need to be precise.”
Irene takes a deep breath. “I want the people who are bullying me at school to stop bullying me.”
The Man inclines his head and regards the sharp jut of Irene’s chin. He opens the notebook, two fingers to the flap as he sweeps the older pages over for a fresh one. He reads. “You need to tell your parents a big lie, and they need to believe you.”
“What do you mean by a ‘big’ lie?” Irene asks.
“You’ll have to figure that out.”
“Something like… I’ve done my homework?”
“You know that that’s a small lie, Irene,” the Man says, which has the girl huffing faintly in irritation. “You should take some time to think about this. Just telling a lie won't be enough, for it must be believed.”
Irene nods, solemn.
Ferne
“Is this a punishment?” Ferne asks. “I know that it’s just a transaction, but if you’re giving me these tasks—”
“I don’t give you the tasks,” the Man says.
Ferne rolls her eyes. “If your book is giving me these tasks, shouldn’t the task and the reward be, like… equal? I have to hurt people – I have hurt people, and I’ve said things that I would never… Are you – is the book trying to tell me that what I asked for is as awful as what I’m doing to people?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” the Man says. “It’s not a mirror.”
“How do you know? Is there a manual?”
“The book isn’t judging you," the Man says calmly. "I’m not judging you.”
Ferne laughs.
“What you should be thinking about,” the Man says, “is whether you’re getting what you want. How’s your family?”
Ferne turns her face aside. “My mother called me the other day.”
The Man lifts his pen, ready to write. “Was it good?”
“We didn’t argue,” Ferne says. “It wasn’t a long call, but it was… different. Not good, exactly, but definitely different. I can barely remember the last time we spoke to each other that didn’t end in screaming. I almost didn’t know what to do with myself, when I hung up.”
“That’s close to what you want, though, isn’t it?” the Man asks.
Ferne shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”
Dr. Robert
“I’m still looking,” Dr. Robert says, a little defensively. “It defeats the purpose if I lose my license.”
“Your purpose,” the Man says. “There’s nothing in the task that says that it has to happen in the hospital.”
“I can control the situation, if it’s at the hospital.” Dr. Robert is a tall, healthy man, and his eyes are sharp behind his thick-rimmed glasses. “I can control how it happens and how people react. I just need to find the right person, the right circumstance.”
The Man flips back a few pages. “So you’ve given up on trying to engineer a situation?”
Dr. Robert nods. “Too dangerous. There’s a few other options. I could take ER duty, and let someone just… slip. But how do you decide? If I could somehow know in an instant if the patient in front of me is, you know…” He jumps a little as the waitress moves past, and then leans across the table to whisper, “…deserving. Maybe I could do it then.”
“That’s solely your decision,” the Man says.
Dr. Robert makes a face. “I know it is.”
Irene
“Does it have to be a lie about me?” Irene asks.
The Man’s read the page a few times already, but rereads it again, just in case. “It doesn’t specify.”
“So it could be a lie about someone else.”
“Yes, it does.”
Irene's brought gummy snakes with her today, and she’s chewing one now as she thinks. “It’s so weird. I’ve lied to mom and dad before, and it’s always kinda easy? I mean, they’re always busy. They don’t need to know I’m coming here, stuff like that.”
“They trust you,” the Man says.
Irene shrugs. “But that’s, like, small lies. Things just come out of the air, you know? I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to plan. It’s the planning that’s tough.”
“That does tend to be the case,” the Man says sympathetically. “Though planning does have its perks.”
One gummy snake consumed, Irene scowls at the next one before nibbling its head thoughtfully. “But it’s a whole big world between the small ones and the big ones. This is what I think.”
“That’s a good thought.”
“So maybe I should… level up? Start with an easy one and then work my way up and up?” The idea has Irene is abruptly animated, sitting up sharply with her eyes wide, and looking very much her age. But then she’s slumping down in the seat again, irritated. “That sounds like homework. Oh my god, can’t you just tell me what I’m supposed to say?”
“I’m afraid not.” The Man smiles when Irene pushes a gummy snake towards him, and politely drapes it across his mostly-unused plate. “It’s going to have to come from you.”
“Ugh,” Irene says. “Was that a good idea, though? The levelling up? Should I do that?”
