Twisted Tree

by Kent Meyers

  The words seeped into Stanley’s mind.

  You OK? the manager asked.

  I’m fine. The heat. I ate at the airport, and—

  Airport restaurants.

  Suddenly the manager turned and yelled: Ivy!

  A middle-aged waitress was setting tables. She walked without hurry across the room.

  This guy’s looking for that waitress nametagged Tray-see. Spelled it cute, though. T-R-A-C-E. You know what happened to her? What was her real name?

  Ivy’s own nametag, pinned to her drooping uniform, faced the floor, unreadable. She stared at Stanley for a full second. Finally she pushed a strand of graying hair off her forehead and turned her gaze back to the manager.

  She left. Lucky girl.

  Yeah, you got it hard, the manager said. We want to know how to find her.

  Stanley lifted his hand to dissociate himself from the manager’s we.

  It’s not important, he said. She waited on me once. I was stuck during a snowstorm.

  Ivy’s eyes were drill bits, that pointed and hard.

  I don’t remember her name, she said. I don’t know where she went.

  It was a lie. Complete and brazen and without apology. Stanley realized she was protecting Trace from him. His knees went weak. She didn’t know anything about him. And he couldn’t tell her. Anything. The things he couldn’t tell were enlarging. They were growing. They were expanding beyond his control.

  Prize Money

  In here, buyers flaunt their cheapness, demanding deals, or else they’re hushed and furtive, pretending they can’t be seen. They want to believe what they buy’s a bargain, only that, and not what someone else couldn’t afford to keep. And sellers, ticket holders? They come to salvage what they can from their delusions. They want to pretend this place is a museum where their ruined dreams will be preserved forever. I make my living in the gap, keeping the two apart. It’s what the markup’s for. I know what things are really worth. Things are things, dreams are dreams. I pay only for the thing, and the thing is what I sell.

  The other day this kid comes in looking for a car stereo. He’s maybe twenty, got his hair spiked, got an earring, got a tattoo slinking off his neck underneath his collar. Got a shorter friend looks just like him. These two come in, smelling of their parents’ money but going to try to talk me down. Come in smiling. Like they own the place. Not smiling at me. Hell, they hardly see me. Just smiling.

  Gotanee car stereos? the tall one says.

  Says it just like that. He’s hardly in the door, got his hands in his back pockets, not a hello or a how-are-you, just Gotanee car stereos? like he’s talking to the stuff on the walls. I nod at the glass case. Fourteen car stereos there. It’s not like they’re invisible.

  I go back to watching one of the TVs I got in. They find the case, and they’re bending over the speakers and amps when this woman walks in the door. It’s awful hot out, this damn drought we’ve been in, the sun like bubbling oil, and I keep it dim in here, bad light on used things is worth ten percent, but I got a bright light on the counter I can turn on when I buy. Sellers’ll try all sorts of tricks. One time a big Indian tried to sell me a clock radio that didn’t work, figured I wouldn’t plug it in. Anyway, everyone stands still when they come in, getting used to the dark. This woman does that, too. I mark her for a seller, the way she looks lost, then finds me and kind of solidifies. Buyers look at the merchandise hung up, sellers look at me. Who do they got to talk to’s their only question. I pretend I’m watching TV, don’t want to make eye contact, disorientation’s in my favor. But I manage to look her over. She’s not bad in the store’s light—not great-looking, but not bad. Her mouth’s a bit big, and maybe she’s a bit overweight but who isn’t these days? She’s not carrying anything, so whatever she’s selling’s small, or so big she needs help hauling it in.

  I’ve seen people bolt. They come in, take a look, go right back out. So when I see she’s kind of adjusted to being in the door, I catch her eye to pin her down. She nods at me. Then her face, it’s kind of like leaves falling inside it, it settles into something bare and determined, and she comes across the floor. She’s got on flat, soft-soled shoes, and she makes no sound. Some women, you wonder how they learn to move like they do. She’s like a lot of rain gathered on a street and the flow so heavy it’s gone smooth and curved, and still more coming, and you can’t take your eyes off it, all you can do is think, Look at it go.

