by Luke Geddes
And who was to say there was anything wrong with being ruthless, necessarily—not that Margaret was at all ruthless. If anyone was ruthless it was that Jimmy Daniels, quite the flea market racketeer, the Heart of America’s most reliably in-the-black dealer. Margaret had once—by pure casual accident, mind you, a mere absentminded glance—peeked on the screen of Keith’s digital ledger and was scandalized by Jimmy’s tremendous profits. One month was more than Margaret had made some years! She wasn’t envious, of course. And she never particularly liked or disliked Jimmy one way or the other. Margaret was a specialist, her booths curated exhibits even more than displays of merchandise (she made an effort to place the price tags inconspicuously on the bottom of each piece so as not to spoil the overall effect), whereas Jimmy was not just a dealer but a salesman. His large booth on Bicentennial Boardwalk changed stock so frequently that it was hardly identifiable week to week: in would come an assortment of, say, vintage Wagenfeld table lamps bought at an estate auction (Jimmy claimed) of a foreclosed movie theater in Arkansas one day, only to be gone and replaced by, say, a deceased relative’s (Jimmy claimed) snuff box collection the next time Margaret walked by.
So when Jimmy, after yesterday’s humiliating Dealer Association meeting, stopped Margaret with a gentle tap on the shoulder, she was less than delighted.
“We should talk,” he’d said, flashing unnaturally white teeth as he followed her out the door.
“Certainly not,” Margaret said. Her hands had involuntarily balled into fists during the exchange with Seymour and she couldn’t seem to unclench them to reach into her purse for her car keys. If only Patricia were here, she thought sadly. Her brain felt warm. Jimmy kept grinning like he hadn’t heard her. Dealers continued to file out the door. Seymour and Lee, Margaret refused to acknowledge, were leaning against the side of their car, arguing about something. Their type, according to many true crime specials Margaret had accidentally watched on television, was given to tempestuous passions; maybe they’d murder each other that night. The thought calmed her. Her hands tingled and loosened.
“You’ll like this,” Jimmy said. “We should talk.”
Margaret wondered if he had some glass he wanted to offer her a first look at. They’d done some dealing in the past, but although Jimmy played dumb, in truth he was a persnickety negotiator, hardly worth the hassle—unless he had stumbled onto something truly impressive. “Well, what is it?” she said in a tone she’d perfected at flea markets and estate sales over the years to exhibit absolutely no hint of interest. You could set a Matt Johnson lily pad pitcher in front of her, price it at twenty-five cents, and she wouldn’t flinch, would talk you down to ten cents no-sales-tax.
“Come to my van.” Jimmy looked over Margaret’s shoulder at some lingering dealers. He went and stood by his beat-up brown Ford Transit with a vanity plate (JIMMY) and whistled like a cartoon character trying to play casual.
Margaret hesitated. Bad things, violent things, happened in strange men’s vans. Jimmy was no stranger—she’d known him as long as he’d been at the Heart of America—but he was a strange man. He had always struck her as less than scrupulous; when he had promised to provide refreshments for the Fourth of July sales event, he’d brought a 128-count box of Moon Pies set to expire just two days hence. (They’d tasted fine, but still.) But what if whatever he was trying to sell her was actually worthwhile?
Jimmy unlocked the double back doors. “I don’t want anyone to overhear,” he said and climbed in. He held out a large, moist hand for Margaret. “You’ll like this. It’s about… well, it’s about ownership.”
The last word rang like a bell in her brain, compelling her, against better judgment, to accept Jimmy’s palm and lift herself, careful not to catch her long skirt on the door latch. Unease struck upon the square echo of the closing doors. The van was distasteful in its enormity, the venetian blinds in the window crooked, the scent of tobacco dizzying, cardboard boxes and plastic tubs stacked haphazardly around them. She sat uncomfortably, her legs crossed in as ladylike a manner as she could manage, on an overturned milk crate, the ridges pinching the skin of her thighs. She kept one hand in her purse clutching a can of Mace (actually a deodorizer spray for shoes, but it was better than nothing).
Jimmy luxuriated in the tension of the moment. Finally, like a child tattling on a classmate, he said, “The mall is done for. By this time next year—kaput.”
