***
Parking for the knitting shop in Greenwich Village was on the street and it was several blocks before she found a space available amongst the cars, all with New York plates, parked there. She scanned up and down but could find no signs limiting her parking. Sometimes the parking gods were with you.
The small shop was meticulously organized, the walls divided into cubbyholes not much larger than shoe boxes, stocked to the ceilings with wool spun in all weights from lace for the finest, most gossamer shawls to heavy oiled aran for sweaters to prevent hypothermia in the North Atlantic. There was also silk and cashmere, alpaca and cotton, some beautiful synthetics, crisp linen that would nearly cut your hands in the knitting, only to soften miraculously with washing. There was even qiviut, spun from the finest downy shedding of Alaskan musk oxen, soft, strong, warm, and priced by the extravagantly expensive ounce. The colors dazzled and shimmered. There were patterns and technical books for reference.
The rest of the shop was equally wondrous. There were needles, including beautiful walnut straight needles, although Olivia preferred circulars, and buttons. In the back, three women and a man, clearly long-time customers, sat working away on their projects. One woman softly cursed the sheep, the mothers and fathers of the sheep, and all the sisters and brothers of the sheep, who had produced the yarn from which she was carefully tinking back hundreds of tiny stitches from what would be a lace shawl. In the corner, another made soft, soothing sounds. No words, Olivia knew, could reduce the insane fury that having to tink back lace could produce. You either understood or you didn’t. And the backdrop to it all was the shop owner, Lois, sitting at a large production wheel that looked like it had come straight from the story of Sleeping Beauty, meticulously spinning by hand a strand from variegated roving that she had dyed herself. When several strands were plied together, they would produce color that was gloriously complex.
A casual observer might conclude that these people knew each other, that they were a bit of a clique and not inclined to interact with strangers. But Olivia knew better. These were people at work and she didn’t blame Lois for very courteously making it clear that she didn’t care to rise from her work until it was necessary to deal with her. Who could blame her, fiber running through her hands, beginning as shapeless fluff, emerging as a ply of yarn whose colors made Olivia think of caverns older than memory, and the paintings of the first humans on their cave walls, in ash and sienna, ocher and lime.
Olivia bought everything that appealed to her. Lois offered no discounts, only a smiling respect. That was more than sufficient.
On her way back to her car, she contemplated the bags of yarn she was carrying. She would need to purchase another small suitcase for the yarn. But why not? And then she found herself ducking into a perfume shop, a basement shop in a brownstone townhouse, and another world of well-worn flagstones the color of honey and the serene sound of a fountain. The door was open to the late spring afternoon, so a bell, set up on motion sensor, announced her presence by chiming softly and a trim old gentleman, impeccably dressed in pressed khakis and colorfully striped shirt, emerged from the small office behind the cash register. His hair was very white, and his rosy face lined, but the grey eyes were brilliantly alive. “I see you’ve been with Lois.”
Olivia sighed. “Wonderful shop. But it’s hard to see how you can make a living from it, even offering classes, even selling handspun.”
“She can’t. I can’t. It’s a problem we’ve discussed. These shops are lucrative hobbies, but in this city, that’s all they are. How may I be of service?”
Olivia teased at her memory, wondering what had brought her in. Then: “My mother loved the classic French perfumes—Caron’s N’aimez qui moi, Nuit de noël, Or et noir. Chanel’s Cuir de russie and Bois des îles, Guerlain’s Shalimar. And Mitsouko, of course.”
“Of course. You do well to remember the names.”
“I grew up knowing the scents. The names came later.”
“Memory is a scent bottle, my dear. Your mother’s tastes inclined to the quiet and the melancholy, and also the old.”
“That was her. Except for the melancholy.”
“She may not have been melancholic herself. Perhaps she understood how easily she might have been, had she allowed it, and wore some perfumes to remind her, no.”
“Perhaps. If I described a scent, could you tell me what it was?”
“I can try. One of your mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That will help, because we know what else she liked. Will you know the notes?”
“No. I remember it as being a beautiful scent, but not at all pretty. This was proud and remote.”
He gave her a long, thoughtful look. “Wait here.” He ducked into the storeroom and returned with a green leather box. “This is very old. I just purchased several perfumes from an estate sale. It is still sealed, so it’s probably still good, but they no longer make it and we don’t have samples. There are many beautiful perfumes but very few that may also be described as proud and remote.”
“If it is not my mother’s scent, I will pay you what you paid for it, plus ten percent. If it is, I will pay you what you think is fair market value.”
“You don’t know what that might be.”
“No more than I now know if it is utterly rancid. Sir, I do not think money matters for something like this.”
“You could buy jewelry for less.” Olivia recalled her morning purchases and permitted herself a brief smile. “I am not speaking of masterpieces, but simply of gold. So let us say, fair market value is, ounce per ounce, near half of gold. And this is two ounces.”
Deliberately, she took it from him, opened the square box to expose a square crystal bottle that said “Djedi”. The name meant nothing to her.
He opened a small lockback knife with a flick of his thumb, handed it to her hilt first. After a second, she took it from him, cut the seal, touched the tiniest amount to her wrist. Then she knew as the scent, warmed by her skin, shimmered up, that this was what her mother had worn only very rarely, in a bottle preserved without oxidation after all those decades. The perfume opened with the scent of stones and minerals and smoke, so that Olivia thought of bitter herbs bleaching in the desert sun, or smoke rising into the desert sky. Then it bloomed into rose and iris, vetiver and spice, beautiful and brief, before melding into leather and musk that was both animal and powdery, and the faintest sense of putrefaction. Her mother had worn it on her deathbed.
Olivia had an overwhelming sense of grief.
