The Luster of Lost Things

by Sophie Chen Keller

  She grabs the landlord’s elbow and yanks him inside, shutting the door and snapping the curtains closed, and the noise of the protesters falls back into a formless roar once more. Lucy drags him to my table, where he drops into a seat and spreads his legs and Milton shimmies out from under the table with a chiding bark—Some space down here?—and customers hover and look uncertainly at one another and at the landlord as he catches his breath, mops his forehead.

  “What the hell?” someone says, and the shop erupts into laughter and chatter and I can’t help glancing at the curtains and wondering if a Sister is out there, or an Italian woman flinging her hands, releasing a curse.

  The landlord leans into the back of the seat and crosses his legs, and then he uncrosses them and leans forward, and the rich fabric of his suit bunches in a few places and bags everywhere else like it does not want to lie flat and touch too much of his skin. I ease my books away from him and perch on the edge of my seat, trying not to make any sudden movements.

  “Can you believe it? Totally uncalled for,” the landlord says.

  “Sure I can,” Lucy says, smoothing her apron and standing. “You do realize that your closures affect a lot of people—real people. Those places were their lives.”

  The landlord crosses his arms and chews his lip, brooding. “Why am I the bad guy here? I don’t control the market—I follow it, and if people weren’t so up in arms they’d see that I’m also improving lives. When the street’s more valuable, everyone wins.”

  Lucy shakes her head and turns to go. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me. I have customers waiting, seasonal accents to put up, a kitchen to close, and a repairman to hunt down since you weren’t getting back to me.”

  “I’ve had a lot on my hands, as you can see, but I’m sorry that you feel—”

  “You’re welcome to hide out here until they leave. We close in half an hour.” Lucy crouches next to me and when I convince her that I am fine and have homework to finish, she gathers up the string of fairy lights and takes a second to compliment a regular and sweeps away.

  The landlord shifts, his chair creaking. His presence clashes with the shop and the discord grinds at my teeth, sharp and shrill as a dentist’s drill.

  “These people,” he says, making an explosion with his hands. “They blow my mind. What do they expect when I’ve got someone lined up who can pay market value? Am I supposed to say, No thanks, bud, I’ll stick to this health code violation paying below market? Tell you what, I wish I could, I really do—” He shakes his head, presses the pads of his fingers into his chest to indicate his sincerity, and I look around for an empty table I can move to and from the corner of my eye I see José glancing at me as he returns to fixing the air conditioner.

  “—but I can’t afford to run a charity. I have a job to do. I tune in to the market, and do you know what it’s saying?” His jowl twitches and his eyes quiver with intensity. “It’s saying, you should be getting two, three times the current rate. And that’s not counting the unicorns—a bank or chain comes knocking, offering six times as much. What operation can compete with that? So you get your space ready, you wait. You create opportunities. It’s good business.” He slaps the table like throwing down a winning poker hand and Milton picks up his head, instantly alert, and José climbs down the stepladder.

  “Sure, change can be tough. People are stuck in their ways, progress doesn’t come easy. But you have to keep your eye on the bigger picture—you’ll see, everyone wins. You’re going to love the new patisserie. I have kids, too—two girls, a little younger than you, rambunctious—they can’t wait for it.” The landlord studies my face and narrows his eyes and seems to see me for the first time. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Are you deaf or something?”

  “Is everything good here?” José says as he comes up to our table, his eyes dark as they move between me and the landlord.

  I shake my head and the landlord says, “What’s wrong with you then? Is it me?” His voice cracks like he has been wounded. “You don’t like me?” and I do not say anything but José raises his palm at the landlord and says, “Let it go, man.”

  The landlord snorts. “What, you think I’m the big bad wolf, too?” He looks down at my books. “Write it down, if you’re shy. I want to know what you have to say about me.” He swipes at my pencil and José grabs his arm and Milton latches onto a chair leg and tries to drag the landlord away. The landlord looks down at the trunk of his arm, at José’s fingers digging into it, blackened with grease and slender as twigs.

