Virgil's jaw worked, his lips mashing together.
"Oh my God," Robyn stepped closer. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"Dissatisfied customer," he choked out.
"Shouldn't you call the police?"
He jerked his head side-to-side.
She came back a few minutes later with two semi-fit male Latte Love coffee drinkers, who set the doily display (what was left of it) upright and pried the hat stand out of the military surplus rack.
Virgil grunted at them for thanks.
When Virgil and I were alone again, he asked me, "What do you think he was going to do with the sword?"
I stuck my nose up the sleeve of my favorite jacket and took a deep, steadying breath. "I don't know. But I think we should hide it in the basement."
"What do you know about the basement?" he barked.
As a matter of fact, I thought I knew quite a bit. We got some Stuff from garage sales, but mostly people brought Stuff directly to the store. Virgil would look it over and sometimes he would set aside something and pay for it with cash from the register. Then he would take whatever he'd bought, and he would set it somewhere and forget about it.
Later, when he couldn't remember where he got something, he's say, "Sophie, that thing gives me the creeps." And he'd pick it up and carry it down to the basement and leave it there.
I had to agree, some of the things he bought were creepy. But where he just got the hair standing up on the back of his neck and the tingling feeling in his shoulders and the slight urge to hide, I had more information. I could smell the blood.
Garage Sale-ing
The samurai sword incident was disturbing, but I've had much more frightening experiences, and I don't mean on the road when I was homeless.
The scariest day of my life was the first time I went garage sale-ing with Virgil. That may surprise you, because, as you know, I've been through some hard times. But the thing is, when you are facing death, a kind of calm comes over you, and you start to think, "Okay, if this is it, I can handle it." You start to think in terms of eternity, and the details fall away. Because when you're really in deep trouble, there's nothing you can do anyway. Panicking won't help.
The truly scary things are the ones where you have some control, where you see an opportunity to prevent disaster.
Like driving with Virgil in his Buick.
First of all, I could smell his fear, just backing out of the spot behind the building.
Crunch…tinkle, tinkle. Robyn came running out of the back door of Latte Love. The screen door clattered behind her as she screeched, "Stop! Stop! What are you doing?"
Virgil craned out the open window, squinted at her Honda Accord, parallel parked along the alleyway.
"Why would you park there, anyway?" he said.
"You could have asked me to move!"
Virgil fumbled with the gear shift and we drifted backward into her Honda once again.
"Oh, damn," he said. "Would you quit dancing around? You're making me nervous."
"Just. Stop." Robyn bit off the words. "Do not. Touch. The accelerator."
I pawed at the door handle. "Can I get out?" I said.
"Sophie, not now," said Virgil.
Robyn reached across Virgil through the open window and adjusted the shift lever, then double-checked the readout on the dashboard. She swung open the driver's side door, and I scrambled across Virgil's lap and went to sniff the greasy pavement by the garbage bin to calm down.
"Let me do this," said Robyn.
Virgil rolled his eyes and clambered out. "You're a bossy young lady," he said.
Robyn took his place, adjusted the mirrors and made Virgil and me stand on the other side of the dumpster, so Virgil wouldn't leap under the wheels, I guess. She maneuvered the car into position facing out the alley.
"Do you have insurance?" she asked, as she slid out of the driver's seat, rubbing her forehead.
Virgil looked confused.
"Never mind. I'll just say it was a hit and run."
"Okay, then, that's fine." Virgil climbed distractedly back into the car and peered over the dash toward the end of the alley. He nodded to himself and gripped the wheel with resolve.
"That really wasn't necessary," he said to Robyn.
"I think it was. I'm pretty sure my car would agree. And my insurance company. Promise me you won't get on the highway," said Robyn. She opened the passenger door to let me in.
After that, it got worse.
We drove onto the highway immediately, past the dog food plant and Burger King, hugging the rail, big trucks roaring up behind us. Horns blaring. And through it all, the right blinker going tick-a-tick-a-tick-a.
