I’d brought him others like it, but with different photos, different titles.
It was mostly deep blue, with a color photo reproduced on it, and the title. One hinge stuck, complaining then the box opened with a tic, and a broken speck of metal skittered over the rosewood. He scrabbled a little at the catch, his self-control momentarily breached. They were the first words out of his mouth since his door had opened and let me in. Then the left one rose again, touched the metal, spread flat on it. His hands came up from under the desk and settled on either side of the box. Then I laid one finger on it and pushed, so that it skidded across the shining wood and stopped in front of him. I put it on the edge of the desk, just outside the pool of light. The merchandise was contained in a flat metal box half again as long as a hand, which had once been white. He already had the only real advantage: money.
Maybe he’d read somewhere that hiding one’s face made for psychological advantage in business transactions. He leaned away from the light, and it from him. The customer sat behind his desk, in a chair so tall and wide it could have hidden two bodyguards. But the way the shadows hung like drapery around the desk the way the crook-necked lamp cast its measured oval of light on the polished rosewood the way the silence lay on the room, unbroken by the hiss of a gas mantle the way the faint, faint smell of petroleum and electricity, like the odor of wealth itself, rose up from everywhere-these things gave the darkness meaning. The room was always dark, because it had no windows it ought not to have meant anything.
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