a draft (cont'd 2)
Chapter III.
III
Lucas returned at a quarter after noon and hung up his hat and his coat, and a dam broke in Jonathan. He hadn’t been able to clear the image from his mind of that old woman out in some graveyard in the middle of the night, bent over a headstone with her gnarled hands wrapped around the handle of a shovel. Digging up her sister, her cousin, her friend one spade full of dirt at a time. Jonathan was angry.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The question exploded from him like the first shot from a Roman candle. Lucas didn’t flinch.
“You looked in the bag, didn’t you.”
“Do you even know what you’re doing? Do you have any idea?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes!” Jonathan threw his hands up. “Yes, I looked in the bag!”
“Mrs. Merriman got exactly what she paid for.”
“What, some sort of-of resurrection kit?”Jonathan was incredulous. He couldn’t keep his voice down. “You sold her a jar of dirt!”
Lucas gave him a look. He’d seen it before, fierce and narrow and fed up behind those thin wire frames, but it was less effective in the blaze of Jonathan’s righteous anger. “It’s none of your business what I sold her, Stillwell.”
“You’re taking advantage of people!”
But Lucas was no longer listening. He was finished with their conversation and was crossing the floor, headed for that goddamned basement door, and Jonathan slammed his palms down against the counter in protest.
“I’ll tell the police!” he shouted. His voice was high, he realized. Desperate. The blood rushed in his ears.
Lucas snorted as he unlocked the door. “So tell the police,” he said, and went downstairs.
Things were tense after that. Not for Lucas, who was entirely unaffected, but for Jonathan, who was forced to consider his boss in a new, rather unflattering light. He thought about leaving. Quitting the shop, finding something else, but what else was there? It had taken him weeks to get this position. Besides, he reasoned, if he stayed here, he might be able to warn a few people away from Lucas and his fraud.
He didn’t think about telling the police. Not really. What would he say? “Yes, hello, my boss is pretending to raise the dead for money. Can you please do something about it?”
So he stayed, but he didn’t like it. What limited conversation he and Lucas had begun to engage in before dwindled back to nothing. Where it seemed Lucas was beginning to come upstairs just a touch more often, his appearances were now nonexistent once more. Jonathan did not see him when he arrived in the mornings or when he closed up of an evening. He issued no instructions, no daily tasks, and didn’t even snap at Jonathan to go home over the intercom. It was a lot like his first few days, but the fear of reprimand had evaporated. It was funny how one flare of a typically dormant temper could change things.
When she came in four days later, his mood was still sour. He stewed in it, having no outlet for the tumultuous feelings, for the persistent image of Mrs. Merriman digging up graves. It was frustrating, but it wasn’t just Lucas he was upset with. He knew he had done his share of damage by letting her walk out of the store with that bag of cheap tricks, and he couldn’t stop himself from reimagining the scene. This time, he would hide the bag and feign ignorance. This time, he would talk to her and explain that Lucas was a slime-slick con man, and she would thank him for his honesty. But those fantasies didn’t recreate that raw, pleading need to take Lucas’s chicanery as genuine. It was much simpler to be the stalwart defender of truth when he didn’t have to break anyone’s heart.
She was some girl he’d never laid eyes on. She was plain, not quite pretty, with lax brown curls wrangled into a ponytail. She wore a coat too thin for the pre-winter wind that blew outside, and her nose and earlobes were red with its touch. She didn’t look at him when she came in, but marched straight into the thicket of shelves with a single-mindedness that startled Jonathan. He tracked her to the far side of the shop where she stopped in front of one of the squat jewelry cases and pressed her hands to the top glass. After a moment, she called to him, her eyes not straying from the case.
“Hey,” she beckoned with one hand, “hey, come over here. I wanna look at something.”
Fighting off the urge to stand dumbstruck, he snatched the key from a drawer and made his way over. He slid into the slim space between the case and the wall and unlocked the back, then turned his eyes to her. Though he recognized that she couldn’t have been more than a few years his junior, there was something about her that was much younger. Her eyes were big, bright despite their drab hazel-grey, and an arc of freckles across her nose and straying toward her cheeks made her face girlish rather than womanly. She tapped on the glass with a short nail.
“This.”
Jonathan looked down. The case held turquoise-studded bracelets and gaudy rings with big synthetic diamonds, colourful gemstone pendants and etched gold cufflinks, all of questionable authenticity; but the girl was pointing at a picture locket on a long chain. He took it from the shelf and passed it to her, the chain sliding like silk between their fingers. It was a pretty piece, light and delicate. The round face was covered in a labyrinth of silver filigree, and the girl was quiet as she inspected it, holding it high so it dangled between them. Jonathan bypassed the locket in favour of the girl’s face, and all he could think about was whether she too had been suckered in by an impossible promise. Would she fall to tears and beg to bring back some late boyfriend who was tragically killed the night of the big game? Lament the cruel loss of an older sister snatched away on her wedding day?
