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“I’m gonna do it,” Wendell Comstock said earlier that afternoon.

He was Edwin Nabler’s last customer of the day. He had been thinking it was almost time to switch the neon sign to closed when the bell rang and in walked Wendell.

“That’s great,” Edwin said, and smiled. “I knew you’d be back. I just had a feeling. There was a woman in here a couple of

days ago, and she had her eyes on that set, really wanted to buy it for her boy, but I said it was spoken for. When you’ve

been in this business long enough, you know when someone’s hooked.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I am,” Wendell said.

He found the set on the shelf where he had last seen it, picked up the box, and brought it to the counter.

“Have you thought about accessories?” Edwin asked.

“What would you suggest?”

“First, how much space do you have?”

“I’ve got a Ping-Pong table in the basement I never use. I’m gonna take the net down, set the train up there.”

“I’ve got a roll of fake grass you might want to put over the table first, make it more realistic.”

“Oh, I love that idea. Yeah, gimme one of those.”

“And if you have that much space, maybe some buildings? A station? Maybe an industry or two? I have plenty of building kits.”

“Load me up. I’m jumping in with both feet.”

Edwin started pulling things off the shelves, Wendell saying yes to every one of them. Edwin said, “I bet your wife is going

to be surprised when she sees you coming home with this.”

Wendell let out a long sigh.

“Oh my,” said Edwin. “That sounded ominous. You know, I have an instinct for these things. I believe your wife—what’s her

name?”

“Nadine.”

“ Nadine . What a lovely name. I believe you’re going to be surprised by how much she loves this hobby.”

Wendell shook his head skeptically. “I got my doubts about that.”

“Let me help you get all this stuff to your car. It’s like an early Christmas, isn’t it? Except you’re your very own Santa.”

Once Edwin had helped Wendell put everything into the back of his minivan, he returned to the store and turned on the closed sign.

All in all, a successful day. And that wasn’t even counting sales in the shop.

The incident over at the Pidgeon household had gone off well. Edwin hadn’t needed to be there in person. He just knew. He

would get that familiar tingling—not unlike the sensation his customers felt when they picked up his offerings—when an event

was under way. He would take a moment, close his eyes, see his efforts come to fruition.

Not that he always had a perfect view. What he thought of as his remote eyes—the headlights on every diesel and steam engine he sent out into the world, or the tiny engineers sitting in the cabs—might not be pointed in the right direction, might not even be in the room where things went down, but he could still gain a strong sense of what was transpiring. This was not some piece of tech, not some miniaturized surveillance device. It was an organic extension of himself. He didn’t need a viewing screen. The images were all there, playing in his head.

He looked at the clock on the wall. Still a few hours before Gavin was due to arrive. He would go into the back of the shop

and see what he could accomplish in the meantime.

The time passed quickly, as it always did when he threw himself into his work. Reinforcing the hills with more plaster. Adding

a pond. Laying more track. The work was never done, and this current project was not only far from finished, but Edwin was

running low on some of the raw materials. It was easy enough to get more plaster and nails and screws at the local Home Depot,

but the trains didn’t hit the shelves with the necessary resonance unless they were run through a layout with ingredients more special than those. This was no ordinary testing track.

It was a finishing touch.

When he heard a rapping on the front door, he dropped back down into a Rubbermaid bin part of a rib—one of the last bone fragments

from Tanner—that he had been using to reinforce some tunnel portals. He went up front to answer it. The store was in darkness,

with but a single light on in the window to illuminate the one train that ran in a simple circle twenty-four hours a day.

It was Gavin. He unlocked the door, opened it quickly, and pulled the man inside.

“I hope I’m on time.”

“Punctual!” Edwin said. “I like that. I like that very much.” He glanced out at the street. “Did anyone see you?”

Gavin shook his head. “I waited till there was no one around before I knocked.”

“Very good, very good, excellent.”

“Kinda dark in here.”

“Well, the shop is closed.”

