Sharon arrives, as promised, bringing me coffee, the Starbucks version of Nublado decaf skim, lacking the Cuban depth. While I was putting in her deadbolt on Thursday she said she’d take me up on sharing my space and see how she did selling some things, as a start on the Noir Boudoir idea. She covers one side table with a vintage cloth and lays out an assortment of compacts, old lipstick cases, evening bags, and so on. I have the other side table and the back table — a U so the customer can walk in and browse. We’ll sit at the outer ends in lawnchairs I brought. She’s not only got on all her amber, which I now think of as her chest guard, she is wearing some heavy tortoiseshell vintage shades. “You look invincible,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.
The old guy comes by with his doggie on a leash. The pooch is wearing an argyle vest this morning, though the old guy himself is his usual shambles. He nods at us and heads for the Kussrows.
I ask Sharon to watch my stuff while I go chew the fat.
The old guy is running his hand across the dresser top. “What is this, Jeff,” he asks, “mahogany?”
“Veneer,” says Jeff. “In great shape. No label, but it’s got the look and the lines.”
The dog jumps up on the vanity bench and peers inquiringly at himself in the mirror.
“Gorgeous day,” I say to all and sundry.
“Finally some fresh air,” Hank says, and takes a deep breath to show off his chest expansion. I think he’s looking in Sharon’s direction.
I say, “You guys hear Sharon got burgled?”
Jeff nods. “Alex mentioned it. They get anything valuable?”
I shrug. “Just some assorted duds from that estate we did. She’s mostly upset that anyone came in. Probably someone who saw her unloading.”
“That’s what you get when you run your business from your home,” Hank says.
I say, “I’ve always counted on no one thinking I’ve got anything. House doesn’t look like much, you know. Probably the least improved property in Belle Meade at this point. You guys have a warehouse, right? Design district?”
“Right above there, Buena Vista,” says Hank.
“It’s a fortress,” Jeff adds. “We all move in when there’s a hurricane. Where I live on the beach, they evacuated twice this fall, for nothing, really.”
Hank says, “But if a big one came, we’d be safe in there. Got a generator and everything.”
“Well, looks like we’re through with that this year. Weather’s changed.” I stretch. “I’m going down to Islamorada and fish a bit, I think. I’ll head down this afternoon against the traffic coming back from the Keys, take a few days.”
“You got a boat?” asks Hank.
“Just a small one. Boston Whaler. Sixteen feet. How long have you lived down here?” I ask Hank, now that we’re talking.
“I grew up here,” he answers. “But I lived in Southern California for a while — used to surf, loved the beaches. Then got married, had a family, brought them back here.” He nods at Jeff. “Got Jeff and two more you haven’t met, not in the business.”
Customers are talking to Jeff, who has them around behind the dressing table to show how the mirror connects. The little pooch apparently has an overblown sense of himself from his time with the mirror, because he jumps off and yanks the leash from the old guy’s hand and runs across to the SPCA gang, an assortment of biggish dogs who look like they could eat him for brunch. He growls at them from his side of their not-very-secure-looking pen. I go over and pick him up. His little body is vibrating with indignation or machismo or whatever it is.
“You’ve got guts,” I say. I hand him back to the old guy, who takes the leash with a shaky old hand.
“Archie, say thank you,” he instructs, and the dog yaps at me in what doesn’t sound like gratitude.
“You should get a dog, Ray,” he tells me, nodding at the orphans up for adoption.
“I probably could use a watchdog, at that,” I say to the old guy, and he walks with me back to my booth. The dog sniffs around Sharon’s ankles and the old guy peruses our goods while Guillermo comes up with some kind of heavy bundle he sets down by my chair.
Guillermo unwraps his find, a vintage interest-calculating machine with Bakelite keys. “In operating condition,” he boasts.
“Seriously outmoded,” I say.
“But,” he says, “the guys who have outmoded it love these. I had three manual typewriters in my shop and last month they all sold to high-tech guys who like to decorate their offices with them.”
“You never know,” I say. “Business been good, then?”
He says, cautiously, “It runs hot and cold. I’m going over there to open up now.”
“I could never stand being stuck in a shop all day myself,” I say. And I tell him, too, that I’m going fishing, but he just shakes his head at my laziness. I let him leave a stack of cards for his shop on my table.
The little dog is nosing through my bin of Ephemera Samplers. I pull him away. “You looking for anything special this morning?” I say to the old guy. “I’ve got more at home, things that came from that estate. Nice stuff.”
“Just giving the dog some exercise,” he says, and shuffles off.
“How old is he?” whispers Sharon.
“Too old to ask even you out,” I say. She gives me a look through her shades.
And so the morning passes pleasantly. Beautiful girls come by and Sharon and I sell them things. One buys a powderbox, another an old Vogue, several select the brooches and hankies and hats of Helena Dorsett, fragments of another woman’s beauty, now theirs. We see a couple buy the dressing table, the fellow writing a check while the young lady sits on the bench, laughing up at him.
“I wonder if she kept it because it was a magic mirror,” Sharon muses. “Maybe it showed her always beautiful and young.”
“I think to her it stood for class,” I say. “Some idea she’d formed of what she’d have, and when she got it she never let it go. Why did she keep that whole room like that?”
Sharon shrugs.
A collector comes back twice before finally buying my Albert Einstein. “That’s how it works,” I say to Sharon. “If you want something too much, you’ll pay any price.”
She says we are all poisoned by desire and tells me some more about meditation. We discuss mindfulness and the radiance of things. It gets warm by noon, and Sharon breaks out a mini-battery-operated fan and fusses that the heat will ruin the perfumes. I agree with her by 1:00 that it’s time to pack it in.
Late in the afternoon I get the Whaler out: Paper Boat, I named it. Hook the trailer to my car, drive it over to the marina on the Little River just north of Belle Meade Island, and leave the boat and trailer there, for a fee. Driving back through my neighborhood, I take a different route and park a few blocks down beyond my house. I stroll back, enjoying the air, and think how I really have to walk more.
Home, I settle down for a night of meditation. It’s after 1 a.m. when I see the flashlight flicker by the dining room window. For God’s sake, break in by the back door, I think. That window frame is rotting from the rainy season and needs to be replaced. I left the bolt off.
He works his way back there. A quick smash of glass, and he’s in: sun porch, kitchen. He must be thanking his stars there’s no alarm. He slows down. In the dining room, his flashlight circles the piles on the table, and then he sends a beam into the living room. And there I’m waiting. I turn on the standing lamp by my chair.