One thing about living in Eerie that I love: the mail comes every morning (except Sunday, of course) at precisely ten o'clock, just as my wife is leaving for work. She brings it in before she kisses me goodbye, and leaves me to sort through it.
Today was the first of the month.
"It's here, isn't it?" I asked Sylvie.
"Of course it's here," she said. "They have never failed you yet." She handed over the plain white envelope with my name and address neatly hand-lettered on the front. No return address.
I knew who it was from.
Sylvie waited while I opened it and checked the contents. "Well? What is it this month?"
"Eyeglass screws, butterfly clips, white shoelaces . . . we have most of this stuff. I'll get it together."
"And I'll buy replacements on my way home. Just like always."
"Gotta keep the economy stimulated."
"Gotta keep our socks," she said, and went out the door.
No one has matching socks in Eerie. One always disappears in the dryer. I've heard of it happening in other places, but in Eerie, there's a reason. Not many people know about the Bureau of Lost under the town, overseeing the removal of hundreds, maybe thousands, of small but necessary objects a day from ordinary households. I was used to walking around with two different socks on.
Sylvie wasn't. When we were first married and settling into domestic bliss, the disappearing socks drove her crazy.
"I know I put two blue socks in here!" Sylvie insisted, examining every inch of the inside of the dryer in case it was hidden in a seam or something.
"You did," I said. "One always disappears."
"Someone is stealing our socks!"
"No, they just . . . go missing."
"So what do we do, then?"
"We go out and buy more."
"And how long do we keep doing this? We are not made of money to buy socks with! No, I am keeping my socks!"
"You don't understand-"
But there was no getting through to her. She went out and bought a hundred safety pins, and pinned each pair of socks together before putting them into the wash cycle.
"There," she said. "Now we will see whose socks are whose!"
"I'm telling you, it's not gonna work."
"What, will they steal my pins too?"
Not quite. When the dryer was done, we opened it to find the usual load of single socks, each one with a safety pin still attached.
There was also a note that read Thanks, but we have enough pins.
Sylvie screamed with frustration. "Who is doing this? Why would they steal my socks?"
"They steal everybody's socks. It's just what they do. It's why you can never find a pen cap or a paper clip when you need one."
"They can keep their paper clips and their pen caps! I want my socks! We have no money to keep throwing away on socks! Can't you talk to these lost people and explain that we need our things?"
"I've got an idea, actually. How would you feel about wearing the same color socks for the rest of your life?"
She looked at me dubiously. "How will that help?"
"Just hear me out. We buy as many identical pairs of socks as we can find. How about white? Is white a good color?"
"I can live with white."
So we went out and bought up every package of white socks that the World of Stuff had in stock. We're talking fifty packages of socks here, enough for the rest of our lives. It took about a week for us to build up enough to wash, and when we did, we documented exactly how many went in, and waited to see how many would come out.
Fifteen pairs of socks went into that first load-six of mine and nine of hers. We left the pins off this time, but made a little mark on the inside of each one with permanent marker so we could tell whose were whose. Blue for mine, green for hers.
It was the longest wash cycle of my life. I literally sat in front of the dryer watching the clothes go around for the better part of an hour, but it felt like a year. When the buzzer finally went off, it was so unexpected I practically jumped out of my seat.
"Now we will see." Sylvie opened the door and handed me the checklist of how many socks we were supposed to have. She counted them one by one, separating into blue-dot piles and green-dot piles. Out of thirty socks, twelve blue and eighteen green, we ended up with seven blue-dot socks and eleven green-dotted ones.
"Now what?" she asked me.
"Now we wait for the next load."
The next week was the same, only this time we ended up with eight out of twelve blue and ten out of eighteen green.
"No matches for the odd ones last time," she noted.
"We're not giving up. Let's see what happens next week."
I figured it would take a while for my plan to come to fruition, and I was right. We went through three more wash cycles and lost a total of twenty-seven more socks before there was a knock on the door.
When Sylvie opened it, there stood a man in a dark blue coverall and a peaked cap, holding a clipboard.
"Enough with the socks already!" he exclaimed.
Sylvie turned and shouted over her shoulder, "Marshall, it's for you!"
He wasn't pleased to see me. "I should have known. The only person who's ever tricked me into returning lost property!"
"Hello, Lodgepoole."
"We need you to stop with all the white socks! We're inundated with white socks! Can't you pick another color? We're well below our quota on blue!"
"I like white socks. They're practical and fashionable. And buying identical socks means we worry less about having to match them up."
He gave me a hard stare. "What do you want?"
"I want to make a deal."
"We don't make deals! Just stop with the socks already!"
"Okay," I said. "We could mix it up a little. If you do something for me."
"That's not how it works!"
"Too bad. Enjoy your mountain of white socks." I started to close the door.
"Wait!"
"Yes?" I held the door open a crack, just enough to see him.
"I suppose . . . we could take extra socks from everyone else, and leave you alone."
"Sounds reasonable. What do you need me to do for you?"
"Help us meet our other quotas. This month we need . . ." He flipped pages on his clipboard until he came to the right one. "Ah, here it is. Red ballpoint pens, elastic bands, white thumb tacks, and . . . small spring clips."
"Spring clips?"
"The kind you use to close up the bag of chocolate chips you're always sneaking from."
"Oh." What, did they have cameras in my house? "Don't tell my wife, okay?"
"Just leave them in random places around the house, and we'll do the rest. And don't forget to buy replacements!"
"And in return, you'll leave our socks alone?"
"Yes, yes, whatever! Do we have a deal?"
"I suppose. Wait, does that list change every month?"
He nodded. "First of the month, the new list arrives."
"Can you leave a copy of that in my mailbox? In a plain white envelope, so no one else catches on."
He looked over his shoulder at the other houses on the block. "Young man, we've been doing this for longer than you think. If no one's caught on in all that time, I doubt they ever will."
"That's true." It's always amazed me that no one else in Eerie has ever noticed how strange things can get. Even if I told them, they wouldn't believe me. It's always been that way.
"I'll put a copy of this month's list in the mailbox by the end of this week. The new ones will get to you a day after I get them. You'd better hold up your end of the bargain, Mr. Teller, or you'll find yourself with no socks at all!" And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked off down the front walk.
Sylvie came up behind me just as I was closing the door. "What was that all about?"
"Just making sure our socks are safe. Can you help me with something?"
"Sure. What?"
"I need to find some red pens, rubber bands, and those little spring clips you put on the packages of chocolate chips."
"The ones you sneak bits from when you think I don't notice?"
I turned to look at her. She had a fiendish smile on her face. "You know about that?"
"Losing the clips means you won't be able to dip into the chocolates. Unless you want to eat naked cookies."
"I'll buy you a replacement package."
"Fair enough."
The next wash day, we sat in front of the dryer, waiting to see what would happen this time. Our usual fifteen pairs of socks had gone in, and when we opened the door at last and counted socks, we came up with . . . thirty. Fifteen pairs. Six blue, nine green. Exactly what we had put in.
"It's over, then," she said, balling her socks together and plopping them into the basket.
"As long as we keep up our end of the bargain. This month it's laser pointers, right gloves-"
"Men's or women's?"
"Doesn't say."
"What else?"
I tried to remember the list. "Hair clips, I think."
"Like this?" Sylvie undid the barrettes from her hair and dropped them on the floor. "He can have them. As long as I have my socks."