The Cost of Memories

In Which I Leave A Conversation Concerned

The Department of Memory Acquisition is housed in a building that has always intimidated me even when I was one of the many people working within its walls. I believe that if they had built it any bigger, it would have cast a shadow big enough to blot out the sun for half of the city.

I smooth the skirt of a dress that I found in the depths of my closet. It is brighter than the shirts I choose to wear while working the pawnshop and meeting with the clients that bring in the majority of my profits. In the business of memory-pawning, it is best to slide under the radar as much as you possibly can to prevent the DMA from finding you.

Yet here I am, preparing myself to walk up the shining marble steps into the mouth of the lion itself. Curse Finn and his vague proposition. My heart has always hurt for the people who walk into my shop especially the people who walk into my shop to give up one of their memories in exchange for money, but Mrs. Miles has tipped the scale too far. Since her visit, I have struggled with my heart softening even further towards my former partner until it has brought me here to, at the very least, hear him out.

The doors open with a boom that I can feel in my chest, and I find myself staring down a long hallway that eventually ends with the receptionist's desk. As I gingerly make my way through, I glance at the walls on either side of me. Like when I worked here, they still list the current agents that the Department is employing along with their rank on the left wall. On the right wall is the list of the agents that they have lost either in the line of duty or to natural causes. Finn always joked that it was their best way of reminding us all of our own fragile mortality.

I used to laugh, but now even the memory isn't enough to cause me to crack a smile. Grim-faced, I turn my gaze towards the desk that is gradually getting closer. The woman sitting there is a face that I recognize, and from the way her eyes light up at the sight of me, I know that she recognizes me too.

"Mae," Daisy says with a thousand-watt smile, "did the Department finally manage to convince you to come back to work?"

"I'm afraid not. I came to see Finn on a personal matter. I assume that his office is still the same."

The smile dims a little but doesn't vanish entirely. "Oh, I should have guessed that Finn would have been the reason you came back. I always suspected that he was both the reason why you stayed here for so long and why you have avoided us for so long. You are correct though; his office hasn't changed."

I nod. "Thank you, Daisy. Perhaps we need to find a time when we're not busy and catch up a bit."

My words cause the wattage of the smile to increase again, and before I can walk away, she slaps a sticky note onto my hand. "That's my information. I am going to hold you to that, Mae. No flaking on me and no disappearing into the nether for five years this time."

"Of course. I will strive to do better about not disappearing." I manage to offer her a smile of my own before tucking the sticky note into my purse and navigating around her desk towards the elevators.

Finn had once tried to convince me that sharing an office would make our work easier to get done. I had laughed him off, telling me that if I had to share an office with him and all his plants, at the end of a workday the pots wouldn't be the only thing shattered on the sidewalk.

I find it sobering that even after all this time, my feet still remember the way to his office. The door hasn't changed either, the bright paper of cartoons plastered across it with a couple of sticky reminders dispersed among them, but my willingness to knock on it has.

After a few failed attempts, my fist finds some empty wood, the knock echoing through the eerily quiet hall. When I hear nothing back, I assume that perhaps he is not in his office right now and turn to leave.