“I don’t know anybody but you.”
“You remind me of her. I used to be in love with Lara—that’s why I bought you. Lara was the woman in front of the fireplace.”
“I don’t think you told me about that.”
“But I lost her, somehow. I lost her walking through the snow.”
“You have to dress really warm for a bluskery day.”
He nodded. “I bought the coat, and some other things. I got some money, somehow, and I put it in the bank. That’s where most of the thirty-two hundred’s from.”
“Maybe Lara gave it to you,” Tina ventured.
“No,” he said. And then, “Yes, maybe she did.”
The Desk
“I’d like to talk to you about it,” he said. “That’s all.”
The ugly woman’s voice crackled from the earpiece. “We’re talking now.”
“I’d rather do it face to face. I could come out to your house any evening that’s convenient.”
Suspiciously: “Isn’t it genuine?”
He inhaled deeply, wanting to lie—and found he could not. “It’s perfectly genuine, I’m sure. But it’s Indian, even though it was made in the British style. Indian things don’t command high prices, as a rule.”
“Well, whatever you want to tell me about it, you’re going to have to say here and now. Then perhaps we’ll meet face to face, if I decide we should.”
“Mrs. Foster,” (this time he positively gulped for air) “I can offer you a five-hundred-dollar profit.”
There was a long pause. “If it’s genuine, why should you people want it back?”
“I’m not calling for the store,” he told her. “I want to buy it myself.”
“You’ve found out it’s worth more than they thought.”
“No,” he said. “No, not at all.” He waited for her to say something; she did not, and he was forced to speak again to fill the silence. “I think that when you bought it I told you I felt it was overpriced. I still do. I study the auction catalogues and follow the results, Mrs. Foster. It’s part of my job.”
“Go on.”
“A piece not much different from your desk went for only a little more than half what you paid, two years ago in New York.”
“But you’ll give me a five-hundred-dollar profit.”
Hope surged. “Yes,” he said.
“You’ll pay me more than twice what it’s worth.”
“Yes,” he said again.
“Why?”
He tried to speak, but no words came. At last he said lamely, “I don’t know if I can explain.”
“I’m listening.”
“I sell these things …”
“You’ve got a buyer?”
“No, no. I don’t mean I’m a dealer myself on the side—I couldn’t do that and keep my job. I only meant that I sell the things here, in the store.”
“I know that. You sold me this desk. I’m sitting at my desk right now, as it happens. This is where I put the phone.”
“I never wanted a piece for myself.” He felt that he was talking into a void, pleading with a soulless thing of wire and plastic far less human than Tina. “I’d check out a particular piece, you know—”
“Don’t say, ‘you know.’ It’s the one thing I absolutely cannot stand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I. Go on, Mr. Green.”
“I was just trying to say I’d look at a certain piece and think that it was nice—or really not so nice. Or at one like your desk and think that it was a good piece but I wouldn’t have priced it quite so high. I’ve seen hundreds of pieces like that, I suppose, but I never saw anything except your desk that I really wanted for myself.”
Again she left him floundering.
“I thought they’d mark it down after Christmas, and then maybe I’d take it.”
She grunted. “You told me you thought it would be lower in January, and you suggested I come back then— when you planned to buy it for yourself. It would have been gone.”
Desperately he continued, “I hadn’t decided to buy it then. Really I hadn’t. Not firmly—I thought I wouldn’t. It