“It’s up to you,” the Man says. “If you think it’s useful, and it’ll inspire you to the one that’ll get you what you want, then why not?”
Ferne
“I can stop if I want to, right?” Ferne asks.
“Of course,” the Man says. “It’s always been your decision.”
This doesn’t placate Ferne, who shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “It’s not that I don’t still want what I want. Because I do. My family is… Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted them to accept me as much as I do right now.”
“Yet you’re thinking about stopping,” the Man says curiously.
“Does that even make a difference to you?” Ferne asks.
“This isn’t about me. I’m a conduit to your making things happen.”
“Isn’t that the kicker.” Ferne looks down at her hands. She seems a few breaths away from crying, and it’s only her willpower that stops her. “I’m happy that I my mother can talk to me without cussing. I honestly thought that would never happen in my lifetime.”
“But?”
“I was doing number nine yesterday,” Ferne says. “A young man this time. He looked tough, I guess, so I thought it’d be okay to choose him. So I grabbed him, I looked into his eyes and I told him… I told him that it’ll never work, and it’ll never stop. I don’t even know why I said that, but it – it came out of my mouth. It's close to what I usually tell them, anyway. Just something vague enough to hit, like a horoscope.”
“And he reacted?”
“He was terrified.” The sadness drains away, leaving Ferne tired and staring at the table. “That’s the first time I got a reaction like that, it was… It threw me, I guess. I thought it was bad enough when they angry, or when they just let me, but this was… it made me think back on all the times I’ve been scared. I hate being scared.”
“So again you’re worried,” the Man says, “for this young man you’ve never met and will possibly never see again.”
Ferne’s mouth thins, unimpressed. “I’m sure it’s all very dull to you.”
“If I thought that, I wouldn’t be doing this at all.”
“Right,” Ferne scoffs. “Because I’m sure you remember every single person who’s come to see you.”
The Man inclines his head; neither a yes nor a no. The notebook is still open, and he presses the side of his hand against the used pages, feeling their thickness. “Everyone is interesting.”
“Even you,” Ferne says. “You and your… book. One of a kind, there.”
The Man offers a little shrug, and thinks briefly about a woman with blonde hair
Doris
and how she’d once gotten close enough that the Man let her hold the notebook, turning the pages open so the Man could make a deal for himself, for the first time. The Man has had to change diner for many reasons, but Doris’ near-theft of the notebook after that incident was something new.
“Everyone has their story,” the Man says.
Randall
“I’ve done it,” Randall says. “It’s all gone.”
The Man perks up, surprised. “All of it?”
Randall looks down at the few coins next to his cup of coffee. “Okay, not all of it. Just this, which is not much of a tip, but…” He shrugs. “That means it should happen today, right? Or tomorrow?”
“As soon as it’s all gone, you will get what you want.”
Randall nods, satisfied. “It got harder, towards the end. People are – people can be kind, when you least expect it. This morning my neighbor tried to give me some money when he saw me. It was hard convincing him I didn’t need it, and it’s even it’s true that I don’t need it.”
“Is this the same neighbor you’ve been spending time with?”
“Yes, that's the one.” Randall shakes his head, face going soft with fondness. “I know he means well. He has his own stuff to deal with, but I think he liked having someone to take care of, if only for a little while.”
“Any regrets about leaving him behind?”
“Some,” Randall says. “But it was enough to see him at least one more before… you know.”
The Man nods. “How do you feel?”
“Ready. Relieved. Happy.” Randall grins. “Thank you for doing this.”
“I’m not doing anything,” the Man says. “It’s all you.”
Dr. Robert
“Will I still get it, if I get caught?” Dr. Robert asks.
“Your getting caught or not has no bearing on what you’ve asked,” the Man says.
“Because it’s stupid if I get it and end up in prison.” Dr. Robert pulls off his glasses and rubs the lenses against his shirt in angry tic. “Then who the hell would want to listen to me anyway?” Across from him the Man jots a few sentences down in the notebook, which has Dr. Robert grumbling under his breath.
“What was that?” the Man asks.
“I said, are you getting off on this?” Dr. Robert says. “I could lose everything because of this damned task you’re making me do—”
“Still not making you do anything, Rob.”