She opened the locket and stroked the flat back where a tiny photo might be nestled. She didn’t look sad. She looked like she wanted to buy some jewelry.
“All right,” she said, and snapped it shut as she turned to walk back to the counter.
Jonathan locked up the case and hurried to the register. The prospect of making an actual sale to an actual customer was bizarre, and though he certainly knew the steps, he now doubted whether he could perform them in the correct order. He stood behind the counter and took the necklace as she handed it over. He punched the price into the register, figured in the sales tax, and hoped the receipt machine had paper in it.
“That’s gonna be $26.31,” he said, and ducked down to grab a few sheets of tissue paper from beneath the counter. He had just started to wrap the locket when he noticed she was not fishing in her bag for money, but was instead staring at him, both brows drawn down in suspicious scrutiny.
“Do you guys sell drugs here or something?”
Jonathan balked. He couldn’t possibly have heard her correctly. “What?”
“Maybe not here, but, like, out of the basement or in the alley or something?”
“Of course we don’t sell drugs!” Jonathan gaped at her with wide, unbelieving eyes. He had been prepared for her to ask about resurrections, sure, but drugs? What the hell would make anyone think they were drug-peddlers?
“Oh,” she said, and plunged a hand into her bag. It came out clutching a wallet, but what she took from it wasn’t cash. She laid a photo on the counter between them, tapped it, and looked at Jonathan. “Well, have you seen this guy?”
There were two figures in the picture, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. One was the girl, and the other he recognized after a moment as the lurking man he had scared off a little over a week ago. He looked far less gaunt, less like a frightened animal. His face was full, held life and colour, and a crooked little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. The girl was stiff, barely tolerant, as though she would have liked to be anywhere other than standing in front of that camera.
“Actually, yeah,” Jonathan said, sliding the picture closer. “Last week, I think. He came by a few times.”
“Really?” The girl’s face tightened and she pressed her lips together, standing straighter and staring Jonathan down. “How many times? What did he look at? Did he buy anything from you?”
“Uh.” Jonathan leaned away from the counter as she began to lean forward. “Why? Is he dangerous?” He cast a cautionary glance around the shop and lowered his voice. “Are you a cop or something?”
“Ugh.” She drew back and snatched the photo away, her freckled nose wrinkling in apparent disgust. “No. He’s my dad.” She traded the picture for a few worn bills and dropped them on the counter. “Frank Collins.”
Jonathan took the cash hesitantly and began to make change. “Well, he never actually came inside.”
“What?” She frowned. It was the first thing he’d said that had any real effect on her. She had been making him moderately uncomfortable since she walked in, but he had reversed the situation in a brief three seconds. She took her change like a stiff-jointed automaton.
“Yeah. He just sort of hung out across the street and stared.” He finished wrapping the necklace and put the parcel into a small plastic sack. “I tried to talk to him once, but he flipped out and ran away. Is he, uh…?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe he was trying to buy drugs.”
“That was really your first guess?”
Her frown adopted the subtle malice of a scowl. “It seemed like something he might do.” She reached across the counter and took the bag from his hand, slid the flimsy straps over her forearm. “He’s been weird lately.”
“How did you know he was coming here, anyway?”
“I followed him,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Part of the way, at least.”
“What, you couldn’t just talk to him?”
She ignored him, again diving into her bag. She produced a pen this time and lunged across the counter, grabbing Jonathan’s hand and tugging it toward her. “Hold still,” she reprimanded crossly when he tried to jerk it free. This was past the point of absurdity, he thought, and he was seriously considering panic as a short-term solution when she forced his hand flat and began to write on his palm.
“I want you to call me if my dad comes here again,” she told him, letting go. He looked at the ten digits bleeding into the lines of his hand. “Okay?” He offered a dumb nod in answer, and she fixed him with a hard, suspicious stare before making for the door.
“Wait,” he called helplessly. She was turning the handle. “What’s your name?”
“Emily,” she said, and left.
Despite still being upset, part of him wanted to hit the intercom and tell Lucas about the exchange. Maybe Frank Collins was dangerous, after all. Crazy and unpredictable. Maybe he would come back and fly off the handle and do God knew what. That’s what Jonathan told himself, but what it really boiled down to was the comfort of authority. It wasn’t his shop, but Lucas’s, and he wanted to pass off the strange burden to the person he felt ought to be bearing it. But he had his suspicions now about why the man had come and skulked about, why he had been so skittish. He surely wanted Lucas’s fraudulent services, and alerting the swindler to a possible customer didn’t seem like a great idea. Besides, he’d chased Mr. Collins off. Maybe that would be enough.
Ignoring how temporary his assurance felt, he closed his hand over Emily’s number and told himself he wouldn’t need it.