  I got to remind myself this is a deal coming toward me. I put my hands on the counter to brace myself. Over at the case the two earrings have pulled out a couple of systems. The short one lifts up a price tag and grins, and they shake their heads. You ever see someone in a retail place behave that way? That’s where the pricing’s dishonest, except when they have a sale and get the price even close to what it ought to be. The regular system rips people off as standard practice. Tells lies as business, buys and sells dreams all the time, preys on people’s insecurities, convinces them garbage is value and brands are religion—and people suck it up. And here, where prices are pinned to what things are actually worth, everyone assumes it’s crooked. I have yet to read where a Chamber of Commerce has named a pawnshop Business of the Year. It’s because we don’t lie. We pick up where the lie ends and the dream disintegrates, and what’s left is what’s really there.

  Then she’s in front of me, her hand in her purse. I want to sell this, she says.

  If it came out any faster it’d be one word. OK—she wants to get it over. Women are always fumbling in their purses, got them stuffed so full they can never find a thing. But she finally brings it out, and I think, Damn, it had to be. She lays a ring case on the counter.

  They always save their ring cases. Like they expect someday they’re going to have to put the rings back in and take them somewhere. I reach out and open the case, this is the worst kind of dealing there is, and I’m looking at a set, engagement and wedding, all polished and taken care of. She doesn’t say anything, she’s just watching me.

  Say!

  The tall earring’s holding up an amp and a set of speakers.

  You think maybe we could install this Pioneer? See if it really works in the car?

  Excuse me, I say to the woman.

  I keep my finger and thumb on the ring box and look at the kid. I don’t answer right away. I want him to think he’s putting me out. And he is, that see if it really works crap, as if I’d sell something that doesn’t. But once he gets that system installed he won’t want to remove it. I make fifteen percent by saying yes—maybe more, if he thinks he’s skinning my nose some by putting it in.

  It works just fine, I say.

  We wanta be sure.

  You got my word.

  Yeah, well, but, you know. We wanta know how it sounds.

  The shorter earring’s nodding, like maybe he’s got a clapper inside his head gonging against his skull.

  How it sounds, I say.

  Yeah. You know. In the car.

  I stare down at the counter like I’m trying to see around some trick they’re pulling on me, get them feeling like they’re just on the edge of being sleazeballs and I’m trying to see just when they’re going to fall over into it. Finally I say: I guess I can let you do that.

  You got some tools?

  I got thirteen socket sets, I got a bushel and a half of screwdrivers, I got two Rubbermaid tubs of adjustable wrenches and one of open/box-ends, I got a five-gallon paint pail of various kinds of pliers, I got fourteen cordless drills, twelve to twenty-four volts, three of them DeWalts, and one of them a lithium-ion some moron bought to hang pictures with and then couldn’t afford the pictures, I got—

  Look around, I say. And whatever you use goes back where you got it. You hold em where I can see em going out the door. And I’m telling you right now, that system works. So if it don’t after you’re done with it, you get to purchase it. OK?

  Gong, gong, gong, a couple of Bobbleheads—which is one thing I won’t buy, though people’ve tried
to sell them to me—nodding away.

  I turn back to the woman. So, I say.

  So, she says.

  We both stare at the rings. Even in the dim light they glitter. But that’s what rings are made to do.

  What will you give me? she asks.

  No chitchat. Just plow ahead and get it done. I don’t even have to ask if she’s pawning or selling. Pretty obvious she’s here to get something over and hopeful that what I’ll give is close to what she wants. Almost never is. Dreams and things hardly ever match. I pluck the wedding band out of the box, flick on the lamp, put on reading glasses. Inside the band I can see LORRAINE AND BILL. FOREVER. 7/7/83.

