Читать книгу Riverside Park - Laura Wormer Van - Страница 28

Celia Has a Gift

A FRIEND OF a friend of Rachel’s came to pick up their old refrigerator before the new one arrived. The guy was apparently some kind of fix-it whiz and he was somehow going to restore the Freon and put taps in the side to dispense beer and soda. Celia said if he could fix it why didn’t they just hire him to fix it while the refrigerator was still theirs instead of getting a new one. “Daddy’s getting it so don’t worry,” Rachel said. Celia was not worried in the least; she just hated what felt like arbitrarily replacing things for the sake of something new.

“Charlie,” the man said when he arrived, holding out his hand to politely shake hers.

He was huge, this Charlie, filling the doorway. Behind him stood an upright steel dolly with big straps. He was much older than Celia had expected for Rachel’s friend of a friend. He was like her dad’s age, neatly dressed in a sweater (that Celia could wear for a dress), jeans, work boots and big blue parka.

“I feel kinda guilty,” Charlie said later, sipping the cup of black coffee Celia made for him while looking in the back of the refrigerator. “I should just fix this for you.”

“Thanks for the thought,” Celia said, sitting at the breakfast bar, well wrapped in her terry-cloth robe, “but there’re always appliances mysteriously falling off the back of one of my roommate’s father’s trucks. This time it was a stainless steel refrigerator.” She was drinking coffee, as well. Nine-fifteen was early for her to be up; she didn’t get home from work until almost three this morning.

“She’ll never keep it looking clean,” Charlie commented, coming back around from behind the old refrigerator, “not without a full-time maid.”

“One of those hasn’t fallen off the back of the truck yet,” Celia told him.

Something on the counter caught Charlie’s eye. It was an old door knocker, covered in years of crud, that was waiting for Celia to clean up. She bought it off a janitor last week who had been cleaning out a basement. The knocker was the head of a horse, made of what Celia believed to be solid brass.

“I might be interested in making you an offer for that,” he said, moving closer.

“This?” Celia handed it to him. “Sorry, but I’m totally in love with it. Someday I’m going to buy a house with a front door that will do it justice. I think it’s solid brass. Maybe a hundred years old.”

“It is,” he confirmed, hefting it in his hand. He took reading glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on to examine it further. “But my guess is around 1880. Where’d you get it?”

“On One Hundred and First Street. Guy was cleaning out the basement of the building. Ten bucks.” Actually, she had paid the janitor ten bucks so that she could climb into the Dumpster to see what he was throwing out. Celia didn’t know why she felt compelled to do things like this, but she felt no shame about it; she had always been fascinated by junk piles, looking for something that spoke to her. To a certain degree her mother shared her interest, but would never dream of the lengths Celia had been known to go.

Charlie carefully placed the knocker back on the counter. “He gave you two, two hundred fifty bucks for ten dollars.”

“I guess it’s going to have to be a very expensive house, then.”

He looked at her. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging, “it’s never really been about money.”

“Spoken like a girl who grew up with a lot of it.”

She looked up at him. “I beg your pardon?” She knew she sounded like her mother when she got on her high horse, but she didn’t like the way he said it.

He held up his hand as a caution. “No offense. I just meant you obviously haven’t had to try to make a living selling antiques. If you did, well, then, the money would mean a lot.”

“I’m a bartender,” she told him.

He frowned slightly. “You seem kinda classy for a bartender.”

“I’m a classy bartender,” she said, sliding off the stool to get more coffee. She was starting to feel depressed. “I just like old things.”

“I work weekends at an auction house in the Bronx.” When she turned around, holding the coffeepot out to him, Charlie nodded and she poured. “Thanks. That’s why the money means something to me. I gotta kid trying to get through college. That’s what I use the money for.”

“Where is this auction house?”

He told her. It was way uptown, but it would have to be to make any money. “So if you ever want to sell anything like that, the knocker, I can move it for you. That’s the kind of thing people go nuts over.”

Celia, standing there, sipped her coffee and lofted an eyebrow. “Maybe I should show you something, then.” She led Charlie to the maid’s room which she and Rachel shared as a kind of studio space. Rachel used her side for art stuff. Celia gestured to the wall and bookshelves on her side. There were various small oil and watercolor paintings and prints, some hanging in old frames, others in new, some prints vaguely speckled while others were almost clean. (She’d zap them in the microwave to kill the mold spores and then, if it was in good enough shape, use an artist’s soft putty eraser on the spots. The paintings she left alone.)

Her best find in terms of a document had been rescued from a carton of ancient newspapers on the East Side that had been put out with the garbage. It was a single sheet, a 1787 playbill from the Drury Lane in London advertising Sarah Siddons and her brother, John Philip Kemble, starring in Macbeth. Celia had carefully matted it and used an old frame from another one of her finds, outfitted with new glass. She gave it to her mother, the intrepid theater goer, for her birthday last year and was amazed when her mother burst into tears, she was so moved. (Celia had been nervous her mother would think her cheap or something.)