III
Lucas returned at a quarter after noon and hung up his hat and his coat, and a dam broke in Jonathan. He hadn’t been able to clear the image from his mind of that old woman out in some graveyard in the middle of the night, bent over a headstone with her gnarled hands wrapped around the handle of a shovel. Digging up her sister, her cousin, her friend one spade full of dirt at a time. Jonathan was angry.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The question exploded from him like the first shot from a Roman candle. Lucas didn’t flinch.
“You looked in the bag, didn’t you.”
“Do you even know what you’re doing? Do you have any idea?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes!” Jonathan threw his hands up. “Yes, I looked in the bag!”
“Mrs. Merriman got exactly what she paid for.”
“What, some sort of-of resurrection kit?”Jonathan was incredulous. He couldn’t keep his voice down. “You sold her a jar of dirt!”
Lucas gave him a look. He’d seen it before, fierce and narrow and fed up behind those thin wire frames, but it was less effective in the blaze of Jonathan’s righteous anger. “It’s none of your business what I sold her, Stillwell.”
“You’re taking advantage of people!”
But Lucas was no longer listening. He was finished with their conversation and was crossing the floor, headed for that goddamned basement door, and Jonathan slammed his palms down against the counter in protest.
“I’ll tell the police!” he shouted. His voice was high, he realized. Desperate. The blood rushed in his ears.
Lucas snorted as he unlocked the door. “So tell the police,” he said, and went downstairs.
Things were tense after that. Not for Lucas, who was entirely unaffected, but for Jonathan, who was forced to consider his boss in a new, rather unflattering light. He thought about leaving. Quitting the shop, finding something else, but what else was there? It had taken him weeks to get this position. Besides, he reasoned, if he stayed here, he might be able to warn a few people away from Lucas and his fraud.
He didn’t think about telling the police. Not really. What would he say? “Yes, hello, my boss is pretending to raise the dead for money. Can you please do something about it?”
So he stayed, but he didn’t like it. What limited conversation he and Lucas had begun to engage in before dwindled back to nothing. Where it seemed Lucas was beginning to come upstairs just a touch more often, his appearances were now nonexistent once more. Jonathan did not see him when he arrived in the mornings or when he closed up of an evening. He issued no instructions, no daily tasks, and didn’t even snap at Jonathan to go home over the intercom. It was a lot like his first few days, but the fear of reprimand had evaporated. It was funny how one flare of a typically dormant temper could change things.
When she came in four days later, his mood was still sour. He stewed in it, having no outlet for the tumultuous feelings, for the persistent image of Mrs. Merriman digging up graves. It was frustrating, but it wasn’t just Lucas he was upset with. He knew he had done his share of damage by letting her walk out of the store with that bag of cheap tricks, and he couldn’t stop himself from reimagining the scene. This time, he would hide the bag and feign ignorance. This time, he would talk to her and explain that Lucas was a slime-slick con man, and she would thank him for his honesty. But those fantasies didn’t recreate that raw, pleading need to take Lucas’s chicanery as genuine. It was much simpler to be the stalwart defender of truth when he didn’t have to break anyone’s heart.
She was some girl he’d never laid eyes on. She was plain, not quite pretty, with lax brown curls wrangled into a ponytail. She wore a coat too thin for the pre-winter wind that blew outside, and her nose and earlobes were red with its touch. She didn’t look at him when she came in, but marched straight into the thicket of shelves with a single-mindedness that startled Jonathan. He tracked her to the far side of the shop where she stopped in front of one of the squat jewelry cases and pressed her hands to the top glass. After a moment, she called to him, her eyes not straying from the case.
“Hey,” she beckoned with one hand, “hey, come over here. I wanna look at something.”
Fighting off the urge to stand dumbstruck, he snatched the key from a drawer and made his way over. He slid into the slim space between the case and the wall and unlocked the back, then turned his eyes to her. Though he recognized that she couldn’t have been more than a few years his junior, there was something about her that was much younger. Her eyes were big, bright despite their drab hazel-grey, and an arc of freckles across her nose and straying toward her cheeks made her face girlish rather than womanly. She tapped on the glass with a short nail.
“This.”
Jonathan looked down. The case held turquoise-studded bracelets and gaudy rings with big synthetic diamonds, colourful gemstone pendants and etched gold cufflinks, all of questionable authenticity; but the girl was pointing at a picture locket on a long chain. He took it from the shelf and passed it to her, the chain sliding like silk between their fingers. It was a pretty piece, light and delicate. The round face was covered in a labyrinth of silver filigree, and the girl was quiet as she inspected it, holding it high so it dangled between them. Jonathan bypassed the locket in favour of the girl’s face, and all he could think about was whether she too had been suckered in by an impossible promise. Would she fall to tears and beg to bring back some late boyfriend who was tragically killed the night of the big game? Lament the cruel loss of an older sister snatched away on her wedding day?
