1 MARGARET
Margaret Byrd watched the two new vendors who had taken her dear friend Patricia’s vacated booth (#1-146) lug in their boxes of inventory, thinking: There were antiques and then there were collectibles. She ought to poke her head out from behind her immaculate, organized-by-color shelves of perfume bottles, some of which—on the top row, of course, locked behind thick, bulletproof glass, the storage unit screwed securely to the wall, and, of course of course of course, the entire set insured to its precise value—dated back to the eighteenth century, and introduce herself, welcome the gentlemen to the Heart of America Antique Mall family, perhaps show them to the café and treat them to a package of Nilla wafers and a Pepsi from the vending machines. Yes, she certainly should, and in a little while she would. But for now she only watched, making note of the many collectibles (which consisted of any crafted or manufactured items less than one hundred years old, unlike antiques) the two men removed from overstuffed cardboard boxes and set haphazardly on the fiberglass shelving units they probably assumed the mall had provided but which had actually belonged to Patricia. Margaret had thought her leaving them there was a sign she’d return one day, she hadn’t really meant the unpleasant things she’d said two months ago, before she dropped, quite deliberately, Margaret’s Royal Flemish biscuit jar with gold and amethyst butterfly embellishment, shattering it into a thousand glittering pieces—but no, in retrospect, an accident, just an accident, Margaret was certain, unequivocally so—and stormed out, sending her three brutish sons to collect her inventory days later. They’d forgotten Patricia’s beautiful hand-painted porcelain doll, and although it didn’t fit, Margaret had been keeping it safe behind a shelf in her own booth. Margaret called her, sometimes twice a day, ready to explain away the simple misunderstanding that had led to all this trouble. She’d written her spiel down on a telephone pad, just in case she got flustered or nervous—though why should she be nervous? The calls went unanswered, the messages unreturned.
One could make out dust rings on the shelves left by Patricia’s exquisite Josef Hoffmann–style candlesticks and already these two were moving right on in, proudly displaying Dallas and The Beverly Hillbillies board games where Patricia’s gilt nineteenth century hand mirrors once sat, fanning back issues of Playboy and Oui and Mad magazine on the lowest shelves where anyone’s children could get at them, and stacking tin lunch boxes whose brightly colored visages—the Fonz, grinning; a tense Lee Majors, standing impassively in a fluorescent sea of flames; soaring, dead-eyed cartoon superheroes; potbellied, silver-jumpsuited casts of science fiction television programs long forgotten—mocked everything booth #1-146 had once been. And even though their ten-by-twenty-square-foot space was stuffed thick and musty with the accumulated ephemera of a thousand Generation X childhoods, they left for the parking lot and returned with still more things.
Margaret’s heart began to hiccup as they continued to unpack. There were artifacts and then there were knickknacks. There were knickknacks and then there was junk. With the emergence of each item, she was surer that these two were nothing more than half-rate junk dealers. When one of them pulled out an unopened box of Mr. T breakfast cereal, she began to choke. She needed some coffee, with a lot of cream and half a spoonful of sugar, and maybe some popcorn or those Nilla wafers. However, the only route to the café was past the dreaded twosome. Oh, what the heck, she thought. She may as well satisfy her own morbid curiosity. She couldn’t help it. She was human, too, always slowed down with the rest of them to take a gander at a grisly accident at the side of the highway, though she did it out of concern, in case someone would happen to flag her down for help; she wasn’t some thrill-seeking gawker.
She waited until their backs were turned to slip out of her booth and down the aisle, named, according to the wood-carved street sign hanging from the ceiling, Memory Lane, but one of the men—the blond, mustachioed one—cornered her and stuck out a visibly moist palm. “Hello there.” She nodded, tried to smile, took his hand daintily. “We’re new,” he said unnecessarily.
The dark-haired one, his hands tangled in a bundle of video game joysticks, turned and said hello, but not so friendlily as the other. He looked at his partner in a way to suggest that the blond always talked to strangers in terms too intimate and that, although the dark-haired man didn’t like it, he was helpless to stop him. There was something obscenely paternal in that look, especially given that the dark-haired one, judging by his receding hairline and the thin skin around his eyes, appeared significantly older than the blond. Wasn’t that the way it worked with these homosexuals? Their relationships hinged on bizarre power struggles that reversed themselves in the privacy of their bedroom, culminating in unimaginable acts of perversion. Anyway, something was off about these two. They were both so tall and thin. As a couple, they seemed unbalanced. Wasn’t one of them supposed to be short and stout, the Laurel and Hardy dynamic? They were gays of a type that used to be popular on raunchy television sitcoms that Margaret, as a rule, refused to enjoy: Hawaiian-shirt-wearers who drank flamboyantly named martinis like fuzzy navels, sex on the beaches, and pink flamingos, who called themselves bitches and meant it as a compliment, who used words like po-mo and kitsch and camp as if anyone knew what they meant.
“I don’t think we have room for this, Lee,” Blond said to Dark Hair, motioning to a large Styrofoam hamburger, the vestige of a defunct and better-off-forgotten novelty diner. He turned to Margaret and said, “You mind if we keep it in your booth?” Margaret must have blanched, because he touched her shoulder and said, “Only kidding, dear,” and then, “Seymour,” more like an exclamation than a way of identifying himself.
“Margaret,” Margaret said uncertainly. “Booth one-dash-one-thirty-eight, corner of Memory Lane and Treasure Way.” Seymour didn’t say anything, so she added, “Welcome aboard.” The words tasted sour, camp counselorish, and unnatural. Already these men’s tackiness was affecting her. After a few weeks’ exposure, she’d be decorating her mantel with plastic fast-food prizes and those googly-eyed fuzzballs with sticker feet, wearing shirts that jingled with myriad gaudy charms and buttons sewn in willy-nilly patterns, eating Lucky Charms for breakfast out of a Tiffany bowl.
Seymour said, “Don’t mind us. We’re just settling in. Got this booth here and one in Hall Three for our vinyl.”
She prayed that by vinyl he meant record albums and not some sort of depraved sex apparel. You just never knew when it came to these people. They had been here less than a day and already they’d staked their claim to multiple halls! As much as it would anguish her, Margaret would have to investigate their other booth later. As the Heart of America’s senior-most dealer, it was her duty.
“Nice to meet you,” Lee said without sincerity and then left, probably to gather even more junk. Frankly, she preferred his rudeness to Seymour’s hello there aren’t I cute brand of social charm. He was presently digging through the boxes and humming. Having made himself known, he evidently had no interest in continuing the conversation, no desire to ask Margaret what sorts of antiques (official dictionary definition) interested her, how long she’d been in the industry, or if she would introduce him to the community of dealers who made the Heart of America their home away from home. Just as she was preparing to sigh pointedly and leave for the café, he yanked out of a box an object so vile and blatantly violative to the mall’s clear policy guidelines that Margaret swore she could taste—she could actually taste—a wisp of vomit in the back of her throat.