Bluff City Pawn (17 page)

“Not ever,” Huddy says. But then he recalls a monkey ring. This crazy guy, short and squat, five-by-five, coming in last year and showing him this ring, worn long along his finger. But it was what was hidden underneath that was the punchline. The man slipped off the gold ring—Huddy expecting some personal inscription—to reveal the monkey’s penis lying flat against its belly, a ruby on the tip. The guy gave a hyena laugh and said that the monkey was humping his finger every day. So maybe Huddy’s wrong about what he told Harlan, and all these made-up items, mink flyswatters and snakeskin goggles, are likely real. He should have known this, being a pawnbroker, that any and all odd items and ornaments somewhere exist. He tells Christie about the monkey ring and she smiles, and then she breaks out laughing, cups her mouth to not wake their son, but Huddy leans in and pulls her hand away and they share the laughter, and Huddy feels good for assisting, for flipping her mood, for kicking away her guilty story and finding another one, with a funny underside. If she ever tells of it again, he’s got this different and better ring to crack her up. He pokes the air with his finger. She tips her palm over, as if the joke is right there in her upturned hand, and maybe any future thoughts of the elephant ring will trigger the monkey ring. Both TVs are going the same way, but now it doesn’t feel like they’re operating wrong but instead like the sets are paired up and connected, a high-end system, his house wired for surround sound.

“Did you buy it?”

“The monkey? It wasn’t for sale. Just for show.”

“But you would’ve?”

Sure. The right price. The ruby. The gold. Buy it real easy. Huddy nods.

“It’d be a good day if somebody walked in with an elephant ring?” Her head twists sideways.

“For me?” Huddy asks.

“I figure, since you won’t tell me what a good day is, I might as well make one up. ’Cause I know you ain’t trading marbles.”

“Marbles and Hot Wheels watches.”

“Who . . .” she says, but she doesn’t say more, shakes her head to not care or worry. “So, today’s a day when somebody brought you an elephant ring?”

“Today’s a day with a hundred elephant rings.”

Her eyes jump, and Huddy feels like he’s just brought unnumbered presents. He stares hard at her, keeps looking, as if to tell her that she doesn’t need to miss or even think about that sorry ring, when he’s about to redeem it a hundred times over. That old ring got lost but their lives are offsetting, their future is getting raised. He sees both her faces at once, the younger one who pawned and defaulted, and the older one with this big win just up ahead with his expenditure and investment return. He watches her remember—but then she blinks, fast as if to forget the memory, and smiles, dimly but then brightening, so that maybe all of her just came back here.

He wonders, when he dreams tonight, if he’ll see an elephant, this decked-out elephant carrying a monkey, and the monkey sparkling, too. Maybe they’re part of a parade or celebration. And then he’ll probably picture Harlan. Harlan’s come from no direction, not approaching but appearing all at once, as if he’d crawled out from the elephant’s underbelly, to flank these bejeweled animals. Huddy watches the three of them move altogether, and Harlan sees the shiny rings on the riding monkey’s fingers, and Huddy waits to see if Harlan will reach up high to try to slip one off. There he goes, up close against the elephant—a little person next to this immensity—one hand palming the elephant’s side, readying himself for an opening, the right unsuspecting moment, some coming commotion or activity elsewhere in the procession, or the sun a blinding shimmer on the headdress, or the sun low and a concealing shadow thrown. But if Christie changed, why can’t Harlan? Except, when Huddy met Christie, she’d already become another, already stopped what she was one time. “Did Harlan ask where the ring went?” Wouldn’t it have been great if Huddy had found that ring and brought it back to Christie on their engagement? He can’t tell this final thought’s origins, if it came from himself, or if he was imagining Harlan saying it first to Christie earlier in the night. And since he can’t distinguish which speaker in his head, he decides it’s both.

“No. He said, figured it was gone. Why you asking so much what Harlan did and didn’t do?” And she laughs again, this monkey ring still tickling. Huddy’s got her on some safari, where people take down elephants and monkeys, and then wear rings as souvenirs mounted on their fingers.

But he’s gone from the safari plunder. Huddy’s in the gun room checking the guns off a list. And Joe’s in the truck laying the blankets. But you still need a third body, someone in the middle to walk the guns out.

