Warm and Willing - Lawrence Block [3]
It was a slow morning. Around ten, Mr. Yamatari brought out two cups of green tea and sat across a lacquered black desk from her. They drank tea together and Mr. Yamatari spoke politely about a book he had been reading and a movie he had seen. Half an hour later there was a sudden rush of customers. She sold two saki sets, one small screen, several fans, and a china tea service. A little later, a man came in and bought some dangling earrings. The pair he picked out was a terrible one, poorly made, poorly designed, and the ultimate in gaucherie.
“These are perfect,” he told her. “This is the kind of stuff my wife really goes for.”
Your wife must be a terrible person, she thought. But she wrapped the earrings, put them in a small gift box, and took his money.
Get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to work, have lunch, back to work, eat dinner, go home, change clothes, go to a movie, to a play, for a walk, home, to bed—until morning or until the dream made sleep impossible. A quiet life, she thought. A rather uneventful life. There were amusements to it, and there was pleasure, and there were high points and low points.
Sometimes she forgot how utterly alone she was.
That morning, she remembered. There was one young couple, a pair of just-marrieds who came in and shopped around endlessly, and finally bought a small ashtray with the figure of a running horse on it. And there was something so beautifully close about them that it caught at her heart and wrenched. She watched them holding hands, talking closely together, talking in whispers, and she thought of herself in her little bed in her little room, living an absolutely solitary life.
She managed to brush the thoughts away. It looked good on the surface, she told herself. The closeness, the lovey-love. But it didn’t work out. She knew.
There was something special about the blonde. She sensed it the minute the girl came into the shop, very tall, very blonde, very striking in a print blouse and Capri pants. The blonde was not a typical customer of Heaven’s Door.
She was not a tourist, for one thing. When you lived in the Village you developed a special sort of disdain for tourists—they were too noisy, too pushy, too tasteless, too stupid. The blonde was definitely not a tourist. While she didn’t fit any of the convenient stereotypes for Villagers, something about her made it quite obvious that she belonged here.
The blonde’s eyes were on Rhoda as she walked over toward her. She could almost feel the woman’s gaze, steady and confident, and it made her vaguely uncomfortable to be stared at that way. But the girl’s face softened into a smile as Rhoda drew close.
“May I help you?”
“You sure can,” the blonde said. “I’m looking for a gift for a friend. She’s fond of the Oriental motif.”
“A wedding present?”
The blonde seemed amused, “Oh, no,” she said. “Lord, not that, not for her. Although in a way—” She broke off suddenly and smiled again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have a tendency to go on talking to myself. No, not a wedding present. Nothing for her apartment. A personal present.”
“Jewelry?”
“Something like that.”
“A pair of earrings—”
“She doesn’t wear them.” The blonde picked up one of the white porcelain elephants, looked at it, put it back in place on the counter. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something rather nice. I was thinking of a necklace or a pendant, something like that. Would you have anything along those lines?”
She moved toward the jewelry counter and began to show the necklaces and pendants. But the blonde girl wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were on Rhoda.
“I’m at a loss,” the girl was saying. “Could you select something? You have excellent taste. I like your sweater.”
“Why, I—”
“You pick,” the girl said. “Something that would make an appropriate farewell gift. For a very close friend.