“Pedantics,” Dr. Robert drawls. “My whole life is on the line and you’re just scribbling away like this is some hobby.”
The Man eyes Dr. Robert, intrigued by the insult. “Something happened recently. Tell me.”
Dr. Robert clenches his jaw. He tries to hold the Man’s gaze, as he does every time he comes here, but again he finds himself turning away. “There was a homeless man, died in his sleep, still don’t know what happened. His neighbor found him.”
“Homeless man,” the Man echoes. “Yet he has a neighbor?”
Dr. Robert sighs exaggeratedly. “Former neighbor. He just got evicted, or something like that, and was sleeping under the stairwell when his neighbor, the kid, found him. He was a right mess when he came in, and my first thought was… Well, my first thought should have been to find out what happened to this old man. But instead I was thinking: what a fucking waste.”
The Man nods. “You missed an opportunity.”
“An old man, broke, no family, dying anyway, he would’ve been perfect.” Then, quieter, “He would have been perfect. Who thinks like that?”
“You do, evidently.”
Dr. Robert scowls.
Irene
“People lie all the time,” Irene says. “Adults, I mean. All the time. So I started watching people, right, to see how they do it?”
“How do you know when they're lying?” the Man asks.
“You can tell, if you look closely enough. There’s something in their face, in their eyes. But these are just the ones that I know, there’s probably like hundreds that I miss. Like my teacher lies all the time to get us to do stuff. And my dad, he lied to mom about staying back for work.” Irene takes a long sip of her milkshake. “I think Mom thinks he’s having an affair. She doesn’t say it, of course, but I can tell.”
“Do you think your father’s having an affair?”
Irene shrugs. “So I like, I lied to my mom, you know, to make her feel better? And I guess it’s a ‘nice’ lie, but it’s still a lie, so… good practice.”
“What did you lie about?”
“That I’m happy,” Irene says. “That I’m totally cool with dad being such a – a workbaby.”
The Man pauses his writing to regard Irene, and the simpleness with which she delivered that statement. “You wouldn’t consider that a big lie?”
“No,” Irene says. “I mean, I tell them I’m having fun at school all the time, that doesn’t count.”
“I suppose not,” the Man says.
“But it’s getting better, though. I mean, at school, they haven’t…” Irene pauses, frowning. There are some words she doesn’t like to use, so she composes herself deliberately: “It hasn’t been as bad lately. Is it because I’m doing this?”
“It could be,” the Man says.
“But I haven’t told my lie yet.”
“You’re working towards it,” the Man says. “Sometimes things start to fall into place as soon as you’re making your way towards completing your path.”
“Okay,” Irene says. “Cool.”
Ferne
“Number fifteen,” Ferne says.
The Man puts his cup of coffee down. “How was it?”
Ferne’s familiar with the Man’s questions by now, his interest in peeling apart the workings of the minds that are pressed to make seemingly-impossible deals with strange men in diners. She has been thinking about what to say all the way over here, and before that.
“I know that it could be worse,” Ferne says. “The tasks, I mean. I know that they can be harder. And I think I’m lucky, in a sense? Because all I’ve asked for is for my mom’s heart to be open to me again.”
“Is that a small thing, Ferne?” the Man asks.
“No,” she says. “But the task isn’t small, either. It’s not that just that I had to confront complete strangers to hurt them. I've had to change myself to do this, and it's not something I can easily undo.”
“Explain that to me.”
“I feel like something is rattling loose,” Ferne says. “Look, I asked for this out of love, and I think I had to give up a bit of my ability to love in getting there. So… I know I should thank you, because Mom called me last night and asked me to come home, but… I don’t want to.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Because I did it all by myself,” Ferne sing-songs. “Yes, you’ve mentioned that, still not buying it. What was that thing you once said? The world is a seesaw, and it’s a matter of me pushing one end down so the end I want goes up?”
“I did say that,” the Man agrees.
“You’re haven't convinced me the bit in the middle – the pivot, whatever – doesn’t have its own opinion. Maybe everyone who comes in here is an end you get to push down, too.”
“I control less than you think,” the Man says.
Fern, still smiling, narrows her eyes at the book. “I sure hope so.”
Irene
“I’m late, sorry,” are Irene first words in the booth today. She’s out of breath, and practically tosses her backpack to the side in her exhaustion. “Can I have some juice?”
