by Luke Geddes
“Margaret,” Keith said, “I’m sure it was just—”
“It was an attack on me personally.”
“Margaret, dear, have we offended you?” Seymour’s face was a mask of ironic mirth. Lee whispered something in his partner’s ear, but Seymour just shrugged.
“You’ve offended the Heart of America,” she said. “You could have damaged something. His—its—sharp edges against my fragile glass. This will not stand.”
Lee’s smile was as stiff as a mannequin’s. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Oh, I understand. And they know what they did. They know exactly what they did. In my booth, in my beautiful, fragile Riverside sugar bowl, they threw the offending item. It could have chipped. Who knows how such delicates react to that cheap plastic? Do they have any idea of its worth? Do they care?”
Keith supposed that as Heart of America co-owner it was his duty to defuse the situation, but just as he was going to try, Ronald stood and gave it his own best shot. “Now, now, fellows. There’s no need for hurt feelings here. I’d hate to see this turn into a—” Someone threw a Nilla wafer and hit him square in the temple. Ronald smiled in good humor and sat down.
“Let’s settle this now so we can all go back to being friends,” Seymour said. “Just so we’re clear, what do you mean by ‘offending item’?”
Margaret held her handkerchief as if blocking out a sour smell. “You know as well as I. A toy manufactured long after December thirty-first, 1989. Some sort of doll.”
“What sort of doll?”
“Not a baby doll but like Barbie and Ken.” At this Delores Kovacs’s head perked up. “An African American man. In a purple outfit, I think.”
“Hmm. That could describe any number of dolls. Do you happen to know, Margaret, dear, what this certain doll was called? Does he have a name?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“I surely don’t.”
“Very well. If you won’t admit it. We all know it was…” Margaret closed her eyes. Keith wondered if she was about to faint. Would it raise their insurance rates if she croaked right on the spot? Finally, she regained composure and cleared her throat. She was about to utter the cursed word when—
“MC Hammer,” Lee blurted as if confessing to a horrendous crime.
“An honest mistake,” Seymour said. “One of us must have misplaced it in all the hubbub of moving in.”
Finding his opening, Keith rose from his stool. “That settles that.” The sooner this was over with, the sooner he could get out there and find that missing girl. “Meeting adjourned?”
“No,” Margaret said. “That settles nothing. Keith, this is your mall and your problem. What are you going to do about these two?”
Seymour let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “Please, Margaret, you’re only giving us a hard time because we’re—”
“I assure you,” Margaret said with an unexpected hint of apology. “This is not at all about that, but rather—”
“About what?” Seymour leaned in. “What do you mean?”
“Just because you’re… it has nothing to do with…”
“With what?”
Margaret hummed nervously as she considered her words. “What you are.” After a moment, she shrugged—an unnaturally casual gesture for her, it looked more like a spasm—and said, “Homosexuals.” She cringed as if forced to utter an awful slur.
The dealers were getting restless, whispering among themselves and eyeing the exit. Throats were cleared, arms stretched, noses wiped, seats shifted, fingers drummed. The vending machines buzzed. Ronald stared forlornly at a Nilla morsel on his thumb as if it were a cancerous growth he had just noticed. Delores gnawed absently on the Barbie parts she kept on a key chain. Pete, mirroring her, gnawed on his inhaler’s mouthpiece.
“New,” Seymour said. “I was going to say you’re just giving us a hard time because we’re new.”
“Well, I—” Margaret’s old gray face was even grayer than it had been moments before. She flattened the wrinkle in her skirt and sat down. Quietly she said, “Yes, I suppose the meeting’s adjourned.”
As if on cue, the fluorescent lights overhead went out row by row, a wave of darkness surging toward the café. Stacey must have gotten tired of waiting and was initiating closing procedures.
“Another productive meeting, folks,” Keith said bitterly. “I’ll beg you to put your best faces forward for Mark and Grant on Monday. Until then, I hope to see you in the Lindy Bobo search party. I know I’ll be there. Right, Veronica?”
But Veronica had already left, and soon the rest of the dealers—all but one—followed her through the darkness to the glowing exit that led to the lot behind the building.