  So: Lorraine’s forever was twenty years long. These days, that’s not a bad forever. I push the ring back into its slit. I’ve always liked that little friction, the way those cases hug the rings. Fourteen-carat gold, the engagement ring has a twenty-five-point diamond. Good stuff, but not worth much on resale. Jewelers get to charge for the dream. This set’d probably go two thousand retail. But I can’t buy the dream back any more’n I can sell it. People don’t come to pawnshops for symbols of forever. Maybe they should—get a dose of reality along with the romance. For me, it’s a puddle of gold. A bright stone at the end of a tweezers.

  I put it on the scale. The wedding comes to three grams. I get out my wholesale book. I know what it’s worth, but the drama helps, shows there’s a standard, it’s not just me picking a number out of my head. People have faith in the book, they feel better if I look up what I already know. She doesn’t even fidget while I turn the pages, making a show of peering through my glasses. I go past the right page on purpose a couple of times, don’t want to seem too sure, then pretend to finally find what I’m looking for. I lay the book down, take off the glasses.

  It’s three grams of gold, I say. It’s a twenty-five-point diamond. Four a gram for the gold, six a point for the diamond. I’ll up it to two hundred dollars.

  She looks at me. Usually there’ll be a flicker of eyes, calculating going on, doing the math. But her eyes just hold me. The light reflects off the glass countertop up into her face, makes her look stark. She was prettier back by the door. But those eyes—they’re great, light brown, almost the color of brick. And I remember that walk, and I’m thinking, Eyes like that and a walk like that? What the hell’d Bill find better?

  Four dollars? she finally says. Six dollars? But that’s—

  I know, I say. But that’s what they’re worth. Really. You need to think, you go ahead, I’ve got to check on something.

  The Bobbleheads are bobbling out the door with my tools and car stereo, and if I push too hard, she’ll get proud and walk. Not that I’d care. It’s not like I need to campaign for more divorce because I’m short on used ring sets. But you can’t do business unless you do business, so I leave her to think and amble out the door after them. The sun whams into me. This heat. It’s just unending. Sure enough, they’re heading for a black Camaro. Why’m I not surprised? I note the license number.

  When I come back in, she hasn’t moved. I go around the counter and stop, facing her.

  I want seven hundred and fifty dollars, she says.

  She’s one of those. My little show of looking in the book, all that stuff—useful as casters on a crutch.

  Six a point and four a gram’s standard, I say. You want, I’ll show you.

  I want seven hundred and fifty.

  Look, maybe three hundred, but that’s a stretch. I know these mean a lot to you, but—

  No, you don’t.

  She sounds like she’s stopping a child who’s about to throw a toy.

  You don’t know anything, she says. Maybe these don’t mean much to me at all. Maybe a great-aunt I never even liked willed them to me.

  I don’t say anything, but I have my doubts—unless Great-Aunt Lorraine got married in 1983 to a real romantic Geezer Bill.

  I need seven hundred and fifty, she says.

  Needs now. Like I’m a bank? Or a mission? Like I got a sign on my door saying my job is helping out? I feel like telling her, You know who buys used jewelry? No one. Except once in a while some geezer or great-aunt, and then only because they never got out of the Depression and they’re still stocking up, or else it’s cheap decoration while they go to Deadwood to gamble their great-niece’s inheritance away. Either way they won’t pay for your story.

  But I don’t owe her an argument. She needs a dozen stores with the same answer.

  You’ll have to try somewhere else, I say.

  She shakes her head, like she’s the one refusing. No, she says. No, that’s no good.

  What’s good got to do with it? We trying to end starvation here? She thinks I’m begging to buy her stuff? Like right beneath us, under the counter’s glass, I don’t have enough old rings I haven’t sent to the refinery yet—class and engagement and wedding and just plain showoff rings—that you’d have to measure in square feet? And every single one of them is someone’s castoff past or pride or loyalty or love. How many forevers? She thinks I need hers, too?

  Her hand floats over the counter, and I think she’s going to pick the rings up and pout out of here, too bad, Mister Pawnshopman, you missed your chance. But her hand hangs over them, pale and light-veined, a leaf that started to fall but stopped in midair.

  Fifteen hundred dollars, she says. That’s what he paid. I don’t know how many times he told me. Bragging about it. Like I was supposed to be grateful I was worth that much. Every time we had an argument, I’d learn how much these rings were worth.

