Little Girls(59)

Naked and wet, Ted stood with one foot inside the shower and one planted firmly on the ecru tile floor. Something metallic roughly the size of a softball was in his hands. When he looked up at Laurie, there was bemused expression on his face. A reddish knot swelled at the center of his forehead.

“What happened?”

He showed her the metallic softball-sized object. “Goddamn showerhead shot right off the spigot. Cracked me in the cranium.”

“Oh, my God, are you okay?”

“I’ll live. The bitching thing could have taken my head off, though.” He thrust the showerhead at her, then turned off the water. It dribbled from the broken nozzle jutting bent-elbowed from the shower wall.

At that moment, the smoke alarm went off.

“Oh, damn!” Still clutching the showerhead, she rushed back out into the hall (Susan still stood mesmerized in the doorway, shocked into speechlessness at her father’s barrage of curse words) and down the stairs. In the kitchen, smoke roiled from the slices of French toast that burned in the pan. She scooped the pan up off the burner and rushed it over to the kitchen sink where she dropped it, along with the broken showerhead, unceremoniously. Snatching a dishtowel off the counter, she hurried to where the little white disc beeped in the ceiling. She climbed onto a chair and flapped the dishtowel like a matador’s cape until the smoke dissipated and the alarm went silent.





At two o’clock, Stephanie Canton arrived with a companion—a fastidious little man with a droll smile and the flattened nose of a prizefighter. He wore circular glasses with wire rims. The top of the man’s head was completely bald while the sides and back were in full bloom with wiry corkscrews of hair so dense it more closely resembled the fur of some woodland creature. He wore a forest green sport coat of a material that looked suspiciously like velvet and pants whose cuffs had been hemmed too high over the tops of his suede loafers and seaweed-colored socks.

His name was Smoot and he was a self-proclaimed collector of antiquities. He was the proprietor of a boutique on West Street that sold refurbished pieces from the turn of the century. In the study, Smoot ran stumpy hands with abbreviated though well-manicured fingers along the aged wood with a lover’s caress. Laurie watched him with curiosity, the way one might watch a small but colorful beetle thudding around inside a mason jar.

“Would you like some coffee?” Laurie offered him when it seemed he was permanently lost in a trance while staring at the piece.

“Never, never,” chirped Smoot. “Gives me angina.”

Susan, who had been in the hallway eavesdropping, broke into a fit of giggles and scampered away. Laurie smiled apologetically at both Smoot and Stephanie Canton.

“Very nice,” Smoot said, returning his concentration back to the desk. He spoke with an effeminate lisp. “This is a Cutler, you know. A handsome model, too. There is no date-stamping, but I would guess it’s circa 1910 or thereabouts.”

“Wow,” Laurie said.

“Wow, indeed,” said Smoot. He opened and closed the desk’s flexible tambour, then stood upright while straightening his sport coat. “Do you have any of the original paperwork?”

“I wouldn’t know. My father’s old housekeeper might know where it is, if it’s still around.”

Smoot nodded perfunctorily. “I’ll give you eighteen hundred for it. And an extra two hundred for the bookcase.”

Laurie blinked. “Dollars?”

“Do you prefer francs? Pesos? Indian rupees, perhaps?” He smiled wryly and Laurie could see that this was as close to humor as this punctilious little man probably came. He withdrew a slender checkbook from the inside pocket of his coat.

“Sold,” Laurie said, still in disbelief.

Smoot leaned over the desk and meticulously printed out the check, which he then tore from the checkbook and handed over to Laurie.

“I’ll have some men come for it later this evening,” he said.

As Smoot left, another fellow arrived. Slender and well-dressed, and with an approachable demeanor, McCall was the antithesis to the Dickensian Mr. Smoot. McCall’s interests lay in the ornate bedroom furniture in the master bedroom. Ted was in the bathroom fixing the showerhead when McCall made his circuitous passes around the bed and nightstand; at what was probably the most inopportune time, Ted poked his head out into the bedroom just as McCall bent down to inhale the scent of the wooden headboard. McCall made an offer just slightly less generous than Smoot’s, though still quite impressive, and Laurie accepted it without hesitation.

“I’ll need a truck for the bed,” McCall said, “but if your husband would be kind enough to assist me in transporting it, I can fit the nightstand in my car.”

Together, Ted and Mr. McCall lifted the nightstand and duck-walked it out of the bedroom. Out in the hall, one of the drawers slid open. Her father’s Bible tumbled out and struck the floor.

“That’s seven years bad luck,” Ted commented.

“I believe you’re thinking of breaking a mirror,” McCall retorted.

Laurie scooped up the Bible, then watched as the men slowly navigated the nightstand down the stairs, across the foyer, and out the door. Stephanie Canton followed them out, scribbling diligent notes in her binder.

Laurie looked down. There was something poking out between the pages of the Bible. She opened the book and saw there was a photograph inside. She turned it over to view it and her skin prickled.