9 RONALD
With the lights out, obscure sounds, unheard above daytime’s fluorescent buzz, echoed through the halls: the squeaks, groans, and sighs of old screws loosening at a rate of micromillimeters per month, of wooden joints wearing, of plastic drying into brittleness, of paper yellowing, of tin and glass and brass and celluloid and silver and ceramic and cloth and stone all just being, the sound of settling, the sound of existence and therefore the sound of decay. And in the middle of it all was Ronald Marsh, who had, sometime during the meeting, around when the Nilla wafer hit his head, retreated inward to ponder his pickle: the matter of the child locked in a dog kennel in his basement. No, really, it couldn’t be as bad as that sounded. It wasn’t. But how to make that clear to the authorities, to the little girl’s parents? She liked the kennel. It was a misunderstanding.
He recalled, as if through the haze of years and not minutes, the meeting’s end. The dealers streamed past him to the exit, not one offering him so much as a goodbye. Pete Deen held Delores Kovacs by the hand (or, actually, clutched her extended pinkie finger) as he bade her adieu. It was so charming to see love bloom like this, especially between those two strange birds. Maybe they weren’t the only birds pairing off, what with the way Jimmy Daniels cupped his hand over Margaret’s shoulder and whispered in her ear; and of course let’s not forget Keith and Stacey, the very model of a loving marriage long settled into, comfortable, comforting, but far from passionless. Ronald was happy for them but sad for himself, too. He was lonely. He missed Melinda. He missed the dramaless routine of his old life, when his most pressing concern was catching up on back issues of Deltiology Quarterly, not facing a minimum of twenty years in prison according to the figure Veronica Samples had cited.
When he found her in the yard and took her in he was only acting out of concern. He’d been in his office researching a batch of unsigned portraiture postcards for a pen pal to confirm that they were indeed, as he suspected, the work of Maud Humphrey. The small text of the guidebooks really did a number on these old eyes of his and it was when he went to the kitchen to get his reading glasses that he saw through the window a little body facedown amid the fallen leaves on the lawn. That gave him quite a startle! He rushed outside and scooped the poor thing up. The girl was breathing, her eyes open, not crying, but she wouldn’t respond to anything Ronald said, so he carried her inside and down to the basement where Melinda kept the first-aid kit.
He set her on the couch and looked her over. She appeared uninjured, merely dirty from the lawn. “My name is Ronald,” he said. “And who are you?”
But the girl just bit her lip and shook her head, a slight, mischievous smile on her face.
“Well, at least you’re okay. Don’t you want to talk to me?”
She shook her head again.
“Hmm. Now, this is a pickle. My Melinda used to babysit for the Willefords next door before they moved away. That little girl, I think her name was Dorothy, like in Wizard of Oz. She would never talk to me, either. She had the oddest habit. She’d chew up each chicken nugget till it was paste and spit it back onto the plate. One by one, just like that. Then she’d mix up all the chewed-up stuff and fork it down. What do you think of that?”
The girl shrugged. This was one o
f the toughest confabulation partners Ronald had ever faced, but luckily he had an ace up his sleeve. “How about we move this chat over to the studio?”
The studio was part of a project Ronald had begun a few weeks before Melinda’s passing but had abandoned in his grief. He so relished the conversations he had about deltiology, with experts and novices alike, he’d decided it just wasn’t fair to keep them all to himself. So he’d put together this little studio in a spare corner of the basement consisting of a video camera on a tripod pointed at a desk with a microphone just like the ones on TV and a couple of chairs, with bright lights hanging from the exposed pipes overhead. It was designed to be portable, the better to take along with him to conventions with the aim of conscripting his fellow dealers to appear on the show, which he’d named Keeping Posted with Ronald Marsh, and had planned to premiere on Wichita public access. However, he’d only ever managed to film one segment, in which he showed off his most favorite and rarest pieces to Melinda and spun humorous anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of acquiring such an impressive collection. It brought Ronald solace to know that the mellifluous sound of Melinda’s laugh was forever preserved on tape.
