She didn't sound as if she wished she could afford them, though Paul knew she couldn't. He remembered that her father worked with this alternate's electronics. Maybe that helped her see how much better this stuff was, even if it would have been junk in the home timeline.
"We try to stock the best," Paul said—which was true, if you compared it to the state of the art here.
Lucy Woo nodded. "And you do." Now she smiled at him. "Did I tell you I got a promotion? Now I'm a clerk—they took me off my sewing machine."
"That's terrific! Congratulations!" Paul said. "Did you get a raise, too, I hope?"
"Oh, yes. A nice one," she said. "And I only have to work half a day on Saturday."
"Wonderful!" Paul worked hard to sound happy for her. The hours people here put in would have been illegal back home. Working half a day on Saturday on top of long hours Monday through Friday was no bargain, not to him. But it was better than what she'd had before. Paul tried to change the subject: "I hope your father is doing all right?"
"Yes, he's fine now. The Germans haven't been back." Lucy seemed to intend those two sentences as two halves of the same thought. She waved again. "He does wonder where you come by some of these things."
"We make them ourselves, in the basement." Paul laughed. Of course Lucy's dad would wonder where Curious Notions got the gadgets from the home timeline. Paul couldn't very well tell Lucy or her father or anyone else from this alternate.
Lucy smiled a little—just enough to show she knew he was joking. She walked up to the counter, leaned one elbow on it, and said, "Tell me something, would you please?" She studied him like a birdwatcher eyeing a brand-new warbler.
"What is it?" Paul asked cautiously.
"Where are you really from?"
"Right here. San Francisco." That was the answer he had to give. It was not true and true at the same time. The lively city he lived in wasn't much like this sad, sorry place. But then he had a question of his own: "Why do you want to know?" That was an urgent question, an important question. Did she think he was from somewhere else in these conquered United States? Or did she think he was from somewhere else altogether? She wasn't supposed to think that, not even when it was so. Especially not when it was so.
She said, "It's not just me. There are . . . people who want to know about you. If you don't tell me, they might find someone else to ask you. Whoever that is, he won't be so friendly."
"I think I've already met somebody like that," Paul said. As a matter of fact, he was sure he had. And making sure growers in the Central Valley didn't sell to Curious Notions hadn't been friendly, not even a little bit.
"I'm not surprised," Lucy said. "You've made people notice you. What you've got here makes people notice you. If you're not. . . big enough, getting noticed like that can be awfully dangerous."
By themselves, Paul and his father weren't anything much. When you added in what they could call on from the home timeline, it was a different story. But the home timeline had only limited access here. This was the Kaiser's home ground—and also that of the Chinese who'd grown curious about Curious Notions. That made things a lot harder.
Even so, Paul said, "We can take care of ourselves." And if we can't, he thought, we can scoot back to the home timeline. Let's see anybody bother us there.
"I hope so." Lucy's tone of voice couldn't mean anything but, You've got to be kidding.
"We can." Paul knew getting angry was silly, but he couldn't help it.
"I hope so." Now Lucy did sound as if she meant it, which surprised him. She went on, "I don't think you're really from here. I've never met anybody from here who's anything like you. You don't even talk quite the way I do."
What was she reacting to? That he didn't come from an occupied country and did act like a free man? That was probably part of it. People in these United States had been downtrodden for 140 years. They were cowed. The Germans made sure they were cowed. Paul wasn't. His United States was free, and the strongest country in the world. He didn't need to worry about any opinion but his own. It had to show.
As for the way he talked . . . English here wasn't much different from the way it was in the home timeline. San Francisco didn't have any special accent, the way Boston or New York City or New Orleans did. Maybe it was a matter of style, not one of word choice or vowel sounds at all.
"I grew up on Thirty-third Avenue, south of Golden Gate Park," he said after a pause only a little longer than it should have been. And that was also both true and untrue. Thirty-third Avenue, yes, but not in this alternate.
Lucy shook her head. "I don't believe it. That's a tough part of town. You'd be different if you came from there."
Paul muttered something under his breath. It wasn't a tough part of town in the home timeline. It had been, back in the early days of the twenty-first century, but the neighborhood had changed the other way as time went by.
"Well, I did," he said out loud. "Believe it or not. I don't care."
"One of these days, maybe you'll tell me the truth," Lucy said. "Till then . . ." She nodded to him, turned around, and walked out of the store.
How bad did I mess that up? Paul wondered. He did some more muttering. By the way things looked, by the way they felt, he couldn't have messed it up worse if he'd tried for a week.
Lucy didn't want to go back to Stanley Hsu's shop. She didn't know what to make of the answer Paul had given her. She was afraid the jeweler would know. If he did, what kind of advantage would that give him over the people who ran Curious Notions?
She thought about making up a story. But what could she say? She didn't know what kind of lie the jeweler might believe. Besides, she'd made a deal with him. Once she told him what Paul had said, he'd leave her alone.
"Hello, Miss Woo," he said when she walked into his shop. She might have been a German countess by the way he treated her. "I was hoping I might see you soon."
Everything he said had a hidden meaning. Was he just telling her he was glad she'd dropped by? Or was he saying he'd had her followed and knew she'd gone to Curious Notions? She couldn't be sure. She couldn't be sure of anything with him.
He smiled, and went right on smiling. For all that smile had to do with what he felt, it might have been a Halloween mask. But she couldn't see past it. It hid whatever was really there.
"What have you got to tell me?" he asked.
"I went to Curious Notions and asked Paul Gomes the question you told me to," she said.
"Good. Very good." Stanley Hsu leaned forward across the counter. He might have been a hunting dog taking a scent. "And what did he say?"
"He said he was from right here in San Francisco. He said he was raised on Thirty-third Avenue south of Golden Gate Park," Lucy answered.
"Did he?" Whatever the jeweler thought of that, he kept to himself. Yes, he used his smile as a mask, but it was a good one. "Do you believe him?"
"I don't know," Lucy answered slowly. "He didn't sound like he was lying, but everybody knows what the Sunset District is like. He doesn't act like somebody who comes from there. He acts like somebody rich, somebody who doesn't have to worry about anything. He almost acts like a German—like he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to do it."
"Interesting." Stanley Hsu nodded. "We didn't make a mistake when we got that clerk's job for you, did we? You're plenty clever enough to do it. If you had a better education, you could do much more than that. I'm sure of it."
Lucy didn't say anything. She was lucky to have got as much schooling as she had. Most of her childhood friends had gone to work even before she did. If your family needed money, what were you going to do? Whatever you had to.
"Why did you want to know what he'd say to that question?" she asked.