Differential Damsel

by Kevin L. O'Brien

sorry..." I began out of reflex, then I took a closer look.

  That night had been too warm to allow a pedestrian to comfortably wear anything other than a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. The person before me, however, had bundled himself up as if for winter. Aside from a pair of rather baggy trousers, he wore a heavy coat that covered him from neck to knees. A wide-brimmed hat sat low over his head, and a meter-long muffler wrapped around his face hid everything beneath the nose. I could see only two, deep-set, and very disturbing, bloodshot eyes. His posture looked stooped and bent, as if he was extremely old or crippled, and he stank of mold and loam.

  My first thought was that he might be a robber, trying to hide both his appearance and a weapon, but he simply stood in the doorway, staring at me, with both hands thrust into the coat pockets. I didn't like the look of him (at least, I assumed it was a "him"). Even so, he made no threatening move, so I couldn't just dismiss him without a reason.

  Overcoming what I thought was simply my natural paranoia, I asked if I could help him. His only response was to pull his left hand from the pocket and extend it towards me. That hand had tannin-brown skin, with black, stringy hair, and long, pointed nails encrusted with some dark matter. He held a piece of torn newspaper in his grasp.

  Taking the scrap, I saw that it had an advertisement from our store offering a special price for two large pizzas. It was still valid, but it was also soiled with food, and other, stains, as if it had been taken from a garbage can.

  "I take it you want to place an order." I may have sounded surprised, but he nodded, calm and smooth.

  "I'll be just a moment." I stepped behind the front counter and retrieved the order book from underneath. I spent a few minutes filling out the preliminaries, such as the time, date, and my name.

  "Let's see now. You want two of our large pizzas--"

  A vigorous head shaking interrupted me. He took a few steps closer and pointed at the ad. Looking more closely I saw an "x" followed by the number twelve written below the word two.

  "You want twelve orders?"

  He nodded his head.

  "But that's twenty-four pizzas."

  He nodded again, patiently.

  I shook my head in disbelief, but recorded the number. "They come with cheese. Would you like any other toppings?"

  He stared hard at me for a few seconds, then spoke a single word in a high-pitched voice that meeped the vowels.

  "Meat."

  If there had been a full moon that night...but I didn't believe in werewolves.

  "Um, we have five different kinds of meat..."

  I let my voice trail off when he only stared. As I jotted down the details, he placed another piece of torn newsprint on the countertop. It had only a portion of an ad, but I saw an address, and a name, scrawled in a very illegible script, beneath it.

  "Elmwood and Charles," I mumbled as I added it to the order. "Is that in Tamarack?"

  He nodded once. I should have guessed.

  The name proved to be more difficult, but I pronounced it "Caldwell" and he rewarded me with another nod.

  "Ah, I don't suppose you have a telephone, do you?"

  He gave no answer. Briefly, I felt like a fool.

  That left only drinks. He nodded vigorously when I suggested that he add beer to the order, and he indicated the number of bottles by pointing to the number of pizzas.

  "Ok, because of the size of this order, we can't guarantee 25 minute delivery. We will, however, get there as fast as we can. Also, I'll have to ask that you pay in advance."

  He was way ahead of me. As I spoke he dug into one pocket and tossed me a single coin, about the size of a silver dollar. Surprised, I tried to catch it against my shirt, but I missed and had to scramble for it as it rolled under the counter. For a brief moment I thought I saw the man's feet, but what I saw must have seen his shoes instead. No person could have feet like that.

  When I finally caught the coin I discovered that it was encrusted with filth and dirt. I stood up, ready to explain that it wouldn't be acceptable, but the man had vanished. He had left as silently as he had arrived, leaving me dumbfounded.

  "Do we have an order?"

  Glancing at the office, I spotted Michele looking at me. I signaled for her to come out and waited until she came over before answering.

  "We do, though you were close enough to hear."

  She flashed a testy expression. "I heard you ask for payment, but I didn't hear if you were paid." She then glanced at the order form.

  "Twenty-four pizzas?" Though higher in pitch, she reproduced my original reaction perfectly. "Did he pay?"

  I held up the coin. "If you can call this payment."

