“Let me show you something,” he said, taking her around a dark turn and snapping on a light. They were now in a room larger than the first, and even more crowded with aged merchandise.
“Look,” he said, waving his arms. “Anything you want, you could find it here.”
She stared about at piles of old coats, at paintings in bad colors in splintered frames, at shaky stacks of ancient saucers, and her lower lip began to quiver. “What are you talking about? These are things people threw out because they didn’t want them.”
She stared plaintively at him, but his attention had been drawn by a sled with wooden runners that leaned against the nearest wall. He shook his head — he had not noticed it before. Adele came to pull him back down the aisle.
“Listen, I had my nephew Myron, the attorney, do some checking. He found out the previous owner, God rest his soul, just disappeared last year, without a trace.”
Guerin looked over his shoulder toward the sled. “Maybe he had something better to do,” he said, turning to her with a smile. “A trip to the islands maybe.”
She huffed on toward the front, unamused. Guerin stopped to stare down at a wooden chest, another thing he had missed in all the clutter. A satin gown, glittering with sequins, trailed out of the partly opened lid. He found himself wondering if Adele had ever worn such a thing. Then she was back, pulling him impatiently along.
“I see these bums around here with their fires going and their cooking in the vacant lots. They probably took his money and his clothes and then they ate him.”
At the counter, she turned to face him. She took a deep breath, her gaze faltering for a moment. “Guerin, come away from here. I want you to come with me to the Centurion place Myron found. I can cook for you. I’ll take care of you. I have enough money for both of us.”
She glanced away as she finished, and Guerin felt something knot in his throat. After a moment, he moved forward and took her shoulders gently.
“Adele, please. Try to understand. All my life I work for somebody else and try to get ahead and it never works out. Now I got this place that is mine. A market it isn’t, but it’s okay.” He broke off and managed his broadest smile. “And God willing, I’ll save my money and someday I’ll go off to Tahiti.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand to stop her. “It’s a nice dream, Adele, and I don’t want you should give me such a hard time about it, okay?”
She stared at him, her face falling into inestimable sadness. “I knew you wouldn’t listen,” she said. “Oh, it’s so awful to get old.” Her eyes had begun to fill, and she turned quickly for the door. When he tried to follow, she pushed him away.
“Stay here, then. Stay with your junk.”
The door slammed behind her and Guerin stood staring uncertainly after her. Finally, he moved back behind the counter and sank glumly into the easy chair he had dragged out for better light, staring up at his bulletin board and his thermometer for success. He picked up an edition of Gaugin prints he’d found in the stacks and began to flip listlessly through the pages.
Shortly, his hands lay atop his favorite of the painter’s illustrations, innocent natives awaiting a ship’s arrival on their unspoiled beach. In this version, however, it was Guerin himself who stood at the prow of the vessel that was bound for the island port, the salt spray cool in his face and his eyes fixed upon a lovely maiden tying up her hair at the shore. Though it seemed impossible, and she was certainly younger and more carefree here, it was unmistakably Adele in the colorful sarong who awaited him. Even more astonishing than that was the happiness he felt as the ship moved inexorably toward the shore.
The doorbell of the shop sounded then, interrupting the snores of dreaming Guerin. He started awake, the book slipping to the floor, his gloom swooping back upon him as he stood to assume the role of proprietor.
It was a blond woman wearing large-lensed sunglasses who came through the door, urging along her husband, a balding man in walking shorts and golf shirt, sporting around his neck a gold chain the thickness of Guerin’s little finger.
“Oh, we’re soooo glad to see you’re open again, Mr. Rogovin. We just love your place,” she cooed, already heading for the stacks.
The woman’s husband came to clap him heartily on the shoulder. “Been out buying, have you? You must have scads of new things.” He gave Guerin a wink and dove into the aisles after his wife, who had already begun squealing at some find.
As Guerin stared into the depths of the shop in befuddlement, there came the sounds of something heavy being dragged across the planked floor toward the front of the shop. Finally, the couple emerged, wrestling with a fortune-telling booth from a carnival arcade. The thing, the size of a phone booth, held a dummy gypsy wobbling over a cloudy crystal ball. Guerin clutched hold of the counter for support.
The wife motioned her husband forward with an unspoken command. The man affected unconcern as he approached Guerin. “Say, we’ve found something we might be interested in.”
Guerin shook his head in wonder. “I’ve never seen that before...”
The man turned to his wife, who frowned and lifted her chin in a commanding motion.
“So, we’d be willing to go... say, a hundred and a half.”
“Charles!” his wife whispered.
Charles shrugged. “I meant to say two hundred.”
“Two hundred dollars?” Guerin repeated, dumbfounded.
The woman drew her husband aside. “I want it,” she hissed. Charles turned back to Guerin and slapped some bills into his palm. “Look, we’ll go four hundred dollars, and not a penny more.”
Guerin stared at the hundred-dollar bills in his hand, wondering if he was still dreaming. The woman motioned to her husband, and they began wrestling the thing toward the door. “We just love it,” she smiled, with a sidelong hateful glance at Charles. “You’d have to shoot us to stop us now.”
“Shoot?” Guerin repeated. “Four hundred dollars?”
“Ciao!” she said, heaving the booth on out the door toward her husband.
He followed the pair outside and watched as they lifted the booth into the back of a Cadillac converted to a short-bed pickup, then returned the couple’s wave as they sped off into the evening shadows.
He checked his watch and walked back into the shop, turning the window sign over and shooting the door bolt home. Through the glass he thought he saw the wino watching him from a storefront opposite, but when he blinked to clear his eyes, the vision was gone. He went quickly to the counter, certain that the cash too would have vanished, but it was still there, four crisp bills that marked the first notch upon his sales thermometer.
That night, though he did not dream, he awoke once with a start, certain he’d heard the sounds of thunderous surf about to crash down upon him. When he leaped from his small bed to investigate, he found that one of the paddle fans was rustling a grass skirt atop one of the stacks of papers. Guerin moved the skirt, then staggered back to bed and lay for hours, unable to sleep.
At eight the next morning, an insistent knocking roused him. He swung out of bed and drew on a satin dressing gown he’d scavenged from the stacks — it seemed like something his father would have fancied. If it were Adele come to pester him again, he’d offer her a gift, a gesture of peace, perhaps the sequined dress from the wooden chest.
When he opened up, he found instead two youths in ragged tennis shoes and jeans staring up at him warily. The taller youth stepped forward.
“We been looking for a basketball,” he said, peering over Guerin’s shoulder.