Denim Gillard could sell anything, that much is true. He handled
real estate out of the left half of his storefront down on Conway
Street, and antiques out of the right. I don't believe his real estate
agents have ever cared much for the tweedy sorts working opposite them
not vice versa, but they are all united in admiration of Gillard's
prowess. It doesn't take much for one of them to step aside and let
their boss handle a sale. When he's ramping up to close a deal Gillard's
easy to spot, sticking one hand high up into the air to count off
selling points while he points to it with his other hand like a kid
pointing up at a skyscraper. After a price is settled on he licks all
the fingernails of his right hand in one quick motion, then dries them
against the leg of his characteristic jeans; when he does it it looks
like some familiar gesture out of an old western, but you know, who
licks their own fingernails? Nobody but Denim Gillard.
    Anyhow, about a week after those three guys in fedoras appeared
downtown and started going after pedestrians with feather dusters, Denim
announced that he had sold these strangers all the loose dust in the
city, minus a percentage for "practical concerns," and that nobody was
to keep any dust from the three gentlemen if they could help it.
    Now, the reporter to whom this information was first given didn't
bother to get Gillard's paperwork, but as his lawyer I insisted he show
me his proof. He said he'd mostly based the contract on something he'd
read on water rights and if it was good enough for his buyers, wasn't it
good enough for me? I asked why he kept me out of it and he just slapped
me on the back like we'd agreed on something and walked away.

    A week later, lingering over a coffee to avoid going back to my
office, I saw a duster walk in and start doing the customers. I
approached him and extended both of my arms out to the side (palms down,
of course; palms up means either "You got nothing on me, copper!" or
"Lama sabachtani?" and I was trying to be friendly). He nodded and
started dusting me.
    From the faint whirr I heard and the way the duster felt going over
my scalp, I realized there was a suction tube hidden inside. Sensible.
When he was done, the duster tipped his hat to me and turned to go; I
followed him. As we got to his cat he pulled a sour face at me but
unlocked the passenger door.
    I took my first good long look at him while he drove. He seemed
dazed, taking corners too late and braking too early. Horn-blasts from
other drivers didn't faze him, but they startled ME, and I sank in my
seat to avoid being spotted.
    We stopped at the old quarry. I tried to get out but found the door
locked. None of the buttons would open it, causing me considerable panic
in the lengthy seconds before my host, looking close to collapse, came
around and let me out.
    He ignored me once I was up, instead dropping to the ground and
sweeping together little piles of rock dust, which he then licked up.
Each swallow instantly made him visibly more alert, more urgent, and
quicker to move.
    The now fiery-man before me stood to face me. "Did you make an
agreement about this with Denim Gillard?" I asked. He looked confused
from the moment I started to speak. "Gillard!" I shouted uselessly,
miming 'signature' with my right hand. He understood my agitation,
clearly, but not my intent. Then, I thought to raise my hand to indicate
someone taller then me, followed by licking my fingernails and running
them across the leg of my pants. Relieved to understand, the duster
nodded once, then waved both hands to the left: 'the hell with that'.
    I walked home.

    "Gillard," I said the next time I saw him, "I hear those men in the
fedoras shot you down. There never was a contract." He grinned and put
his finger to his lips before setting off again to abuse a collector of
Victorian mementos who, truth be told, had it coming.

written for Senor Bamboo while standing up 7/26/03

I juggled the words a little but in the end my original perception that there was a drug subtext to them (which might have been completely unintended by Senor Bamboo) showed through.

Every once in a while I end up breaking my promise with these stories (in letter, if not in spirit) by setting down the typewriter in the middle of the page and putting it out of my mind as much as possible until I have time and willpower to pick the contraption up again. It's happened, I don't know, three times now; this was one of them. I don't know if it's obvious where the gap was.

One thing that may be obvious is that the story doesn't make much sense -- if Gillard only does the thing with his fingernails when a sale is closed, then why did the guy with the hat recognize it? I remember noticing some other outright inconsistency when I reread it afterward, though I can't bring it to mind now. Easy enough to fix things like that on revision, of course, but I don't like realizing I've done them.

If one does a lot of short pieces like this, does one improve by focussing on the good ones, or on the bad ones?

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

<< back to more fast custom fiction<<