The Social Climber of Davenport Heights by Pamela Morsi Read Free Book Online Page B

suddenly struck me as funny that I was put out because this fellow wasn’t quicker to let me rob him.
    As unexpected as the arrival of such a thought was the truth in it. I had grown accustomed to talking this man out of his inventory. Getting a better deal than I deserved. But changing prices was not a negotiation—it was a fraud or shoplifting or…well, it was something and it wasn’t something good. I had promised to “do good.”
    Right there, in my favorite store, in the middle of the afternoon, I had an acute attack of conscience.
    “Okay,” the owner said, rising from his little desk behind the counter. He didn’t bother with his cane. His gait was awkward, the right leg was scraggly somehow, he moved it keeping his knee stiff, and it was not as well muscled as the left. “Did you want to buy these?”
    The question was mostly rhetorical as he picked up the casters. He glanced at the price on the masking tape and reached over to punch it in on the ancient cash register.
    “I don’t want to buy them,” I blurted out.
    He looked up, surprised.
    I don’t think I’d ever looked at him eye to eye before. His were a surprising vivid blue. I’d always thought the man to be about my age, but the depths behind his gaze were like aeons of time. He’d seen a lot. Maybe he’d seen too much.
    “I don’t want to buy them,” I repeated. “I…I brought them up because I think they are mismarked. These are eighteenth-century silver. I don’t recognize the mark, but they are obviously American. You’ve got them priced here as if they were ordinary silver plate.”
    “Really?”
    He examined the three little containers more closely.
    I told him what I thought a reasonable price would be for the set. The amount I suggested was a little higher than the one that had been on the original masking tape, but it was what I thought he could get.
    “I’d pay that much for them myself,” I said, “but I’m just looking today.”
    His eyes narrowed and he glared at me intently. Slowly he nodded as if he understood.
    “So,” he said, “you don’t want to buy anything. You’re just coming up here to point out what an idiot I am.”
    “Ah…no, of course not,” I stammered.
    “I’m really busy today,” he told me, his words rife with deliberate patience. “If you want these you can have them at the price marked on them.”
    “No, I don’t want them,” I assured him. “I just wanted you to know that the price is wrong.”
    “Okay,” he said, though he continued to look at me unpleasantly.
    “I’m just trying to help you,” I told him.
    “Right.”
    “You could say thank you.”
    “Look,” he snarled firmly, “I don’t have time for this little song-and-dance number you always do. I’m not sure what you’re up to, but I’m not haggling over this crap today.”
    “I’m not haggling,” I assured him a little sharply. “And this is excellent artisan silverwork not crap.”
    His mouth thinned into one disapproving line. “What ever,” he said as if it were two distinct words. He laid the casters in my hands. “Take them.”
    “What?”
    “They’re all yours.”
    He turned away as if that was the end of it.
    “Wait! No, I couldn’t do that.”
    “Of course you can.”
    “Then I have to pay you.”
    “That would involve coming to an agreement on a price,” he said. “And I just don’t have the stomach for it.”
    I stood there staring at him, speechless, dumbfounded.
    He relented slightly, his tone more conciliatory. “Just accept them as a gift, Janey,” he said. “They’re yours.”
    The sound of my name on his lips was a surprise.
    “You know me?”
    The man folded his arms across his chest, and in a singsong voice, like a brattish pubescent, said, “Janey Domschke is no dumb-ski, she’s the smartest girl in school. If you don’t believe it, ask her.”
    The little taunt was so far in my past, yet so familiar.
    “Lofton,” I corrected. “Janey…Jane Lofton.”