Atropos by William L. Deandrea

Dish.”
    Arnie shook his head. Maybe he ought to replace it with one that said “A. Gillick, by appointment only,” like those diamond places.
    He’d done a security check for a place like that in Amsterdam, once. Found a bug, too. Had to be an inside job, because the mini recorder was right there next to it. There must have been the combinations to a lot of loaded safes on that tape, if the relieved look the Dutchman in charge of security gave him meant anything. Of course, Arnie never knew for sure, because it was a point of honor with him never to listen to stuff he collected. He was doing this for clients, after all, not for himself. He didn’t need to go stuffing up his brain with other people’s secrets. It was just here’s the tape, gimme my check, thank you very much, and off somewhere else.
    That was all before Sally, of course. Sally was a small brunette he’d seen at a party about two years ago. He decided to do her a favor, since there weren’t any worthwhile blondes in the place. What Arnie didn’t know was that Sally was a witch, and six months later he would be happily hypnotized into becoming Sally’s husband, and stepfather to eleven-year-old Pete.
    So the security business, at least on the footing it had been on, was over. All that globe-trotting meant too much time away from Sally.
    He had learned, on the other hand, that he didn’t want to be under her feet all day, either. Arnie had never been a big spender; he’d done high-risk, high-paying jobs for the challenge, and banked most of the money. But he needed to give Sally a break from his face. So he’d opened the store. He’d noodle around for a while, order out from the deli, close for lunch, noodle around a few more hours, and rejoin his wife about the same time Pete came home from school.
    If it weren’t for the damn customers, life would be a dream.
    They were pounding on the door now.
    Arnie put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Go away! Can’t you read, for God’s sake?” He would go look to make sure he’d put the CLOSED FOR LUNCH, BACK AT 1:30 sign on the door, but then the asshole out there pounding would see him and make things worse.
    Arnie turned back to the receiver. “No, I wasn’t talking to you. I know you can read, you work for the Encyclopedia Victoria.”
    A few weeks ago, Arnie had conceived the notion of buying Pete an encyclopedia. Pete was a good kid, and smart. School-smart, which Arnie had never been. Besides, he’d seen the ads on TV about the kid walking through what looked like a goddam monsoon to get to the library. Pete spent a lot of time at the library, and in New York, even in a good neighborhood like this one, there were elements your kid might be exposed to coming home late that should worry you a lot more than the weather.
    So when Arnie had seen a coupon in TV Guide to request more information, he filled it out and sent it in. What he got back was worthless; an expanded version of the magazine ad. So he’d said to hell with it.
    Then today, they’d called him on the phone. A guy with a slight Spanish accent asked him if he was Mr. Arnold Gillick, and when Arnie admitted it, told him he was a Customer Representative for the Encyclopedia Victoria, and that Arnie had sent for their information packet.
    “Yeah. The information packet didn’t tell me what I wanted to know.”
    “What might that be, Mr. Gillick?”
    “How much does it cost?”
    And the guy wouldn’t tell him! He launched into a spiel that was word for word exactly what was in the brochure!
    “Look,” Arnie said, ignoring the first knock at the door, “I know it’s the best. I want to know what it costs.”
    “New members of the Victoria family find Victoria surprisingly affordable.” He sounded like Ricardo Montalban on that old car commercial.
    “I don’t want to be surprised I can afford it, I want to know. ”
    That was when Arnie had turned away to deal with the door pounder.
    “Yeah, yeah. You can read,” he told