The Virtues of Oxygen (7 page)

“I like this town,” he said, glancing into the window of a secondhand sporting goods store a few doors down from the newspaper. “It’s not too pretentious, solidly middle class, which puts it right in the sweet spot of our target market. Any place too upscale means people won’t be seen walking into a place like ours. Too down-and-out means they have nothing of value they haven’t alread
y hocked.”

He said all this with a detachment that both troubled and fascinated Holly. They kep
t walking.

“It doesn’t bother you,” she said, “that places like this make money because other people are st
ruggling?”

“We provide a needed service. We convert unused assets into something you can buy groceries with. It’s a win-win
, really.”

“And you give people a fa
ir price?”

“Absolutely. We’re more generous than the mail-order gold mills, maybe a little less than an established pawn shop, but most people feel uncomfortable walking into a pawn shop. Bottom line, gold has no value sitting in your old jewelry box, so whatever we offer is a
net gain.”

Holly nodded, because her own Internet research had confirmed what Racine said. She wasn’t overjoyed to be comparing Vivian’s investment unfavorably to a pawn shop, but then again the gold shop wasn’t a charity. Racine stopped near an empty storefront about half a block from the newspaper office. It had an iron gate on the front windows—unusual for Bertram Corners—and a brick exterior. His Jaguar was parked
in front.

“This is the place I like,” he said. “It gives off that solid, respectable vibe, but it’s not ostentatious. What do y
ou think?”

Holly stood back and looked at the shop in the context of its neighbors, a failing video store and a Dunkin
’ Donuts.

“The Dunkin’ Donuts will bring in traffic,”
she said.

“Exactly my thought,” he said, knocking lightly on the wood frame around the front doorway. “The price is right, too. About a quarter of the rent we’re paying in
Brooklyn.”

“I’m not surprised,” Holly told him. “The downtown’s been teetering since the day they opened the mall back in 1986, and then it took another hit with the outlets, which are now killing the mall. It’s amazing any of these places have held on t
his long.”

“What about your newspaper?” Racine said. “How does that hold on? I thought they were all disa
ppearing.”

Holly paused to look down the street at the assortment of storefronts, which included a dental office, a nail salon, a Chinese restaurant, and a dry cleaner, interspersed with empty buildings that once housed a tailor, a shoe repair shop, a candy store, and a jeweler. She couldn’t deny that the mammoth chain clothing stores, fast-food joints, and ubiquitous purveyors of bitter coffee that banded together in ugly strip malls had sucked the vibrancy right out of Bertram Corners. But the newspaper kept chugging along, even as it reported on the town’s disin
tegration.

“We’re holding our own,” she said, though she wasn’t completely sure about the latest advertising figures. “We have loyal
readers.”

“You’re lucky then. So we’re good on the
location?”

“It’s fine with me. Did you as
k Vivian?”

“She told me to ask you,” Racine said, laughing. “She said you know the town better than anyone. I tried to talk her into walking me around, because she’s one of my biggest investors in this location, but she made som
e excuse.”

Holly stopped on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. “You do
n’t know?”

“K
now what?”

“Abou
t Vivian.”

“What ab
out her?”

“She’s got . . . some medical issues,” she said, stopp
ing there.

“She sounds fine on t
he phone.”

“She holds her own, barring weather misha
ps . . .”

Holly was mumbling now, fairly sure that she should stop talking before she said anything she would regret. And yet she wanted to tell Racine something he didn’t know—to bring him inside the loop—because he seemed like a perpetual traveler who kept a polite distance, never quite feeling
at home.

“That’s a relief,” Racine said. “Want a lift back to th
e office?”

“I should stop by Town Hall and chat up the clerk. If I buy her a Diet Coke once a week, she stays on my good side. If I forget, the real estate transactions are late. Oh, here’s that check
for you.”

She reached into her purse, pulled out her wallet, and found the check Vivian’s accountant had
prepared.

“Be good to it,” Holly meant to say, but it came out “Be good to me.” She stood in the middle of the sidewalk, reddening, as Racine bestowed a radiant smile
upon her.

“I will,” he said, and wa
lked away.

CHAPTER 8

H
olly walked into Vivian’s living room to find her with Marveen Langdon, the
Chronicle
’s bookkeeper, who was retouching Vivian’s highlights with a dye kit from the groc
ery store.

“So I say to him, I say, ‘You’re crazy,’” Marveen said. “No one pays full price for movies anymore. You get your discount tickets from AAA. It’s a no
-brainer.”

“Hi, Holly,” Vivian said, smiling from the halo of foil that framed her face. “Marveen is giving me the t
reatment.”

“I can see that,” Holly said, wondering if Marveen could be talked into cutting and highlighting her hair. She hadn’t been to the salon in a year and had taken to trimming her own hair with the same pair of scissors she used to cut
coupons.

