Chapter 17 Clara #2
I walked toward Zeg’s pawnshop. I hadn’t been there for a while and for once had nothing to sell, but I was lonely enough that I was willing to listen to his scolding for the afternoon, just to talk to another person, to hear my own voice out loud.
I once had a vision of Zeg helping a man who must have been his father at a shoe store: his father would hold out a shoe to a customer, and Zeg would hurry into the back room to look for the proper size among the stacks of white shoeboxes.
In the vision I could see out the front window to what must have been Atlantic Avenue, the marquee of the old movie house.
The theater was closed now and the store across the way, where Zeg’s father’s shop would have been, was now a fried chicken restaurant.
So that explained Zeg, I guessed. He was just like the rest of us.
He couldn’t let go of what he had lost and would spend the rest of his days hoarding the wrong things trying to make up for it.
Maybe his father had gone out of business when the casinos were built.
Maybe his pawnshop was his small way of getting back: collecting gamblers’ wedding rings and lucky coins when they came to him pleading, liquor wafting out of their pores, eyes bloodshot, hands shaking, giving them a tenth of what their most prized possessions were worth.
Maybe he felt like he was getting his revenge by being exacting, cheap.
A strip of bells attached to a leather strap jingled when I pushed through the door.
Zeg was bent over a copy of the Press of Atlantic City, and I could see the thinning hair at the top of his head.
His store was a mess, but he knew where everything was, as though at the end of the day he brought home a map of his inventory and studied it before he slept.
Below him, a glass case gleamed with rhinestone necklaces, tarnished silver spoons, gold bracelets and earrings, old watches, all stopped at different times, and a few newer ones that told the times in other cities, too: London, Tokyo.
I loved looking at the things in his case, but he was as indifferent to all of it as though they were tabs from soda cans, bits of penny candy, tokens from the arcade.
They were like the visions in a way. Scraps of a life, clues. And then I had an idea.
“Good morning,” I called. Flirting didn’t work for Zeg, and stealing from him was out of the question—he was way too vigilant for that, one of the few people I knew who actually paid attention to how other people moved through space.
I always wondered, what did he want, other than to read his paper and exact his revenge, piece by piece, pawn by pawn? I couldn’t tell.
“If you’re bringing me some old movie poster or a porcelain doll, you can forget it. I’m up to my neck in goddamned porcelain dolls. And I don’t want to deal with paper goods. They don’t hold up, too much salt and water in the air.”
“No dolls. I’m here as a customer today.”
“A customer? That’s rich.”
I didn’t say anything, but crouched to look at the sleeves in a box of old records.
“Where’s Des been? Haven’t seen either of you around much lately.”
“Des? Your guess is as good as mine.”
“So, what are you looking for, anyway?” He must have felt sorry for me—his voice had softened.
I glanced at the trays of rings. The blonde woman had that pale band of skin on her finger. She had rubbed it as she spoke. “Hey. Has anyone pawned any wedding rings here lately?”
“By lately you mean what, today?”
“Like three weeks ago. A woman. Sandy-blonde hair. About as long as mine. Locket around her neck.”
“How do you know that? She steal something that you stole first? She was real shifty when she came in. I would have rather had that necklace, to be honest. You have no idea how many wedding rings walk in here each week. Lockets, not so much.”
“Which ring was it?”
“Christ, you think I remember?”
“Zeg, I know you remember.”
He sighed, produced another tray from the case, scanned the rows of rings.
I thought of the reading I gave her: the Four of Wands, the happy home life.
That ring had meant something to her, once.
Zeg plucked a gold band from the tray and handed it to me.
It had a pattern of tiny flowers engraved on the outside.
I tilted it to get a look at the inside.
In scrolling cursive: Victoria and Zachary, 7-13-14.
I felt gratified that the reading had been accurate, until I realized that also meant there was something bad waiting for her.
“Victoria,” I said out loud. I don’t know why it felt so good to have a name—a name didn’t tell me anything else about her, didn’t help explain where she had come from, why she had been so nervous around me, or where she had gone.
It didn’t explain why, after she came to me, I saw images of her baby, heard its cries rip through my brain.
But it was some sort of comfort, one more thing that helped make her feel real.
“You done with that?” Zeg asked.
I held the ring in my palm, traced it with my fingertip, then clicked it onto the counter. “Yeah. But what can I get for twenty bucks?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on. Not true.” Zeg rolled his eyes and crouched to pull a few trays from the case.
A row of vintage buttons with rhinestone centers, still sewn into the card.
A single shoe buckle. A glass marble. A thimble.
I lifted each item, weighed it in my hand.
I was stalling, because it had felt good to come see Zeg, like when things were simpler.
When I was just busy plucking bracelets from drunk ladies’ wrists, stealing wallets from senior citizens.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Hey, show me those?” I tapped on the glass to indicate a tray of pocketknives. The one that caught my eye had a pearly handle decorated with silver swirls. It gleamed in the light.
“Out of your budget.”
“Can I at least see?”
Another grunt, and Zeg crouched again.
He pushed the knives toward me. “You are wasting my time.” Some of them had handles that looked like bone; others were carved with marks and symbols that I didn’t recognize. I touched my finger to the one with the silver swirls.
“Don’t even think about it.”
I touched another, a longer one that looked less ornate. “Uh-uh.”
I picked up a third, and when Zeg didn’t say anything, I flicked the blade open. It was freckled with a few rust spots but otherwise it seemed okay. It was simple, silver, and a little shiver of feeling moved through me when I looked at it, felt the cool metal against the skin of my palm.
“How about this one?”
“What do you even want that for?” I didn’t really know, other than it made me feel good to hold it. A little less small, a little less afraid.
“Forty-five dollars for that one.”
“Twenty dollars is all I’ve got.” I pushed the bill toward him and his eyes caught on my fingers, the matching Band-Aids, and something like surprise crossed his face. Just for a second, and then it was gone. Sometimes I thought Zeg might have a little bit of the gift, too.
“You’re robbing me blind, kid.”
I handed the ring back to Zeg, pushed my twenty in his direction, and slipped the knife into my bag. Down to $630, but the knife had called to me, and I knew better than to resist a feeling like that.
I was a block away from home when the tingle came back and a vision moved through me, like a kaleidoscope turned too fast. Highways, roads stretching endlessly.
A woman baking bread in a sunlight-filled kitchen.
A hotel room, the sense of being hit hard across the face.
Something soft and pale, something bright—shining discs, hanging above a bed.
I came to exhausted. My limbs ached, the way they had when I’d had the flu last year.
The throbbing in my head from the blow lingered, and I had to blink a few times before the street around me came back into focus.
Each step toward home felt heavy, full of effort.
Her name was in the back of my throat, but I didn’t want to say it, to match up what I knew with the thing I had been afraid of.
The vision was about Julie. Julie Zale. The tooth, Victoria’s crying child. I couldn’t deny it anymore. There was something evil and ugly at work behind these visions. And now someone had gotten to Julie Zale, too. I texted Lily. Please, can we meet?