“Your mother,” said the proprietor gently, “seems to have loved Jacques Guerlain’s scents the best. Djedi is his masterpiece, his lament for the France that had done Verdun, and would be unable to do it again.”
“Who is Djedi? Or what is a Djedi?”
“There is a legend. Djedi was a master magician of ancient Egypt. Pharaoh Khufu, the god-king, brought Djedi to court to entertain his courtiers. It was said that Djedi could rejoin a severed human head to its body and Pharaoh asked him if this was true. Djedi said he could indeed do such a thing, so Pharaoh commanded a prisoner be brought in and decapitated for his amusement. But Djedi refused, saying—I remember the exact words, war will do that to you—saying, ‘Do not do this to a human being, my sovereign lord. Surely it is not permitted to do such a thing to one of the noble herd of God.’ So Pharaoh had a duck brought in and decapitated instead, and Djedi rejoined its head to its body. Presumably, the duck lived happily ever after. But the moral of the story is, there are some things people should never do to each other. Never.”
Olivia blinked back tears. “Why do you say, ‘War will do that to you’?”
“North Africa. Sicily. Southern France. Infantry. Based on experience, I agree with Djedi wholeheartedly.”
“Do you have more of this?”
“I have a second bottle, also sealed.”
“I will take them both.”
“We will not open that one. Instea
d, we will split the difference between what I paid for it, plus 10%, and fair market value.”
“That is fair to us both.” Olivia counted the price out in hundred dollar bills, tucking the perfume carefully into her purse.
She gathered up her wool and went off to find that her car had been stolen.
Along with every other car on that side of the street.
It was now Olivia’s turn to curse, slowly and methodically, both enraged and resigned, until she found an ominous No-Parking sign, well above eye level, hidden under some scaffolding.
A cabbie pulled up and stuck his smiling, know-it-all face out the window. “Looks like your car’s been towed, lady.”
“Do they do this often?”
“Every night. Alternate-side street parking and they start towing at 3:00 PM. The signs are very hard to find. On purpose. This is why a lot of New Yorkers don’t own cars. You can run up a hundred bucks a month in tickets and fines easy, no matter how hard you try to stay clean. Your car isn’t your car, it’s how the city makes money. Get in. I’ll take you to the impound lot. It’s part of my daily routine. Yeah, I make money off it, too. But I can’t say I like it.”
Olivia was grateful that she had taken George’s advice to courier her jewelry to the hotel. “No thanks, you can take me back to my hotel.”
“You just gonna leave it at the impound lot?”
“It’s a rental.”
“I don’t think they let you do that, lady.”
“My name is on that rental agreement. Not yours.”
“OK, you wanna go back to your hotel, I’ll take you there. It’s your money. Hope it’s close. I gotta get back here fast for my next fare. It’s like a public service, y’know?”
Back at the hotel, she checked to see that her package from Tiffany had arrived. It had, and all the pieces she had purchased were there. She added the contents of her purse and arranged for everything to stay in the hotel safe overnight.
Up in her room, she called the rental car company’s customer service and explained the situation to the young woman who, after ten minutes of piped-in bad music and worse exhortations to buy their special insurance or something else, chirpily identified herself as Hi-I’m-Susan-How-May-I-Help-You?
“I’m leaving on an overseas trip tomorrow and I had my car towed here in New York City. I really don’t want to spend my last night in New York ransoming my car. If I authorize you to charge the fines and administrative costs, will you pick it up?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We have a policy of not letting our customers do that.”
“But I’m leaving the country on an extended trip tomorrow and I’m willing to pay for the cost of picking it up.”
“Ma’am, I understand, but that’s against company policy and I can’t change it.”
“May I please speak to your supervisor?”
“I’ll have to put you on hold.”
Five interminable thank-you-for-your-patience minutes later, a male voice came on. “I’m Bill, Susan’s supervisor. How may I help?”
Patiently, Olivia repeated herself. “I’m leaving for Europe tomorrow and my rental was just towed here in New York City, along with a whole mess of other cars because there were no visible signs. I don’t want to spend my last night in America ransoming the car. If I authorize you to charge the fines and administrative costs to me, will you pick it up for me?”
“No, ma’am. Company policy says that you’re responsible for everything that happens to the car between the time you pick it up and the time you drop it off, and we have your signature on the paperwork. We will bill your credit card for all charges until you return it.”
Olivia opened her mouth to argue, but what came out was, “Well, you can find it in one of New York City’s impound lots.” And then she hung up.
Next, she called her credit card company and after authenticating her identity, explained the situation to the customer service representative, also a young woman. “I want to be fair, so I’d like to add in charges for towing, ticket, any storage fees and their costs to retrieve their car.”
“Actually, ma’am, since you authorized the rental, they can charge you up to the limit of your card, which is $25,000. If they’re not willing to limit their charges to those fees you mentioned, that’s between you and the rental company.”
“And if I don’t pay that charge?”
The woman’s voice got soft and worried. “Then we start charging penalties and late fees and really high interest rates, and your credit score goes down.”
“Thank you, dear. Your company and the rental company can sort it out then. Just give me my outstanding balance.” That balance included what Olivia owed the rental car company and she scheduled a final payment. The hotel, she’d pay for with a traveler’s check, then make a final large withdrawal in Vienna. How, she wasn’t quite sure. Someone would know.
When she was done, she broke her credit card into small pieces and dropped them into the wastebasket, along with the keys to the rental car.
This is how it ends, America. A lovely day with wonderful old people whose civilization will die with them. Then an evening arguing over rental cars and credit cards.
So this is how it ends, America. Not with a bang, not even a whimper. Just a final spat with Customer Service.