She stood in the back room looking at all the items that Charlie had piled there the day before: shoes, lamps, umbrellas, porcelain figures, toys, a couple of books, and an old black-and-white television and a painting of a clown on black velvet.
“He said this stuff was glowing?” she asked Ray, who stood in the doorway to the store.
“Yes. He made me check it all with my Geiger counter.”
“Ray, why the fuck do you have a Geiger counter?”
“Lily, why do you have a nose stud shaped like a bat?”
Lily ignored the question and picked up the ceramic frog from the night before, which now had a note taped to it that read DO NOT SELL OR DISPLAY in Charlie’s meticulous block-letter printing. “This was one of the things? This?”
“That was the first one he freaked out about,” said Ray matter-of-factly. “The truant officer tried to buy it. That started it all.”
Lily was shaken. She backed over to Charlie’s desk and sat in the squeaky oak swivel chair. “Do you see anything glowing or pulsating, Ray? Have you ever?”
Ray shook his head. “He’s under a lot of stress, losing Rachel and taking care of the baby. I think maybe he needs to get some help. I know after I had to leave the force—” Ray paused.
There was a commotion going on out in the alley, dogs barking and people shouting, then someone was working a key in the lock of the back door. A second later, Charlie came in, a little breathless, his clothes smudged here and there with grime, one sleeve of his jacket torn and bloodstained.
“Asher,” Lily said. “You’re hurt.” She quickly vacated his chair while Ray took Charlie by the shoulders and sat him down.
“I’m fine,” Charlie said. “No big deal.”
“I’ll get the first-aid kit,” Ray said. “Get that jacket off of him, Lily.”
“I’m fine,” Charlie said. “Quit talking about me like I’m not here.”
“He’s delirious,” Lily said, trying to pry Charlie out of his jacket. “Do you have any painkillers, Ray?”
“I don’t need painkillers,” Charlie said.
“Shut up, Asher, they’re not for you,” Lily said, automatically, then she considered the book, Ray’s story, the notes on all the items in the back room, and she shuddered. It appeared that Charlie Asher might not be the hapless geek she always thought him to be. “Sorry, boss. Let us help you.”
Ray came back from the front with a small plastic first-aid kit. He peeled back Charlie’s sleeve and began to clean the wounds with gauze and peroxide. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said. “I slipped and fell in some gravel.”
“The wound’s pretty clean—no gravel in it. That must have been some fall.”
“Long story.” Charlie sighed. “Ouch!”
“What was all the noise in the alley?” Lily asked, needing badly to go smoke, but unable to pull herself away. She just couldn’t imagine that Charlie Asher was the one. How could it be him? He was so, so, unworthy. He didn’t understand the dark underbelly of life the way she did. Yet he was the one seeing the glowing objects. He was it. She was crestfallen.
“Just the Emperor’s dogs after a seagull in the Dumpster. No big deal. I fell off a porch in Pacific Heights.”
“The estate,” Ray said. “How’d that go?”
“Not well. The husband was grief-stricken and had a heart attack while I was there.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, he just sort of became overwhelmed thinking about his wife and collapsed. I gave him CPR until the EMTs came and took him off to the hospital.”
“So,” Lily said, “did you get the—uh—did you get anything special?”
“What?” Charlie’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean, special? There was nothing special.”
“Chill, boss, I just meant will we get the grandma’s clothes?” He’s it, Lily thought. The fucker.
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know, it’s so strange. The whole thing is so strange.” He shuddered when he said it.
“Strange how?” Lily said. “Strange in a cool and dark way, or strange because you’re Asher and you’re out of it most of the time?”
“Lily!” Ray snapped. “Go out front. Dust something.”
“You’re not the boss of me, Ray. I’m just showing my concern.”
“It’s okay, Ray.” Charlie looked like he was considering how, exactly, to define strange, and not coming up with anything that was working. Finally he said, “Well, for one thing, this woman’s estate is way out of our league. The husband said he called me because we were the first secondhand store in the phone book, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of man to do something like that.”
“That’s not that strange,” Lily said. Just confess, she thought.
“You said that he was grief-stricken,” Ray said, dabbing antibiotic ointment on Charlie’s cuts. “Maybe he’s doing things differently.”
“Yes, and he was angry at his wife, too, for the way she died.”
“How?” Lily asked.
“She ate silica gel,” Charlie said.
Lily looked at Ray for an explanation, because silica gel sounded techno-geeky, which was Ray’s particular field of geekdom. Ray said, “It’s the antidesiccant that they pack with electronics and other things that are sensitive to humidity.”
“The ‘Do Not Eat’ stuff?!” Lily said. “Oh my God, that’s so stupid. Everyone knows you don’t eat the ‘Do Not Eat’ stuff.”
Charlie said, “Mr. Mainheart was pretty broken up.”
“Well, I guess so,” Lily said. “He married a complete fucktard.”
Charlie cringed. “Lily, that’s not appropriate.”
Lily shrugged and rolled her eyes. She hated it when Charlie dropped into Dad mode. “Okay, okay. I’m going outside to smoke.”
“No!” Charlie jumped out of the chair and put himself between Lily and the back door. “Out front. From now on if you have to smoke you go out front.”
“But you said that I look like a child hooker when I smoke out front.”
“I’ve reassessed. You’ve matured.”
Lily closed one eye to see if she could better glimpse into his soul and thus figure out his true agenda. She smoothed over her black vinyl skirt, which made a tortured, squeaking noise at the touch. “You’re trying to say I have a big butt, aren’t you?”
“I absolutely am saying no such thing,” Charlie insisted. “I am simply saying that your presence in front of the store is an asset and will probably attract business from the tourists on the cable car.”
“Oh. Okay.” Lily snatched her box of cloves off the desk and headed out past the counter and outside to brood, grieve really, because as much as she had hoped, she was not Death. The book was Charlie’s.
That evening Charlie was watching the store, wondering why he had lied to his employees, when he saw a flash of red passing by the front window. A second later, a strikingly pale redhead came through the door. She was wearing a short, black cocktail dress and black fuck-me pumps. She strode up the aisle like she was auditioning for a music video. Her hair cascaded in long curls around her shoulders and down her back like a great auburn veil. Her eyes were emerald green, and when she saw him looking, she smiled, and stopped, some ten feet away.
Charlie felt an almost painful jolt that seemed to emanate from somewhere in the area of his groin, and after a second he recognized it as an autonomic lust response. He hadn’t felt anything like that since Rachel had passed, and he felt vaguely ashamed.
She was examining him, looking him over like you would examine a used car. He was sure he must be blushing.
“Hi,” Charlie said. “Can I help you?”
The redhead smiled again, just a little, and reached into a small black bag that he hadn’t noticed she’d been carrying. “I found this,” she said, holding up a silver cigarette case. Something Charlie didn’t see very often anymore, even in the secondhand business. It was glowing, pulsating like the objects in the back room. “I was in the neighborhood and something made me think that this belonged here.”