I’ve always loved taking things down to their parts and then building them back up again.
It’s weirdly soothing, knowing that it’ll all fit together in the end.
Unless it’s a bad day, like today, where there’s a bastard little screw that I keep knocking off the tabletop and my fingers feel like a bunch of sausages crammed into a glove.
“Stay put, you little shit.”
There’s a chance I’m tired and hungry and should take a break.
Which is probably why I’m not at my best customer service self when someone rings the bell a minute later while I’m crawling around on the floor with my ass in the air. I scowl, hoping the persongoes away. Maybe I can just hide out under my bench and they’ll get the hint.
“Excuse me, are you Grizz?”
I keep my eyes still focused on trying to find that damn screw, mentally noting that I should probably invest in a ‘do not disturb sign’. But usually, my face and general demeanor are enough to communicate the message.
Whoever’s ringing the bell doesn’t let up. Instead, she clears her throat loudly and rings the fucking bell again. I’m tempted to shove it in a drawer or tape it so it doesn’t work. It’s something the business insists on having, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be accessible to people barging in here when I’m trying to work. Even if I’m not actually doing the job they pay me for. It’s not my fault no one wants to buy anything from the selection of crap that’s on the shelves.
“Excuse me? I was hoping you could help me?”
“You’re Grizz?” she asks.
I don’t answer, instead focusing on the miniscule wire in front of me through my magnifying glass.
I’m categoricallynotGrizz from theGrizz’s Little Odditieschain of shops. She can see that from the picture on the sign that sits right beside the store's name. I’m not the smiling redheaded spellcaster. But I don’t think Grizz would mind too much if I claim her identity for the moment. Mostly because I’m convinced she doesn’t exist. She’s one of those PR creations, like the homely witch behind Mrs Surecrust’s famous pies. Although, personally, I always found Mrs S to be shifty-looking. Her eyes are a little too bright on the boxes of her pies and it makes you wonder exactly what kind of meat she’s putting in them.
“Well then, Ms. Grizz, I’m hoping you can help me out. I’m looking for someone who I’ve heard lives in this town. I was directed your way, but perhaps my information is wrong.”
I raise an eyebrow, satisfied with how things are lining up on the device in front of me. It whirrs and clicks and I get about two seconds of pure satisfaction before the feeling fades as I realize I now have nothing to distract me from having to talk to this woman.
Attempting my professional, customer service face causes her eyebrows to shoot up and mild panic to enter her eyes, so I quickly go right back to my usual slight frown.
I guess the faster we can get this over with. The faster I can return to my tinkering and the endless ticking clocks on the wall to my left. They tick-tick-tick away, driving me halfway out of my mind, but apparently they’re a bestselling item in other Little Oddities shops across the country.
I don’t know what other shops are doing differently, but no one’s ever bought a clock from me.
“The person I’m looking for is proving difficult to track down, but I’ve heard they retired here to Willow Ridge.”
My first proper look at the woman tells me a lot about her. She’s wearing a very expensive-looking suit and crazy high heels, an even more expensive watch, and carries a briefcase that looks like it’s just bursting with important documents.
She’s a bigwig. Or at least she thinks she is.
I wonder if she thinks that I’m the local friendly tinkerer and shopkeeper, ready to spread gossip and produce service with a smile.
Only two of those things are true. I like to keep to myself, and I wouldn’t want to know anyone else’s business if you paid me.
Comes with the territory of being an iceberg that cut myself off from social contact even before I escaped from my past life.
“They used to go by the name of ‘Saint’, but it seems like the name retired at the same time they were. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of them?”
My chest fills with ice at her words and I have to fight to keep my expression neutral and my breathing steady.
It might make me sound like an old cop from one of those detective TV shows, but that’s a name I’ve not heard in a while.
Five years, to be exact.
Five years since I packed up my old life and moved as far away as I could. Quit being Saint Madison and became Sinjin Murphy.
My mind goes a mile a minute. I wonder how the hell this woman found me. She doesn’t look like someone that works for the Herald—she’s not slimy enough to work for the man who, according to his own words, created me and was going to reap the rewards.