It isn’t rush hour in the diner, so Irene gets her juice quickly. The Man takes the lull of the waitress dealing and delivering her order to check the ink in his pen, and flips the notebook open to a suitable page.
“Slow down there,” the Man says, as Irene downs half the glass. “You might choke.”
Irene wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Oh my god.” She tilts her head back as though the study the ceiling. “It’s like they didn’t even see me.”
“They?”
Irene blinks, and focuses back on the Man. “Those girls. The – them. It’s not like I see them every day, okay, but the past few days it’s been kinda quiet? So I went looking for them, and they were hanging out in the gym, and I know they saw me, but they didn’t… it was so weird.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” the Man asks.
“Yeah,” Irene says, discomfited, “but they were picking on someone else. A new girl, I think.” Her mouth turns down unhappily. “I know I said I wanted them to stop picking on me, but… And I remembered what you said about being specific, and I got so mad at myself.”
“Irene,” the Man says slowly. “Why did you run here?”
Irene grins then, and it is the brazen grin of a job well-done. “I figured out how to make it work. I just need to get in their way, take their attention from the new girl. And since they can’t pick on me, well… they don’t get to do anything.”
“You haven’t told your big lie yet, though,” the Man points out. “You’re not ‘protected’, as it were.”
“Maybe I don’t need to.” Irene starts in surprise, as though she hadn’t meant to say that. “Maybe I can handle it by myself.”
“Or you could tell your parents.”
Irene rolls her eyes.
Dr. Robert
Today Robert is subdued, almost distant. He usually orders a coffee for this sessions, because he is a man that likes his hands to be occupied as much as possible, but there is no order this time.
“It took me ages before I decided to come here the first time,” Robert says. “When I heard about these deals, I spent days, weeks, just to think about what I wanted. It’s like when I was applying to medical school, although it was something I’d wanted since I was a kid, I had to be sure that that’s what I wanted.”
“You don’t go into things lightly,” the Man says.
Robert nods. “So when I want to always be correct with my diagnoses, I’m not asking it on a whim. I’ve really thought about it – the pros and cons, the ways it can come back to bite me in the ass. But I was always thinking within the realm of the work.” With a fingertip, Robert draws a circle on the table. “Within the realm where I am in control.”
“Ah.” It hasn’t escaped the Man’s notice that Robert does put a great deal of weight in being in control.
“I have a daughter,” Robert says. “Did I mention that?”
“No,” the Man says.
Robert smiles wryly. “Just started middle school. She came in yesterday to the hospital, with her mother. Not to visit, mind. She’d hurt herself, and she said it was nothing, that she was just messing around with her classmates and fell down. And I knew that she wasn’t telling me everything. I just knew.” His eyes seem younger when he raises them to meet the Man’s. “That’s a diagnosis, and it’s correct. I could feel it.”
“So what did you do?” the Man asks.
“I asked more questions,” Robert says. “And I could see it – this, this grey, cold thing inside her. Not a physical sickness, but something. I saw it, not just in her, but in my wife, too. I love them. I do love them a lot, and I was… nauseated to see this grey thing inside them. It was everywhere, in their voices, their eyes, the way they moved. They went home after my daughter got the clear, but I was so rattled I could barely concentrate when I got the perfect chance to complete my task.”
“This perfect chance,” the Man says. “Tell me about that.”
Robert sighs. “Do you remember that kid I mentioned before, the one who brought in the old man who died? He came back, in even worse shape than before and yelling about the world conspiring against him and hurting everyone around him. He was crazy, like literally crazy, and I could see it. Something had snapped in his head, and he was thinking about hurting people. So… it was perfect. I even got him alone in a room and strapped down and I could have—” he makes a shapeless gesture that is supposed to mean illicit organ harvesting, “—settled it with him.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I told you,” Robert snaps. “I was too busy thinking about my wife and daughter – the way they looked at me through this — this haze like they didn’t even know me. The point of having this ability is to be able to do something about it, but I can’t do anything about this. So why have it?”
“You didn’t say you wanted to be able to do anything about it,” the Man says.
Robert groans and leans back in his seat. “I know.” He presses a hand over his face. “Fuck.”
