Lee Nichols - Hand-Me-Down

“Still don’t remember me?” he asked.

“You’re starting to ring a distant bell,” I said.

“I’ll give you a hint. You asked me to your school—”

“I know who you are, Ian! Last I heard, you’d moved to New York.”

“Small-town boy lost in the big city. And did you know—” he tried to look horrified “—they have no beach there?”

“Get out!”

“Yeah, and all their malls are inside. It’s no Santa Barbara, I’ll tell you that.”

“But it’s the place to be if you want to learn—” I waved a hand at the moldering goods he had on display “—all this?”

“Took a couple years, but I finally wandered into Sotheby’s training. What’ve you been up to? What has it been—six years?”

“Eight,” I said, then was sorry I’d let him know I’d been counting. “This and that.”

“Married?” he asked.

“Divorced.”

He eyed me. “Liar.”

“Well, I could’ve married. I had offers. How did you know?” He was probably still following Charlotte’s career, like a cyber-stalker or something. Probably knew her birthstone and exactly how many centimeters she dilated when she had her kids.

“You’re not the marrying type,” he said.

“I am too. I just never—”

“Met the right man?”

“Found the right dress. How about you?”

“I don’t wear dresses.”

“So not married?”

“Nope. I’m engaged, though.”

“Engaged? Now? Currently?”

He nodded. “All of the above.”

“You can’t be flirting like that when you’re engaged! Where is she? Who is she? What are you thinking? Skinny-dipping at the reservoir. You oughta be ashamed, flirting like that.”

He laughed. “It’s harmless. I dated your sister, so we’re like siblings.”

That stopped me. “Yuck.”

“Well, I wouldn’t flirt with my actual sister, Anne.”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, Charlotte’s why I’m here. I’m supposed to buy some old pot for her birthday.”

“Some old pot?”

“Yeah, and if I don’t get it Emily will kill me.”

“So Emily hasn’t changed?”

“No, she’s mellowed. These days, she’d kill me painlessly.”

“We can’t have that. When’s Charlotte’s birthday? Wait, I should know this—must be this weekend.”

I nodded. He still knew her birthday. Pathetic.

“How is she?”

“Good. Three kids. Happily married.” I looked at him. “Very happily.”

“Mmm. Pity I missed her. She came into the store? My assistant must’ve been here—I’m surprised she didn’t mention seeing Charlotte Olsen.”

“Maybe she was wearing a scarf and sunglasses. It’s some kind of lacquer pot. Asian or something.”

“The Japanese Three Friends teapot?” He moved toward a display of Zen-looking kitchenware in a bright nook under the stairs. “The bamboo, pine, and plum design represents the Confucian virtue of integrity under—”

“No, no,” I said. “Not a teapot. No virtues. It’s a box, I think.”

“Oh! The lacquerware cosmetic box?” He moved the teapot aside. “An interesting piece. Made from bamboo which is coated with layers of lacquer—twenty-five, thirty layers. The lacquer’s a resin secreted by a plant at points of injuries—so they cut channels in the bark of the Rhus verniciflua, the sumac trees which…” He babbled on as he searched for the box—then suddenly stopped. “Oh, I forgot—it’s gone.”

“You sold it?!” I said. “I’m dead. I was supposed to come in two days ago.”

“It’s not sold. It’s on loan to a decorator. When do you need it?”

“Tonight.”

“Yikes. Well, I’ll give him a call. What time?”

“Dinner’s at six.” Charlotte insisted on an early dinner, for the kids. And I’d promised her I’d bathe the little monsters before the party. I didn’t have time to swing back here after work. “Do you think…it’s asking a lot, but could you drop it by Charlotte’s?”

“You want your antique delivered? Like it’s a pizza?”

“Think of it more as a house call—like a doctor.” It certainly wasn’t an invitation. I’d meet him, grab the gift, and disappear. This was a delivery only.

He shook his head. “You’re impossible.”

“To resist?” I asked.

He made a noncommittal noise. “Okay, I’ll deliver it.”

“Thank you!” I said. “You saved my life.”

I paid the extortionate sum for the old relic, sight unseen. Gave Ian Charlotte’s address, pretending that I didn’t know he’d memorized it from his cyber-stalking, and thanked him profusely.

He told me he’d see me a little before six. “Oh, and don’t worry about the rug,” he said, eyeing the mud.

I glanced down. “I won’t.”

I jogged muddily uptown a few blocks to Element and I slipped into Wren’s office before the sleek and nonsweaty salesgirls could bar the door. Wren hit Enter a few times, pretending she hadn’t been playing solitaire, and looked up at me. “You’re a walking Fashion Don’t.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you’re a—” She was impeccable. Wearing a deep V-neck black cashmere sweater, knee-length black skirt, a jade necklace and red heels. “You’re a—okay, I’m a disaster. I need a new everything.”

“Why?”

Because I just had false-memory sex with a man who thinks this is what I look like. “Charlotte’s birthday’s tonight.”

“I thought it was just family.”

“It is, mostly.”

“Then why…?”

“You remember Ian?”

“With the overbite?” she asked.

“That’s Liam, and it wasn’t an overbite. It was a gap. A chasm. He could whistle with his mouth closed. Anyone would’ve broken up with him. That wasn’t my fault. If you’re going to—”

“Oh, that Ian. Who you asked to give you a little ba-da-boom at Emily’s book party.”

“Yeah. Him.”

“God, you were so in love.”

“I wasn’t—”

“He’s back in town? Are you gonna ask him again?” In an atrocious English accent, she said, “Fancy a shag, Ian? I may be an old slapper, but—”

“I never asked him—I never used the word ‘shag,’ thank you very much.”

Still Dickensian, she said, “Please, sir, may I have another?”

“Would you stop it?”

She giggled. “Well, you did ask if he wanted to get laid, right?”

“Lei-ed! Like a lei, a Hawaiian—” I said, and Wren snorted. “Hey, at least I do get laid. Don’t make me talk about naked Kevin.”

That sobered her right up. “I still can’t believe you did that.” She meant squirt her with water.

“Has he called yet?”

“If I get pneumonia, it’s your fault.”

“He’ll call,” I reassured her. “You’ll see him Wednesday, anyway. Wet T-shirt night.”

“This, from the girl who wants to use my discount?”

But Wren never could resist dressing me up. I wanted the green Ana Sui dress with red chrysanthemums—because it had the same color combination as Wren’s necklace and shoes—but she insisted on more practical items. Although she did encourage me to splurge on a gorgeous pair of Blumarine shoes guaranteed to make my legs look like Nicole Kidman’s, and my feet feel like victims of Chinese foot-binding.

Still. When we finished shopping, I looked positively almost kinda Charlotte-esque. If you squinted.

Barely made it to work by one o’clock, wearing one of my new outfits. I’d bought three, but only spent $700, which sounds like a lot—sounds like more than my weekly after-tax pay, actually—but is in fact a bargain, as I got maybe $1000 worth of clothes. I could return one or two items, but these were the kind of prices—I mean, pieces—that made me look both curvy and skinny. I was definitely ten pounds lighter than I’d been in the soccer shorts. Maybe fifteen.