There’d been murmurings about the Heart of America’s foreclosure or filing for bankruptcy or otherwise going out of business for so long now that Margaret had learned not to pay heed to unfounded speculation. “Oh, I’m sure,” she said without meaning to say anything at all.
“It’s for real this time.” He told her about how his check had bounced a few months ago, how Keith had blamed it on a banking error, about how when his latest check was late Keith admitted that the books were telling a story that would lead gradually but surely to the mall’s closing, that neither he nor Stacey wanted to do this anymore. (They had been drinking at the time, in the mall’s back room, from a bottle of eggnog left over from last year’s holiday event.) They were counting on the exposure from the Home Channel show to drum up public interest, but basically it was a lost cause. “In Keith’s words: ‘The Heart of America is fucked.’ ”
“Pardon your language.”
“I’m just telling it like he told it to me.”
It hurt that Margaret was hearing this now, and from Jimmy, of all people. It was just the thing she would ordinarily have shared with Patricia, in Patricia’s car, with the air-conditioning going full-blast (“I’m hot-blooded,” Patricia once said), spreading the potpourri scents of her air freshener.
“They’re barely making enough to keep the lights on. If it weren’t for me…” Jimmy leaned over the passenger-side seat and reached into the glove compartment. He removed and tore open a pouch of bubble gum candy, shoved a fistful of purple shreds into his mouth. The scent of artificial grape flavor was so pungent the air turned sticky. “Big League Chew,” Jimmy said. “Heard the manufacturer was gonna discontinue it so I bought a few gross.” He offered the pouch to Margaret. She shook her head no with as little movement as possible—a millimeter to the left, a millimeter to the right—for it scarcely merited a response. “You’ve seen how they’ve been lately. At the meeting tonight. Keith’s delusional. They let go of the part-timers, put the girl on the register. You and I are the only ones still around who remember Heart’s golden age. Used to be there was a vetting process for new dealers. Now any schlub—any two schlubs—can stumble in off the street and sell last week’s newspaper in Hall One. Like the rules don’t apply to them. It’s worse than usual. Mismanagement, plain and simple.”
Jimmy was right, but Margaret didn’t see what it had to do with her insofar as requiring her to sit here when she should be at home, wrapped in the quilt Patricia had given her, watching television. “Well, if the time comes, I suppose I’d move my merchandise to another establishment, much as I’d hate to have to transport my—” The thought of all her beautiful, fragile glass clanking around the grimy interior of a U-Haul nearly brought her to tears. “My pieces,” she choked.
“You don’t get it, Margie, baby. Why rent the cow when you could sell the milk yourself?”
“Speak coherently.”
“I’m saying: It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Stollers or some other big wheel. It’s sunk cost to let some owners”—he spat the word like a slur—“take a cut of our hard-earned profits on every dang sale. Listen, I got a line on a place in Delano. It’s not huge, but it’s cozy. And between the two of us, it’s more than enough space. Was planning to go in on it by myself, but it wouldn’t hurt the fiscal side of things to partner up. When you stood up during the meeting, it strikes me: You gotta have some money stashed away, you’re old enough. And this chick knows business. Plus, the lease is dirt-cheap. So what’s the rub? There is none. No rub whatsoever.”
“Please stop using that word: rub.”
Margaret couldn’t say she’d never fantasized about a shop of her own, or even one she shared with a business partner, though of course it had always been Patricia she pictured at her side at the antique National cash register, not Jimmy Daniels. “I’m hardly stunned that a building in Delano is so affordable. I’m sure you’d get plenty of foot traffic from needle addicts and transients.”
“Ever heard of revitalization, Margaret? We’d be in between a pizza parlor and high-end coffee place. And besides, it’s an historical district. Old-time charm and whatnot. Not like the bunker we got here. I’m talking big storefront windows. Natural light out the ass. Think about looking in from the sidewalk and seeing your stuff just gleaming there. That’s some classy shit.”
“It’s not for me to argue with your tactics, Jimmy. I credit you with knowing what you’re doing. It’s well established that this is your full-time career. Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced that our management styles would cohere.”
