in study hall, with both doors partly closed. He looked like a taller, African American version of Jet Li, and he moved like him too, with the same acrobatic quickness. He was in Mr. Mauskopf’s other social studies section, and we had health ed together. Most of the girls at Fisher had crushes on him. I would too, if I didn’t think it would be presumptuous . . . Well, to be honest, I did anyway. I was pretty sure he had no idea who I was.
“Hi, I’m here to see Dr. Rust?” I said.
“All right. Who should I say is here?”
“Elizabeth Rew.”
Marc Merritt picked up the receiver of an old-fashioned telephone, the kind with a dial. “Elizabeth Rew here to see you, Doc. . . . Sure. . . . No, till six today. . . . All right.” He pointed a long arm—longer than Mr. Mauskopf’s, even—toward a fancy brass elevator door. “Fifth floor, take a left, through the arch. You’ll see it.”
When I stepped out of the elevator, corridors branched away in three directions. I couldn’t imagine how they fit it all in one narrow brownstone. I went down three steps through an arch to a small, book-lined room.
Dr. Rust was slight and wiry, with thick, shaggy hair just on the brown side of red and a billion freckles.
“Elizabeth. I’m glad to meet you.” We shook hands. “Please, have a seat. How is Stan?”
Strict but fair. Stern-looking, but with an underlying twinkle in his eye. Oddly dressed. “Fine,” I said.
“Still keeping that great beast in that tiny apartment, is he?”
“I guess? I’ve never been to his apartment.”
“Well. Let’s see, you’re in Stan’s European history class, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Good, good. Stan’s never sent us a bad page. He says you’re hardworking and warmhearted, with an independent mind—which is high praise from Stan, believe me. So this is really a formality, but just to be thorough, do you do the dishes at home?”
What kind of a question was that? “Yes, most of the time.” One more bad thing about my stepsisters going away to college—I was the only kid left to do chores.
“About how often?”
“Most days. Five or six times a week, probably.”
“And how many have you broken this year?”
“Dishes?”
“Yes, dishes, glasses, that sort of thing.”
“None. Why?”
“Oh, we can never be too careful. When was the last time you lost your keys?”
“I never lose my keys.”
“Excellent. All right, sort these, please.” Dr. Rust handed me a box of buttons.
“Sort them? Sort them how?”
“Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?”
This had to be the strangest interview I’d ever heard of. Was I going to lose the job because Dr. Rust didn’t like the way I sorted buttons?
I poured them out on the desk and turned them all faceup. There were large wooden disks and tiny pearls, shiny square buttons made of red or blue or yellow plastic, sparkly star-shaped ones with rhinestones that looked as if they would shred their buttonholes, little knots of rope, a set of silver buttons each engraved with a different flower, tiny rabbits carved from coral, plain transparent plastic buttons for inside waistbands, big glass things like mini doorknobs, a heavy gold button studded with what looked like real diamonds.
I grouped them by material: metal; wood and other plant products; bone, shell, and other animal parts; stone; plastic and other man-made materials, including glass. Then I divided each category into subgroups, also by material. Within the subgroups, I ranked them by weight.
“I see. Where would you put this?” Dr. Rust handed me a metal button, the kind with a loop on the back rather than holes. The front part had a piece of woven cloth of some sort, set behind glass.
I hesitated. Should it go in metals, in man-made materials for the glass, or in plants for the cloth? Maybe the cloth was wool, though, which would put it in animal parts. “Am I allowed to ask a question?” I said.
“Of course. Always ask questions. As the Akan proverb says, ‘The one who asks questions does not lose his way.’”
“Where’s Akan?”
“The Akan people are from west Africa. They have a remarkably rich proverb tradition. Perhaps because they believe in asking questions.”
“Oh. Okay—what’s the button made of?”
“Excellent question. Gold, rock crystal, and human hair.”
Not man-made materials, then; maybe stone. Other than that, the answer didn’t help me much. By weight, the button was mostly gold, so maybe it should go in with the metals? But I had put the diamond-looking one in stone, not metal. I decided to classify the new button by its weirdest component and put it in the animal pile.
“Interesting,” said Dr. Rust. “Sort them again.”
I scrambled them and resorted, making an elaborate grid of size and color. It started with red at the top and ran through the rainbow down to violet at the bottom, with extra rows for black and white. From left to right, it started with tiny collar buttons and finished with vast badges.
“Where would you put this?” Dr. Rust handed me a zipper.
A zipper! “Why didn’t you give me this the last time?” I said in dismay. “I could have put it with the metals.”
Was it my imagination, or had Dr. Rust’s freckles moved? Hadn’t the large one over the left eye been over the right eye earlier?
I scrambled the buttons again and started over. This time I sorted them by shape. I put the zipper with the toggles and a rectangular button carved with zigzags. I didn’t like that solution, but it was better than nothing.
Dr. Rust raised an eyebrow (no large freckle anywhere near now) and asked, “Which do you think is the most valuable?”
I considered the diamond one but picked an enameled peacock with blue gems in its tail. Dr. Rust seemed pleased.
“The oldest?”
I had no idea. I picked one of the silver ones.
“The most beautiful?”
I was getting a little impatient with all this. I picked one of the plastic ones, in a lovely shade of green. Dr. Rust didn’t seem quite to believe me. “The most powerful?”
“How can a button be powerful?”
“Oh, I think you’ll find over time that every object here has its own unique qualities. You’ll find that the materials in our collections speak to you.”
Did that mean I’d gotten the job?
Still, some of the buttons did seem to draw me more than others. I chose a black glass button with a disturbing geometry. Dr. Rust picked it up and examined it closely for a long time while I watched the freckles, trying to catch them moving. Wasn’t that butterfly shape of freckles on the left side just a minute ago?
“Well, Elizabeth, this has been most illuminating, but we both have a lot of work waiting,” said Dr. Rust at last, as if
Someone opened the door just as Dr. Rust handed me one last button. It matched the buttons on my coat—it might have been my missing top button.
“And here’s Marc, right on time.”
