“Can I see some stationery?”
“You’re not trade. We only sell to trade.”
“I’m trade.” Rose didn’t know what it meant.
There was another pause. A hydro-bus sped by and hit a bump with a loud clunk. “Appointment only,” the lady said finally, and: “We’re about to close.”
“I know your voice,” Rose said. “The kinds of things you say.”
There was a sigh. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” The voice was suddenly impatient. “This is Rose Hartel, isn’t it? The hair’s different—it threw me. Listen, go home, Rose. You never came here.”
“I’m not leaving,” Rose said, with a flash of what felt like a long-familiar streak of stubbornness.
Another sigh.
The door buzzed. Rose opened it and stepped inside.
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PART 2
The Glass Coffin
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CHAPTER 12
“It feels like dead man’s finger!”
That was Clara’s excuse, why she wouldn’t hold hands with her stepmother when they were crossing the street. It was something her dad had shown her. If you put your palm flat up against someone else’s palm and, with your other hand, rub the outsides of both index fingers, your finger feels numb, like your hand isn’t yours anymore.
“Her hand does not feel like dead man’s finger,” her dad would tell her. His voice always sounded like he was smiling, even when he wasn’t. He was tall like a tree and had blue eyes with heavy lids, so sometimes Clara couldn’t see them. “You hurt her feelings.”
“She doesn’t have feelings.”
“Clara! That’s not my girl!”
“Read,” Clara would say, as she did every night, asking to hear the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Little Snow-white”—that was its proper title, with the word “Little” and a hyphen between “Snow” and “white.” Of course, Clara, at eight, could read it herself, but this was something she and her dad had always done, way before he met someone and married again. When he read, Clara always held tight to the elephant that had been her mother’s favorite childhood toy, loved so hard its fur was gone. If her room ever caught fire, this was the prized possession Clara would rescue.
These were the best times, hearing the story at night, no matter what might’ve gone wrong during the day. On that particular brisk September afternoon, her dad had taken her to the zoo. But Clara found animals so alien—they couldn’t talk, so how did you know what they were thinking?—especially the nocturnal creatures at the back of the House of Primates, in an exhibit dark as night. Ugly bats hung upside down and a weird thing called a slow loris had eyes as big as saucers. A woman who fed purple grapes to shrieking monkeys told Clara what “nocturnal” meant, though Clara hadn’t asked.
“Phil, she’s got to get some sleep. She’s got school tomorrow,” her stepmother said, standing now in Clara’s doorway, arms folded, a stern expression on her face, dark-blue eyes focused like a laser on the scene before her. She wore one of those dumb kimonos she always had on at home, black and white, tied at the waist, and she had that long hair, thick as vines. What had her stepmother been doing, before trying to ruin story time for Clara? Probably reading a book so thick the title fit across the spine instead of down it, or watching an old black-and-white movie. Clara didn’t understand that. Movies were supposed to be in color. Life was in color, wasn’t it? Clara didn’t understand anything about her stepmother.
“Read,” Clara said again.
“Phil, she’s had such a long day at the zoo.”
“Clara didn’t like it,” her dad said. “Just like you.”
No, it wasn’t at all the same, Clara was sure, even if they both happened to feel the same way about something.
“I’m not a fan of zoos, it’s true,” her stepmother said, unfolding her arms. “I know they’re all ecological and environmental and animal conscious and all that. Still, I don’t like to see animals in cages. Humane cages, but cages.”
Which meant her reason wasn’t the same after all.