The Glimpse Trade (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 5
Chapter 5 — The Assistant
The building Avery Bloom used as her
content studio used to be a dentist’s office. You could tell from the windows which
were tinted just enough to make the outside world feel like an abstraction. I
sat in a chair that had probably once held someone waiting for a root canal.
The magazines on the table were arranged by color schematic. I’ve never liked
going to the dentist. All the drilling and scraping and spitting and suctioning
of blood and saliva. Not for me. Just being in a waiting room previously run by
a dentist is knotting my gut.
But the case beckoned. I needed to find
out more about Avery Bloom’s behavior. Her comings and goings and routine. Somewhere
in there should be a clue about how she knew what tomorrow brings.
A young woman with a headset and a
clipboard appeared in the doorway. Mid-twenties. Efficient. The kind of person
whose job was keeping the chaos of someone else's life from leaking onto the
carpet.
“You’re the consultant?” she asked.
“Depends who’s asking.” I said. Being
coy really is one of my favorite parts of the job.
“I'm Marcy. Avery’s PR assistant.”
She said it the way people say “air
traffic controller.” Something important that mostly involves preventing
disasters. She didn’t sit. Assistants like her rarely do.
“You’re looking into her engagement
anomaly?” she asked.
“That’s one way to phrase it.”
Marcy nodded. “It happens before big
content pushes.”
“Before?”
“Yes. Product launches. Brand
partnerships. Viral attempts. Things like that.”
I waited. People will eventually say
the strange thing if you leave enough silence in the room. Also, I didn’t know
what any of those terms meant so I was working on my context clues.
“She books a consult,” Marcy said. “Before
every one of those pushes, she books a consult.”
“A consult with who?”
Marcy hesitated.
“That part,” she said carefully, “is
above my pay grade.”
“Therapist?”
“No.”
“Lawyer?”
“No.”
“Life coach?”
Marcy made a face like she’d just
smelled expired almond milk.
“No. Avery considers herself a life
coach.”
“What kind of consult is it?”
“Look,” she said, pinching the bridge
of her nose. “I’m not supposed to speculate. I manage the calendar, coordinate
brand calls, and make sure Avery doesn’t accidentally livestream something that
violates three different FTC disclosure rules.”
“That sounds like a full day.”
“That’s before lunch.”
She leaned against the wall now, the
professionalism slipping a notch.
“Yesterday I scheduled a sunrise
meditation reel, a probiotic sponsorship, a podcast interview about
‘intentional self-care,’ and a thirty-minute crying video about the emotional
labor of deleting negative comments.”
“Busy.”
“We literally spent an hour perfecting
how Avery would say ‘you guys.”
“Jesus.”
“And that was a light day,” she said.
“Last week we had a ‘healing weekend arc.’ I had to source a crystal bowl, find
a photographer who specializes in authentic vulnerability, and cancel a brand
deal with a candle company because the flame aesthetic felt ‘too aggressive.’”
I nodded like a man who understood
candle politics. Marcy continued, warming to the subject.
“You know how many times a day someone
asks me if Avery is available for a quick collab? Twenty. Minimum. And every
one of them says it’ll only take five minutes.”
“Does it?”
“No,” she said flatly. “Nothing in this
business takes five minutes. Five minutes becomes lighting tests. Lighting
tests become emotional authenticity checks. Emotional authenticity checks
become a two-hour conversation about whether beige still aligns with her
personal growth journey.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is exhausting,” she said. “But the
weirdest part isn’t the schedule.”
“What is?”
Marcy lowered her voice slightly.
“It’s that after those consults…” She
glanced down the hallway like Avery might appear out of thin air. “…the
schedule changes.”
“How so?”
“Cleaner,” Marcy said.
“Cleaner?”
“Like she already had a clean draft
ready to go.”
That was an interesting phrase to hear
before lunch.
“Give me an example,” I said.
Marcy flipped through her clipboard.
“Last month she was supposed to film a
breakup reflection video. Big emotional thing. We had the lighting ready. The
captions drafted.”
“And?”
“She came back from the consult and
said the breakup never happened.”
“Just like that?”
Marcy nodded.
“She said she had decided not to live that
particular Thursday.”
I wrote that down. You hear a lot of
strange things in my line of work. But that one had a certain architectural
quality to it. Like a sentence someone builds a staircase inside.
“You ever hear who she calls?” I asked.
“No.”
“Ever see a name?”
“No.” She thought about that. “Well…”
Now we were getting somewhere. She
reached into the clipboard sleeve and pulled out a folded piece of scrap paper.
“I did see this once.”
She handed it to me. A phone number. No
name. No business. Just ten digits written in thick black marker. I looked at
it. Something about the ink felt wrong. Too deliberate. Like someone wanted the
number to exist in the world very firmly.
“You try calling it?” I asked.
Marcy shook her head immediately.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I remember
hearing about someplace where random doors were popping up all over town. People
were warned not to open them. Urban legend, I assume. That number feels like
one of those doors you shouldn’t open.”
I folded the paper and slipped it into
my coat.
“You should take some time for yourself,
Marcy.”
She gave me a sympathetic look.
“Yeah,” she said.
Outside, the afternoon light felt a
little too bright. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at the number again. 555-0106.
I grabbed my phone from my jacket pocket and dialed. It was a switchboard. And on
the other end of that line was someone who helped people decide which days of
their lives were worth living. I hung up before engaging and walked toward the
diner.
If I was going to call that number, I
was going to do it with a cup of joe sitting across from me.
Some conversations require caffeine.
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