I prefer to meet with prospective clients in cemeteries. It might be unnecessarily morbid, but I don’t strike deals flippantly. I could come at them with all the smiles and assurances of a used car salesman and do more than twice the business that I do now. But I don’t want that. I want them to really need what I’m offering so bad that they fully realize what they’re asking me for. It’s my wish that they truly see what they’re asking for. The unfamiliar names carved on these headstones were once flesh and blood people, with hopes and dreams like anyone else. They had families and struggles and joys and pain, but now they’re gone never to return. Still, I’m not sure anyone realizes the price they pay me, not even at the end.

It started to drizzle when I met her by an old newspaper magnate’s mausoleum. It had started to drizzle, so she had a hood pulled over her head. Even I had to admit that the rain made for a dramatic first meeting. It’s amazing the effect a little water and gravity can have on even the most calloused heart. 

Even in the rain, I could how beautiful she was. Her raven hair and green eyes were a force of nature all their own. I didn’t gape or snap pictures of her, but I had a distinct feeling she was aware I knew who she was. She just didn’t realize how I knew and how much. 

“Is this where you handle all of your business?”

“No. I don’t handle any of it here. I’d just like you to look around and think about what you want,” I replied.

“You don’t even know what I want yet, and I wouldn’t have walked through a cemetery in the middle of the rain if I didn’t need it!” She was a good actress. I knew she was more tired than angry though. 

I tried to use reason, to show her an out. “Why don’t you call him? You know he’ll do anything to take you back. You’ll destroy yourself on this path, and he loves you. These bums your running with now will use you and throw you away.” Just like I will, I wanted to say.

“You spend a lot of time reading tabloids I see,” this was real anger now. “If you won’t give me what I want then quit wasting my time.”

“Interesting choice of words,” I said. “Why don’t you talk to him?”

“Because if I did, I couldn’t help but come back, and he deserves better,” she was crying in the rain. 

“I have to ask you, are you truly resolved to do this? The price is higher than you realize,” I said.

“Yes,” she answered.

“Then I’ll come to you tomorrow. Once you ask me, I’ll grant it. Think it over because once you ask, there is no going back,” I warned.

“But tomorrow I’m on set…there will be security…” she stammered.

”Don’t worry, I’ll lose them,” I said.

The next day I showed up on the lot. It’s amazing how moving pictures these days involve people standing in front of green backgrounds. I remember back when the Bard had to travel from village to village with his troupe to earn his bread. All he needed then to make audiences feel was his words and their attention. Nowadays they have machines paint pictures for them. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between actors and props.  Maybe there was never a difference in the first place.

Nobody noticed me as I walked into her trailer. She was standing in front of the mirror. I knew that she had thought about it every waking moment since yesterday. She sat carefully in the chair, wincing, makeup concealing fresh bruises like thin paint over graffiti. "Last week. I want to lose last week."
                                                                                  …

I went to the Nursing Home. I really hate going to places like this. That seems odd, because chronologically, they’re simply the last stop before the cemetery. But I’ve always thought that nursing homes were too artificial. It was mankind’s way of appearing to cling on to life where there was really no life left. I walked through the door. The room was festooned with vases full of dead flowers and framed pictures. There were some framed magazine covers on the wall. She lay in the bed. Her long raven hair had turned white a long time ago, and the nursing assistants had cut it short so as not to have to fool with it. She opened her eyes when I walked in. She still had those beautiful green eyes. She looked at me. “I know you,” she said. I simply looked at her, laying on that bed. Everything in her life was behind her now. It could never be retrieved.

“I know you from…from…I don’t remember.”

And then she cried a single tear. It’s amazing the effect a little water and gravity has on even the most calloused heart.