Rare Objects. Kathleen Tessaro

whipped round. “I beg your pardon?”

      “You’re angry!” Mr. Kessler chuckled. “Well, that beats all!”

      “You think I’m funny?” Embarrassment vanished; now I was furious. “There’s nothing funny about it, Mr. Kessler! I’m flat broke, and I need a job!”

      “And I still need a clerk. In fact”—he ran his fingers through his beard—“a blonde from Albany would suit me very well.”

      “Ha, bloody, ha!” I flung open the door.

      “Hold on a moment! I need a girl who can make sales and keep the books, and who fits in with my customers.”

      “What about Roberta?”

      He gave a distinctly Eastern European shrug, a kind of slow roll of the shoulders that came from centuries of inherited resignation. “I doubt Roberta has your dramatic intuition. Now calm down and close the door. Let’s see your dress.”

      “Why?”

      “Come now!” He made a soft tutting noise, as if he was luring a stray cat with a saucer of milk. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

      I closed the door and took off my coat, careful to hold it so the label showed. I was wearing the navy blue knit. It was the nicest outfit I owned, and even at that, I’d spent the night before darning moth holes beneath the arms.

      Mr. Kessler opened up the jewelry cabinet and took out a long string of pearls and a pair of pearl clip-on earrings. “Here,” he said, handing them over. “You can wear what you like from the display, as long as it goes back at the end of the day. If a man comes in, he likes to see the jewelry on a pretty girl. It’s the easiest way to sell it.”

      I wasn’t sure I understood. “Are you hiring me?”

      “If you can keep the fiction for the customers, you might be rather useful. I’m looking for someone adaptable, with a pragmatic disposition. And I have to admit, your stories have flair.” He winked, tapping the side of his nose. “The bit about the persistent beau was clever. You’ll be good at selling.”

      “But … but aren’t you afraid I’m going to steal something?”

      He gave me a rather surprised look. “Are you?”

      “Well, no.”

      “You’re an actress, May with a y. Not a thief,” he informed me. “A real thief doesn’t warn you of their intentions.”

      I followed him back behind the glass counters to a room divided into two offices. He hung his coat up in one and pointed to the other. “You can use that desk. It’s Mr. Winshaw’s.”

      “Won’t Mr. Winshaw need it?”

      “Mr. Winshaw isn’t here. Do you drink tea or coffee?”

      “Coffee, please.”

      “So do I.” He gestured to the back storage room. “There’s a sink in the bathroom and a kettle on the hot plate.”

      Then he went inside his office and closed the door.

      I stood there, unsure of what exactly had just happened.

      Then I slipped the pearls over my head. There was no mistaking the real thing. They were heavy with a creamy golden-pink luster. The echo of some long-lost perfume clung to them; sensual, sharp, and sophisticated, it could be muted by time but not silenced.

      Instantly they transformed that old blue knit; when your jewels are real, your dress doesn’t matter.

      But no sooner had I put them on than an eerie feeling came over me, at once familiar yet anxious and uncertain.

      The pearls reminded me of someone—the girl on the far ward.

      

BINGHAMTON STATE HOSPITAL, NEW YORK, 1931

      She was wearing pearls. That was the first thing I noticed about her. Large and even, perfectly matched, falling just below her collarbone over the thin blue cotton hospital gown. She strolled into the day room of the Binghamton State Hospital with its bare, institutional green walls and floor stinking of strong bleach like she was wandering into the dining room of the Ritz. Willowy and fine boned, she had blue eyes fringed by long, very black lashes and deep brown hair cut in a straight bob, pushed back from her face. A navy cardigan was draped casually over her shoulders, as if she were on her way to a summer luncheon and had turned back at the last minute to grab it, just in case the weather turned.

      The rest of us were in the middle of what the nurses referred to as “occupational therapy,” or making ugly hook rugs. The girl with the pearls moved slowly from table to table like visiting royalty, surveying everyone’s work with a benign, interested expression.

      “Oh, how interesting!” she’d murmur, or “What an unusual color choice!”

      Then she stopped beside me. Up went a perfectly plucked eyebrow, like a question mark. “Well, now! Surely that’s the most deeply disturbing thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

      “Well, no one’s asking you, are they?” I was tired of crazy people. And this place was bursting with them in all shapes and sizes.

      “There’s no need to take it that way. It’s a very powerful piece.”

      I glared at her. “It’s not a piece. It’s a rug.”

      “A very angry rug, if you ask me.” She sat down, picked up a hook. “Go on then—show me how you do it.”

      I wasn’t in the mood for a demonstration. I was only here because the staff made me come, hauling me out of my usual spot in the rocking chair by the window. “Ask the nurse if you’re so interested.”

      She laughed. It was a drawing-room laugh—the practiced jocularity of a hostess, high and false. “Don’t be so serious—I’m only teasing you!” She nodded to the other women in the room. “You’re the best of the lot, you know. An artist!”

      It wasn’t much of a compliment. There were maybe a dozen of us rounded up for the afternoon session, all dressed in shapeless blue smocks, heads bowed over our work. There’d been a lice outbreak, and we’d all been clipped. But this girl still had a good head of hair. She must be new. The two of us were the youngest in the room by maybe ten years, although it was hard to tell for sure.

      “So you’re a connoisseur, is that it?” I pointed to a thin, wiry woman in her mid-fifties with no teeth, furiously hooking across the room. “Mary’s pretty good. Why don’t you go bother her? She doesn’t speak. Ever. But she can make a rug in an afternoon.”

      The girl twirled the hook between her fingers. “But you have talent—a real feeling for the medium, possibly even a great future in hooked rugs. Provided of course that people don’t want to actually use them in their homes. So”—she leaned forward—“tell me, how long have you been here?”

      I yanked another yarn through. I’d been here long enough to wonder if I’d ever be allowed out again. Mine was an open-ended sentence: I needed the doctor’s consent before I’d see the outside world again. But I wasn’t about to let her see that I’d never been so alone and terrified in my life. I gave a shrug. “Maybe a month, I don’t know,” as if I hadn’t been counting every hour of every day. “What about you?”

      “I’m just stopping in for a short while,” she said vaguely.

      “‘Stopping in’?” I snorted. “On your way where, exactly?”

      She ignored my sarcasm. “Why are you here? In for anything interesting?”

      “This isn’t a resort, you know,” I reminded her.