  I knew I wouldn’t avoid it. Put it in a book somewhere, maybe it’s worth something.

  I want half, she goes on. That’s all. Seven hundred and fifty.

  Got a Phillips screwdriver?

  The short earring, in the door, sweaty. Looks like a dog wandered in.

  One or two, I say. I’ll get one for you.

  An opportunity to get away from the sob story. I walk around the counter to the tool section. The earring trails me. We stand over the Rubbermaid full of screwdrivers.

  What size? I ask.

  Oh, maybe two, three inches long.

  What, he thinks I’m talking about his dong? The number, I say. The screw head size.

  They have sizes?

  He acts genuinely surprised and kind of pleased, like he’d like to hear more, could I maybe give a lecture on how Phillips screws came to have sizes, and who was Phillips anyway?

  I reach into the bin. Here, I say. There’s a One and a Two.

  Hey! That’s great! Thanks, man!

  He grins like I gave him a Christmas present and heads for the door. I wait behind the shelves a bit, hoping she’ll take the opportunity to leave. But no. She’s standing where I left her. OK, then—time to get her out of the store. I don’t need to hear more about Bill and her sad little troubles. I go behind the counter and take the cash box and pull up six fifties. It pisses me off that I’m going this far, but it’s the limit I’d set.

  There’s three hundred. It’s a gift. I’ll be lucky to get that back.

  The sight of cash usually does the trick. But she doesn’t even look at it.

  He started playing golf, she says.

  Now there’s a futile dream. I got two sets of clubs gathering dust. It was widows brought them in, and I thought I could turn them over. But golf clubs aren’t like power tools. You don’t expect a drill to make you a better driller. But golf clubs—who wants to buy them if they failed at turning someone else into Tiger Woods?

  He met someone, she goes on. Who golfed, too. Drinks at the clubhouse, I suppose.

  I nudge the money. But she’s going now. I’m bound to get the whole sorry story.

  What do golfers talk about? she asks. A year ago he left on a business trip. He had a round-trip ticket. He only used half of it. You think he was the only one on that plane did that?

  I push the money against her hand.

  That’s three hundred, I point out. It’s more’n you’ll get anywhere el
se.

  I suppose.

  OK, then.

  I take my fingers from the bills and reach for the ring case. I need seven-fifty.

  I hate it when I’m too sure to close a deal. There I am, with my hand hanging over those rings like one of those claws in those glass-cased games that rip off little kids. I drop it to the counter, trying to make it just a hand again.

  He called me two days ago, she says. From Tucson. Told me he made a mistake. He wants to get back together. What do you think of that?

  I’m supposed to have an opinion? What I think is, she’s one of those people thinks other people care about her story enough to think about it.

  She answers her own question.

  I think she got sick of him, she says. He wasn’t up to par. Not enough foreplay. Not nearly. So he thinks he’ll just come back to me. An easy lie. A hole in one. Who invented golf language anyway?

  I damn near smile. I damn near say, Musta been that screwy Phillips. But I keep my mind on what’s at hand. She lifts a shoulder.

  He told me he’d wrap things up and come home, she says. We’ll work things out. You know what I told him?

  She’s here with the rings.

  To go to hell, I say.

  Kind of, she says. I said, Sure, come back, you know where the house is.

  I’m not following. But I remind myself that I don’t have to.

  A reunion, I say. How nice.

  That’s why I need the seven-fifty. A first-class ticket from here to Tucson is seven-forty. It all works out. If he can wrap things up in two weeks, so can I. I’ve been wrapped up since he left. So, I find out when he’s leaving Tucson, and I take a plane so I pass him in the air. Or as close as I can. What do you think?

  She keeps asking me that. This time it’s the tall earring who interrupts. I guess they got a tag team going. He sticks his head in the door. Say, he calls. It doesn’t work.

  I thought they might try something like that: Now we got it in the car, since it doesn’t work anyway, how about we just leave it there? You got to get up a hell of a lot earlier than that to put one over on me.