Ronald set the girl in the chair beside the desk and took the host’s seat. Upon seeing the camera’s lens trained on her, she transformed in a way that only made sense the next day when he found out about her experience on the pageant circuit. She wiped the dirt from her cheeks and arms, tamed back her hair with her hands, and smiled unnaturally.
“That’s the spirit,” Ronald said. “Pretend we’re on TV. My guest here tonight is, well, you might know her as a little girl from right here in the neighborhood. What did you say your name was?”
She leaned into the microphone. “Lindy.”
“Lindy, I bet you’ve got a real kooky story about how you ended up in my yard. Why don’t you tell me where you came from?”
Lindy licked her lips and grimaced at the camera. She looked Ronald up and down. After a moment, she finally spoke. “I—I wanted the Sanrio bedspread. Keroppi’s my favorite.”
Ronald scratched his head, pantomimed a shrug at the camera. “Are you talking English or are you talking rubbish?”
“Mom wouldn’t buy it for me.”
“I see.” Ronald was not usually great with kids, but the studio atmosphere was just the ticket. After prodding Lindy through a professional-quality (if Ronald said so himself) series of Q&As, he finally pieced the story together.
On a shopping trip to Target, her mother had refused to buy her something she wanted, a bedding set featuring a cartoon frog named Keroppi. She loved Keroppi and his Sanrio friends so much she could not live without it. To teach her mother a lesson, she had run away. Her plan was to find her way back to Target herself and refuse to leave until someone there gave her the bedspread. But she’d quickly gotten lost on the way. And then she tripped on a branch and fell and—and that was when Ronald had found her.
“Aww, I’m so sorry to hear that, dear. I’m sure if your mother is watching our show tonight she’s sorry, too. Now tell us how we can reach her?”
Lindy shook her head. She would not tell Ronald her last name or address, and she would not return home until she got the bedspread.
“Are you hungry?”
Lindy nodded.
“Will you tell me where your mommy and daddy live after we eat? No use in worrying them over a silly little thing like a bedspread.”
Lindy shrugged.
He carried her back to the couch and turned on the TV, then went upstairs to cook a frozen dinner. When he brought it to her she was already asleep, curled up with her knees against her chin, breathing peacefully. He sat on the arm of the sofa picking at the gelatinous cheese casserole, wondering what to do, if he should wake her, what Melinda would say if she were here, until he, too, fell asleep.
He awoke the next morning covered in mottled cheese. The TV set was still on and the news reported the suspected abduction of pageant princess Lindy Bobo. An oopsie, he’d thought. Just a simple misunderstanding. He stood over Lindy, still asleep, wrapped in an afghan like a comfy kitten, the phone in hand, about to dial the police and explain away the whole silly thing. But he couldn’t do it. Talking on the phone always made him nervous. He much preferred to look a person in the eye. Nonverbal communication was ninety percent of conversation—he’d read that somewhere. It would be much better to go to the police station himself. But he couldn’t just take Lindy with him. Things might look a little funny that way. Ronald did not want to get in trouble. The station was just about a mile down Douglas Avenue. Lindy was fast asleep and looked like she wouldn’t awake for hours yet. She’d be just fine if he stepped out for a short while.
In the car, it hit him. Hoo boy, was he in trouble. On the radio, the police announced they would “aggressively pursue” everyone who may have come into contact with Lindy in the past twenty-four hours. Ronald did not like the sound of that. He wished Melinda were here. She’d know what to do. What Ronald had done was turn the car around. What Ronald had done was go to Target and get that girl the bedspread she wanted, stopping at the McDonald’s drive-through on the way.
When he got home, she was still asleep, thank goodness. He roused her, fed her, and gifted her the bedspread. Her eyes practically glowed when she saw it, it was just darling. Hugging the bedspread, she said, “Okay, you can take me home now.”
“I’m sorry, dear, not just yet,” he said gently and led her into the kennel he’d stuffed fat with pillows and blankets—it was like a playhouse, a fort, really—and locked her in.
Sure, it sounded bad when he imagined himself explaining it to an authority, but it was for her own good. He couldn’t have Lindy running about while he was gone and risk getting hurt. In due time Ronald would figure things out, Lindy could go home without getting Ronald into trouble, and everything would go back to normal.
