A First-Rate Lie

The customer wanted a childhood. Not a better one: a specific one, with a dog, a flooded street, and a mother who had definitely been at the bakery on the afternoon of the fire. Tomás priced it as a first-rate lie, which meant three witnesses, one smell, and a scar nobody would think to ask about.

“Can it hold in court?” the customer asked.

“Court is where cheap lies go to die. This one is for a family dinner.” Tomás stamped the receipt. The stamp was a mask smiling with only half its mouth. “If someone cries, you have overpaid. If someone argues, we refund the dog.”

He sent the order downstairs. In the workshop, apprentices practiced weather. A good rain lie needed mud on the correct shoe. Tomás disliked the work and was excellent at it, which the guild considered a personality.

By evening the childhood was ready, wrapped in brown paper that smelled faintly of bread. Tomás did not open it. First-rate lies were like first-rate knives. You trusted the edge more if you had not tested it on yourself.