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did not title this yet
Sep. 27th, 2011 04:55 pmIt was the worst deal I ever made.
Granted, as an antiques dealer, you know, a pawnshop owner, as one of those people that deals with ‘goods’ that are often pretty bad, well, it’s inevitable that I’d make a few poor decisions in my twenty years — there was that time with the fake cavalry sword that I bought for a few thousand, the time that I bought some idiot’s glass axe (I guess I was the bigger idiot there), and, jeez, the collection of eyeballs.
Look, I thought some goofball kid would buy it, right? I didn’t expect it to sort of just sit there and... rot. Didn’t even notice it until some touchy-feely type that needed to hold everything flipped the bowl and eyeballs went flying and... well, it wasn’t one of my prouder moments.
But in the course of a couple of decades, you also end up becoming a part of the town center, a real cornerstone of the community, you know? The older generation is always around to sell some of their knickknacks that they want a a few bucks for, those new ‘adults’ sometimes inherit a house and want to clear out the attic, and the kids, well, they’ll sometimes run off with a ten-year-loyalty-golden-pocketwatch or crystal statuette or something and look for a few bucks for some candy (I gave both of them back, for the record, and didn’t ask for the five bucks I had given either).
The point is that you become something of a fixture — some of the elders may pass on, God rest their souls, but the kids grow into adults that will come in every once in a while, usually just to remind themselves that my shop will be the same it always has been. Even though people nowadays talk into those pocket phones more than they do to each other, even though they have robots in their bodies and use lasers to fix their eyes, I’m still as I ever was, selling the same antiques as I did to their parents when those kids were in high school, or even first grade.
Sure, my hair’s a bit grayer and I’m stooped a bit more than I used to, but my eyes are still sharp and my judgment’s still sound — well, at least, I thought it was before I made this deal.
Granted, as an antiques dealer, you know, a pawnshop owner, as one of those people that deals with ‘goods’ that are often pretty bad, well, it’s inevitable that I’d make a few poor decisions in my twenty years — there was that time with the fake cavalry sword that I bought for a few thousand, the time that I bought some idiot’s glass axe (I guess I was the bigger idiot there), and, jeez, the collection of eyeballs.
Look, I thought some goofball kid would buy it, right? I didn’t expect it to sort of just sit there and... rot. Didn’t even notice it until some touchy-feely type that needed to hold everything flipped the bowl and eyeballs went flying and... well, it wasn’t one of my prouder moments.
But in the course of a couple of decades, you also end up becoming a part of the town center, a real cornerstone of the community, you know? The older generation is always around to sell some of their knickknacks that they want a a few bucks for, those new ‘adults’ sometimes inherit a house and want to clear out the attic, and the kids, well, they’ll sometimes run off with a ten-year-loyalty-golden-pocketwatch or crystal statuette or something and look for a few bucks for some candy (I gave both of them back, for the record, and didn’t ask for the five bucks I had given either).
The point is that you become something of a fixture — some of the elders may pass on, God rest their souls, but the kids grow into adults that will come in every once in a while, usually just to remind themselves that my shop will be the same it always has been. Even though people nowadays talk into those pocket phones more than they do to each other, even though they have robots in their bodies and use lasers to fix their eyes, I’m still as I ever was, selling the same antiques as I did to their parents when those kids were in high school, or even first grade.
Sure, my hair’s a bit grayer and I’m stooped a bit more than I used to, but my eyes are still sharp and my judgment’s still sound — well, at least, I thought it was before I made this deal.
-
It was...Tuesday, I think, when it all started. Miss Taylor had just haggled me down on one of her lamps — she swore up and down that it was from the turn of the century, designed by some famous artist or other, and wouldn’t listen when I explained that the artist in question hadn’t ever set foot within a hundred miles of the town. He hadn’t, I was sure, but she was talking about how it had come into the family because some great-aunt or other had been traveling and saw them in Boston and knew they were precious and, well, she just kept going.
Sometimes, I think she just came to jaw some, or because she liked the sound of her own voice, but she was had a good heart — father passed away a few years ago, and she dropped some sort of fancy job in the city to come back and take care of him in his waning months. And her father was good people, and she was good people, and it wasn’t right to cut her off. Besides, what she said could usually be used to resell the junk she sold to me at a far higher price, with a few choice words thrown in — ‘rumored’, ‘believed’, ‘probably’ — to give it a better status.
So I bought her lamps, the two of them for sixty, and figured I could probably turn it around and lay them on one of those rich mansion types that needed ‘old-fashioned’ decorations for double that. Just a bit of color commentary and they’d buy even the most tacky, chintziest brass lampholders or ironwork or what-have-you.
It was sometime in the afternoon when she finally left, and I had just settled with the town’s paper when Jonas came in. Jonas was...a bit of a lost one, I’m afraid. Parents split up when he was young, and his father disappeared. When he was eight or so, his mother simply ran away one day, leaving him with an empty house. His aunt — on his father’s side — still lived in town, though, and she took the house, rather eagerly, but I reckon that she never treated him that right. He got into trouble, sometimes, but the sheriff knew of his history and let him go lightly, usually. He had tried to bring in some stuff that wasn’t his, but I never took it, and he never tried to push it too hard, which was good. All I could do is give him an extra five or ten sometimes with something that was definitely his, even if it was pure junk. I know that Miss Taylor sometimes gave him a place to sleep, and sometimes John Thomas, who owns the diner, fed him for free, too.
It was just the right thing to do, you know? Not everyone is blessed with the chances that we had in life, and we were just paying it back the only way we knew how.
Well, this Tuesday, he came in with a small round object in a hankerchief, and I could tell right away that this was something special. The ‘kerchief was silk, fine pearl silk, and it was barely dirty at all, definitely not something that I’d expect the kid to have. I almost stopped him before he started, but I guess he saw me winding up, and came out more bluntly than I’ve ever heard him.
“I didn’t steal it, I swear, sir,” he started, and that shut me up enough for him to keep going. “It was just left in the motel, and I’ve been helping clean it out, and Jeff told me that I could have anything that no one claimed in a week and, and, no one came back for this, sir, so, I was thinking...”
“You were thinking you would bring it in and see what you could fetch for it,” I finished, finally having recovered my wits enough to at least see where he was going. Not that it wasn’t obvious, him having taken it to me, but I felt like I should say something, at least. “Well, son, look, I’m glad you thought of me, but—“
And just about then, I remember, he opened the kerchief and showed me what was inside.
----
a/n okay need sleep continue tomorrow sorry for, you know. delay. don't read if you don't like incomplete things.
hmm, this is at bottom of page, probably not helpful.
(1113/2500ish)