But he’d had Lindy for all night and all day now, and things just got less and less normal, and meanwhile Ronald got more and more pickled. There was no longer any use in pretending today was a day like any other, in acting as if Melinda would descend from the heavens and tell him exactly what he ought to do to un-oopsie his oopsie. He’d left Lindy alone too long already, and he had to get home ASAP.
On his way out, he caught sight of the doll, its arms hooked to the lip of the trash receptacle. It was the one Margaret had been carrying around earlier that day. Ronald thought he’d heard someone call him BC Hammer; perhaps he was a caveman character like Alley Oop. How’d it end up here? Margaret probably had set it down at some point and forgotten. A customer who didn’t know better—or one, Ronald hesitated to think, who was just causing trouble for trouble’s sake—discarded it instead of taking it to the lost-and-found. The funny thing was, this doll didn’t seem to be in line with her usual interests, but perhaps she’d decided to branch out. Perhaps Delores had had an influence on her. With no small bit of envy, Ronald wished he could turn one of his fellow dealers on to the thrills and wonders of deltiology, though Lord and Melinda knew he’d tried plenty. Well, lucky for Margaret, Ronald would return it to her booth. And then—lickety-split—he’d rush home to Lindy and sort out this whole silly mess, even if it meant a tricky conversation with her parents. After all, he had nothing to worry about. He had only been acting out of concern. They’d see he’d only meant the best for the girl. Anyone at the Heart of America could vouch for him: Ronald was about the nicest guy anyone could ever meet.
He was also, he discovered when he pushed futilely against the unyielding exit door, locked in.
FRIDAY THE MOTIONS OF ATTAINMENT
10 MARGARET
There are dealers and there are hobbyists, Margaret Byrd thought as she unlocked the Heart of America’s back door, a compote bowl tucked under her arm. Although Keith and Stacey or the girl were supposed to arrive one hour before opening, they rarely appeared even ten minutes before ten, and the girl especially was always late. Technically, Margaret was not supposed to have
a key. She’d borrowed the spare set Keith kept with the half dollars and Canadian quarters in the cash register some time ago and had not found the occasion to return it. There are hobbyists and there are dabblers, she thought as she shouldered the door open and held the bowl now steady in both hands. There are dabblers and there are the ignorant. So why should she feel anything but pleased that she had, earlier this morning, having arrived at the rummage sale one hour prior to the start time posted in the Eagle classified, purchased from right out of the hand of the woman before she could set it on the rickety card table, for only four dollars, this Millersburg radium-green boutonniere compote bowl, which she now planned to sell in one of her own booths at a seventy-dollar markup? It wasn’t Margaret’s fault the woman hadn’t the faintest clue of its actual value, and for all Margaret knew, she may have rescued it after an eternity packed away in a cardboard box marked “Grandma’s things” abandoned in a cobwebbed corner of a dank basement crawl space, may have circumvented its sale to an unscrupulous teenager with intent to use it as an ashtray for his marijuana joints or a dippy housewife who’d fill it with Rolos. It was only fair that Margaret had gotten such a bargain.
In fact, the purchase had been positively moral. Patricia shared her distaste for Pickin’ Fortunes, which Margaret had found enjoyable until a season-ending special, Picking 101, in which Mark and Grant lectured the viewer on what they so superciliously referred to as their “commandments of picking.” “Thou shalt not fleece without due restraint,” they’d said. Margaret did not consider herself a ruthless person, and certainly Patricia hadn’t thought—didn’t think—of her that way, either, but after the episode’s end the two friends had a long, enchanting discussion about the ethics of dealing, reaching the conclusion that it simply wasn’t right for anyone who’d spent years developing and honing a particular expertise to pay a single penny more than a given transaction required, that it was in everyone’s best interest—and in the best interests of the industry toward whose preservation Margaret and Patricia worked so diligently—for bargains to be taken the utmost advantage of, even if that necessitated an imbalanced exchange. There was no such thing as a “rip-off,” Margaret thought, only errors in judgment that occurred when less-than-knowledgeable buyers and sellers willfully, through impulse or ignorance, allowed themselves to be misled.