This is too easy, she kept saying to herself. Something will go wrong. And something did, though it had nothing to do with the other clerks—or she didn't think it did, anyhow.
While she was eating lunch one day, somebody left an envelope on her desk. She didn't think much of it when she came back. People here left one another notes all the time. But when she opened the envelope, it didn't hold a note. One of Stanley Hsu's business cards fell on her desk. When she turned it over, she found he'd written, Please come to my shop tomorrow at eight. We have a lot to talk about, don't we?
"No," Lucy whispered. "I don't think we have anything to talk about." She tore the card into tiny pieces and dropped them in her wastebasket.
That didn't make her forget, however much she wished it could. It didn't mean she didn't go see the jeweler, either. Had she been alone in the world, she might have tried ignoring him. But she wasn't. Whatever he and her friends did, they wouldn't do just to her. The rest of her family made such lovely, tempting targets.
When she told her mother and father she'd got the note, they only nodded. It didn't surprise them. To her relief, they didn't tell her to do whatever Stanley Hsu wanted. She didn't think she could have stood it if they'd said that.
Her mother did say, "Be careful. These people mean business."
Lucy nodded. "I know that. I knew it as soon as they got me the promotion. Mr. Simmons is a tough man. Nobody can stand him, but he's tough. And he looked scared to death while he was talking to me."
"Better him than us," her father said. But he didn't say, Better the people at Curious Notions than us. He might have been thinking it—he probably was thinking it—but he didn't say it. Lucy was grateful for that.
Even coming back to it a second time, Lucy almost walked right past the jewelry shop. Fog rolled in as light faded from the sky. She hoped it wouldn't be too thick when she came out. She couldn't do anything about it, though. She couldn't do anything about going inside, either. In she went.
As it had before, the jewelry dazzled her. This time, she made herself look at what price tags there were. A lot of the pieces cost more than she made in a year, even with her new job and new salary. And the ones without the price tags? Well, they had to go up from there.
Stanley Hsu waited politely while she looked around. He was polite almost to a fault. He used good manners as a shield, so nothing would stick to him and so he wouldn't reveal his true self. If he'd shown more temper, Lucy would have had a better idea where she stood.
At last, he said, "I hope everything is going well for you?"
"You would know about that, wouldn't you? Lucy said.
He didn't tell her yes or no, not straight out. He just smiled, showing off very white teeth. "I was delighted to hear you had a new position."
"What did your friends tell Mr. Simmons to get him to do that?" Lucy asked.
"Nothing much." With a graceful flick of the hand, Stanley Hsu brushed the question aside. "He turned out to be a sensible man. He did the sensible thing."
What would have happened to him if he hadn't been . . . sensible? Would he have lost a finger? An eye? A leg? Both eyes? Would his mother have had a sad accident? Would his wife? His son?
What will happen to me if I'm not. . . sensible? The thought was snowstorms and icicles inside Lucy. She said, "You're going to tell me what you want from me now, aren't you?"
"I understand you do not care to do anything that might cause problems for the people at Curious Notions. I even understand why, I think." Stanley Hsu's nod was sober, considered, calculating. "Your reasons do you credit."
"That doesn't mean you care about them, does it?" Lucy asked. The jeweler didn't brush that aside, but he also didn't answer. Not answering, here, was the same as answering. Harshly, Lucy said it again: "Tell me what you want from me."
"One simple question will do," Stanley Hsu replied.
"What is it?" she asked suspiciously. Stanley Hsu told her. She tried not to show how surprised she was. That wasn't what she'd expected at all. She said, "That's it?"
The jeweler nodded. "That's it." He held up his right hand, as if taking an oath. "So help me, that's it. And that's all. Tell me exactly what Paul Gomes or his father says when you ask it. I want to know just the words they use. Do that, and you will meet your half of our bargain."
Lucy hadn't made the bargain. Stanley Hsu and the Triads had forced it on her. But if this would satisfy them . . . "You're sure?" she asked, suspicious still.
He held up his hand again. "So help me, I'm sure."
"What will you do if you don't like the answer?"
"Whatever seems necessary," he replied with a shrug. "But it won't have anything to do with you, whatever it is."
Things weren't that simple. Lucy could see as much. She could also see that Stanley Hsu's friends would do whatever they were going to do if she didn't get them their answer. That helped clear her conscience. "All right," she said. "I'll ask it."
"Yes, ma'am." Paul tried to sound enthusiastic about a stereo system that would have been a hopeless antique in the home timeline. "This one will make your records sound better than they ever have before." Even talking about records made him feel as if he'd fallen back into the dim, dark days of the twentieth century.
"That's nice," said the woman who was admiring the stereo. "And it will also be something most of my neighbors don't have, won't it?"
"Oh, yes." Paul tried to exude sincerity. "This is our very latest model."
She smiled at him. Her teeth had braces on them. That was much much less common and more expensive here than in the home timeline. Her dress was of a turquoise silk that glowed under the lights in the shop. She wore a wedding ring with a fat diamond in it, too. She was old—about his father's age—and kind of dumpy, but she had money. Maybe she was a nob of Nob Hill. Paul had always liked the sound of that.
"I'll take it," she said. Only after she decided that did she bother to ask, "How much does it cost?"
"Like I told you, this is our very top-of-the-line model," Paul answered. "It's $499.95." Not even five benjamins, he thought. But it wasn't the same thing. Five benjamins, in the home timeline, meant a burger and fries and a soda at Burger King. Some people here didn't make five hundred dollars a year.
She reached into her purse. She reached into her wallet. Out came five hundred-dollar bills. She was as casual with them as if they were benjamins back home. "Here you are," she said grandly. "Let me get my chauffeur. He'll carry it to the Mercedes."
She threw that right in Paul's face. It was supposed to hit him even harder than the cash. Hardly any Americans in this alternate could afford a fancy German car. She wasn't just rich, then. She was very rich. And she had connections, too, or she would have had to get along with a Cadillac or an Imperial.
The chauffeur was a big, beefy man. Paul held the door open for him. He lugged the stereo system down the street to the car. The Mercedes was a big one. Somehow, Paul wasn't surprised. The trunk swallowed the system. The chauffeur closed it with a thud. He opened the rear door for his boss, then got in himself and drove away.
Paul was glad to put the money in the register. He wanted to rub his hands on his jeans even after he got rid of it. It didn't feel clean to him. What had that woman or her husband done to earn it? Did he really want to know?
He made a sour face when the bell chimed again a minute later. Someone else who had more money than he or she knew what to do with and wanted a new toy to impress the neighbors? But then Paul found himself smiling. "Hello, Lucy," he said. "How are you?"
"I'm doing pretty well, thank you." She strolled up and down the aisles. "So many wonderful things here."