In the hallway of the third floor of Charlie’s building, a meeting was going on between the great powers of Asia: Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Korjev. Mrs. Ling, by holding Sophie, had the strategic advantage, while Mrs. Korjev, who was fully twice the size of Mrs. Ling, possessed the threat of massive retaliatory force. What they had in common, besides being widows and immigrants, was a deep love for little Sophie, a precarious grasp on the English language, and a passionate lack of confidence in Charlie Asher’s ability to raise his daughter alone.

“He is angry when he leave today. Like bear,” said Mrs. Korjev, who was possessed of an atavistic compulsion toward ursine simile.

“He say no poke,” said Mrs. Ling, who limited herself to English verbs in the present tense only, as a devotion to her Chan Buddhist beliefs, or so she claimed. “Who give poke to baby?”

“Pork is good for child. Make her grow strong,” said Mrs. Korjev, who then quickly added, “like bear.”

“He say it turn her into shih tzu. Shih tzu is dog. What kind father think little girl turn into dog?” Mrs. Ling was especially protective of little girls, as she had grown up in a province of China where each morning a man with a cart came around to collect the bodies of baby girls who had been born during the night and hurled into the street. She was lucky that her own mother had spirited her away to the fields and refused to come home until the new daughter was accepted as part of the family.

“Not shih tzu,” corrected Mrs. Korjev. “Shiksa.”

“Okay, shiksa. Dog is dog,” said Mrs. Ling. “Is irresponsible.” Not once was the letter r heard in Mrs. Ling’s pronunciation of irresponsible.

“Is Yiddish word for not a Jew girl. Rachel is Jew, you know.” Mrs. Korjev, unlike most of the Russian immigrants left in the neighborhood, was not a Jew. Her people had come from the steppes of Russia, and she was, in fact, descended from Cossacks—not generally considered a Hebrew-friendly race. She atoned for the sins of her ancestors by being ferociously protective (not unlike a mother bear) of Rachel, and now Sophie.

“The flowers need water today,” said Mrs. Korjev.

At the end of the hallway was a large bay window that looked out on the building across the street and a window box full of red geraniums. On afternoons, the two great Asian powers would stand in the hallway, admire the flowers, talk of the cost of things, and complain about the increasing discomfort of their shoes. Neither dared start her own window box of geraniums, lest it appear that she had stolen the idea from across the street, and in the process set off an escalating window-box competition that could ultimately end in bloodshed. They agreed, tacitly, to admire—but not covet—the red flowers.

Mrs. Korjev liked the very redness of them. She had always been angry that the Communists had co-opted that color, for otherwise it would have evoked an unbridled happiness in her. Then again, the Russian soul, conditioned by a thousand years of angst, really wasn’t equipped for unbridled happiness, so it was probably for the best.

Mrs. Ling was also taken with the red of the geraniums, for in her cosmology that color represented good fortune, prosperity, and long life. The very gates of the temples were painted that same color red, and so the red flowers represented one of the many paths to wu—eternity, enlightenment—essentially, the universe in a flower. She also thought that they would taste pretty good in soup.

Sophie had only recently discovered color, and the red splashes against the gray shiplap was enough to put a toothless smile on her little face.

So the three were staring into the joy of red flowers when the black bird hit the window, throwing a great spiderweb crack around it. But rather than fall away, the bird seemed to leak into the very crack, and spread, like black ink, across the window and in, onto the walls of the hallway.

And the great powers of Asia fled to the stairway.

Charlie was rubbing his left wrist where the plastic bag had been tied around it. “What, did your mother name you after a mouthwash ad?”

Mr. Fresh, looking somewhat vulnerable for a man of his size, said, “Toothpaste, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know,” Charlie said. “You could have changed it, right?”

“Mr. Asher, you can resist who you are for only so long. Finally you decide to just go with fate. For me that has involved being black, being seven feet tall—yet not in the NBA—being named Minty Fresh, and being recruited as a Death Merchant.” He raised an eyebrow as if accusing Charlie. “I have learned to accept and embrace all of those things.”

“I thought you were going to say gay,” Charlie said.

“What? A man doesn’t have to be gay to dress in mint green.”

Charlie considered Mr. Fresh’s mint-green suit—made from seersucker and entirely too light for the season—and felt a strange affinity for the refreshingly-named Death Merchant. Although he didn’t know it, Charlie was recognizing the signs of another Beta Male. (Of course there are gay Betas: the Beta Male boyfriend is highly prized in the gay community because you can teach him how to dress yet you can remain relatively certain that he will never develop a fashion sense or be more fabulous than you.) Charlie said, “I suppose you’re right, Mr. Fresh. I’m sorry if I made assumptions. My apologies.”

“That’s okay,” said Mr. Fresh. “But you really should go.”

“No, I still don’t understand, how do I know who the souls go to? I mean, after this happened, there were all kinds of soul vessels in my store I hadn’t even known about. How do I know I didn’t sell them to someone who already had one? What if someone has a set?”

“That can’t happen. At least as far as we know. Look, you’ll just know. Take my word for it. When people are ready to receive the soul, they get it. Have you ever studied any of the Eastern religions?”

“I live in Chinatown,” said Charlie, and although that was technically kinda-sorta true, he knew how to say exactly three things in Mandarin: Good day; light starch, please; and I am an ignorant white devil, all taught to him by Mrs. Ling. He believed the last to translate to “top of the morning to you.”

“Let me rephrase that, then,” said Mr. Fresh. “Have you ever studied any of the Eastern religions?”

“Oh, Eastern religions,” Charlie said, pretending he had just misinterpreted the question before. “Just Discovery Channel stuff—you know, Buddha, Shiva, Gandalf—the biggies.”

“You understand the concept of karma? How unresolved lessons are re-presented to you in another life.”

“Yes, of course. Duh.” Charlie rolled his eyes.

“Well, think of yourself as a soul reassignment agent. We are agents of karma.”

“Secret agents,” Charlie said wistfully.

“Well, I hope it goes without saying,” said Mr. Fresh, “that you can’t tell anyone what you are, so yes, I suppose we are secret agents of karma. We hold a soul until a person is ready to receive it.”

Charlie shook his head as if trying to clear water from his ears. “So if someone walks into my store and buys a soul vessel, until then they’ve been going through life without a soul? That’s awful.”

“Really?” said Minty Fresh. “Do you know if you have a soul?”

“Of course I do.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m me.” Charlie tapped his chest. “Here I am.”

“That’s just a personality,” said Minty, “and barely one. You could be an empty vessel, and you’d never know the difference. You may not have reached a point in life where you are ready to receive your soul.”

“Huh?”

“Your soul may be more evolved than you are right now. If a kid fails tenth grade, do you make him repeat grades K through nine?”