“Exactly! Exactly, this is my full-time gig. I’m on the road four days a week minimum in the busy season. And for me, it’s always the busy season. I’ll practically be a silent partner.” He helped himself to some more gum. “I’ll even let you name the joint.”
Jimmy Daniels was not entirely trustworthy. But after today’s meeting, after the way that Seymour had humiliated her, now sitting here in Jimmy’s filthy van, nearly choking on the tobacco and grease smell and Jimmy’s grape-flavored breath, feeling Patricia’s absence more than ever, hating suddenly Keith and Stacey and the whole of the Heart of America even while admitting she couldn’t very well abandon it and start over at some other mall—not after all the years she’d put in—she was hopeless enough to be reckless and hopeful enough to already have a name in mind: Pretty Patty’s Antiques Shoppe.
“I’m interested,” Margaret said.
“Sweet deal,” Jimmy said. “I’m a big-picture guy. I only see the big picture. You’d run the day-to-day. I trust your experience—no, I have faith in your expertise. Like I said, a silent partner.” He mimed a zipper over his lips. “You’ll see me when I drop my stuff off and that’s about it. You don’t even have to talk to me.”
Well, that Margaret wouldn’t argue with. “I’d have to view the location myself before I agree to anything. And I would insist on final say vis-à-vis décor and arrangement.”
Jimmy spit the wad of gum into his hand and pitched it past Margaret at a window. There was a collection of seven or eight dry wads already stuck there, each a different color. “Deal?” He thrust his hand out for a shake, the same hand that had just held the gum. Margaret touched it gingerly with just her fingers, but Jimmy’s hand cupped hers tight, the sticky candy residue connecting with the smack of a kiss.
That disgusting sound now echoed in her mind as Margaret, in the dim quiet of the empty mall, scanned her shelves for the most fitting spot for her latest acquisition. Some collectors called carnival glass “poor man’s Tiffany,” which Margaret thought crude. She personally had great affection for it. There was a humility to its luster, a playful insouciance that distinguished it from the haughtier Tiffany.
This time when she saw it, not lying inside any of her pieces, thank god, but sitting on the floor, its legs spread V-shaped and its square head leaning against the ridged rim of a fruit bowl, she felt no shock or surprise, no fear or offense, only rage, white-hot and pulsing through her veins, not directed at Seymour and Lee, or Keith and Stacey, or anyone but the dead-eyed doll itself. In that moment, it seemed all her troubles had started with this ill-shapen lump of brown plastic. It was MC Hammer that had caused her humiliation at the Dealers Association meeting, MC Hammer that had signaled Seymour and Lee’s invasion of Hall One. She blamed MC Hammer even for driving Patricia away.
She picked it up, set the Millersburg in its place as if cleansing an unholy taint. She held the body in one hand and the head in the other and pulled with all her strength, relishing the sensation of the neck joint gradually loosening. Finally—a cork’s pop—it gave, too suddenly, the smooth nub slipping from Margaret’s hand and catapulting into a Beatty celery vase atop her booth’s highest shelf. The vase teetered, spinning on its base like a toy top losing velocity. Margaret screamed, the high ceilings echoing with matching unease. Frozen, she braced herself for the shatter, an ugly, awful noise she’d experienced only once before, the time with Patricia.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Patricia had said that day when Margaret described what she heard, how the glass had its own ethereal hum. Margaret then removed, with ginger fingers, the Royal Flemish biscuit jar from its place on the shelf and handed it to Patricia. “There’s a word for it, hearing something just by looking at it.” Patricia had learned about it on TV, a rarefied phenomenon exclusive to a small few with highly developed senses. She had it, too. “Synesthesia.” Something about the way Patricia cradled the jar, like a newborn baby, her head tilted so that her ear just brushed the rim, the pucker of her lips as she pronounced the last syllable of synesthesia, made Margaret woozy. She hadn’t been sure of what she was doing, but she knew it was all she had ever wanted to do, as she leaned forward and caught Patricia’s lips in hers. And then: the jar in pieces, words said, Patricia’s shadow trailing her under the fluorescent lights as she stalked down Memory Lane.