  “I said, let it go.” José flashes a smile that glitters cold as the snow in the displays and the landlord yanks his arm back as if scalded, staring at José and his four-and-a-half missing teeth.

  The landlord brushes at the stains on his jacket. “All I’m saying is, I clear out the dumps, make the neighborhood beautiful, and they get upset. How’s that for thanks?” He glances at the door as it opens and the sounds of the protest filter in.

  “You want to go tell Lucy the repair guy is here?” José says quietly, nodding at the person stepping through the door, a bald man with a bushy beard and a toolbox tucked under one arm. I snatch up my homework and leave the landlord alone to get Lucy from behind the counter.

  “Huzzah,” Lucy says when I point out the repairman. José is already shaking his hand, and the landlord is on his feet now, peering behind the curtain with one hand braced against the Book’s display case.

  Ten minutes later, Lucy locks the doors and windows to begin the closing routine. I turn on the taps and adjust the water temperature and empty the displays while the sinks fill. I wait for the hypnotic rhythms of the routine to set in but the calm does not come because the landlord is still here.

  “We’re closed,” Lucy says through the glass door, pointing at the sign.

  “Not for sale!” one of the protesters cries with renewed vigor when the landlord appears in the glass next to Lucy.

  She raps the door and says, “It’s late. Let him go home.”

  They circle like weary flies and Lucy sighs and steps outside, and with that the routine is disrupted. She talks to the protesters under the awning and Milton dances on fours and twos trying to eat their signs while the landlord lurks behind the curtain, and finally Lucy comes back in and says, “They’re leaving. Thanks, Milton.”

  He barks sharply—All in a day’s work—and pokes around hopefully for his reward.

  The landlord does not leave the safety of the shop until the protesters disband, and even then he slinks out first, checking for stragglers, before making a strutting double-time retreat into the night.

  Lucy locks the door behind him, and from there the rest of the closing ritual goes without a hitch even though the silence is, to my ears, less comforting than usual. We wash and dry and scrub and wipe and polish. I blow out the oil lamp and we mop ourselves to the kitchen door and survey our gleaming handiwork and call it a good night.

  10

  The next morning, on Monday, I hear Lucy rise before the sun as she always does. I put on my red high-tops and clatter down the stairs and burst into the shop, ready to shape croissants.

  It looks the same. I hear a timer ping! and the hum of the refrigerators and the floor rumbles faintly like a hungry stomach as a train thunders past in the tunnels far below my feet. I move toward a table in the front, slow and quiet and holding my breath, and I sit and observe and try to put my finger on what it is—the thing that is wrong with the shop.

  Lucy emerges from the kitchen with Milton and a tray of warm vols-au-vent mice. They look golden-brown and delicately puffed and layered. She sets the tray on my table and sits across from me, stunned, and Milton sits and the mice sit too, perfectly still, delicious and dead.

  I turn in my seat and see that, of course, the Book is missing.

  There is a moment of incredulity, when a treasured thing becomes a lost thing. The worl
d stills and sound fades and you are suspended in a fuzzy, foggy place, before your surroundings resolve and you splinter into sharp little pieces of panic.

  I float to the case but the Book is not on the floor next to the base. It is not on the window ledge. Not on the surrounding shelves. No. No. Nonono—and with that my stomach plummets and clenches, cold with fear, and my chest burns hot and I am shaking and my teeth are chattering.

  I want to run to everywhere at once, upend every drawer and rifle through cabinets and stack the furniture and turn out every nook and cranny like the Book will become more lost with each second that passes.

  With great effort, I sit down and I stop and I breathe, so that I can organize and think.

  “Don’t you worry. It’ll turn up—or you’ll find it.” Lucy kneels and tries to catch my eye, peering up at me until I can’t help but smile a tiny bit.

