Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

He reached for a towel.

In bed Tina said, “I can sleep on top of the covers. But it would be better if I slept under them. I’d stay warmer.”

He lifted the blankets for her, and she snuggled beside him. After a time he said, “How old are you, Tina?” He could just see her in the faint light leaking past the blind.

The doll turned over and yawned theatrically, an elfin hand covering her mouth, a tiny arm stretching above her head. “How old are you?”

He told her, then added a year. “My birthday was last month. I’d forgotten.”

“That’s old.”

“I know,” he said.

“I don’t think you’re that old. I’m not.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“What did you get for your birthday?”

“Nothing. I really didn’t pay any attention to it.”

“Didn’t Mama and Daddy give you anything?”

He shook his head. “My mother’s been dead for a long time, and I haven’t seen my father for ten or twelve years.”

“But he still loves you.”

“No, he doesn’t. He never did.”

“Yes, he does.”

“Tina, you’ve never met him.”

“I know about Daddies, though. And you don’t.”

“All right,” he said, strangely comforted.

“What did you give him for his birthday?”

The question surprised him; he had to think for a moment. “Nothing. I never do.”

“You could give him a big kiss.”

“I don’t think he’d like that.”

“Yes, he would. I’m right and you’re wrong.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Next birthday, what would you like?”

He told her about the desk.

“I think you should get that for your next birthday. I’ll tell Daddy.”

“It’s been sold already.”

“Maybe the lady would sell it, too.”

He nodded to himself. “Maybe she would. Would you like some more tea, Tina?”

“Yes!”

He threw back the covers, rose, and switched on the light. By a route he could not quite follow, Tina leaped from the bed to the dresser. “Is your tea set in here?”

“I don’t have a tea set,” he told her. “Not yet, anyway. I was looking for this check book.”

“I can’t read. I haven’t been to school.”

“I’ll read it for both of us,” he said. “I’ve got thirty-two hundred dollars. That’s more than the desk cost.”

“You should have bought it.”

“You’re right. Now let’s have some tea and talk about it. Do you think she’d sell it at a profit? Where do you think it ought to go?”

“ Not facing the TV.” Tina hopped onto his shoulder. “So you’ll do your school work.”

“Not in a corner,” he told her. “I hate things in corners. Against the window.”

“All right!”

He turned up the burner under the pan of water, rinsed out Tina’s demitasse cup, and found a cup, a saucer, and a spoon for himself. There were only three tea bags left in the canister. “I’ll have to get more tea tomorrow,” he said.

“You sure will.”

“Tina, do you know a girl named Lara?”

“I don’t know anybody but you.”

“You remind me of her. I used to be in love with Lara—that’s why I bought you. Lara was the woman in front of the fireplace.”

“I don’t think you told me about that.”

“But I lost her, somehow. I lost her walking through the snow.”

“You have to dress really warm for a bluskery day.”

He nodded. “I bought the coat, and some other things. I got some money, somehow, and I put it in the bank. That’s where most of the thirty-two hundred’s from.”

“Maybe Lara gave it to you,” Tina ventured.

“No,” he said. And then, “Yes, maybe she did.”

“I’d like to talk to you about it,” he said. “That’s all.”

The ugly woman’s voice crackled from the earpiece. “We’re talking now.”

“I’d rather do it face to face. I could come out to your house any evening that’s convenient.”

Suspiciously: “Isn’t it genuine?”

He inhaled deeply, wanting to lie—and found he could not. “It’s perfectly genuine, I’m sure. But it’s Indian, even though it was made in the British style. Indian things don’t command high prices, as a rule.”

“Well, whatever you want to tell me about it, you’re going to have to say here and now. Then perhaps we’ll meet face to face, if I decide we should.”

“Mrs. Foster,” (this time he positively gulped for air) “I can offer you a five-hundred-dollar profit.”

There was a long pause. “If it’s genuine, why should you people want it back?”

“I’m not calling for the store,” he told her. “I want to buy it myself.”

“You’ve found out it’s worth more than they thought.”

“No,” he said. “No, not at all.” He waited for her to say something; she did not, and he was forced to speak again to fill the silence. “I think that when you bought it I told you I felt it was overpriced. I still do. I study the auction catalogues and follow the results, Mrs. Foster. It’s part of my job.”

“Go on.”

“A piece not much different from your desk went for only a little more than half what you paid, two years ago in New York.”

“But you’ll give me a five-hundred-dollar profit.”

Hope surged. “Yes,” he said.

“You’ll pay me more than twice what it’s worth.”

“Yes,” he said again.

“Why?”

He tried to speak, but no words came. At last he said lamely, “I don’t know if I can explain.”

“I’m listening.”

“I sell these things …”

“You’ve got a buyer?”

“No, no. I don’t mean I’m a dealer myself on the side—I couldn’t do that and keep my job. I only meant that I sell the things here, in the store.”

“I know that. You sold me this desk. I’m sitting at my desk right now, as it happens. This is where I put the phone.”

“I never wanted a piece for myself.” He felt that he was talking into a void, pleading with a soulless thing of wire and plastic far less human than Tina. “I’d check out a particular piece, you know—”

“Don’t say, ‘you know.’ It’s the one thing I absolutely cannot stand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. Go on, Mr. Green.”

“I was just trying to say I’d look at a certain piece and think that it was nice—or really not so nice. Or at one like your desk and think that it was a good piece but I wouldn’t have priced it quite so high. I’ve seen hundreds of pieces like that, I suppose, but I never saw anything except your desk that I really wanted for myself.”

Again she left him floundering.

“I thought they’d mark it down after Christmas, and then maybe I’d take it.”

She grunted. “You told me you thought it would be lower in January, and you suggested I come back then—when you planned to buy it for yourself. It would have been gone.”

Desperately he continued, “I hadn’t decided to buy it then. Really I hadn’t. Not firmly—I thought I wouldn’t. It wasn’t until it was gone—”

“That you realized how much you wanted it.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

“Do you know, Mr. Green, I’ve felt the same way myself a time or two. May I ask how your wife feels about your spending so much money?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“You’re divorced?”

“I’ve never been married, Mrs. Foster.”

“Marriage isn’t for everyone. Why, I know several men, the nicest, kindest—”

“I’m not gay, Mrs. Foster.” He knew that he had lost, and he wanted to hang up. “Once a girl even lived with me for a few days, but I’ve never married.” He made one final effort. “I’ve got thirty-two hundred dollars. That’s every cent I have in the world, and that’s why I said I’d give you a five-hundred-dollar profit. I’ll make it a thousand if you’ll take the second five hundred in installments.”