Which brings us to that storeroom.
• • •
WHEN the loft was renovated, I didn’t get around to doing anything with the old storage room at the back. It’s been a handy place to stash junk, some of it mine and Ruby’s, some of it left over from earlier occupants. The loft is air-conditioned, but the storeroom isn’t. When I propped the door open that morning so Ruby and I could work in it, the rush of heat felt as if it had accumulated from uncounted summers past. It was hotter than the dickens—and dark as the inside of a cow, until I remembered that there was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I reached up, found its chain, and yanked it.
The naked bulb revealed a shadowed, low-ceilinged space running the full width of the building, about six feet wide, with shelves along the back wall. It smelled of musty old papers and summer’s heat, with an oddly sharp top note of lavender and the elusive bouquet of hot dust and dead mouse. I expected Khat to rush in, eager to discover if there were any survivors (mice, that is) who might require his immediate attention. But oddly, he put one paw inside the door, took a sniff, and then decided he had urgent business elsewhere.
“Wonder what got into him?” Ruby asked as he zoomed past her at warp speed and vaulted down the stairs. Wrinkling her nose, she stepped into the storeroom. “Is that lavender I’m smelling?” Not waiting for an answer, she pulled out a cardboard box. “What’s this?”
I opened the box and peeked in. “It’s the extra craft supplies from that papermaking workshop we did a couple of years ago. I thought we gave it to the preschool over on Elm Street.”
Ruby picked up the box. “That’s where it’s going now. I’ll put it at the top of the stairs. Could you see what’s in that crate? Maybe it’s something we can throw away.”
And that’s how it went for the next couple of hours. We worked our way down the length of the storeroom, opening boxes and bags, identifying the contents, and making executive decisions. Some of the stuff went to the Dumpster in the alley, some of it went back on the shelves (neatly!), and some of it was going to Goodwill. The curtains from my former apartment, for instance, along with some pots and pans, a rolled-up section of carpet, Brian’s old goalie mask, and a couple of boxes of games and puzzles—all bound for Goodwill.
I was beginning to feel like an archaeologist on a dig, for as we burrowed deeper into the storeroom, we seemed to be moving back in time. I discovered a Life magazine featuring the assassination of JFK, several copies of the Pecan Springs Enterprise dating back to the 1950s, a box of vinyl World War II–era records (Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller, the Andrews Sisters) that might be worth something at a yard sale, and a metal advertising sign for Coca-Cola that said Refreshing Fountain Drink, just 5¢! A collector might want that.
And then it got even more interesting. I turned up a 1930s Shirley Temple doll with only one hand but most of her curly blond hair; a campaign button for Franklin Roosevelt’s first run for the presidency in 1932; and—folded into a cardboard dress box between several layers of tissue paper—a slinky silver flapper dress from the 1920s, with a silver headband and a red feather boa.
“Omigod,” Ruby breathed, when I opened the box. “Let me see that dress, China! It’s gorgeous!”
I held it up. It was made of some sort of sheer metallic fabric with skinny spaghetti straps and rows of layered silver tassels from the deep vee neckline to the hem. “It’s totally you, Ruby,” I said. “And it looks just your size. You have to try it on.”
Ruby’s eyes were shining. “Oh, wow,” she breathed, and snatched it out of my hands. A few minutes later, she was back, a vision in silver tassels, her carroty frizz set off by the silver headband. “Twenty-three skidoo,” she said, twirling the red feather boa. “Perfect for Halloween, don’t you think?”
“You are the bee’s knees,” I said admiringly. “So now that we’ve found your Halloween costume, we can quit. Right?”
“Nah,” she said. “We’re almost to the end. I’ll change and be right back. Bet we can finish in a half hour.”
“Okay,” I said, and went back to work.
There was more junk and more trips to the Dumpster, but more goodies, too. A copy of the Austin Weekly Statesman dated November 7, 1912, announcing Woodrow Wilson’s election as president. A framed photograph of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. A wooden stereopticon with a set of cards illustrating battles of the Spanish-American War. A cardboard carton printed with the words Corticelli Silk Threads, Florence, Massachusetts, and a picture of a kitten playing with a spool of thread. The carton was filled with old sepia-toned snapshots from around the turn of the century, judging from the costumes and the way the women wore their hair. On top was a photograph of a man, a woman, a baby, and a pretty young girl, sitting in an old-fashioned porch swing on what looked like the veranda right here at 304 Crockett Street. The man, smiling happily,