  She stocks the displays and they look like glass coffins and I wait for the feeling of panic to subside, and the minutes linger like oblivious houseguests and a feeling like emptiness displaces the panic.

  José arrives and then Flora, and the smell of croissants wafts out of the kitchen and Lucy comes out and turns the sign to Open. There is a rhythm to the shop; things get busier as the week goes on, with purchases peaking on Friday after work and crowds peaking on Saturday and Sunday. The cycle starts again on Monday but quieter does not mean empty, and too soon a man comes in with two boys dangling from his arms, one willowy and towheaded and the other sturdy and dark-haired, and a stroller rolls through the door like a tank, pushed by the mother. I grip the counter and wait for them to approach.

  The boys hop and skip and kick their way to the displays, their chubby cheeks bouncing with anticipation and their eyes fixed on the displays, tilted toward glee, wholly unaware that the shop has changed.

  I stand behind the glass and the towheaded boy draws back from the desserts arranged in unmoving rows. “What’s wrong?” he whispers shyly.

  The dark-haired boy pounds on the glass. “Wake up, dragons.”

  The rest of the family catches up, breathless and eager, and Lucy comes out of the kitchen and wipes her crumb-flecked hands on her apron and breaks the news that the Book is gone.

  The boys look at their parents.

  “Totally fixable, boys,” the mother says, and she says to Lucy, “We can fix this, right? You’re working on finding the Book? What can I do?”

  “What do you mean, the Book is gone?” the father says, confused. “Are we too early?”

  The towheaded boy presses himself into his mother’s legs, looking forlorn, and the dark-haired boy peers around the counter. “Is this a prank?” he says suspiciously. “It’s not funny.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Lucy sighs. “We’ll do what we can to find the Book and restore your favorite desserts, but this is the best we can do right now.”

  “I’ll ask around. We’ll find it and fix this,” the mother vows, energized, and she wheels the stroller around to leave.

  “Fix?” the father explodes as the truth dawns on him. “This should never have happened! What kind of business are you running?” He narrows his eyes at the stiff desserts, incensed, and Lucy waits for him to finish and her disappointed judgment is a cool, unnerving thing. He shakes it off and stalks to the door.

  “That was a bad joke. Can we come back in the afternoon?” the dark-haired boy says, grabbing his father’s arm.

  The towheaded boy is the last to go, running for the door after the rest of his family has left, and a woman with a severe bob holds it open for him before entering the shop. The ruffled, padded shoulders of her blouse make her waist look absurdly small.

  “The angel food cake,” she says without looking at the display, and I reach for a square and Lucy takes the plate from me.

  “I’ll take care of this,” she says, sending me away gently. “You should get to school.”

  Lunch box, I think halfheartedly. Backpack—notebook—pen—making sure that everything else is in its place, and on my way out I catch a glimpse of the woman pushing the plate of cake back across the counter, and she surprises me by reaching for Lucy’s face.

  “There, there,” she soothes, resting her palm against Lucy’s cheek. “Everything will be all right.”

  Over lunchtime I make a list to think through the case and the possibilities, and I return to the shop that night with a plan of action, itching to search for the Book. I greet Milton and we join Lucy behind the register and I ask if she was the one who dusted the display case and replaced the Book.

  “I don’t think so,” she says, but she does not sound confident. “It’s a little bit of a jumble, but . . . I don’t remember myself doing that.”

  A woman orders a peanut butter silk pie and shuffles to the side. Lucy beams at the next customer in line and I watch the woman dig in with her fork.

  “This is heavenly,” she says to me, rolling her eyes back, and I am about to smile when she adds sheepishly, “I suppose it’s an awful lot to live up to, though, isn’t it?” She shrugs and scoops up another heaping forkful and says around the cream cheese and fudge, “Did you hear, the new Jacques Pierre is opening soon?”