There was still enough light, however, from the street and the window display, for Gavin to see the items that filled the

shelves. “Wow, this is some very cool stuff you have here. Really takes me back. There was a kid on my block, his parents

were rich, and he had this monster setup in the basement with bridges and tunnels and everything.”

“Wait’ll you see what I’m working on out back.”

“Can’t wait, but I gotta ask, and I hope I’m not getting ahead of things here, but I’ve been wondering all day what kind of

opportunity you have in mind for me. I don’t know anything about this stuff you sell. I don’t think I’ve got any experience

that would be useful to you. I mean, I can fix machines, like I said, like snowmobiles, but the motors in the model trains

are a lot smaller than what I’m used to.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” Edwin assured him. “I want you not for what you know, but for what you are.”

Gavin smiled awkwardly. “I’m afraid these days that ain’t much. When you get right down to it, I’m a homeless person, Mr.

Choo. I’m down on my luck, and five years ago, if you’d told me this is where I’d be, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Edwin put a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. “You’re just who I’m looking for.”

He held open the door to the back of the store and with a wave of his hand directed Gavin to walk in first.

“Holy moly,” Gavin said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

He stood openmouthed, staring at the display. Edwin could forget how impressive something like this could be to the uninitiated.

“There’s a town and a bridge and—oh, that mountain looks amazing. And a river and—how long did it take you to build this?”

“Quicker than you might think. I don’t sleep much.”

“It would take me years to make something like this.” The layout ran along two walls of the back room. Gavin inspected every foot of it, marveling at the details. A factory sign caught his attention and he laughed.

“The Flushing Toilet Company? Oh wait, this one’s even better. A hair salon called Curl Up and Dye? I love it.”

“Always fun to add a little humor to the scenes,” Edwin said.

“How did you—this pond here, under the bridge? Is that like a hard epoxy?”

“Something like that.”

“Is it supposed to look polluted?”

“What makes you think that?” Edwin replied as he stepped over to a transformer and powered up the track. He eased the throttle

forward and a steam engine trailed by more than a dozen tanker cars began to roll out.

“Well, it’s red. The water’s dark red, like, well... You don’t see that in the real world unless it’s downriver from a chemical plant or something. And

this little row of rocks, bordering this garden?”

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff went the train as it wound its way through the scenery.

“Yes?”

“They kinda... they kinda look like teeth, Mr. Choo.”

“They do, don’t they. Look what’s coming your way.”

Gavin gazed down the track at the approaching train. The steam engine’s smokestack was furiously pumping out puffs of white

vapor. A whistle sounded, followed by a clanging bell. Gavin, no longer focused on the blood-like water and rocks that looked

like teeth, was briefly transfixed.

“Those tank cars look just like the ones that pass through town every day,” he observed. The train sped past tall grasses that had been planted at the track’s edge, and Gavin found himself running the tips of his fingers over them. “The grass is so... fine. What’s that made of? Is that corn silk or something?”

“Look at the train, Gavin.”

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Gavin, seemingly without realizing it, was twirling his fingers through his hair. “I was asking because it also reminds me

of—”

“Look at the train.”

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Gavin grew so mesmerized with the train’s passage that he failed to notice when his foot bumped into the cardboard box with

the last of the bones in it. A bit of Angus Tanner in there, as well as the still-missing Walter Hillman, one dumb goat, and

any number of pets that were the subject of “Have You Seen...” leaflets staple-gunned to lampposts around Lucknow.

The steam engine had belched out so much faux-smoke that Gavin was waving his hand in front of his face, trying to keep it

out of his eyes and nose. A layer of white mist was filling the room, making it look more like the venue for half a dozen

nicotine-addicted poker players.

Gavin began to cough. The smoke was clouding Edwin’s vision and working its way up his nose, too, although it didn’t bother

him in the slightest.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

As Gavin bowed his head, tucking his face into his elbow as he coughed again, he noticed for the first time the container

of bones.

“Jesus, Mr. Choo, what the hell’s this? If I didn’t know better, I’d say those look like...” But Gavin, suddenly unable

to breathe, could not finish his sentence.

Edwin did not bother to explain. Gavin was already dropping to the floor.