by Yoav Blum
“Right.”
Eric returned the piece of paper to him and shrugged. “You have a small mystery here. Enjoy.”
“And what am I supposed to do now?”
“It seems to me that you should go to the place specified at the designated time,” Eric said.
“And . . . ?”
“And decide whether you mind or not.”
“Mind what or not?”
“If someone kicks you in the head.”
5
Eric looked around, waiting for a taxi to appear.
“It’s ironic,” he said. “Throughout the years, I’ve organized at least fifteen taxis to arrive precisely when needed, but when I need a ride, half an hour passes before something comes by. And even then, the cab is taken.”
Guy laughed. “The shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot.”
“I’m not a shoemaker’s son,” Eric said. “And I recently decided that I can’t stand irony.”
Three seconds passed and a taxi stopped next to them.
“And exactly how did you do that?” Emily asked, wideeyed.
“Who said I did something?” Eric smiled. “Sometimes things just happen, don’t they?”
“You planned for a taxi to arrive now only so you could use the punch line ‘I can’t stand irony’?” Guy asked. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”
Eric got into the taxi and waved to them. “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
“If you say so,” Guy said with a smile, and the taxi drove off.
“You remember our bet, right?” Emily asked.
“Um, there’s a small chance that I don’t,” said Guy.
“How many times do I have to repeat this?” Emily sighed.
“We’re already busy coincidence makers,” Guy said with affected seriousness. “We have no time for nonsense.”
“Don’t try to get out of it. We agreed—whenever you want, and for at least fifteen minutes, you need to arrange for ten young girls named Emily to be within the park. I need to try to arrange for there to be ten children with the name Guy.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Hey, belittle this all you want, no problem. There’s a dinner at stake, you know.”
“Can I also bring boys?”
“Named Emily?”
“Or Emil.”
“On the condition that I can bring a Gaia.”
He nodded his head, smiling. “We’ve got a deal.”
She smiled back, an old sparkle in her eyes.
“The park” was, of course, the park where everything began, from their perspective.
The first day of their Coincidence Makers Course began on a reddish bench in the park. Guy arrived second; Emily was already there. He approached slowly, a bit hesitant, and stood before the young woman with the short black hair.
“Uh, is this . . . ?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
She had large, dark blue eyes and a small face the color of pale marble. She smiled a bashful smile. “Emily.”
“Guy,” he said, and sat down next to her. Only a second later did he realize it would have been more polite if he had asked permission. But she didn’t seem to notice.
Children played soccer on the grass in front of them. Farther off, several mothers and babysitters sat with little children, trying almost desperately to stop the toddlers from eating pieces of grass or examining particularly intriguing dog poop, though they were unwilling to stop talking on their phones while engaging in these efforts.
Emily held a small bag of bread crumbs in her hand and scattered them on the ground in front of her. A few lucky birds gathered and pecked the sidewalk with urban expertise.
“At least now we both know this is the right bench,” said Guy in an attempt to break the ice.
“Yup,” said Emily, scattering another handful of crumbs.
“So where are you coming from?”
Emily sat up straight and looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“What was your previous position?” he asked.
She looked at him for a long moment. “You first,” she said. “What were you?”
“I was an I.F.”
“Hmm. Initials. Great. And they mean?”
“Imaginary friend. I was an imaginary friend. Of young children, primarily. Very interesting work.”
“I’m sure.”
“Yes.”
“So, from your point of view, this is a promotion?” Emily asked. “It’s considered a better position?”
“Yes. I’m used to existing only in the eyes of one child at a time. Regular and continuous existence will be an interesting challenge for me. I’m quite satisfied.”
“Did you submit a request for a transfer or did you simply receive it?”
“I simply received it, to be honest. I didn’t know you could submit a request for a transfer.”
“It seems logical for there to be something like that, no?”
“Perhaps. I’m not really familiar with all the . . .”
“Okay.”
Emily absentmindedly scattered another handful of crumbs.
“Is this the bench for the Coincidence Makers Course?” they heard a voice behind them ask.
Both of them turned around.
“You’re not supposed to just say it,” Guy said. “What if any two people were sitting here?”
The thin redhead behind them looked at him with an amused expression. “Then they would think I’m a bit cuckoo and tell me no,” he said. “You don’t seriously think someone would assume such a course really exists, right?”
“There are rules . . . ,” Guy tried to say.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear about a rule against asking. And even so, you know what rules are designed for. This is the course, right?”
“Right . . . but . . .”
“Great.” He walked quickly and sat on the bench between them, crossing his arms to extend his hands in both directions.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Eric, man of many talents.”
“Nice to meet you.” Emily raised an eyebrow and smiled.
“I like your hair. The smile is great too,” Eric said before turning to Guy. “No smile?”
“Not only can I smile, I can offer you a handshake too.” Guy extended his hand. “Where are you from?”
