All that was up ahead. Before that there was the Minimum Franken Wage, and if Mr. Airtight Safe had come to her during that time Margot would’ve just done his bidding. You’ve heard about Margot’s two cash-in-hand jobs, but her third job, and the only one she received a pay slip for at that time, was as sales assistant in an antiques shop. More minding antiques than selling them, as plenty of people came in to have a look around, but only a few made a purchase. Harriet took the day off school and stood in for her mother when Margot’s other working hours overlapped with her antiques-shop hours. A Lee standing in for a Lee who was busy standing in for somebody else.
Gabriel Kercheval came into the shop one afternoon. Harriet was leaning on the counter at the back of the shop reading La Bête humaine and thinking what a different beast this book was in English. Whilst reading she hoped that the group who’d just entered the shop and were going around picking things up and putting them down again weren’t going to break anything and that their slightly sneering expressions were a haggler’s method of disguising ardent attachment. Harriet had trotted around after them for a few minutes trying to tell them the stories of the objects they were handling, but a member of the group had warned her that they’d all leave if she didn’t “calm down,” so Harriet had returned to the counter, where she read and thought of her Professor Procházka. She also thought of making a sale, a good sale. She mustn’t make a bad sale . . . if she lost this job she’d lose the perk her mother most prized: getting to arrange the shop window display.
(In fact Margot was already on the verge of letting the job and the window-dressing perk go. She didn’t want Harriet missing any more school—you, my one and only, first and last daughter, you who loves school the way others your age love clubbing or finding out each other’s a/s/l in chat rooms . . . This wasn’t inaccurate, with the caveat that Margot made it sound as if Harriet was popular at school. She wasn’t, but she enjoyed syllabi as ways of knowing what she had to learn. It was good to follow one alongside others who also needed to learn the same thing. This was far less daunting than that task Gretel had identified . . . the one that involved working out an asking price for her gingerbread. Even if she got her sums right and it turned out life owed her something, there was no way such a bill would ever be settled. Life isn’t ill-natured; it’s just dirt poor, like any other public resource.
Tamar and Ari had given her to understand that a state-school classroom is one in which it’s impossible to see the blackboard through the thicket of fists flying in every direction. But either Harriet’s new new school wasn’t that rowdy or even the rowdiest inmates of after-school detention were disarmed by the slightly nervous approach of a gray-haired girl who was all of five feet and one inch tall and carried a large tin of homemade gingerbread with her. As a social experience Harriet didn’t find school bad, but it could have been better. Harriet would join groups, groups of boys and groups of girls, groups of student librarians and groups of teen iconoclasts, and so on, and she’d exchange smiles with the people she found gathered there . . . all genuine smiles. Nobody had anything against Harriet, and she didn’t have anything against anybody, but, bit by bit, in twos and threes, the group she’d just joined migrated and recongregated elsewhere, and she didn’t have the heart to chase it. Once Harriet turned to the last girl left standing with her beside the snack vending machine and said, Why don’t we talk a bit . . . just talk? To her credit, the girl Harriet questioned did take time to try to think of a proper reply. You seem really nice, she said, after a few seconds. This seemed to serve both as answer and consolation prize; very soon after saying that, the girl rejoined her group across the hall, and Harriet thought about how a lot of people are just looking for acquaintances. Which is understandable; a lot of the people one meets have already formed close attachments, and there’s quite enough going on in those friendships already. In an environment like this, Harriet Lee must have seemed like a bit of a social chore, one of those girls who weren’t satisfied with mere conversation . . . having a little chat about nothing with her today bound you to more little chats the next day and the day after . . .
But it wasn’t true! Harriet seriously considered having little cards printed up for circulation purposes: Harriet Lee—Friend or Acquaintance: It’s Completely Up to You! Margot found out and nixed this plan.)
Harriet’s shop-floor uniform was a work of faded grandeur—its collar had once been covered with brambles of bronze. Such a collar . . . finely worked and richly threaded—sometimes Harriet smoothed and tapped that part of the robe for the sake of what had once been there . . . she’d seen it all in a photograph that was older than her. Margot said the photo was nice, but as things stood in the here and now, the robe was nothing more than an ankle-length rag. From a distance its color was a grainy gray, but the fabric draped well, and up close (but you had to come very, very close) you could see its true multicolor, tens of thousands of tiny rainbows tumbling and vaulting across the cloth. The wearer of this gown had the provenance and special features of every item in the shop ready for recital, but all anybody asked about was the price; she’d get flustered, give incorrect information, and have to amend the price just before the final sale. The object on the counter always cost more than she’d initially said it did, and then she’d replace the antique while the customer went off in a huff. Harriet often sent Ari psychic reprimands for giving her clothes and a bicycle instead of giving her tips on how to persuade a customer to make that investment in her as a salesperson and buy the things she wanted them to buy. One of the greatest blasts of despair Harriet sent Ari Kercheval’s way followed a visit from a woman wearing a leather jacket and a tutu skirt who walked up to the shelf where the antique books were displayed, picked up a leather-bound Latin tome in both hands, and asked: What is this about? in a harried tone of voice, as if she wasn’t the one who’d picked up the book but the book was harassing her, had cornered her, and was mumbling about how it had something to say. Apart from times like that, Harriet didn’t mind spending a few school days at the shop; it made her like school even more when she went back.
(Perdita says, “Hopeless,” and her enunciation is the clearest it’s been in weeks.)
Also, seeing Gabriel was worth missing school for. He hadn’t come in with the group Harriet hoped were hagglers, but she didn’t see or hear his arrival. Rather, she became gradually aware of him moving around the shop too, picking things up and putting things down as the others were.
It had been about eight months since Harriet had last heard from Gabriel; she’d switched schools, but Tamar had called to tell her all about his having finished school covered in the glory of seven A’s at A Level. Harriet presumed he was working for Ari now, like Rémy was. He looked good. A little on the thin side, but, as he said later, she could talk. The shop was poky and narrow and L-shaped, so sometimes Gabriel was snuffed out of her line of sight, only to rekindle in a different spot, looking at her over, under, and through the displays. Each time this happened he showed her an object he’d taken from one of the shelves, and he seemed to want to know whether or not she thought he should buy this thing. She laughed, thinking, at first, that this behavior was out of character, then conceding that the character she must have previously assigned to him—whatever it was that made her think “this is out of character”—could’ve been a misapprehension on her part. She nodded when he picked up a brass measuring wheel: Yes, you may approach with your well-chosen purchase.