"So, you're telling me that in all twenty five years of business, you've never made a single good deal?"
Daniel stands behind the register fiddling with some old wooden thing he found on the counter. It looks like a carving of a wolf, but he's not sure since the quality is pretty poor.
"It turns out, Daniel, that people are assholes," David says and laughs.
"Weren't you Priest or something before this?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"I just thought a former man of God would have a little more faith in humanity."
"Well look at Saint Daniel the Pious over here. Look, I don't have anything to do with the deal being good or bad. That's on the customer. It just turns out, I ain't ever had a good one."
"Doesn't anybody ever come back angry when they find out the deal's bad?"
"To the store? Sure. Every once and a while we get a knucklehead barging in here wondering if I can reverse the curse or some bullshit. You just gotta let him know that ain't how it work."
"Well, how does it work?"
"I don't know. I never asked."
"Asked who?"
"The guy who sells me this shit, who do you think?"
"There's a guy who sells you this shit?"
"Of course there is. What do you think? You think I just pull this voodoo mumbojumbo out my ass when I run out?"
"No, I don't got his number."
"Then how does he know when you're running low?"
"I don't know, geeze. He comes in when i'm running low and gives me more stuff. Why's that so hard to believe? What'd I tell you about questions? I hired you because you said you don't ask questions. I'm hearing an awful lot of snooping coming out that shithole you call a mouth."
Daniel laughs and puts down the trinket. David's standing near the door. They both sit quiet awhile waiting for a customer.
"I'm sorry David, but I gotta push this a bit further. I think you got gypped. I mean, 25 years? No good person gets a deal at all?"
"I thought the same thing too the first few weeks."
"Yeah? Well what changed your mind?"
"Tell me this, kid, are you by any chance religious?"
"I wouldn't call myself a Priest, but I dabble. Why?"
"That explains it!" David says and slaps his knee.
"How? I don't see how me being religious has anything to do with it."
"Hot damn, I know why I hired you. You're just like me back in my preaching days."
"Don't change the subject, how do they relate?"
"It's that Godly view of the world you're carrying. The paint-by-numbers view of the world that everything is cut and clear and where it belongs. Ain't nothing where it belongs, Dan."
"I don't get it. Are you saying that religious people are optimists, so therefore I can't understand how out of the thousands of customers you've had over the years that not one of them turned out good? I wouldn't call that a problem with my optimism. It's a math problem is what it is. Probability, David. If I put a hundred green beads in a bucket and one red one, I'd eventually pull out a red one."
David laughs again and wipes his eyes.
"