Eric shook his hand. “Maybe if you explain the question, I can answer it.”
“He meant, what did you do before the course?” Emily said.
“I was an igniter,” Eric said. “It’s a wonderful thing. But you get tired of it after a few decades. Or centuries, it depends.”
“What’s an igniter?” Emily asked. But before Eric could answer, his face was covered by the shadow of the person standing in front of them, whose arrival had sent the birds into flight.
“Good morning, Class Seventy-five,” said the figure.
“Good morning,” said Guy.
“Good morning,” said Emily.
“Ditto what they said,” said Eric.
Standing tall in front of them was a middle-aged man with short grayish hair and light green eyes, like bundles of grass that grow in a hypnotist’s yard. Through the tight white cotton shirt he wore, the three of them could tell he was someone who took care of his body. And his body, in quiet appreciation, took care of him in return.
“This,” the man said, “is the stage when you begin to follow me and listen.”
The three quickly obeyed. They got up and began to walk behind him.
He walked slowly, his head held high and his hands crossed behind his back.
“Okay, listen up. The name is really not important, but you can call me the General. In fact, you must call me the General, if only because it’s the only name you’re supposed to know and to which I’ll respond. Please erase from your heads—as long as you still can—whatever guesses are now coming to mind regarding my real name, because soon I’ll be stuffing your minds with so much information that it’ll be difficult for yo
u to even budge within your own thoughts. Like a praying mantis that needs to swim in a pool of honey. Clear so far?”
“Clear,” Eric said.
“And you?” The General glanced back toward Guy and Emily.
“Clear, clear,” they quickly responded.
“When I say ‘clear,’ ” said the General, “my three imbecilic trainees will make the effort of their lives, will leap over the mental hurdle related to the complicated thing called ‘timing,’ and will answer me together, at the same time.”
He stopped and looked with extraordinary interest at the top of one of the trees. “Clear?”
“Clear,” the three of them answered.
“Better. I’m very impressed. You’re extremely talented. I’m even a bit moved. Oh, here comes a tear,” he said and continued to walk.
“During the next sixteen months, I’ll teach you how to make coincidences. You think that you understand what this actually means, or why we do this, but you’re probably completely wrong.
“First of all, you are secret agents. Except all the others are first of all agents and then secondly secret, but you are first of all secret and to a certain extent, also agents. Your existence is regular and continuous, like any human being. You eat, drink, fart sometimes, and occasionally will catch a virus, but with the help of the tools you receive in this course, you’ll understand the way in which cause and effect operate in this world and how to exploit this understanding in order to create small and nearly imperceptible events that help people come to life-changing decisions. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Many people think that to make coincidences is to determine fate—to lead people to new places by the power of the events. This is a childish view, lacking in vision and full of arrogance.
“Our role is to be exactly on the border, to stand in the gray area between fate and free will, and to play Ping-Pong there. We create situations that create situations that create more situations that ultimately can create thoughts and decisions. Our objective is to light a spark on the fate side of the boundary so that someone on the free will side of the boundary will see this spark and decide to do something. We do not light fires, we do not breach borders, and we definitely do not think our role is to tell people what to do. We are creators of possibilities, givers of hints, winkers of tempting winks, discoverers of options. You’re welcome to think of other descriptions in your free time, later, but make no mistake—whatever you did before, you were just promoted. Because there are many reality-backstage-workers out there—imaginary friends, dream weavers, luck distributers, and the list goes on—but after finishing this course, your new role touches the core itself.
“The world is full of coincidences. The overwhelming majority of them are indeed what they are—things that simply happen by chance at a time when something else happens too, wonderfully regular things given context by good timing. And the context imbues them with meaning, and the meaning makes them important. It doesn’t have to be a room in which all of the people have the same shirt, though that is nice. It can simply be that someone says something while someone sees something, and the combination engenders a new thought. That’s all. No great drama. No one notices these regular instances. The idea is simple. Sometimes things happen that cause people to think someone is trying to send them a message. Sometimes things happen that simply cause people to think, without trying to attribute the occurrence to an entity seeking to spur them into action. And sometimes things happen that compel people to look at reality from a new angle, to turn this Rorschach inkblot called ‘life,’ to see it a bit differently. We are responsible for these three types of instances. We do not determine fates; we are hired hands of the general public—even slaves to it, if you wish. You will all have private, almost regular, lives but will be able to observe another layer of life, unlike others.