  She took it to examine. "What is this?"

  "I would suppose a dollar, assuming, of course, it's not a foreign coin."

  She scowled in disappointment. A large order like that one could save a bad night, if it was legitimate. Unfortunately, it looked like it probably wasn't.

  "Well, if it's any consolation, at least we didn't waste our time and money making a bunch of pizzas we couldn't sell."

  I had tried to cheer her up, but from the look she gave me I wasn't successful.

  Then she examined her fingers. They were gray from the filth on the coin. When she scrutinized the now clean surface more closely, a confused look crossed her face.

  "I thought dollars were made out of silver."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  She handed the coin back to me. What I saw left me speechless. Instead, I began to frantically clean the coin with my shirt.

  "What's wrong?"

  When I had finished, I held up the coin for her to see. The polished yellow metal glinted a dull green in the fluorescent lights. Her eyes grew wide, filling her lenses, as she recognized it.

  "It's gold, isn't it?" Her voice cracked on the second word.

  "It's more than that." My own voice rose barely above a whisper. "It's an 1850 Double Eagle, and in excellent condition. They weigh a full ounce and contain almost 90% gold. Based on the metal alone, at today's prices, it would be worth maybe $450. But that's not the half of it. To a collector it's worth almost $3000."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "I used to be one."

  Michele said nothing for the longest time; she just stared at the coin. Yet even when she finally could speak, she didn't take her eyes from it. "Do you think he knew what he gave us?"

  "I don't know, but no matter how you look at it, he certainly paid for his order." It was a lame statement, I know, but what else could be said at a time like that?

  It took us nearly 45 minutes to make all the pizzas. We packed them into insulated boxes to keep them warm, six pizza cartons to a "hot" box. Afterwards, I went next door to a liquor store. (We had an agreement with the proprietor to buy beer at a little more than his wholesale price. In that way, Michele didn't need to have a liquor license.) While we worked, I described the man's manner and appearance. Michele informed me that no customer like him had ever visited the store before, but she seemed to recognize the name Caldwell. She seemed certain he had ordered from her at least once. She just couldn't recall the details.

  Since I couldn't handle four hot boxes, plus four six-bottle cartons of beer, all by myself, Michele decided to close up the shop and come with me. We loaded my Dodge four-by-four, and then checked a map of Tamarack to see where we were going. The only place where Elmwood and Charles intersected lay at the east end of Greenwood Cemetery. There were houses along both streets, but the man had not given me a house address, which made Michele suspicious. Yet, he had paid, so we were obligated to try to deliver his order. Even so, Michele decided not to take any chances.

  The drive to Tamarack was quiet enough and took only ten minutes. A major state road runs north and west between the village and Delasalle, allowing quick and easy access to the nearby interstate highway. Just west of the road, before one reaches the village proper, is a suburban area with its inexpensive single family homes, parks, and
schools. On the east side is the "wealthy quarter", with its beautiful mansions that could rival the best on the East Coast. Beyond it, stretching north and further east, is Maria's Lament, an area of marsh set aside as a nature preserve.

  Once into the incorporated town itself, however, things change dramatically. Tamarack is not a prosperous town. Though the sister city of Delasalle, it has never been as successful as its sibling. It is nowhere near as decayed and squalid as Seth's Landing to the south, or even as tired and rundown as Stonefort to the north, but it is nonetheless decadent and decrepit. A visitor once described Tamarack as a has-been whore, passed her prime, but still trying to recapture the golden days of her youth with a thick veneer of cheap makeup, all the while deluding herself that there really had been any gold to recapture.

  The central, western, and northern quarters of the village are not too bad, since they cater to students who either cannot afford to live in Delasalle or want to experience an impoverished Bohemian atmosphere, but the eastern section that borders on the marsh is by far the worst part of town. The structures there are all extremely old: none are younger than 150 years and some even date back to the arrival of the first settlers, in the middle nineteenth century. Yet they are in varying states of decay and disrepair, even those still occupied.

  Their residents are little better. They are a proud, resourceful, and arrogant people who, by virtue of their direct descent from the founding families, considered themselves superior to the "outlander tribes", the villagers who are their neighbors to the west.