by Sam Asher

For example, a man in some part of southern Illinois once wrote asking for enough money to never work again. I waited for him on his porch, with all the cash he wanted.

But what do you want in return? He asked. He was cautious, which he should have been, not because I meant harm (which I didn’t, I can’t, same as I can’t mean well) but because of the stakes themselves, which were everything, if he realized.

Well, what can you give me?

He thought it over. You can see he assumed he didn’t have much at all, but people have more than they think. To me at least, humans have everything there is.

I can give you a song my father used to sing to me.

Deal, I said, taking the song from his head. It lit up my eyes like new logs in a fire.

• • •

It was a good song, about mist over the water, the taste of salt. I sang it on my next porch, in Idaho. This was a condo building, built like a motel, a busy road running by, empty fields in the distance. The porch ran the entire floor, doors of each unit opening onto it, stairs at irregular intervals. The apartment I was at had a single chair outside, a bench along the railing. The woman who met me there was the age I expected, looked the way I expected, was no surprise to me at all. Her hair looked recently cut, in a regrettable way. She smelled like cheap, sweet cigars.

You asked for extra time, I said.

She nodded. Her eyes went wide, like frisbees, and she said, You know that.

Is that a question?

No, she said. She fluttered her hands like tiny, useless wings. I mean. I just didn’t think you were real.

They say this a lot. I’ve never understood why. Parts of humanity aren’t for me to understand. So why’d you write?

I was just desperate. I tried all kinds of things—

This one worked, I said. How much time would you like?

She was carrying a shopping bag. She set it down. Inside were oranges, almost exclusively, all different sizes. Clementines and mandarins and navel oranges that are good for juice.

Can I get, I mean, could I get three more years?

Yes.

… Five?

Yes. What can you offer me?

She looked all around, twisted her hair, patted down her legs like she might find some treasure she’d forgotten all about. Before too long could pass I pointed at the oranges, and asked if I could have one.

Of course, she said.

• • •

I don’t like visiting children. Technically, I have to. Technically, they’re humans too, but it doesn’t feel right. Children offer me too much, will usually offer me absolutely everything. And usually what they’re asking for isn’t for them, but a parent, or a sibling, or a person they saw who needed help. Sometimes people ask if I’m God, and I tell them I’m not. But if they want to see the closest to God there is, watch a child.

I don’t meet this little girl on the porch, because her family doesn’t have one. I sit on her windowsill, waiting to be noticed. The house is quiet, the grown-ups asleep. It gets cold, so I tap on the glass, and she looks up, smiling, pulling the window open, and moving aside for me to step in.

I thought you’d come.

I always have to, I say. You need to tell me who this person is.

You don’t know?

You didn’t give me their name, I said. Do you know it?

Yes.

So what is it?

The room is poorly lit, but I can see everything. This looks like a kid who has plenty, there’s dolls on every surface, a huge music box, the size of a footstool. The space isn’t large, but it’s crammed full of items, every toy she could want. She has short black hair, light brown eyes, is wearing a yellow nightie. She doesn’t tell me the name at first but asks me questions. Like:

Do you always look like this?

(No) and

Have you always done this?

(Yes)

before I get frustrated and tell her, You have to tell me his name, or I can’t do anything. It’s the rules.

His name’s Mr. Gerrity, she says. And he lives—

I know, I say. That’s all I need. Thank you.

She slides a piece of paper off her bedside table and holds it up for me to inspect. I have a list of things—

I take it. The list is payment enough. My eyes flare red, like excited stars. I leave and give Mr. Gerrity what she wants.

• • •

A woman once asked me what I do with my free time. That took me a while to understand: All time is free. I can be anywhere, anytime, now or then, forward or backward, up or down. I exist everywhere, always.

You’re immortal? She asked.

It’s more than that.

Could you make me immortal?

I shrugged. That’s not very interesting.

But…?

Yes. Do you want that? That isn’t what you asked for—

No, she said. No, I don’t. Can I ask you another question?

Yes.

Hers was the smell I remember the best, of any person I’ve ever visited. She smelled almost exactly like the deep ocean, the way it is thousands of miles from land, where it’s just the depth and the waves, and the sun beating down. I don’t suppose anyone had ever told her that, that she’d ever met anyone who’d been that close to nowhere.

What’s most precious to you?

What?

If you exist always. Forever – what could be precious to you?

Humans think things are only precious if you can lose them.

Isn’t that true?

I shrugged. I don’t know anything about true. Many things are precious to me.

But the most precious?

I thought about it. She asked for it. I gave it to her and took her smell.

• • •

After that, after that exchange, my eyes were aflame for a dozen infinities, the unending lifetimes of a boundless universe. The brighter they were, the more powerful I was. There are no words for what I am.

Except, perhaps: a trader.

It’s true that I’ve never really understood the rules. Beyond:

They ask, I give, I take.

When my eyes begin growing darker again, I once again, and all at once, return to answering requests.