The Man signals for the waitress, mouthing a quick, One coffee.
“I don’t think I want this anymore,” Robert says.
“That’s fine,” the Man says. “It’s always your choice.”
Robert sighs.
Harding
All who come into the booth at the end bring some form of desperation with them, but none with such open terror as Harding. He is sweaty and disheveled, with bags under his eyes due to trouble sleeping. He takes the seat opposite the Man and clips out a quick, “I hear the pastrami sandwich here is really good, which is fucking hilarious because they don’t even sell pastrami sandwiches here.”
The Man isn’t expecting this. He may be free, but there is no appointment for this hour. He starts to flip the page to check if he’d missed something, but stops at the look in Harding’s eye. The Man rests his hand on top of the book instead, palm down and fingers spread.
“And you are?” the Man says.
“What, it doesn’t say?” Harding sneers. “No mention of ‘Harding’ in there?”
“You expect it to?” the Man asks.
“Check it.” When the Man doesn’t move, Harding slams his fist on the table. “Check.”
There’s no point being coy, so the Man pulls the book closer, away from the reach of Harding’s arms. He flips it open, but only glances at the page.
“I want to make a deal,” Harding says.
“No.”
“No? I haven’t even asked yet. What’s it say?”
“It says you already have a deal,” the Man says.
“Not with you.”
“Doesn’t matter. This book or another book, it’s the same.” The Man may know less about the workings of the book than most of his guests think, but there are some things he can piece together. “You want to make a deal with me to undo your other deal. What did you ask her for?”
Harding swallows. “The book. I wanted her book.”
The Man nods. He finds himself smiling at the thought of Doris managing to get a notebook of her own. He imagines her sitting in a diner somewhere with her guests – no, not in a diner, not when she’d worked in one. She’d find her own space somewhere else, create her own routine. It’s always tricky in the beginning, before word gets out and they start coming in by themselves.
“What was your task?” the Man asks.
“I had to find you.”
“Not just that.”
Harding nods. “Not just that.” He takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “I know that it’s been trying to stop me, keep me away. These past few weeks have been… People accosting me in the street, at work, on my phone at random hours of the night, and then... and then it killed my friend. It killed him! He was just an old man, he never hurt anybody. It almost killed me, too, with the doctor. I know it.”
“Yet you kept going with your task,” the Man says. “You could have ended it at any time.”
“I had to see you. And it.”
The Man knows what the book usually asks for. A reward of a book itself would require no less than its previous owner’s incapacitation, or death. Harding has come with possible murder on his mind.
“You’ve seen us both now,” the Man says.
Harding runs a trembling hand over his face. “Jesus Christ.” He takes a few shaky breaths. “Will it stop now? Will it stop sending people at me?”
“You know that I don’t control that,” the Man says.
Harding barks a harsh laugh. “Will completing my task stop it?”
“I don’t control that, either.”
As the Man watches Harding struggle with himself, he realizes that he feels no fear. He has no way of knowing if the book cares whoever holds it, but he has only a mild curiosity as to where this will go next. He looks around the diner – at the waitress, the handful of customers, the cook passing by behind the counter. There are worse places to die, if it comes to that.
“It’ll never stop,” Harding says at last. “It fucking said so, it made that woman say so.”
“That would be a reasonable conclusion,” the Man says.
Harding tries to look at the book but he can’t keep his gaze there. The Man flicks the pages, just to watch him jump.
“Fuck. Damn it.” Harding scrambles to his feet, so suddenly that the Man jerks back surprise, hitting the back of his seat. “I’ll just make a new deal with her. Something – something to get back at your damn book.”
“No, you won’t,” the Man says.
Harding shivers. “No, I won’t.”
The Man watches Harding go. Sometimes he wonders if things could play out differently, and if they could, how they would. Perhaps in another universe Harding found strength inside him to complete his task, or Randall didn’t believe he had to embrace death to be at peace, or Ferne decided she could mend things with her family on her own. So many deals, so many tasks, so many ways things go wrong or right.
The Man does wonder about this, but only sometimes. After all, the book decides on its own what kind of universe it wants to exist in. The Man may not know much, but he knows that.
“Well,” the Man says to the book. “That went well.”
The book doesn't say anything.