I watched in horror from the front seat. I would have hunkered down by the floor boards, where it was safer, but somebody had to scan the road and bark when we were about to hit something.
If there had been a safe place to pull over, I would have offered to drive. I had seen several people do it, and it didn't look that hard. Surely, I could do better than Virgil.
Then we were swerving down the off ramp. I upchucked discreetly on the floor mat. When I raised my head again, we had stopped at a multi-family garage sale. Shakily, I exited the car and sniffed some vinyl records, and, just because of their soothing undertones, baby clothes. Ah…talcum powder and poop and spit-up. I could almost hear their squeaky-toy voices. That relaxed me enough that I was able to re-enter the Buick while Virgil shelled out four dollars for a very aggressive tolling clock.
When we arrived at the next garage sale, I was so anxious to get out of the car that I scrambled over Virgil, tail tucked, and didn't realize what I'd gotten myself into until the dog of the house charged me, snarling, "Trespassing! Rip her to shreds!"
Before I knew what was happening, I was on my back, trying to protect my loins with my tail, yelping, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" My eyes rolled up into my head so they wouldn't have to see me disemboweled.
"Thor, no! Come to Mommy! I have treeeats!" A woman pleaded in the background, while "Thor" tried to decide whether she really had treats, and whether it might be better to disembowel me anyway.
I grimaced and whimpered, "Sorry?" one last time.
He glared at me, then went wagging--Wagging!-- Over for a chunk of chicken jerky.
"He's a good boy," said the woman, quaking and quavering as we peeled out. "He just likes to play rough!"
We drove in stunned silence. The highway seemed more doable on the return trip, the screeching and honking far away.
"Are you okay?" Virgil asked, as we turned onto Longfellow Street.
I sighed with a frisson. "I think I saw God," I said.
Back in the shop, Virgil wound the new clock and placed it on the counter, where it threatened my doom every hour on the hour, giving me flashbacks, until the day I finally silenced it by tripping a customer with a Latte Love grande mocha onto it. Virgil was angry, but it was worth it. I shivered to think what kind of customer would have come in looking for that clock. Hopefully, not a repeat of Sword Guy.
The problem was, Virgil didn't always buy the right stuff. The basement was full of creepy stuff that he had bought by accident. His failures. When he got too old and weak to haul things down the creaky stairs, Virgil started leaving his mistakes next to the dumpster in the alley.
The homeless guy who lived behind the dumpster thought Virgil was generous. But he was afraid all the time and he didn't know why.
When people brought stuff for sale, I could see with one sniff what was in those bags and boxes. Virgil, with all his looking and prodding and thinking, could really only guess. Sometimes, something Valuable or Old, but actually quite bland, distracted him from the good Stuff, lying crumpled at the bottom of the box. Other times, he bought stuff that he would regret later, and the homeless guy ended up having more panic attacks.
Virgil's Hair Wears Off
One day, a fog of evil wafted through the store as the cowbell clanked. It was furtive and damp, w
ith hints of the man under the bridge who had tried to eat me. I struggled up from my bed and pogoed over and cut off a man with a vinyl duffel bag before he could reach the sales counter.
"Don't bother us! We're busy!" I said. Okay, maybe I barked. I was alarmed.
Virgil put his hands on his hips and leaned over the counter. "Sophie, you come back here right now! What are you doing?"
I was a little embarrassed. After all, as you know, I rarely vocalize. In spite of trying to stay calm, my Silent Rumble burst through my chest. I clamped down onto it and it turned into a whine.
Virgil stared at me, assessing, and crooked his finger at the man. "What have you got?"
The man set down his duffle on the floor and I leaned in to sniff while Virgil held me by the nape of my neck. With a sickly, sexy grin, the man slowly slid the zipper open. Out peeked a little girl's face. A naked little girl in a photograph. And behind her there were others.
Virgil's hand went limp on my neck, and his lip trembled and curled. "Get out!" he spat, and sent the man running.
After that, we vetted the new arrivals together, Virgil and I. He would paw through the boxes or bags, and I would sniff them, and I would murmur to him what to buy.
