The Used World. Haven Kimmel

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      They sat a few moments without speaking. Claudia listened to the faint, tinny sound of the Andrews Sisters coming from the back of the store.

      “They were lovely, the Andrews Sisters.” Hazel completed her task and dropped the stack of envelopes in her outgoing-mail tray.

      “I found this in your book last night,” Claudia said, handing the photograph to Hazel.

      “What’s this?” Hazel slipped off her glasses and held the picture at arm’s length. She squinted. “You found this in Owen Meany?”

      Claudia nodded.

      “Thank you for returning it to me.” She slipped the picture inside the book she was reading, The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & the Reality, and said, with a perfunctory clip, “Let’s get this store closed down and go home.”

      Claudia allowed one beat to pass between them, one chance for Hazel to change her mind and speak. It passed, and Claudia stood up, Hazel following her. “Okay.” Claudia touched Hazel’s shoulder with just her index finger, attempting to make the gesture communicate something. But Hazel left the office without another word.

      1961

      “I can’t be late getting home.” Hazel looked at her watch for the fifth time, thrust her hands back into her coat pockets.

      “You can’t be late.” Finney’s breath smelled like tea. Sometimes she smelled like sleep or cinnamon, but today it was bergamot and lemon.

      “That’s what I said. If we don’t leave here in twenty-seven minutes, it’s all over for Miss Hazel.”

      “Well, we don’t want that.” Finney leaned farther over the scrollwork railing of the mezzanine, let her body tip just slightly past the fulcrum of her own weight.

      “Hey, how’s about you follow the rule about keeping your feet on the floor.” Hazel tried to sound casual as she grabbed Finney’s coat belt, which was untied and slipped free.

      “What I want”—Finney turned and reclaimed her belt—“is to go up, up to the sixth, Women’s Lingerie. Then I want to come down, down, stopping on every floor. Last is the jewelry counter. If I have twenty-seven minutes I’m going to use them.”

      Below the girls, the black-and-white-tiled ground floor of Sterling’s Department Store spiraled around the square jewelry counter, so that from Women’s Lingerie, looking over the railing, Hazel knew she would feel an urge to jump. “Women’s Lingerie it is,” she said, taking Finney’s arm and heading for the elevator.

      The folding metal door of the elevator closed, cagelike, behind them. In the red velvet interior the air was warm and close. The elevator operator hummed along with Bing Crosby’s Hawaiian Christmas song, which both Hazel and Finney hated. Jerry Hamm, that was the name of the man sitting on a stool in front of the elevator’s controls, but Hazel didn’t acknowledge him, nor did he look at her. He was a patient of her father’s, and there were countless rules of conduct that applied to meeting a patient in public, or at his job. Finney knew him, too, of course, but she ignored him, leaning against the back wall to watch the numbers light up above the doors.

      In Women’s Ready-to-Wear, in Household Goods, in Infants and Children, Finney had asked, “Do you want this? Is this on your list?” No, Hazel had answered, and no. Finally, walking toward the jewelry counter with only four minutes to spare, Finney asked, “What do you want for Christmas?”

      “A book. I don’t know, something I can keep. Nothing frivolous.”

      Finney took a deep breath, rolled her eyes. “I worry about you, Hazey.”

      “Really.”

      “Yes, I do. I worry that any day now you will tell me you want to write short stories or romances, and then you’ll turn to strong drink.”

      “Will I abandon my Christian principles?”

      Finney considered the possibility. “You will.”

      “Will I die young and tragically?”

      “That’s not funny.” Finney ran her fingers over a dozen strands of freshwater pearls, took one off the metal rack and held it to her throat.

      Hazel fastened the necklace, gently lifting Finney’s hair. “This looks beautiful on you.”

      Finney looked in the square mirror on the counter, turned her jaw to the right and the left in a way that would have never occurred to Hazel. Finney’s camel hair coat was down around her shoulders and her long neck looked more vulnerable than ever, with the pearls lying pale and imperfect against her skin. “I’m not a pearl person.”

      “Hmmm. What kind of person are you?”

      Finney took three steps away, didn’t answer.

      “Anyway, what do you most want for Christmas?” Hazel asked, just as Finney stopped before a display of gold chains.

      “Oh, look at this.”

      In a blue velvet box were two chains, each chain holding half a heart. On the inside lid of the box were the words MAY GOD WATCH OVER US WHILE WE ARE APART, and carved on the heart itself, ME FROM THEE. Hazel lifted the left half and warmed it in her hand as Finney did the same with the right.

      “Do you think,” Finney whispered, leaning close to Hazel, “that he will ever buy me one of these?” She whispered, it seemed to Hazel, because she had lost her voice, like a girl in a fairy tale. It was only a matter of time before a hunter came after Finney’s real, beating heart, or until her legs became the tail of a mermaid, and she vanished. No, the man in question would never, never buy Finney such a necklace; the possibility did not exist on planet Earth or within the bounds of time and space. “Maybe he will,” Hazel said, turning away from the display. “Your four minutes in jewelry are up, Miss Finnamore Cooper.” She used the old nickname as a distraction, but it failed.

      “I will be blue until I die,” Finney said, sighing.

      Hazel’s stomach knotted into a fist, and she could taste at the back of her throat the coffee they’d had at lunch. She reached into Finney’s bag and pulled out her muffler, wrapped it around Finney’s neck as they walked past the great Christmas tree beside Sterling’s revolving doors. “Bundle up,” she said, tucking the end of the scarf into Finney’s coat.

      Finney smiled, said, “You do the same.”

      They’d grown too mature for hats, so they walked close together, heads bent against the bitter December wind, across the street to the parking lot and Albert Hunnicutt’s late-model, sleek black Cadillac. Tomorrow Hazel would return for the necklace, she knew, and she would give it to Finney signed with her own name. Hazel would never pretend it had come from someone else. Finney would accept the gesture as she always had, for years and years now, as long as Hazel could remember. Finney would wear her half of the heart as if it mattered to her as it did to Hazel, and only someone who really knew her, only a best friend, would see the unease and disappointment on her face. It was just metal, after all, and probably hollow at that.

      “Admit that you’re a brat.”

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