She opened the locket and stroked the flat back where a tiny photo might be nestled. She didn’t look sad. She looked like she wanted to buy some jewelry.
“All right,” she said, and snapped it shut as she turned to walk back to the counter.
Jonathan locked up the case and hurried to the register. The prospect of making an actual sale to an actual customer was bizarre, and though he certainly knew the steps, he now doubted whether he could perform them in the correct order. He stood behind the counter and took the necklace as she handed it over. He punched the price into the register, figured in the sales tax, and hoped the receipt machine had paper in it.
“That’s gonna be $26.31,” he said, and ducked down to grab a few sheets of tissue paper from beneath the counter. He had just started to wrap the locket when he noticed she was not fishing in her bag for money, but was instead staring at him, both brows drawn down in suspicious scrutiny.
“Do you guys sell drugs here or something?”
Jonathan balked. He couldn’t possibly have heard her correctly. “What?”
“Maybe not here, but, like, out of the basement or in the alley or something?”
“Of course we don’t sell drugs!” Jonathan gaped at her with wide, unbelieving eyes. He had been prepared for her to ask about resurrections, sure, but drugs? What the hell would make anyone think they were drug-peddlers?
“Oh,” she said, and plunged a hand into her bag. It came out clutching a wallet, but what she took from it wasn’t cash. She laid a photo on the counter between them, tapped it, and looked at Jonathan. “Well, have you seen this guy?”
There were two figures in the picture, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. One was the girl, and the other he recognized after a moment as the lurking man he had scared off a little over a week ago. He looked far less gaunt, less like a frightened animal. His face was full, held life and colour, and a crooked little smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. The girl was stiff, barely tolerant, as though she would have liked to be anywhere other than standing in front of that camera.
“Actually, yeah,” Jonathan said, sliding the picture closer. “Last week, I think. He came by a few times.”
“Really?” The girl’s face tightened and she pressed her lips together, standing straighter and staring Jonathan down. “How many times? What did he look at? Did he buy anything from you?”
“Uh.” Jonathan leaned away from the counter as she began to lean forward. “Why? Is he dangerous?” He cast a cautionary glance around the shop and lowered his voice. “Are you a cop or something?”
“Ugh.” She drew back and snatched the photo away, her freckled nose wrinkling in apparent disgust. “No. He’s my dad.” She traded the picture for a few worn bills and dropped them on the counter. “Frank Collins.”
Jonathan took the cash hesitantly and began to make change. “Well, he never actually came inside.”
“What?” She frowned. It was the first thing he’d said that had any real effect on her. She had been making him moderately uncomfortable since she walked in, but he had reversed the situation in a brief three seconds. She took her change like a stiff-jointed automaton.
“Yeah. He just sort of hung out across the street and stared.” He finished wrapping the necklace and put the parcel into a small plastic sack. “I tried to talk to him once, but he flipped out and ran away. Is he, uh…?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe he was trying to buy drugs.”
“That was really your first guess?”
Her frown adopted the subtle malice of a scowl. “It seemed like something he might do.” She reached across the counter and took the bag from his hand, slid the flimsy straps over her forearm. “He’s been weird lately.”
“How did you know he was coming here, anyway?”
“I followed him,” she answered matter-of-factly. “Part of the way, at least.”
“What, you couldn’t just talk to him?”
She ignored him, again diving into her bag. She produced a pen this time and lunged across the counter, grabbing Jonathan’s hand and tugging it toward her. “Hold still,” she reprimanded crossly when he tried to jerk it free. This was past the point of absurdity, he thought, and he was seriously considering panic as a short-term solution when she forced his hand flat and began to write on his palm.
“I want you to call me if my dad comes here again,” she told him, letting go. He looked at the ten digits bleeding into the lines of his hand. “Okay?” He offered a dumb nod in answer, and she fixed him with a hard, suspicious stare before making for the door.
“Wait,” he called helplessly. She was turning the handle. “What’s your name?”
“Emily,” she said, and left.
Despite still being upset, part of him wanted to hit the intercom and tell Lucas about the exchange. Maybe Frank Collins was dangerous, after all. Crazy and unpredictable. Maybe he would come back and fly off the handle and do God knew what. That’s what Jonathan told himself, but what it really boiled down to was the comfort of authority. It wasn’t his shop, but Lucas’s, and he wanted to pass off the strange burden to the person he felt ought to be bearing it. But he had his suspicions now about why the man had come and skulked about, why he had been so skittish. He surely wanted Lucas’s fraudulent services, and alerting the swindler to a possible customer didn’t seem like a great idea. Besides, he’d chased Mr. Collins off. Maybe that would be enough.
Ignoring how temporary his assurance felt, he closed his hand over Emily’s number and told himself he wouldn’t need it.