Eight

Sell his gold. Sell
his gems. Sell his guns. Instant selling that he’ll combine with Joe’s bankroll to buy up the guns to sell them and swap out his Lamar life for the richer gutter of Summer Avenue. Huddy phones the buyers, tells them he wants money today. He knows he won’t get full price—the cost of unloading is leaving money on the table—but right now he’s a discount house that can never go negative.

He starts with gold, but here comes the diamonds with his old car to not draw attention, a hopped-up engine to drive away fast and a henchman stepping out the passenger side to guard the car during the interval between drive-up and getaway.

“That’s some firepower,” Harlan says, then returns his eyes to the movie below the loan counter.

The buyer walks inside the store swinging his beat-up attaché case. “What you got for me, Mister Huddy?”

“What I always got, reduced prices.” Huddy pulls the bigger diamonds from the safe, a half-dozen higher-grade stones inside envelopes inside a cigar box, and he carries the box back to the showcase, which he unlocks to retrieve the smaller ones. The mounted diamonds sliding out of the envelopes and Huddy reading the price codes to see what years ago he paid and make sure he’s not giving them now away. “Steam-cleaned ’em so you can get a fresh look.”

“Appreciate that,” the buyer says, the loupe and the Leveridge gauge tapping down on the glass of the showcase, and Huddy watches him lift a marquise and loupe it, his eyes strengthening ten-power. He sets the stone between the arms of the gauge to measure out width and depth. “Nice. Too bad these marquise ain’t selling.”

“Same with pear-shaped,” Huddy says. “Emerald cut, too.” He figures why not talk about two others falling out of fashion, when they aren’t sitting here.

“Yeah, funny thing about womenfolk. They all want something special, ’cept they all want the same ring.” And he picks up the round to show what that one brilliance is. Huddy watches him go piece by piece, a European cut and then another round. “Nice detail here,” he says, a finger tracing the diamond-set shank. “Diamonds in a loop is classy.” He sorts it with the pile he wants and Huddy’ll wait to tell him he’s taking all sorts. Mark it down, and down again, but it’s still going out with you. “Kind of a hit-and-miss on this one,” the buyer says after zooming in on a princess. Huddy nods. “Cut’s real nice, but you got some real bad flaws.”

“
Flaws
is such a mean word,” Huddy says. “Especially when you talking about what she’s born with.”

“Well, I hate to be mean. Give me another way of saying.”

“It’s about
seeing
. Maybe you got an angel inside, sitting on a cloud.”

“Ha! Well, that sounds pretty. But I ain’t much for imagination. I just like clear stones.”

“This clown sleeps here,” Harlan says, and Huddy shoots a look at Harlan, who’s up from the chair eyeing the parking lot and Del, who’s eyeing the guardsman before turning toward Huddy’s door and inching in. Sleeps here, crawls all over the merchandise like some insect you can’t kill—you spray and think you stopped it but it comes back through the keyhole, some water bug you can’t eradicate because now he’s a goldbug, too. Del’s arms stuck up high, except he’s the one hijacking the day. Huddy sees the new hardware slung on his hip.

“My happy hunting ground,” Del says to everyone and all the inventory. Huddy deciding whether his job right now is a juggler or a bouncer, and then his right arm goes sideways to pawn Del off on Harlan, but Del ignores the handoff. “Huddy, you gonna go with me on gold? I told you, I’m paying ninety-one percent of spot. Come on now, you gotta leave something on the bone. Just a little bit, so I can move it. Don’t make me pay more or I’ll never get to be a millionaire.”

Huddy aiming for the correct incentive, some hush money, a kickback to kick him out.

“I figured that was your answer,” Del says. “Which is why I’m asking today for silver. Silver coins. I’m hunting ’em cause I got the buyers lined up. These survivalists in Arkansas. Man, they buying up silver. And gold. They think Armageddon is right around the corner. They paying twelve and a half times the face value. Saying to me, What you gonna do when Armageddon comes, and I’m telling them, I’m gonna get my gun and get your shit! Gold and silver and hellfire. Man oh man, they scared about the third thing so they hoarding the first two!”