• • •

The man from Southern Illinois has written me another letter. His porch is little different, a little cleaner, maybe, a touch sturdier. He meets me there, holding a rifle, pointing it where I guess he thinks my heart would be. I raise my eyebrows and wonder if he thinks he’s the first one to ever do this.

You want your song back? I ask.

What song?

I chuckle. He raises the rifle to my head and tells me I should shut up. He’s grown a beard, which doesn’t suit him. It’s patchy, and too round. His hair’s in a ponytail.

You look the same, he says.

I shrug, silently. Truly silently, I don’t even have to breathe, my body doesn’t have to stir. I’m quieter than empty space would be. A squirrel bounds across the yard and throws itself headlong into a pile of leaves. There’ll be frost soon, I catch the smell of it, the anticipation of it curdling in the earth. The rifle dips, wavers, and the man comes forward, shaking from anger, or fear, or drunkenness.

I read about you, he says, I read about you.

What did you read?

You killed me. You didn’t tell me you’d kill me. That wasn’t what you took—

I didn’t kill you. I shake my head. That’s not what it is. I don’t know what you read, but that isn’t true. The you that was no longer exists, but you do. You’re alive. Look at you. Alive as a person can be.

He calls me a liar, the end of the first syllable catching in his throat and strangling the second, so it comes out like a roar. I can’t lie. I’m sure he knows that. I tell him. I can’t lie.

Then what do you look like?

This.

Liar. You look just like a person, but that isn’t what you are. Your whole being is bullshit.

I look however I want to look. I have always looked precisely how I mean to. You wrote to me with a request, I fulfilled it, in exchange for something from you.

But you took everything, he says. You killed me—

I stand, and make his rifle disappear. He doesn’t notice its disappearance, because we’re now in a world in which it never existed. This situation doesn’t happen as often as it might, which I’ve grown grateful for, but that it happens at all feels untidy. I can’t feel anger, and yet I do.

It’s the only way to make it work, I say. You asked for money. I gave it to you. And now imagine you have an enemy: A terrible enemy, that despises you, and they write to me, and ask me to take the money away. What then? I can’t say no, so long as they offer me a trade, and I can’t take what I’d given you. So I create a new timeline, with a new you, a new them. You in this timeline have your money, and they’ve taken it in theirs. The you who asked me to make you rich, he no longer exists. But you do. So why do you care?

I want a new wish.

I’m not a genie.

Then I have a new request!

All you have to do is make a trade, I say. I’ll give you anything you like. The new you, who I’ll create, at least. He will have anything you want.

I look at this man’s life, from birth to now, and past that. This man has never had anything at all, but still he’s terrified of what he thinks he’s lost, which is nothing, and everything. Because he is you, and them, and they cling to nothing, fingertips in a cliff that isn’t truly there, terrified of falling into the ocean that doesn’t notice they exist.

I want to be you, he says.

I laugh. It’s a real laugh, and I let him hear it, the sound of timelines crashing against one another, of stars colliding and mating, separating and burning. I laugh for him the sound of dying gods and empty worlds and children’s dreams. I amplify his whimpering across a million universes, galaxies coursing beneath and through one another like rivers on a loom, and I clap my hands together, to create silence.

I show him my true self, or what he thinks my true self should be, the yawning void of my existence, the hissing red eyes, the spreading, moth-like wings. I ask again what he wants, holding the world around us in silence to better hear his response.

To be you, he says. I want what you have.

He crawls toward me on his knees, spreading his arms like a genuflecting priest. There’s only one thing I’ll accept in exchange, I say. It is not a small thing. And I cannot make deals with creatures like me. Do you understand that? Once you are like me, I can’t help you ever again.

Make me like you, he says, And you can have anything.

I run my fingers along his eye sockets.

Deal, I say.

• • •

The man from Southern Illinois, I keep in my pocket. He is me, in every way but one, and that is the way that matters. Together we visit an old woman on the Eastern Seaboard who would like to see her husband one last time before she herself passes on, loses her grip on this reality. I tell her I can offer that and ask what she has in return.

I don’t have much, she says. No money. No family left, I—

Are you blind? I ask.

Excuse me?

I’m sorry, I say, I don’t mean it unkindly. But can you see? You have cataracts.

She shifts in her chair. There’s a row of buttons on one arm, I suppose for calling for help. I wonder what good they could possibly do. She takes a deep breath.

I’m almost blind. I can see a little – do you want the rest of my sight?

How would you see your husband if I took your sight? I’m not the devil. This isn’t one of those deals. I’m not here for your soul.

I smile.

Then what would you like? She asks.

There is a creature in my pocket, I say, whose eyes I took. They’re empty pits, and he cannot see. They’re black holes at the center of the universe. I understand from his screaming that he wishes he could see. That he has a great deal of regrets. That he did not understand much, and now understands even less.

That’s awful—

It’s nothing at all. But I wonder if you might talk to this creature for a moment, just to explain how you live without sight.

Would it help?

I pause for a moment. I bring what was the man from Southern Illinois out of my pocket, the powerless shadow, starved of the world, and let him drip from my hand onto her tiled floor.

No, I say. I don’t think so. Probably not at all. Do we have a deal?