There Are Doors

black wires going from building to building, wires for the clanging trolleys. There were buildings on the sides, streets and sidewalks below, the wires above. A dozen—no, two dozen at least—two dozen doors, and all of them looked significant. Had there been a hospital for dolls there before? Had there ever been such a shop in the world? Feeling rather like a broken doll himself, he started toward it.

Hell or Paradise, Who Say?

The room was lined with shelves eight or nine inches apart, and upon all these shelves stood little beds, dolls’ beds. In each bed lay a doll.

“Yes, sir. Have you come for a doll?”

He ducked the question. “What an interesting place you’ve got here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shop quite like this.” Lara would like it, he thought; aloud he added, “Are all these broken?”

“Why, no,” the shopkeeper said. He was about his own age, a stooped man who did not seem to know that the long hair that spilled to his thin shoulders was retreating.

“Then why—”

“All of them were broken when they came,” the shopkeeper explained. He pulled down the blanket and sheet of the nearest doll. “They’re fine now.”

“I see.”

“You’ve got a doll to be fixed? We need a deposit. It’ll be refunded when you come back for your doll.”

“You’re holding deposits on all these?”

The shopkeeper spread his lean hands. “We’ve got to make money someway. We’ve got to keep the place going. We used to charge for the repairs, but hardly anyone came back when their doll was fixed. So now we take a pretty big deposit and charge nothing for the treatment. If the owner does come back for his doll—or like it is usually, the owner’s mother—we gain shelf space, and he gets his deposit back in full. If he doesn’t …” The shopkeeper shrugged.

“Don’t you ever sell the dolls?”

The shopkeeper nodded. “When the owner’s dead.”

“Then you must keep some of them for a long time.”

The shopkeeper nodded again. “There’s a few we’ve had ever since we opened. But see, sometimes when a boy gets older, he remembers about his doll. Sometimes he finds the receipt in his mother’s old papers. But we get the name of each owner when we accept his doll, and we watch the obituaries.” The shopkeeper reached up to the highest shelf behind him and took down a small bed. “Here’s one that’s for sale now. If there’s somebody you know …”

It was Lara.

Lara in miniature, ten inches high. But unmistakably Lara—her darkly red hair, her freckles, her eyes and nose and mouth and chin.

He managed to say, “Yes,” and reached for his wallet.

“It is a pretty expensive doll, sir,” the shopkeeper said. “Not just walk and talk—all the functions.”

“No kidding?” He tried to cock an eyebrow.

“Yes, sir. It’s the kind you wet with a salt solution. That’s what provides the electrolyte. It’ll be pretty well dried out now, I’m afraid. It’s been here a long time.”

“I see.” He examined the doll more closely. A name, Tina, was embroidered on the tiny blouse.

“It’s still the goddess, naturally, sir,” the shopkeeper said. “The goddess at sixteen. The boy who owned her’s been dead now for about eight years. Malicapata. Pretty sad, sir, isn’t it? Only now she’ll bring years of pleasure to another child. Life goes on.”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Sir?”

“And where could I find the goddess herself?”

“In Overwood, I suppose, sir. I’m afraid I’ve got to ask a hundred and fifty for that, sir, if you really want it.”

“I’ll have to write a check.”

The shopkeeper hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

The doll fit nicely into the breast pocket of his topcoat, its slender form well suited to the pocket’s narrow shape.

Standing on the sidewalk once more, he looked around to get his bearings. Buildings rose from the five corners—a health-food store, a real-estate agency, a bookshop, a law office, a liquor store, a boutique advertising “Genuine Silk Artificial Flowers,” and an antique shop. The streets that stabbed the aching distance seemed utterly unfamiliar. A brick-red trolley rattled by, and he recalled that trolleys had not run even when he was a child.

As if his mind had room for no more than a single puzzle, the answer to the first occurred to him: he had turned wrong on leaving the doll hospital; this was a different intersection. He reversed his steps, waving to the shopkeeper as he went past and noting with some amusement that there was already a new doll in the tiny bed that had been Tina’s.

“Didn’t even change the sheets,” he muttered.