And now it was about to happen again. The bowl rattled, rattled, and then settled. No noise, nothing shattered. The near-silent harmony of the glass returned, and Margaret opened her eyes. The vase appeared undisturbed. The doll’s head lay on the floor near Margaret’s feet, its devilishly sloping forehead and toothy grin mocking her. She gave it a swift kick.
This chicanery had gone on quite long enough. She could not wait until she had taken proprietorship of Pretty Patty’s Antiques Shoppe to rid herself of Seymour and Lee. Something would have to be done immediately. Still clutching the body of the doll, she stood at the edge of booth #1-146, nearly gagging at what appeared to be a fresh layer of sleaze. When had the men had time to deposit even more of this junk? It was as if it were multiplying of its own accord. There was plenty here that must be in violation of Dealer Association policies. For instance, Margaret could not recall having seen this despicable gelatinous-bodied toy figure labeled “Stretch Armstrong” (she pressed a pinkie to its latex skin, shivering in revulsion; if there were an opposite feeling to the near-frictionless pleasure of running one’s hand across molded glass, this was it); this dusty container of “Cube Lube,” an accessory for the Rubik’s Cube toy Margaret recalled having been popular once upon a time; an automated model in the form of a red-nosed drunken bartender, which, at the press of a button, swigged from a bottle marked “XXX”; a framed and autographed poster of a buxom occultist named Elvira; imitation vomit in a cellophane package labeled “Gags and Giggles”; and most disturbingly, a porcelain ashtray in the shape of a woman’s vulva.
It was perversion, pure and simple. They had perverted booth #1-146. If Patricia were here to see this—if only she were here to see this, she’d understand how out of control, how chaotic and sad, things had gotten since she’d gone. Margaret was hardly herself without Patricia around. She missed her, but even more she missed the person she was when she was with her.
Their friendship had been so easy in the beginning. Margaret didn’t see why she had to now make it so difficult owing to a trivial misunderstanding. Margaret was not a natural friend-maker. She always tried to be nice, but she suspected her intelligence and fine taste intimidated others. She wasn’t going to dumb herself down and act like someone she wasn’t for the sake of superficial companionship. Frankly, she was no good at pretending to be interested in things she was not. She valued integrity and sincerity and would rather be alone than engage with those she felt did not appreciate her for who she was. Before Patricia, Margaret had been solitary but not often lonely. Her collecting kept her busy and in touch—if not exactly friendly—with other collectors and sellers and buyers.
When Patricia moved into booth #1-146 about two years ag
o, Margaret had initially been disappointed with her stock’s eclecticism. However, as she watched Patricia from behind her own shelves she began to admire the newcomer’s uniformity of taste; she was not a collector like Margaret—she lacked the drive for completism—but nor was she a mere dabbler. Arranged with a sparseness that allowed each piece its own presence while exuding its of-a-pieceness with the booth at large, her merchandise included items as varied as a salvaged row of post office boxes with art deco lettering, a set of framed Charley Harper prints, a pair of hand-painted china dolls that were just darling, and an exquisite antique cuckoo clock whose unseen bird Margaret and Patricia would, in one of their silly moods, name Fritz, after one of Margaret’s favorite twentieth century glass artists. Margaret ought to welcome her, she decided, before someone like Peter Deen came along and made a bad impression. But the longer she lingered, hiding and watching (not hiding, really, but standing just out of sight, and not watching, really, but glancing now and again), the harder she found it to step out and introduce herself.
It had been Patricia who first approached Margaret, of course. Margaret lost sight of her for a moment, and then a tap on her shoulder—and there she was, encased in the reflections of Margaret’s glass, a gray line of dust across her coral blouse.
“Hiya,” she said. “We’re neighbors, huh?”
“Hello,” Margaret said. “I’m Margaret Byrd, the Heart of America’s Dealer Association president—presidential candidate.” This was during her last campaign, the one she’d only lost because, she suspected, Keith had forgotten to set out the ballots and ballot box in the back room until noon, despite the fact that association rules stipulated they be made available from opening till closing hours on election day. Who knew how many had been disenfranchised as a result? She handed Patricia the Vote Byrd sticker she’d had printed at FedEx Office.