wasn’t until it was gone—”
“That you realized how much you wanted it.”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”
“Do you know, Mr. Green, I’ve felt the same way myself a time or two. May I ask how your wife feels about your spending so much money?”
“I don’t have a wife.”
“You’re divorced?”
“I’ve never been married, Mrs. Foster.”
“Marriage isn’t for everyone. Why, I know several men, the nicest, kindest—”
“I’m not gay, Mrs. Foster.” He knew that he had lost, and he wanted to hang up. “Once a girl even lived with me for a few days, but I’ve never married.” He made one final effort. “I’ve got thirty-two hundred dollars. That’s every cent I have in the world, and that’s why I said I’d give you a five-hundred- dollar profit. I’ll make it a thousand if you’ll take the second five hundred in installments.”
Silence again, stretching on and on; this time he did not speak, and at last she said, “I’m president of the Collectors’ Club. Did you know that, Mr. Green?”
“No. No, I didn’t, Mrs. Foster. I know about your club, of course.”
“We’re
There was a metallic click as she hung up. He hung up too. The desk was gone. He tried tiredly to guess her age: fifty or fifty-five, perhaps. Perhaps there would be an estate sale in twenty years or so. No, she was the kind of woman who hung on forever. He could get her address, as he had her number, from Accounting. He could write her and suggest that she contact him if she ever wanted to sell the desk; but it would do no good.
“Staying late, Green?” It was Mr. Cohen, the Art Gallery supervisor.
“Had to make a phone call, sir. It took a while, I guess. How about you, sir?”
“Getting set for Christmas. You know, firelight, candles, and snow.”
The images danced through his mind as he walked to the bus stop: snow—candles—firelight—children and other gifts under the tree. The headline of the paper in the vending machine was SUICIDE RATE CLIMBS.
If I’d made the world, he thought, Christmas would be a good time for everybody.
Quite suddenly he recalled that he had promised Tina a tea set, new clothes, all sorts of things. He left the bus stop and walked down to the arcade, an old-fashioned sort of mall he had sometimes peered into, but never entered.
Old-fashioned or not, the arcade had already gone over to extended hours. More than half of its little shops were bright, and shoppers bundled against the cold stamped up and down the clangorous iron walkways. He passed a travel agency, a beauty salon, and a chiropractor’s office, the last dark. A toy store—in both senses of the word, for it was hardly larger than the make-believe stores given to children—provided dresses that he thought might fit Tina and a minute tea set of real china.
“I don’t suppose you have any tea?”
The clerk shook her head. “There’s a deli. I don’t know if they’re open, but they might be.”
He nodded. “Where?”
“In the annex. Know where that is? Down that way, and the entrance is on your left. Only one level in the annex.”
He thanked her and went out. When he reached the entrance, its arch of moldering marble looked dark and somehow ominous, as though all the stores beyond were closed and gates of steel bars might slam down behind anyone who dared to enter.
He went in anyway. A few shops were open even here. As he passed a haberdashery, a small, dark woman darted out and caught him by the sleeve. “There you are! What’s the matter with you, you don’t want your pants?”
He stared at her. She was sixty or so, graying hair knotted at the nape of her neck. “I think—”
“You think I’m trying to sell you something. Listen, your pants are all paid for. You paid so we’d make the alterations, remember? So how about picking them up? I need the space. Be an angel.”
“All right,” he said. As he followed her in, he felt that he should remember both the woman and her shop.
“With the pants, I got you a nice varnished hardwood hanger. Last you the rest of your life.” She glanced at the yellow tag pinned to its paper dust cover. “Four months now they’ve been waiting.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Oh, it’s okay.” She was studying his waistline. “They might not still fit. Bring them back if they don’t, and we’ll let them out.”
“This is the hotel, isn’t it? The Grand Hotel?”
She looked at him quizzically. “We rent from them.”
“This is where Fanny worked in the coffee shop. This is where Dr. Applewood has his office.”
The woman said, “He’s dead now.”
He nodded and walked out into the cavernous lower level. Why hadn’t he recognized those dusty flags at once, the clawed griffin, the eagle with two heads? And the woman in the toy shop had said the annex had only a single level. There were balconies. Dr. Applewood had leaned over one of those railings to call to him.
