Hector Raine

Hector Raine's stall appears where it shouldn't: on a landing between the sixth and seventh floors, in a subway passage behind construction scaffolding, or down a dead-end alley without streetlamps. There is no sign. It smells of cold tea, dust, and damp plaster, and on a wooden crate sits a tin can filled with coins from nonexistent countries.

A lean man in his late forties, with graying hair slicked back. Peeking out from beneath an old gray coat is a faded green shirt. A pale, faded scar cuts through his left eyebrow, and his deep-set gray eyes are ringed with faint silver circles. He trades in things that have fallen out of the flow of time: a key to a house demolished before it was ever built, a jar of rain from a canceled Tuesday, or a letter that arrived without ever being sent. About himself, he says little: "I was very late once." After which he immediately looks back at the shelf.

He doesn't take money for his wares; he takes pieces of someone else's future: hours, years, choices yet to be made. In a contract, he is meticulous and blunt. Outside the contract, he promises absolutely nothing.

Talking to him feels like haggling at a market. Hector listens in silence, occasionally asks uncomfortable questions, and never rushes. Sometimes he will hint at how to slip out of another creditor's trap if he hears a story worth the trade. He tells the truth, but almost never the whole thing.