“Do you buy AAA discount movie tickets?” Vivian asked Holly. “Marveen seems to think every
one does.”

“Do people still go to the movies? I can’t remember the last mov
ie I saw.”

Vivian and Marveen exchanged a brief glance conveying that Holly was always strapped for cash and was, therefore, an object of pity, even a source of frustration, as though she should get on the stick and make more money so others wouldn’t have to feel guilty about their own spending in her presence. Vivian had a hefty bank balance because her parents had left her their house, disability insurance covered most of her medical expenses, and she was known to be something of a wizard with her investments. She also had no need to spend money on travel or clothing or furniture or anything else besides the technology that kept her connected to t
he world.

Marveen made a small salary as the newspaper’s part-time bookkeeper, but her husband was a wealthy executive. She only worked because it provided her with more people to gossip about. Holly hated that her income—or lack thereof—so circumscribed her life, and even more that no one wanted to talk about it, preferring to pretend that money didn’t matter. If it didn’t buy happiness, it bought, she had decided, at least some measure of comfort. The philanthropist and investor Harold Bertram, for whom Bertram Corners had been named, had put it in a rather grotesque way that Holly nevertheless admired: “Worship not penury, for it is but
a noose.”

“Are you planning to stay?” Marv
een asked.

“I can stay,” Holly said. “When does your s
hift end?”

“Just another half hour, and then the nurse comes in, but if I can make it to the drugstore today, I won’t have to stop after work. I need a new curl
ing iron.”

Vivian gave Holly a wink as Marveen picked up her purse. The wink referred to their joint opinion that Marveen’s devotion to her hair bordered on the religious. On a daily basis, she straightened it, then curled it, then teased it into a froth that made her three inches taller, and she was tall
to start.

Marveen, who was a languid hugger, gave Holly a long, tepid squeeze and then kissed Vivian on
the cheek.

“Bye, ladies,” Marveen said as she and her hair left through the f
ront door.

“I’m the first person to admit that I spend way too much time on my hair,” Vivian said once Marveen was gone. “But look at me. What else do I have to fu
ss about?”

“She must burn through a curling iron every few weeks,” Holly said. “Hey, I need to ask you something. Are you sure you don’t want me to tell Racine about your condition? He’ll hear about it eventuall
y anyway.”

Vivian rolled her eyes. “You’re used to me, Holly. You know my brain hasn’t been affected. But I learned the hard way not to tell business partners that I’m in an iron lung. They can’t wrap their minds around it. If they do find out, they start talking to me like I’m frail and elderly, and eventually they find a way to get out of
the deal.”

“So how do you get a
round it?”

“Usually I give the impression that I’m constantly traveling or too busy to meet in person. It makes me seem i
mportant.”

“And you are,” Holly said. “As important as t
hey come.”

Vivian smiled. “My financial adviser takes care of most of my investments anyway, but this one was different because Racine’s company wanted local investors with a hands-on approach. His group doesn’t want to be one of those fly-by-night gold operations, which is smart in my book. I didn’t want to scare
him away.”

Holly forgot sometimes that most people under fifty had never heard of an iron lung and would have been shocked to find that any were still in use. Bertram Corners had grown so used to Vivian’s unique situation that the town had lost sight of how the rest of the world might regard it. If it weren’t for Vivian, Holly realized, her kids wouldn’t have known that iron lungs had eve
r existed.

“I gave Racine the check, by the way,” Holly said. “I hope it
pays off.”

“I’m sure it will,” she said. “And maybe things will get easier for you with a little extra coming in. Maybe you can save up a bit and invest some of it in t
he store.”

Holly nodded. It was nice to imagine having enough of a nest egg to put some money toward the service of making more money. She considered telling Vivian the full extent of her cash-flow problems now that her mother wasn’t sending a monthly check. The bank wouldn’t let her stay in her house indefinitely if she couldn’t make her mortgage payments, and even with the checks Vivian’s accountant sent her each week, she was still behind and likely to make another partial payment for the upcoming month. She instantly imagined the boys curled into sleeping bags in the back of her car. But she decided against telling Vivian. Not voicing the extent of her problems made them feel less dire. At least she still had a job. However small the salary, she had an income and health benefits, which was more than some people could say. If she could cut back on her expenses a little more and work more weekends for Vivian, maybe she could make her own in
vestment.

When she left Vivian’s, she was tempted to stop at the gas station to buy a lottery ticket, but she stopped herself. Every dollar she didn’t spend was a dollar she might one d
ay invest.

