Are You Jealous (part four)

Are You Jealous

(part four)

He looked at the next email, Emil Reiff’s request for payment. He looked twice. The clock gave a brief twinkling note, as it struck the half-hour.

How could the repairs have cost so much? Reiff had not itemized; he extenuated nothing…but he had included a phone number. Gabriel left his seat, wary at the silence from the kitchen. His phone would be in his jacket. His jacket was on the sofa arm.

“Darling?” he called, but softly.

He approached the thing with trepidation. Eva had placed it on the island, below the pot rack. Were heavy machinery to go by…a street not far from theirs was under repair…one of those pots…

But it would have to be cast iron to do real harm. He tapped his email, got Reiff’s number.

“I accept a credit card,” Reiff told him. “I accept cash. Also, through McFadden Presby. He will arrange for you.”

“I don’t object to paying…”

“My business is such, that I must be paid. I expect to be paid.”

Well, Gabriel mused, ending the call, everyone’s business is such, for that matter.

The day was not really sunny; it was not really warm. He felt clammy in his jacket. He knew that if he took it off, he would feel chilled. The sun seemed warmer where yellow leaves remained, coldly withdrawn where limbs were bare. He passed three businesses in a row, shuttered and closed, taped signs advertising Premises for Lease.

Passages in life run their course. Vows and pledges can’t obviate human nature. Eva’s nature was to fix things…to take a shabby thing and make art of it; to take a broken thing and restore its utility.

On the other hand, she had a short attention span.

“You don’t, you know,” he had told her once. “It’s an identity you choose.”

“Oh, that explains me. Thank you, Gabriel.”

She cast things aside; she moved on to new enthusiasms. She was mistaken, he thought, if she believed her work was finished.

And yet…could it be?

As a child, she had coveted this clock that sang its magical song atop the wardrobe. She could not reach it, not even standing on a chair. (“Evie, down!”) The wardrobe was a fortress, a castle keep. It had hulked in its corner for an age, gathered a century of home soot, waxed into the grain. The pulls had faces of angels, blackened too, their curls glinting red-brown.

Eva had known and named each, with their small alterations of feature. She had sketched their stories in her spiral-bound book.

4

Are You Jealous

Are You Jealous (part five)

(Stephanie Foster, 2016)