An Chu looked up. “Are you sure it was him?”
“I will be.” She tipped up the lid to the other woman’s sewing box. An Chu kept her sequins and sparkles in little plastine bags. Paula shook one empty.
“You shouldn’t accuse people when you aren’t sure.”
“Hunh.” She took the little bag and went across the common room to the kitchen.
Three people stood at the sink, singing an obscene round and washing dishes. Water puddled the floor. She opened the cupboard over the stove and filled up the plastine bag with baking soda. The boisterous singing followed her out again. She went down the other hall to the third door on the left and knocked.
“Go away.”
She tried the latch. The door was locked. John’s plaintive voice called, “Go away.” She felt in her pockets, found her pay envelope, slid the edge through the seam in the door and lifted the hook on the inside.
“Hey!”
She went into a dark, stinking room. The floor was caked with rotting food. The mattress against the far wall smelled of piss and mildew. John sat huddled on it, his arms crooked up to his chest.
“Why you coming in here?”
“Why you stealing my flute? Where is it?”
He was trembling. He curled up on the mattress. “Let me alone.”
Paula crouched before him. At her feet was an apple core fuzzy with mold. She kicked it away. She took the plastine bag out of her jacket pocket and waved it at him. He straightened slowly out of his curl. His face was broken out and his nose dripped. He scratched around in his crotch, his eyes on the bag.
“Where is it?” she said.
“Don’t have it. You can look. Let me—” He reached for the bag. She drew back, holding it in the air above her head.
“Where is it?”
“Don’t have it. Pi-please, Paula. I’m sick. Look how sick I am.” He held his shaking hands out. “You can’t be mad at me, Paula.”
“Where’s my flute?”
“Sold it. I sold it. Don’t have it any more.”
She clenched her teeth. “Who bought it?”
“I’m sick.” His fingers dug into his armpits, his hair. His clothes stuck to him. “I’m real sick.”
“John! Who bought my flute?”
“B-Barrian. Barrian.”
“How much?”
“Please—”
She shook her head. He was playing sick, mostly; if he whined enough, people gave him money to score just to be rid of him. There were several running bets in the commune on how long it would take him to die. She said, “John, how much?”
“Forty dollars.”
She muttered, “Forty dollars.” Of course he had none left. She threw the plastine bag down on the stinking mattress. He lunged for it.
“John, if you do this to me once more, I’ll make your life miserable. Even more miserable. You hear me?”
He was scrambling around, looking for his works. “Sure, Paula. You’re a good girl.” With his shaking hands he lit a candle to cook the soda he thought was morphion. She went out.
Barrian’s was a music store in the underground mall south of the campus. She stood looking at a violin in a glass case while the shopman talked to another customer. The violin’s body was burnished to a chestnut glow. A small sign identified it by a Latin name and the date A.D. 1778. It was nearly four thousand years old. She went up to the counter.
“A loadie came in here over the weekend and sold you an ebony flute.”
The shopman had white hairs growing out of his ears and nose. “That’s right,” he said. “And a beauty it is, too.”
“It’s mine.”
“Not any more.” He tapped the glass counter. She looked down. On the velvet-covered shelf, her flute lay in its open box. A small sign on it gave it a Latin name, an age of fifty years, and a price of six hundred dollars.
She said, “If you look under the lip with a magnifying glass, you’ll find my name. Paula Mendoza.”
“We bought it in good faith.”
“For forty dollars.”
The shopman smiled at her. “Of course, if you pay our price—”
“I’ll give you back the forty dollars.”
“Sorry.”
She drew in a deep breath. Paying out forty dollars would reduce her to eating rice for the next week, until she was paid again. Six hundred was impossible. She tapped her fingers on the counter.
“I want my flute.”
“I can see that. The price is six hundred dollars.”
“I work for the Committee.”
“I’m very happy for you.”
“Give it back, or I’ll go through our files and find something on you.”
“You’ll be looking a long time, we’re honest.”
She went off around the shop. On the wall, in plastic clips, hung swatches of paper music. She could try to steal the flute, but the shop, being underground, was tight against thieves, and the glass case was probably locked. She could borrow the money. Save it over weeks. Maybe Tony would loan it to her. A fat boy with frizzy blond hair down to his waist came into the shop, a guitar over his shoulder.
“Wait.” She intercepted him. “Please let me talk to you a minute.”
The boy swung the ax down between them, “Sure.”
“Please don’t buy anything here. A junkie stole my flute and sold it to them for a ridiculous low price and they won’t sell it back to me.”
The boy’s blue eyes looked past her. The shoulder of his shirt was ripped. He swayed the guitar gently against his knees. Finally, he said, “Check,” and left.
The shopman came around the counter at top speed. “You can’t do that.”
She showed him her teeth. “Watch me.”
“Get out.”
She went out the door, into the dark subway walk, and loitered under the red sign marking the shop. A man in a plaid shirt started in; she talked to him, but he went in anyway. For half an hour she walked up and down before the door, until the shop closed.
The next day she called Michalski at the office and told him where she would be, and she sat down in front of Barrian’s and told everybody who would listen that the shop was stealing her flute in collusion with a junkie. Most people ignored her. Some argued. A few turned away. Barrian’s people tried to chase her off. An Chu brought her lunch. The day following, when she called the Committee, Michalski said she had been given a week’s unpaid leave. She took a chair to Barrian’s. A man from the hourlies came and interviewed her. Every half hour the shopman from Barrian’s threw buckets of water on her. She talked to everybody who went into the store. Two out of three did business there anyway.
Tony was unsympathetic. “You shouldn’t own something you can’t afford to lose. You’re a hostage to your possessions. Property is theft.”
Shaky John was still angry with her for burning him, but she gave him five dollars, and he sat in front of Barrian’s for a day and fired himself up, hour after hour, with morphion, aspirin, barbiturate, horse-downer, distilled water, plastic blood, and milk. Without even talking he turned more people away from Barrian’s in one hour than she had in four days. That evening, the shop sold her back her flute for fifty dollars.
