Cam: stories told in my voice

The square had forty shops and no customers. That was the arrangement. Everybody kept the lights on anyway.

Then a man walked in and said, “I'll be your friend.”

You'd think he'd handed out money. The butcher got there first, wiping his hands on his apron. “Six days,” he said. “Six days I've had the door open.”

“Nine,” said the woman with the flowers.

“Thirty-one,” said the one who sold nothing at all, who just sat behind his window and wrote.

The man nodded at each of them. He was polite about it. He wrote the numbers down.

By evening the line ran the length of the square, and every person in it was explaining how long they'd waited to be asked for something, and not one of them noticed he never said he'd buy.

He came back the next day and stood in the same spot.

“Who's got something to sell?” he said.

Nobody answered. They'd all brought their numbers instead.