Get him to a corner, Huddy thinks, so I can go private in mine. “See you wearing something new. Let’s put you a notch better. Let me talk to Harlan here about a setup.”

“Good deal,” Del says, hyped about the gift certificate he’s gaining. “I seen you busy with the gem man.” But Del doesn’t distract him; he might be inside the store with the buyer, but the buyer’s also inside the stones, and Huddy’ll go internal, too. Del turns his back and Huddy’s eyes keep on the diamonds and not on Harlan moving within earshot.

“He points, you say twenty percent off,” Huddy says, without looking. Paying Del to leave and not jeopardize the deal that Huddy jumps back to.

“This one’s beautifully cut,” the diamond buyer says. “Not seeing no funny birthmarks neither.”

The last stone, the measuring and assessing finished, Huddy stares at the two piles, uneven in the wrong way, but he’ll call out these judgments. “What’s your offer?”

“For these, I can—”

“Nope,” Huddy says. “The whole lot.”

The buyer shrugs. “That’s a big commitment here.”

Not really, Huddy thinks, adding the multi-values. I double my money and you double yours. And that gets me a quarter ways there. “Today, it’s the wheat with the chaff.” Huddy’s hands point at both sets of kernels.

“I’m just telling you what the traffic will bear. These here,” he says, at the pile of have-nots. “You got one that’s drilled and filled. Another one, a purple rainbow shooting out at me. They gonna have to be dirt-cheap. I’ll take ’em, but it’s a giveaway.”

“I understand. But what I’m seeing, it’s all resalable.”

“Then why can’t you sell it?”

“I am. To you. Or someone else. I’m tired of looking at ’em. Gonna put this money all back in the business.”

“Oh yeah?”

“’Course. Going all in on furs. Three-quarter-length coats. By the time I’m done, there won’t be an animal left in the forest.”

A smile, and then Huddy smiles when he sees Del going away. Not a word of jawing before, and Huddy looks at Harlan, who shrugs about his language, his mind blank about threats or insults over how Del got kicked.

“Let’s say ten,” the buyer says, and Huddy nods, and the diamonds switch owners and the money changes hands, the stones sliding into a new compartment and two packs of cash replacing the diamonds in the cigar box. Harlan sees this exchange, but he already witnessed a difference when he helped carry Huddy’s guns from home, Huddy trying to make it some routine morning movement, a collection that circulates every off-day.

“What’d you say to him?” Huddy asks, after the buyer’s gone.

“Thing is,” Harlan says, “guy like that jams up pretty fast. I told him, if he don’t see what he likes, don’t fuck around. I said it polite. Made sure he was near to hear it. Even offered that cut-rate price you said.”

“This all while he’s wearing a gun.”

“Well I’m wearing one, too. Push comes to shove, he gonna think about his house and his dog.”

“That right?”

“Yep. And that’s why I can help you.”

“Oh? How’s that? You braver? Or you just a mind reader?”

“No. I just ain’t got a dog to go home to.”

Huddy eyes his brother who’s dogless and landless, but at least he’s glad he’s armed.

And Tom’s armed, too, his next incognito buyer coming in, seems like everyone’s carrying a piece today to the market, or
from
it, Huddy hopes: the collectors on the other end of the phone that he’s calling on to come get his guns. Four buyers—a shotgun collector, a pistol collector, a big-bore collector, and a collector who’s God-knows-what but has money. Huddy’ll sell fifteen guns and want to make five thousand per buyer.

“Having a fundraiser?” Tom says, and now it’s Harlan and not Del that Huddy doesn’t want to have hear.

“Yep,” Huddy says and Harlan’s about to see what’s clearing out of the cases, all the heavy, meaty chains, and even the light merchandise that barely holds weight, and somewhere between KayKay’s necklace getting liquidated. Huddy eyes the parking lot, unlocks the cases, and starts stacking trays. “Grab the rest,” he says to Tom.

“You cashing out?” Harlan asks, which Huddy ignores. Harlan’s finding a home here, too bad Huddy’s moving. He motions Tom to the office. He’d ask Harlan for help, but he’s got a bigger haul maybe later.

“You said bring twenty-five,” Tom says, “so I brought thirty. Whatever you’d like to sell, I’ll take.”