Grabbed Back

Ten seconds of nerve. You have at least eleven, so up you go — umbrella, birdcage, ship's wheel, quiet as a squirrel in socks — and your fingers actually close around the moon-bell, which is when you learn that the stall's whole reputation is, if anything, modest.

The hoard grabs you back. Not hard. Not meanly. Just completely — one boot to a teapot, one sleeve to the apologetic bear, your left hand politely but absolutely to a trumpet — and you dangle there in the middle of the pile like the day's catch while the Grabby Man looks up at you with the first real interest he's shown in years, and the whole fourth row gathers to spectate, and somebody sells popcorn.

It takes the market's ushers half an hour to negotiate your release (the hoard drives a hard bargain; it keeps your left shoelace as a souvenir). The Grabby Man watches you the whole time with his head tilted, and as you're finally hauled free he says, in a voice rusty as the hinges of everything, the most unsettling sentence of your entire night:

“Come back. Nothing ever comes back.”

Maybe there's something in that, Madison. Maybe there's a completely different way to approach a man like this.