Of Lights and Shadows (Book 4)

6) The Man With the Paper Tongue

Several years ago, a young man named Silence Mourner owned an apartment in Queens that he shared with a friend. Then, abruptly, he met a girl named Susan Seganto and married her, and moved out of his apartment leaving his friend to try and find someone else to share the rent with. He had a very interesting story to tell, but meeting the girl of his dreams, and moving out of his apartment, is not that story.

You could get that it was an interesting story just by hearing his name. It wasn't a common one to hear, but once you met him and knew the story then you couldn't think of anything else that would suit him so well. It suited him to a T, and in a way he was his name.

After his marriage, they had needed to find a new place to live and so had taken another one in Manhattan. It might have been easier for him to find one in Queens, but the place held memories that he didn't wish to be reminded of.

Before meeting Susan, Silence worked for his uncle at a stationery company called Inks and Paper Incorporated. In fact if it hadn't been for Susan he would still be working there now, but certain things happened and the end result was his quitting. He could have stayed on because no one wanted him to leave, but it was an impossible thought for him. Ever since he had been of age to work he worked for his uncle, the same thing day in and day out for several years. He had enjoyed it, but now he felt it was time to move on.

It is hard for a mute man to find a job in New York because most jobs required him to have speech. If you couldn't talk back to a customer when they came up to talk to you then you were considered rude. So really, he wasn't any worse than the other people who lived in New York, but still no one wanted to hire him.

Thankfully, he had put away all he had earned and so once he was married they were able to still buy their own place and live comfortably, but it wouldn't last long. He still had to work and he didn't like the idea of his wife being the one to support him.

After spending another few months searching, he eventually decided why work for someone else when you could work for yourself? He knew a great deal about business making, having been in charge of Inks and Paper more than his uncle had been, so why not set up his own place? It would have to be doing something he knew, and selling things he liked, and after a few days, and talks with Susan, he finally decided what. He would open a bookstore.

It wasn't anything large or super fancy, but the fact that it was owned by Silence made it popular. He called it Silent Books, and Wednesday was one of the days he took off from work.

 The apartment they owned was nice, though small, and work went well for both of them, nothing ever seemed to happen to worry either Silence or his wife, they both lived happily. Well, almost happily.

Driving up in a taxi, Dastardious was let out outside the apartment building, which, compared to his place, looked like paradise to live in. Standing on the pavement outside he gazed up at the tall, lean structure, it was years since he had last seen it but he still remembered it inside and out. The Mourners had kept him up to date with it every time something had changed.

The place had one of those security doors where if you didn't have a key to enter by you had to find the person who you wanted to see and ask them to open the door. This for a while posed a problem for Silence if he was home alone. However, he managed to get around the problem by having Susan record a few messages for him to play. One was asking who was at the door, another was letting them know they could come up, and one saying that they couldn't come up. Therefore, all he had to do when the doorbell rang was to select which message he wanted to send.

Most people who came to visit quickly worked out how everything worked and were fine with it. That was another interesting thing about Silence; he got on well with everyone.