Читать книгу King - Tanya Chapman - Страница 9

I work at the thrift shop in town. Lots of people get their noses all up in the air about second-hand stuff. Some people never want anything that’s second-hand. They judge the store right away – I can see them through the big front window looking in and thinking that nothing is good enough. It’s a very specific expression and it looks the same on everyone: like a sour-lemon face just underneath their normal walking-down-the-street face. When they see me looking back at them from the other side of the window, I get the look too, like I’m second-hand.

This is new to me – no one looked at me like that in my old life. But now I’m getting used to it, almost. I do live in a trailer park, after all. People don’t see the real personalities in the park, or the great things in the shop, or me – just the trailers and a bunch of things that someone didn’t want anymore.

King likes the fact that he fixes used cars and equipment and I sell used everything else. He says it’s like we are keeping things alive together, giving second chances.

The thrift is only open four days a week so I don’t make a lot of money, but I’m not exactly living the high life. Four days pays the bills and puts some fun on the table.

The thrift is a small operation owned and run by the town council. There’s me and then there are the twins who take care of the money and report to the council. The twins are old ladies about seventy-nine years old and they’re dotty. I mean, they are great and sweet and everything, but I have no idea how they manage to balance the books because they can’t even keep their place in a conversation. But the twins are just another thing that I like about working at the thrift.

On the days the thrift is closed, people leave their donations in a big wooden box out back. It’s my job to haul it all inside, sort it, price it and hang it up. I also have to keep the place looking halfway decent, which is harder than it sounds because it’s so crowded and generally down-at-the-heels.

Another good thing about this job is that I get the first look at all the stuff that comes in. The other week there was a huge bag full of belts. An entire bag. Who has that many belts to throw away? Leather, elastic, chain-link, rope: there was everything that anyone has ever thought to make a belt out of. I’m not a belt person myself, but I picked out a tough-looking one for Spiney, leather with a huge buckle. He wears it all the time.

The worst days are when a whole truckload of things comes in from one person, usually an old man or lady. You know right away what happened.

Sometimes the clothes don’t have anything to say for themselves – they are just a collection of pants and shoes and shirts. But other times you can read a person’s whole life.

Today is a day like that. There are nine huge plastic bags filled with dresses, great dresses with sparkle and glamour built right in. I lay them on the counter. There are tons of them. There are so many dresses that when I get them all out of the bags I can’t find enough room to lay them all out straight. So I drape them over racks and along shelves, covering the whole place. After a while the shop starts to look like something else, something a little more beautiful. Who was this person? There sure isn’t anywhere around here to wear these gowns. This lady must have been living in her own piano-bar-and-martini world.

I sit for a while and look around. The light comes in the big window and reflects off the sequins and the shine of the dresses. The whole place sparkles. I watch as the shine makes its way around the place, seeping into the dreariness and lighting things up a little.

The bell above the front door rings and a lady comes in. ‘Holy crap,’ she says and waves her hand at the dresses. Then she goes to the back of the shop to where the books are. This town is too small for a public library, so people are always coming in to pick up a paperback for twenty-five cents, fifty cents for a hardcover. She finds a Harlequin and leaves.

I take the dresses one by one and hang them carefully on a rack. They’re heavy, so I have to use the best hangers. I go to gather up the bags that they came in and that’s when I notice that there’s a smaller bag that I haven’t unpacked yet. I can feel beads and stones through the plastic. I pry open the knot that holds the bag closed and dump everything onto the counter.

We have a whole section of junk jewellery in the thrift shop. There are bead necklaces and fake gold brooches that look like jumping leopards or flying parrots. There are clip-on earrings made of plastic pearls and thin silver bracelets that turn your wrist green. But there’s nothing like this.

I can’t believe it when I take the jewellery out of the bag. It’s spectacular. There are bobbles for every part of your body. They are all rich deep colours to go with the dresses. No cheap stuff here. No falling-apart strands of plastic beads, just loads of sparkle.

I fasten a big bracelet around my wrist. It’s heavy, with glass stones cut to look like gems. My wrist looks different. I know I’m just Hazel standing in the middle of the thrift, but I don’t quite feel that way anymore.

And that’s when it hits me. I’m going to redecorate the shop. The place is pretty depressing, to tell the truth. A room full of unwanted things. But it doesn’t have to be that way. After all, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure and all that.

The first thing I do is go to the back and see what kind of cleaning supplies the twins have stashed away. There’s a big bottle of floor polish, so I haul all the racks to one side of the shop and clean half the hardwood floor. The results are pretty good. By the time I push everything to the other side and do the other half, it’s looking better. I prop the front and back doors open so the place can air out. The smell of second-hand stuff clears and now everything smells like pine. The shiny floor perks the place up, gives it a bit of hope.

Every now and then someone walks into the shop. I tell them to go ahead and look around, that I’m just doing some spring cleaning. The real thrift shoppers don’t mind cramped racks and messy piles – they’re used to going through the jumble, hunting for that one perfect thing.

I move the racks around and box up some of the stuff that isn’t likely to sell: clothes with missing buttons or stains. By the time I take all the wrecked clothes away, there’s room for some of the better stuff to be seen. I organize by season and colour. I make the shop look more like a place where secondhand things won’t be given the lemon face. I even make a window display.

Usually the window is the spot where things get put when you don’t know what else to do with them. Kind of like the lost and found of the lost. But not anymore. I put all that junk in the back and make a display by hanging up my favourite of the glamorous dresses. I don’t have a mannequin or anything, so I improvise. The ceiling is made of the kind of tile where you can push up a section and then loop a string around the bracket that the tile sits in. I put the dress on a hanger and then suspend it from the ceiling. Then I accessorize. I tie some bracelets and necklaces with fishing line and hang them so that they dangle somewhere around where wrists and a neck might be. This is a lot harder than it sounds. It takes a while and tons of adjustments.

But finally I go out to the sidewalk to judge the effect. If you look at the display really quickly, you almost think that there is a lady standing there. Now she needs a partner, so I find a suit and do the same hanging-up trick. I stand back and watch them. They don’t have a care in the world. They’re just standing around letting time go by. Maybe they’re talking -having a vodka twist and smiling about the weather.

It took me my entire day, but the shop finally looks like it might have something to offer. I turn the radio on – it’s stuck on an oldies station but that’s just fine with me: ‘Oh oh oh the charms about you will carry me to heaven.’ I drag an old fan from the back and aim it at the people in the window so when I turn it on the breeze spins them. They’re dancers now. Wrists and waists twirl around.

A lady comes into the shop and eyes the jewellery that I left on the counter.

‘What a load of junk.’

I show her the bracelet on my wrist, letting the light reflect off the gems. ‘This came in the same batch,’ I say.

She laughs. ‘Good god. I haven’t seen stuff like that since my great-grandmother died.’

She quickly selects three paperbacks from the stack and hands me seventy-five cents. Then she picks up a handful of the jewellery and lets it fall through her fingers with a clatter. ‘Remember when you were so young that you thought these things were real?’ She laughs and I watch the jewellery fall on the counter. A ruby-and-diamond earring bounces off the register and hits the floor. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. But she isn’t.

The lady stuffs the books in her purse and leaves. The bell above the door rings on her way out. I find the lost earring and hold it up to the light, all sparkle and no damage done.

I bring one of the dresses home and wear it around the trailer. When King sees me, he bows. All night he speaks in different accents, calls beer champagne and me his little chandelier.