  I dodge the comment and march into the kitchen to continue the search. Flora is piping yogurt whipped cream frosting onto a poppy seed cake and José is spraying dishes in the sink, and when he sees me he brings up his hand for a soapy handshake and everything about the scene is so familiar, so ordinary, that it slides between my ribs, a cruel knife.

  “This is rough, you know, about the Book,” José says.

  “When did you see it? Last.”

  José does not remember and Flora scratches under the elastic of her hairnet and says she remembers dusting the case last week, but they do not remember removing the Book and dusting the case last night and neither do I. That leaves Milton, and he stops wagging his tail and backs away when I look at him thoughtfully. Would he chew up the Book, drop it into the toilet?

  I inspect his mouth, peel back his lips, and he tweaks his whiskers and twists his head away, miffed—Really? Who do you think I am? I hug him around the neck, knowing that I should not have doubted him, and he puts his wet nose into my ear and farts, and I suppose that is forgiveness.

  I reason out the scenarios, starting with the FOLA. The Book could have become lost after we locked up, but I think it is more likely that it happened before. Perhaps it was misplaced in the chaos of the protesters and the interrupted routine, and that means it is hiding somewhere in the shop, in an accidental place where it doesn’t belong. Tuning out the sounds of the kitchen, I clean and organize the cabinets and closets, searching.

  As I sort through cartons of milk and cream in the refrigerator, I hope that the Book is indeed hiding in the shop, because if it isn’t, then someone carried it out and the case becomes more difficult. Perhaps it was taken out with the trash, or the display was jostled and a customer unwittingly carried it home in a shopping bag—or it could have been stolen, too.

  Milton pads behind me as I move from cabinet to cabinet, sniffing at the things I discard and disagreeing occasionally—Not the good sponge!—and I tug the molding sponge out of his mouth and start to wonder about the landlord. He was a new variable in last night’s equation, but then again, so were the protesters and the repairman. I run the hypothesis by Milton anyway, and he spits up a chewed teaspoon and walks away without a second thought.

  I toss out the sponge and the teaspoon. He is right; the landlord does not like old things. I will need to keep my eyes open and continue searching, and there are a lot of places in the shop I have yet to scour and I remind myself that something—some clue—is bound to turn up.

  On Tuesday after school, I repeat my meticulous sweep of the shop, hoping that I have overlooked a clue. I go through bins of all-purpose flour and cake flour and pastry flour and almond flour, shaking them one by one and listening i
ntently and keeping an eye on Lucy as she unloads the week’s supplies herself, because she gave José the day off.

  She shuttles back and forth, faint creases etched in parentheses around her mouth, and she does not stumble or falter, just waves me away, saying, “I’m fine—I’m fine,” and keeps going.

  It is not the first time she has had to carry a load bigger than herself. The first restaurant her parents owned and operated was a modest bistro in Ohio known for its juicy pork chops au poivre. She doesn’t remember that one; she was a few weeks old when the tornado ripped down the block on Palm Sunday, looking like it might miss but veering at the last second into the main room of the restaurant.

  Uprooted by the disaster, the family moved westward to Iowa, where they reopened the restaurant and Lucy learned how to tenderize meat with red wine and thicken soups with roux. One Good Friday, an unattended kitchen fire grew out of control and in the very next instant, the family lost its second restaurant and Lucy’s mother nearly lost her leg.

  They moved west once more and opened their third restaurant in Santa Cruz, California. Lucy studied business management and helped run the restaurant and carried her mother around on her back when her leg buckled with the old pain, and they barely had time to forget before an earthquake struck and swallowed restaurant number three.

  It had to be a sign. They would not try again. But one month later when they sat around the TV and watched looping footage of the fall of the Berlin Wall—East Berliners storming the Bornholmer Strasse bridge and thrusting champagne bottles into the sky—Lucy’s parents turned and saw Lucy’s chin give a defiant hitch, and they were filled with the same sickening mix of fear and happiness they saw beamed through the screen.