“Making coincidences is a delicate and complex art, full of details demanding the ability to juggle events, assess situations and responses, and apply a basic lack of stupidity that is sometimes hard to find. You’ll need to use mathematics, physics, psychology. . . . I’ll be talking to you about statistics, about associations and the unconscious, about the additional layer behind the regular existence of people, a layer they are completely unaware of. I intend to cram into your brains personality analyses and behavior theories; to demand a level of precision from you that will far outshine any quantum physicist, neurotic chemist, or apprentice pastry cook with an obsession for weighing egg yolks; to make you stay awake until you understand what causes certain birds to stand on a particular tree and other birds to stand on electric wires; to force you to memorize tables of cause and effect until you forget the name of the love of your life, if you ever had love, or a life. I’m going to explain things to you that will at first make you look over your shoulder to check whether someone is arranging your life for you while you’re not looking, and in the end will allow you to sleep better than you’ve ever slept. I’m going to change you, reorganize everything you have in life except for your face and the order of your internal organs, and I’ll teach you how to make people change, without them imagining for even a moment that someone might be responsible for it.”
He stopped and turned toward them, his green eyes smiling a bit—but only a bit.
“Are there questions?”
“Um, something small,” Guy said, “regarding the schedule. . . .”
“I didn’t really intend for you to ask questions now,” the General said. “It was a pause out of basic courtesy. You’re supposed to say no. Questions will come later. A bit of tact, really.”
“So . . . then no,” Guy said. “There are no questions.”
“Great,” the General said. “And now turn around.”
They turned around. From the place they had reached at the highest point of the path, almost the whole park was visible. Below, in the middle of the grass lawn, someone had hung a giant sign between the trees. good luck unit 75 was written on it. “Well, look at that,” the General said. “Today there happens to be a party for a group of soldiers who completed basic training. What a coincidence, huh?”
The sun advanced behind them, casting their shadows down the hill, and the four of them suppressed a smile, each one for a slightly different reason.
6
Guy looked at Emily as she walked away. She still seemed small and fragile to him, as she had on the first day of the course. But if there was one thing the course had made clear to him, it was that one must not, simply must not, try to define people in a single word. People are too complex. Falling into the trap of adjectives is the first stage of distorting your perception of the person for whom you are making a coincidence. Words are always small traps of definition, but adjectives are especially dangerous, like swamps. He used to look at Emily and think only of the word “fragile.” He had since grown up a little.
He realized there had always been something a bit strange in her. A bit mysterious, if he allowed himself to commit to a description.
Guy always spoke about his previous job, and Eric didn’t conceal anything from them about his earlier life, even if he sometimes invented things that had never occurred. But Emily . . . each time he tried to understand what she did before coming to the course, Emily somehow evaded the question.
“It’s secret,” she told him when he finally cornered her.
“A dream weaver?” he tried. “I heard that in their Psychological Department, they sign a crazy confidentiality form.”
“Guy . . .” She squirmed.
“I won’t tell anyone, come on.”
“I can’t,” she said.
Or that time she came out of the General’s room, her eyes red, a small white envelope in her hands.
“What happened?” Eric asked her. “What did you get? Is it a mission or something like that?”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“Is everything okay?” Guy asked.
“Everything is excellent,” she said and walked
away quickly.
“In my opinion, she was in the special unit for distributing luck,” Eric said to him once. “They’re more secretive than us. They deal with hazardous materials and such, and they go around in special protection suits in the event that good or bad luck spills on them. They’re even forbidden to mention that the unit exists.”
“I’ve never heard about it, and I don’t think there really is such a thing,” Guy said to him.
“That just proves how good they are,” said Eric.
“Eric, you’re delusional.”
“Oh, come on.”
So he played the game. He and Emily were good friends, with one small subject they didn’t broach. What pair of friends didn’t have that, in fact? But he always knew there was a lot more to Emily than her apparent gentleness. “Fragile”—right.
He turned around and started to walk. Maybe he should return home, put on a good CD, sit on the balcony, and try to understand what the morning’s envelope was trying to tell him.
And maybe . . . maybe it was even better not to think of it at all, but just to devote this day to clearing his head. To reading a good book, to a soothing jazz performance (if there was one) in the afternoon, to a croissant with coffee in a little shop with a beautiful view. The advantages of continuous existence, he thought to himself. You have the opportunity to do things unconnected to work.
He loved this so much.
Before he became a coincidence maker—before he received this continuous life, this body, the ability to experience the present as something that was the future until a moment ago when it became ever so slightly past—when he was an I.F., he could not have even imagined this.
Back then he had existed as a character in people’s minds. He was an entirely real character for them, with a personality and fine nuances of behavior, and narrow or broad humor, as requested.
This was a completely different experience.
He once made a list and realized that over the years he had been an imaginary friend to 256 human beings, and 250 of them were children under the age of 12. Another 5 were people in various stages of mental decline or senility who were so lonely they had no alternative but to invent someone to sit with them and simply note that he existed. And one of them was a man with lifeless eyes who was held in solitary confinement for years and was compelled to surrender a bit of his remaining sanity and invent the character that Guy played for him, only in order to regain his sanity. He forgot Guy the moment he was freed.