A few hours later, Holly remembered with a start, then a sigh, that she still needed to pay the remainder for Marshall’s band trip. When she ran into Marveen in the parking lot behind the
Chronicle
, she decided on the spot that she was the right person to ask for a loan, since she reported to the publisher and not to Holly. Marveen always had cash in her wallet, because her husband didn’t believe in using cre
dit cards.

“Hi, Marveen,” Holly said, as though she hadn’t seen her in ages. “Nice hair. You must have gotten that new curl
ing iron.”

“Well, thanks,” she said, giving Holly another hug as if she hadn’t seen her in months. “I did touch it up before com
ing over.”

“Hey,” Holly said. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask you something kind of
personal.”

Marveen pulled her tote bag out of the backseat of her BMW. “Did you want me to do some highlights? Like I did fo
r Vivian?”

Holly did want the highlights, but Marshall’s trip was a higher priority. She shifted from one foot to the other. Asking Marveen for a loan was like standing on the roof with a megaphone to announce that she couldn’t manage her own finances, but Marshall had to go on
that trip.

“This is kind of embarrassing, but I’m a little short for Marshall’s band trip, and I was wondering if I could get a small loan from you until we get paid next week. I hate asking, but I’m pretty much out of
options.”

“Really,” Marveen said, squinting at Holly as though she were a child caught in a fib. “Because I heard you met with that cash-for-gold guy. How are you talking to him if you can’t pay for your son’s fi
eld trip?”

Holly could have told her that Vivian had hired her to meet with Racine, but she thought Marveen might be upset that Vivian hadn’t chosen her, with her bookkeeping experience and her love of bright and shin
y things.

“It’s a cash-flow problem,” Holly said, feeling the blood creep up her neck. “Never mind, though. Forget I asked. I’ll figur
e it out.”

“Don’t be silly,” Marveen said, reaching into her purse for her wallet. “I’m happy to help. I just wish you had told me about the gold place. I might have wanted in on it. How much do
you need?”

Holly couldn’t meet Marveen’s eyes. “Sixty,” she said, loo
king down.

“Is that all?” Marveen said, handing over three crisp twenties as if they were singles. Holly was jealous of how Marveen treated money. It reminded Holly of the days when her mother used to carry a hundred dollars in cash for emergencies, which seemed to come up every time she passed a s
hoe store.

“Thank you,” Holly said, putting the twenties in her purse. “I really appre
ciate it.”

“No problem. Though you can do me one teen
sy favor.”

Holly sighed, knowing she should have expected to pay a price for Marveen’s generosity. “Wha
t’s that?”

“Introduce me to this guy Racine. I’m hoping he’ll let me in on his ne
xt store.”

Within two weeks, Racine had the cash-for-gold store, now called The Gold Depot, up and running. A crew of workmen had gutted the small storefront and put up drywall, then hauled in some glass cases for the resale items and built a few cubbies with chairs along the back wall, where prospective clients would hand over their gold for an estimate of
its value.

Holly walked over from the newspaper for the grand opening. A single white balloon floated from the handle on the front door, which was propped open, but no one was inside except for two bearded men wearing green visors, who sat on the other side of the cubbies, presumably waiting for the cascade of gold soon to come
their way.

When Holly walked in, Racine was pouring a bag of wrapped peppermint candies into a large glass bowl on one of the front counters. He looked up and smiled
at Holly.

“What do you think?” he said, lookin
g around.

“It’s exciting,” Holly said, running a hand along the glass counter. “The opening of a new business is big news in this town. One of my reporters is writing a feature story for this week’s paper. I’d do it myself, but it’s a conflict of
interest.”

Racine set the bowl of candy in the middle of the counter, then moved it over to the right a few inches. Holly noticed that the glass cases were filled with jewelry, watches, pins, letter openers, and comb and brush sets. Each item had been buffed and cleaned, but they all looked a little dated and fatigued, as though they were housed in the retail equivalent of a nurs
ing home.

“Where did all this come from?”
she said.

Racine took a bottle of glass cleaner from behind the counter and began wiping it down, even though it already looked clean. She noticed as Racine turned to one side that he had a bump near the bridge of his nose, a slight flaw that made him more likeable. She still sensed the conflict between his welcoming smile and the caution in his eyes, but she couldn’t begin to guess what might have
caused it.

“We buy out estate sales. People don’t want to see their neighbors parading around in their grandmother’s old brooches, so we try to mix it up amon
g stores.”

“I see,” Holly said, finding it surprising that any sensitivity at all went into the store’s operation. She nodded toward the visored men in the back. “Where’d you f
ind them?”

“They’re on loan from one of our New York stores for the opening. They’ll work here for a month or two, get us established, then we’ll hire some appraisers of our own. It’s a growi
ng field.”

“I imagine it is,” Holly said. One of the men in the back was polishing a small eyeglass, and the other was adjusting the strap on
his visor.