His was green jade, eleven centimetres, on the front right corner of the desk, head toward the door. He kept the consecration receipt. Two thousand eight hundred.
The shop gave him the rules: do not touch the mouth, do not let the head face you.
The first year his turnover doubled.
One day the cleaner moved it wiping the desk, and it ended up head-in, facing his chair. That afternoon he closed the biggest contract of the year.
He left it where it was.
Later he started touching the mouth. Touch it, close a deal — he tested it four or five times and it worked every time, so he began touching it before every meeting. The jade wore shiny at the corner of the mouth, a patch about the size of a thumbnail.
At the end of the third year the books would not reconcile. A sum was missing, not a small one, and it could not be traced. Finance spent two months on it and said the cash flow was clean, the ledger simply did not agree with itself.
He went to touch the mouth. There was something inside it.
He got it out. A button. White, plastic, four holes. He looked down at his shirt. No buttons missing.
He turned the beast over and knocked it against the desk.
A cufflink. A tooth. A length of red cord. A brass wedding band with an inscription worn past reading.