“You’re fooling me,” Ronald said.
“I wish I was.” Jimmy gave the box another maraca-shake. “I picked these up at a swap meet back in Nebraska. It was more of a gift, really. My great-uncle—he’s not really my uncle but we’re so close I call him that—he’s a big postcard collector since way back when, used to travel the country—a traveling salesman, vacuum cleaners, right? He’d pick up a few here, a few there. That’s how he got started. He even has some of those, um, ah—you’re the expert. Tell me, what are some of the rarest kinds of postcards?”
“Well, there are what you might call holy grails and one-of-a-kinds, like the hand-drawn postcard mailed by novelist Theodore Hook to himself with a penny black stamp in 1840, considered by expert deltiologists to be the very first postcard ever. And there are too many profitable niches to name them all. Railway stations from before 1950 are quite valuable, for example. Halloween-themed cards, such as those by the artist Ellen Clapsaddle—”
“Exactly. Old Uncle had gallons of them. Anyway, the reason he gave me this gift—he said that if I was ever in any trouble, I wouldn’t need to call him and ask for money. These would see me through. But he was a weird guy, insisted that they only be sold as a set and for the box to be opened only by the buyer. Said the right person would know to purchase them blindly. Like I said, he was a superstitious guy. You know that old-time spiritual bullshit. But I loved him, so I got to honor his request.”
“Of course,” Ronald said. “I understand. My wife, she recently passed, and—”
“So you want ’em or not? I hate to part with them, but I just don’t have the room anymore, you know? If you don’t take them, no hard feelings. I’ve already got an offer from another guy, a serious collector. What do you say?”
“Well, it is intriguing.” Who could fathom what sorts of surprises the box contained?
“I’ll do you a favor. Fifty bucks. That’s like giving them away. The other guy offered me a hundred, but I like you. They’re yours. I feel like they already belong to you.”
“Okay.” Ronald reached into his billfold and removed a crisp fifty-dollar bill. “I’ll take them.”
Jimmy clenched the bill in two fingers hesitantly. “Are you sure? I don’t wanna mislead you. There’s probably some junk in there, but I feel pretty confident that my uncle would leave some diamonds in with the rough.”
Ronald nodded so vigorously it made him a little dizzy as Jimmy handed him the box. There was something mystical about it, he felt. He turned it over and over, listening to the satisfying clomp. Perhaps he should leave it as is and preserve the mystery. But he couldn’t contain his curiosity. He tore open the lid and picked eagerly through the stack.
Something in Ronald’s chest evaporated, and the sucking emptiness brought his ribs into his heart like needles. This fabled box contained nothing but countless identical sets of novelty cards in the “Men’s Humor” category, photos of obese women in tiny bikinis with the caption “Glad you’re not her!” The worst part was that Ronald had seen them all before; these had been his cards once, from his ten-for-a-dollar bins. They’d been included in a large lot he bought off a very elderly gentleman who couldn’t be bothered to leave his nursing home to travel to shows anymore. When he’d needed to make room for some new inventory last month, Ronald tossed them in the mall’s “free” box. Through some strange series of circumstances, they’d been returned to him.
“So how great are they?” Jimmy asked, grinning, seemingly so overjoyed for Ronald’s luck that he was on the verge of laughter.
“Great,” Ronald said and tried to smile. He slunk away as Jimmy said that it had been a pleasure doing business with him. Ronald wouldn’t complain or ask for a refund. Jimmy had so much stuff coming in and out of his booth, he’d probably confused Ronald’s cast-offs with the gift from his uncle. He didn’t want to insult the man who was just trying to do him an honest favor. Anyway, if fifty dollars was the price for keeping Jimmy’s friendship, that was just fine. A friend was priceless.
He wondered what to do with the cards. It seemed they were attached to him. Melinda had always teased him about the way he treated objects as if they had feelings. It was one of the reasons he had accumulated such a large and impressive collection. What had once been a couple of boxes in the basement had reproduced, multiplied, and spread throughout their home. Melinda couldn’t even open the silverware drawer to get a fork without coming across a stack. She lived with him, she’d said, in a house of cards. It had been her idea for him to rent the space in the Heart of America as a way of paring down the collection or at least getting a portion out of the house. And, as always, she was right. He’d made so many friends here that had helped him through his wife’s passing, he didn’t know what he would have done without them.
His eyes downcast in thought, he nearly collided with Delores Kovacs carrying a case of Barbie dolls to her booth on Victoria Street.
“Pardon me, Delores,” he said. Now, she was a real looker—not that Ronald was prone to looking with romantic fervor. Besides that his heart belonged forever to Melinda, she was far too young for him. Based on her collecting interests, Ronald guessed that Delores was in her late thirties or early forties, though it was hard to tell. There was an ageless glow about her, a silver-screen luster. She could be a movie star or model, not a hair or thread out of place, wrinkleless on both garment and skin.
Hugging the case tight to her chest, she looked at him with hard, glassy eyes. “Do you know what’s in here? A 1964 swirl-ponytail Barbie in titian.” Ronald followed her to her booth, a U-shape of bright pink shelves with teal trim on which was displayed an impressive collection of vintage Barbies. There were curly-banged Barbies in zebra-striped swimsuits; Barbies in high heels and bikinis; Barbies with sleek bubble cuts and deep red lips; blond, brunette, and redhead Barbies; Fashion Queen Barbies with interchangeable wigs, with sheared scalps like dear Melinda during her treatments; ditzy, sun-bronzed Malibu Barbies; thin-waisted, big-eyed Twist ’n Turn Barbies in colorful mod fashions; walking Barbies, talking Barbies, driving Barbies, toenail-painting Barbies; Barbies living the American dream in lush pink estates; Barbies down on their luck and trying to make ends meet, working the drive-through at McDonald’s; and not just Barbie but her friends, family, pets, and associates, too: freckle-cheeked Midge; multiple Cousin Francies in varying hair colors and skin tones; Kens with clean-cut features and haggard, overworked ones, too; Alans and Rickys and Caseys and PJs; Barbie’s pet dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, monkeys; there were even some off-brand Barbie wannabes mixed in: Barbara and Barb and Bar Bar and Barbé and Blarbie, on whose box Delores had affixed a label that read “Early black knockoff test-marketed in the South VERY RARE.”
There were so many dolls that Ronald felt a certain kinship with Delores. Most dealers at the mall had their specific areas of expertise, had arrived at these areas through an initially casual interest that bloomed into an avocation and then maybe even into an obsession. But few had so comprehensive a collection as he and she. Others dabbled, spreading a wider net of interest. They liked different types of things, incongruous categories, pairing clocks and Christmas decorations, Disneyana and nineteenth century medical tools, for example. Not Delores and Ronald. They had honed their interests with laser precision. Yes, he and Delores were two of a kind. In their own way, they lived life to the fullest. Ronald had been attending an annual postcard show called Deltiomania for some years now, and it was true that he was in a sense a deltiomaniac. Collecting was addictive, like any vice, but he’d take his postcards over boozing or smoking.