Rust had replaced the oil that used to keep everything running smoothly. Giant pistons were locked forever inside their cylinders. Gears and levers would more likely snap than turn. Chains hung from corroded pulleys, pendulums silenced by the slow bite of time.

Footsteps broke the decades-long quiet, and the echoes stirred up a fine powder of crimson dust. Antique tools awoke from the slumber of disuse. The factory pulled in asthmatic breaths through the rust, only marginally interested in what business brought these newcomers into the once-hallowed halls of the Archibald Alphabet and Numeral Company.

Rommel followed another man through the aisles between production lines, stepping quietly out of respect for the wizened building, cringing inside at each of his companion's lummoxing, pounding footfalls. The other man was Ctesibius, a middle man who had on a number of occasions refused to open doors, among other idiosyncrasies.

Ctesibius stopped by the sixth conveyer belt on the left. “This is where they made the letter L.”

There were a few rough and unpolished L's lying in whatever position they'd been left in, to be completed on a shift that never came, works in progress when the plant closed.

“It's also where they made 7's,” continued Ctesibius. “Just bend the angle past 90 degrees, and flip it over and upside-down, you got a 7. They're almost the same thing.”

“Should work with O's and zeroes, too.”

“I'm blind to circles.”

“I'm blind to suffering.”

“I mean, I can't see things that are circular. Plates and records. Anything round.”

Rommel frowned. “That'd be a touch inconvenient.”

“Better than being completely blind.”

Rommel remained unconvinced. He walked ahead towards the corner designated for the clandestine meeting. There were to be passwords and the symbolic lighting of a cigarette, procedures usually reserved for street corners and bus stops, where a mistaken identity could lead to gunfire, maybe worse. But here they were a needless failsafe in a building so far away, both in chronology and physical distance, that not even the casual glass-smashing vandal would break the creaky seal of the loading dock door. Passwords, for chrissakes. Ctesibius was an amateur. In the realm of the redundant, the four-eyed man is king.

Rommel slid on his sunglasses, simple brown Ray Ban Aviators.

Ctesibius talked from a step behind, “When I was a kid, I didn't get it. I thought cars hovered because I couldn't see the wheels. Sports dumbfounded me. Sometimes you swing the bat, sometimes you don't.”

“You always swing the bat,” said Rommel.

“On my seventh birthday, I got a bike. I thought I was flying.” He spread his arms out like wings to illustrate. “The cake was round, so the candles floated, like the flames were little balloons, but I couldn't see the real balloons, so I thought the strings stood straight up on their own. Everything back then was magical. Well, the juggler was particularly unimpressive.”

“No worse than a mime. What about Cheerios?” asked Rommel, choosing but one from a slew of potential questions.

“I can't even see the bowl.”

“A spoonful of nothing.”

“That there's a metaphor for something. But you get your foot runover once, and you realize there's more there than you can see. Magic is the sum total of what you can't.”

They made their way past the letter Y (Z shared a table with N farther up the aisle), and turned left towards a darkened corner. The outer assembly lines arranged the premade letters into commonly used words: the, and, yes, no. Pretty much every other word was a profanity, a number of which Rommel was only vaguely familiar with.

Tight-throated, emotional. Ctesibius said, “You look into your lovers eyes and literally see nothing.”

“And you end up alone, brokering backroom deals between men of questionable character. Sob story. I get it. Consider me moved.”

A figure slouched in the shadows, blowing rings of smoke between puffs on a cheap cigar. Rommel knew the smell, and the lowlife accompanying it. He wafted away a newly formed smoke ring with a wave of his hand.

“Ctesibius, this asshole is your dealer? Perseverance? You told me you had a legit seller. This is fucking open mic night.”

A haggard, middle-aged woman stepped out of the darkness, revealing a face of deep-pocked leather. Ragged wisps of hair poked out from under a tattered boonie hat.

Perseverance asked, “Busker? That you? I ain't seen you since the hotel job.”

“There's a reason for that. World War II grenades? If I wanted vintage I'd ask for it. Try to buy coal from you and I get a goddamn diamond.”

“That such a bad deal?”

“It is when I need the fucking coal.”

“Come on, hon. You can't still be sore ‘bout that.”

Her eyes grew wide with a hyena laugh.

Rommel turned to Ctesibius. “You're in the wrong business if you can't read a person's eyes, boy.”

“He's right,” said Perseverance. “Why d'ya think poker face over there wears the shades?”

She drew a revolver from the leather holster on her hip with an earthy squeak. Jericho Right slid out silently, aimed at Perseverance.

Ctesibius laughed nervously, held his hands weakly in front of him to lend support the faltering transaction. “Come on guys, it doesn't matter what happened before. We can deal, it's all fresh.”

Busker shook his head. “I don't do business with her like.”

“I wouldn't sell a single dud grenade to this pompous ass if he wanted a paperweight,” said Perseverance.

“His money is as good as anybody's, and we're already here.” Ctesibius looked pleadingly at Rommel. “Mr. Busker, there's no need for shootin'.”

Rommel looked at the silver barrel of Perseverance's revolver, the little bit of light in the room glinting down its length with the imperceptible twitches of her hand. Just a simple tube of metal.

“Son,” he said to Ctesibius, “You do realize that there's a gun pointed at your head?”

Ctesibius stared blindly past the perfect circle of the muzzle, trying madly to focus his eyes on the one thing he couldn't see.

Perseverance shot.

Nobody saw the bullet.

-----

Next: Intermezzo 17