Matt mulled the alien concept of owing himself anything but angst as they drove to the Goodwill building, a low, bland bunker of green-painted cinderblocks with a few dusty display windows near the entrance.
Inside, it was a warehouse crowded with racks of wilted clothes on twisted wire hangers, homemade shelves of abandoned dishes and household whatzits and a weary odor of must, stale cigarette smoke and dust.
Temple's pale eyebrows rose. "Never been here. I didn't know they had a rack of vintage clothes."
he was off like a racehorse interbred with a bloodhound.
Matt felt a benign, avuncular amusement as he watched her page expertly through the sorry castoffs looking for buried treasure. Men hunted furred and feathered creatures in the woods, and then killed them. Women hunted inanimate things, expressing the same instinct in a bloodless way. Men proved their virility with limp, frail legs and dead antlers on a car hood; women announced their feminity with a fake leopard-skin pelt draping a footstool.
Matt strolled the naked concrete floor through cluttered aisles, watching the people here as if they were in a casino. Many Hispanics, mostly women, a lot of children in tow. Fussing, sharp Spanish reprimands, whining. They needed these fifty-cent jars and two-dollar baby rompers. By the register, a woman was checking out. Some dirty beige acrylic gloves for the Las Vegas "winter," a few navy-blue towels in still-good shape, a child's plastic toy in Crayola colors. A small pile of children's clothes.
She had a one dollar bill on the counter, and was doling Out coins from her purse for the rest. Her face was the pinched, unlearned mask of Depression-era photographs. The poor could wax fat or lean on malnutrition, depending on their metabolisms, and this wizened mother had thinned with want.
"Twenty-five cents'" She gazed at a child's orange jacket, then counted out pennies. Meticulous. One. Two. Three. Right down to the last penny, which was coming fast.
"I guess I'll leave the rest." She said, shutting the worn wallet.
The woman at the register knew better than to argue with the face of the bottomed-out. Or to extend the too-obvious magic wand of charity. This charity cost. Not much, but enough for self-respect.
"Here" Matt extended a ten-dollar bill to the cashier. "Merry Christmas."
"Oh." The woman wanted to say no. Her eyes rested on the toy pushed away at the last moment.
The cashier rang up the abandoned goods with swift efficiency, before the woman could protest.
"Thank you." She barely looked at him. She barely spoke aloud.
He said nothing more, because it would be too little, and too much.
And he accepted the change the cashier solemnly counted into his hand. Offering it to the woman would have been insulting.
So little had been needed of the ten. Two dollars and thirty-five cents.
The woman snapped the coin section of her wallet shut, gathered up the recycled brown grocery-store bag, and left, with one more murmured "thanks" over her shoulder vaguely in Matt's direction.
"That was nice." Temple stood beside him, chastened. "I never even noticed her."
"Tis the season."
He shrugged to avoid the eyes of the clerk, as she avoided his. Face-to-face charity was always as delicately negotiated as international treaties. It did not "blesseth he that giveth and he that taketh," as Shakespeare promised that mercy would via Portia the Wise, the "Daniel come to judgment" in female guise and guile. It embarrassed them both.
Temple took his arm. "I'm sorry I took you out on this wild-goose chase. I just wanted to help you get something for that empty apartment of yours."
"Why?"
"Nest instincts. Maybe I just wanted to make sure you're staying."
"Oh, I'm stuck here--not at the Circle Ritz, per se, but in the real world. At least they tell me it's real."
"It is." Temple's eyes narrowed with the vigilance of the huntress. She skittered away toward the far wall, through a weary, grazing herd of melamine end tables and crooked lamps and dirty lamp shades.
"Oh, God!" she said.
And to his embarrassment, he paid attention and followed her.
"Will you look at that."
"That" was apparently a long, long sofa, an overstatement in curves and upholstered in red fabric that stretched perhaps eight feet along a wall.
"Real suede," Temple pronounced, stroking the surface to verify the diagnosis. "This is custom. From the fifties. Can you imagine custom-ordering an eight-foot sofa?"
"No. I can honestly say that I absolutely cannot imagine ordering an eight-foot sofa."
"How much do they want for it?" She was patting along the sinuous length, looking for tags. "Aha." She held up a card on a string from behind the back. Her voice lowered. Matt had to come closer to hear. "Only three-twenty. This thing was thousands when it was made! And it's in perfect condition. You can tell granddaddy died and they pulled it out of the den after forty years of placid use."
She squeezed behind the sofa and began trying to push it away from the wall.
"Temple."
"Heavy." Temple was not usually one to state the obvious. "Can you push out the opposite end? I want to see the backside, because of course it's made to sit in the middle of the room ... good, good-- ah, something happened here, but... you could lay something over the back. A leopard skin or something with a little kitsch. Or have just this section recovered. Look at these seams. Perfect. This is hand-sewn." Temple straightened, fire in her slate-gray eyes. "Matt. You've got to get it."
"Three hundred dollars, I don't think so."
"That's nothing! You could buy junk at the warehouse furniture stores for that amount. This is the real thing. It's a classic. Pure design, pure materials, almost unused. You'd never find this in a million years."
"Especially if I weren't looking for it."
"It's made for the Circle Ritz. Don't you get it? It's in the period and it's of an equal quality."
Temple raced over to the cashier, Matt, bemused, followed.
"That sofa over there. Yes, the big red one. When did it come in? Two months ago? And where did it come from? Uh-huh. Oh, sure"
Matt heard the masterful inflection of mere curiosity in her comments as she wheedled every detail available about the huge sofa from the clerk, all the while acting as if her interest was merely . . . academic.
"Such an interesting piece," she finished up. "Too bad it's so big. I mean, where would you put it if you didn't have some huge recreation room in the basement, and so few houses here have basements ... it sure is something, though."
She ambled back to study it, Matt her obedient servant coming up behind. He understood that an entire scenario was being enacted here.
Temple grabbed his sweater sleeve as soon as they were out of earshot. "You could offer two-ninety for it. Easy. I'd hate to go lower, and lose all chance of negotiating."
"You could offer two-ninety, Temple. You're obviously in love with the piece. You should have it."
"But my place is built around that stupid hide-a-bed sofa. It's hemmed in with furniture and accessories. Your place is a blank slate. Matt, you could build a whole room around this wonderful piece. Imagine it sitting on that lovely old parquet, warming as burgundy wine. It would save you buying a love seat and two chairs and this and that. Hey, you could sleep someone over on it."
He eyed the slow but definite curves. "If they had scoliosis. How would we get it moved out of here anyway?"
"Electra's a landlady. She must know dozens of reliable outfits that move stuff. Couldn't cost more than . . . fifty bucks."
"I'm on the third floor--"
Temple shook her head impatiently. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime find, trust me. You need to put something in your living room. With this as an anchor, the job's three-quarters done. You have to get this, or you're absolutely crazy!"