Are You Jealous (part two)

Are You Jealous

(part two)

“What do you think?” Eva asked.

Since he hadn’t been listening, he countered with a question of his own. “Have you decided to sell it?”

“My clock?” Coquettish hand to heart. “I’ll never sell my clock. McFadden says it’s only middle-range. But it’s good.”

She wore a long velvet skirt, an Indian tunic. Her cardigan was cashmere, huge, a college gift from her grandmother.

“You’ve got paint,” he’d told her once, touching a smear of magenta along the cuff.

“Four hundred for this. Nan took me shopping for grad, got tiffed because I picked the biggest size. ‘You never want to look smart, Evie’.”

Another year, he had said, with less hope, “You’ve got moths.”

Eva, as though he sided with her grandmother, had put her fingers in the holes and dragged them out. Bright hues and patterns of her tunic showed through black, through crying gaps with curled edges.

His wife was a swift mover, and her clothes made a whirlwind of Amarige and closet-scent. She tinkered with the clock. “Let’s pretend it’s five.”

She would have Gabriel discover that her clock did not merely chime…it carillonned, it deedled, it piped intricately. She looked enraptured.

She tapped a finger on Gabriel’s bald spot.

“He fixed it. That’s what the man…Emil Reiff, McFadden’s guy who has the shop full of gears and whatnot…” A giggle, a fond moment recollecting Presby’s wit. “That’s what he did. McFadden said he’ll send the bill.”

“Too much joy for one morning.”

It was irony, it was a joke.

“Oh, good,” Eva said.

“I ought to finish one or two things. Then we’ll have lunch, won’t we?”

She slipped her hand across the desk, and picked up her phone.

Gabriel sat angled to his screen, taking surreptitious views of his client’s product photo. Clients often had this idea of selling. To use Eva’s term, the expanse of boobahzh was off-putting. The client’s moles and crevice made a poor framing device for her kitchen gadget. She would need to send another photo; she would need to omit herself next time.

He opened his email. “Your charms, my dear”—Presby’s baritone, intruded upon Gabriel’s imagination—“must come as a happy surprise.”

Presby stood high with his auction-house clientele. Gabriel envisioned becoming Presby, mesmerizing with voice and gesture. He would stand high with Eva, presumably.

2

Are You Jealous

Are You Jealous (part three)

(Stephanie Foster, 2016)