People came to trade their stories for money, which was supposed to solve their problems.
But Virgil Rosenberger had a whole drawer full of money, and more upstairs in the freezer, in old ice cream cartons. And with all this money, too much to carry, he was still sad and lonely.
So I knew that money was not the answer.
He and She hadn't had any money in their freezer, and their hearts had been full. Sometimes, I wondered what had become of He and She. Sometimes I dreamed that they came to get me.
But I wasn't sad and lonely. I was useful. And I was alive.
Virgil may have thought that he knew me. He may have thought that he was my whole life. After all, we spent most of our time together. But if he thought that, he would have been wrong. Because I had an active social life.
Sometimes, when he let me out to do my business at night, he would forget to let me back in. So I would pogo over to Zoom Burger and smile at the high school kid in the drive-thru window, and he would toss snacks out onto the tarmac, because he thought I was cute. "Sophie's got the munchies!" he would say, and the kids in their matching polo shirts would crowd into the window together to coo at me. Then they'd warn me when a car was coming, and I'd duck through the hedge by the bank and pogo home.
Down at the elementary school I had a following as well. Every couple of weeks, I'd show up around recess time and hold court. They'd coax me down the slide and snuggle me and put barrettes in my fur.
But I had to be ready to bolt as soon as the recess lady spotted me, or she'd try to lock me in the cage with the bicycles until Animal Control arrived.
And when Virgil and I walked down the street to the hardware store or the Real coffee shop ("not like that Yuppie stuff at Latte Love"), people would call my name from across the street and run to greet me. Virgil always wondered who those people were, and how did they know my name, and howcome he didn't remember any of them. Some of them talked to Virgil, too, so he wouldn't feel left out.
So, Virgil and I plugged along, feeding people stories, and gradually I took the reins of the business. I'm the one with the ideas. His job is to talk, open doors and operate the credit card machine.
Every day, every year, I could feel that my management made the world a better place. I could feel the waves ripple out from the shop on Longfellow Street, setting off a chain reaction, multiplying as one life touched another and then another.
And then it started to fall apart.
At first I didn't notice, it happened so gradually. Virgil's hair wore off, and then his color. His memory faded, and with it so did his anger. He lost his strength and he set his confidence down somewhere and never picked it up again.
I had to remind him to use the bathroom before bed, and to eat. I coaxed him down the steps to open the shop each morning while he scowled at me like he wasn't sure who I was.
He couldn't see the stories in his novels any more, so he slumped in front of a small television in the shop. The TV blotted out the world so that he could concentrate on the place inside him where old memories played like movies. And he would laugh or cry according to that interior world, and not according to anything that I could see.
My Puppet
Even though I had managed the shop and our home for a while, there were some things I could not do.
I needed an assistant. Someone with thumbs and the gift of language. Someone who could Hear me. Someone to talk to customers and take money and open the shop in the morning. And in a safe spot hidden almost even from myself, I wished for someone with Heart. Someone kind and gentle. Someone like He.
And then one day, a youngish guy with shiny hair and teeth strolled into the shop. He wore cologne to mask the smell of his fear, and damp basketball shorts. Under his arm was a yoga mat. He had obviously just come from the yoga studio across the street.
He wrinkled his nose in disgust and ran his finger over a shelf and gazed at the hunk of dust on his fingertip in wonder. But still, he didn't leave. He was looking for something but he didn't know it.
My heart sank when I realized that he might be the one. Had I had lured this cologne-soaked facade of a man here myself?
His name was Corey, and I could see right through his very careful facade, and underneath, there was not much: stuffing and a lot of empty space.
I know that it wasn't fair to compare him to He, but come on. This guy? This puppet of a man? At first I resisted, but sometimes you have to take what you can get. And besides, I rationalized, there are advantages to having a puppet.
Corey froze in front of a shelf full of toys, and stepped closer to look at a little stuffed bear. He held his breath. The memories lined up behind his eyes. Thoughts of a bear named Poo. A childhood toy, thrown out or given away after he left home.
"But I asked if you wanted anything," his mother had said.
How do I know all this? I know a lot of things you never suspected. Things about you, even. Yes, you.
Corey bent closer. The eyes were the same. The plastic brown and orange eyes. And the nose, sown on with uneven blue stitches. He lifted it out of the pile and turned it over, ran his fingers over the seam where the music box had been removed by his mother all those years ago, for reasons that were unclear, and as he did so, he caught a whiff of childhood.
"Can I help you?" I said.
Virgil Rosenberger slumped dully behind his counter, in front of a tiny black and white TV.
Corey addressed himself to Virgil. "I just realized today is my mom's birthday. Do you have anything that's not crap?"
Virgil looked up, startled.
"China figurines," I mumbled at Virgil's back.
"We have some lovely..." he began, lost his train of thought, then rallied. "Over..."
I jerked my chin toward the alcove near the back.
"Sophie will show you," he finished.
I put on my saleslady persona, led Corey over and nosed open the sliding panel on the back of the case, sniffing for just the right one. Corey reached out. I bumped his hand back a row.
"Knock it off," he whined.
But he picked up the figurine I had chosen. Her name was The Crinoline Lady.
While Corey dithered over whether to make the purchase, I trotted off, snatched the stuffed bear from the shelf and dropped it in a shopping bag.
"So," said Corey, approaching the counter. "Do women of a certain age still go for this kind of stuff?"
"Oh, yes," quavered Virgil.
I met Virgil's eye and nodded, then slumped into my bed behind the counter.
"Okay, then. What's the damage?" Corey asked.
I murmured the price at Virgil's back. Virgil glanced down at me, then turned back to Corey
uncertainly. "A hundred thirty?" he asked.
"You've got to be kidding! For
this?"
I knew better, though, you see.
"One thirty-five," I growled.
Corey leaned to peer over the counter. He seemed surprised to see me.
Virgil licked his lips. "One thirty-five, then."
Corey thought about walking out just to teach us a lesson, but he didn't. With a sigh and a roll of the eyes, Corey slapped his Visa card on the counter. While Corey was distracted by a cute girl with a head-tail bouncing past the display window, I jerked my chin toward the shopping bag sitting on the floor in a mess of clutter. Virgil looked confused for a moment, then shoved the Crinoline Lady into a drawer full of tissue paper.
Corey scribbled his name on the credit card slip, snatched the shopping bag from Virgil and bounded after the girl outside.
An hour later, Corey was back.
"This is not what I paid for." He plunked the bear on the counter.
"Tell him to keep it," I mumbled to Virgil.
Corey leaned over the counter to meet my eye.
"What?" I said.
Corey glanced from me to Virgil, startled.
Virgil said, "I'm sorry. This happens more than you'd think." I'm just so…he glanced nervously around the shop. "Anyway, you can keep--"
"I don't want the stupid bear. I want the overpriced piece of crap I paid for."
"Of course. I just…It must be around here somewhere.
I sighed. Virgil seemed more and more confused. Sometimes, I think he even forgot that I could talk.
Virgil sifted through the drawers behind the counter. A pile of old magazines cascaded to the floor. Peering under the counter, he said, "Was it a plush toy?"
"In here." I nudged the tissue drawer with my nose.
Corey rocked onto his toes and peered over the counter at me again. By this point I was sure that he could Hear me.
Virgil held up the Crinoline Lady for confirmation, then rolled her in tissue.
Corey snatched her out of his grasp. "Thank you," he barked, and strode out.
"He needs the bear, too," I said.
Virgil caught up to him on the pavement and thrust the shopping bag with the plush toy into his arms. "Please accept this as a token of our apology and we hope that you will visit again," he said, avoiding Corey's sneer.
Corey didn't know it, but the bear was a test. A test for Heart. He failed, but that didn't matter in the end. And the Crinoline Lady was working for me. She would work for him, too, of course. She was a double agent.