Antiques

by Nick Rolynd

I

Antiques are an enigma.

People have a love-hate relationship with the past. Some want to learn from it. Some want to forget it exists. Some value it as is. Some want nothing more than go back and change it (some literally, some literarily). But when it comes to antiques, everyone wants them all the time, regardless of their association with the past.

Perhaps it’s the novelty of past ideas.

Perhaps it’s simply the prospect of future value.

I won’t pretend to know the truth about antiques. I only know that if everyone wants them, then I am not a part of the whole in the minds of those who craft the concept of everyone. In fact, I’m just about far from everyone as anyone can get, which is rather contradictory when you think about it, considering the fact that all the anyones in the world supposedly make up everyone.

But then, anyone who doesn’t like antiques can’t possibly be part of everyone.

So I guess I’m just as much of an enigma as antiques themselves.

Yuck.

I need to remedy that.

II

The antique store on Downing Street is having a sale.

Everyone flocks in for angel statuettes and old grandfather clocks and odds and ends from the last century and a half. This particular store–I know for a fact–has quite a few novelty antiques. So it’s particularly amusing to watch everyone flock about as if they’ve just scored the real Mona Lisa. As if there is such a thing.

I sit on the bench across the street form the antique store on Downing Street, waiting and watching with amusement and bemusement, for several hours. Though I do take a short leave of absence to the nearest bathroom.

Finally, the old man shoos the last of everyone out, shuts his door, and spins his sign around. The closed antique store gradually goes dark, until the only light that remains is a single dim yellow glow from the top right window.

Hm. The antique owner doesn’t live in the antique store. What’s he doing, then?

I rise, cross the empty street, and make my way around the back of the store. Like many small businesses, the antique store is housed in an old, bent-out-of-shape home that’s desperately in need of a new coat of a paint.

An antique antique store, if you will.

An antique antique store with an antique owner.

Way too antique for me.

III

I stand at the top of the staircase, peering down the hall. The dim glow from the last right window–well, the left window from this point of view–is now a dim yellow glow glossing a unpolished wooden floor. A creaky unpolished wooden floor. Good thing antique men tend to be hard of hearing. Much like antique buyers tend to be hard of thinking.

There’s a draft. Hm. Perhaps I should have closed the back door after breaking in.

No matter.

I tread lightly across the antique floor until I stand before the half-closed door that conceals the antique old man from view. I wonder just how hard of hearing he is.

I place my index finger on the old, no-doubt-just-as-creaky-as-the-floor door.

Then I push it open.

Oh.

Boo.

The antique owner is asleep at his desk. Yet another strike against antiques. It’s not even dinner time yet. How antique must you be to fall asleep before dinner? Or perhaps being surrounding by antiques is just that boring. But then, I can’t imagine why he’d inflict such pain on himself every day. Sell the damn antique store, I say. I’m sure everyone would want to buy it.

I take long strides across the room and lean over the antique owner. Gray as gray can get. Ugh. And his records. Apparently, that’s what he was doing. Inventory. Balance Sheet. All on paper. Old paper. Antique paper.

This man would write on parchment if he could find it. I bet you anything.

Something must be done about this.

IV

When I’m finished, I pat myself on the back. A job well done.

I return to my seat on the bench across from the antique store on Downing street and watch the results of my lovely new work play out.

I can tell when the antique man wakes up. The window to the last room on the right is open, and he grunts in pain as he sits up. Cramp in his neck, I’m sure, sleeping the way he slept.

But I’m sure his excitement will rid him of that shortly.

And I’m right. Like usual.

There’s a long moment of silent confusion, and then:

“What in God’s name?”

Pfft, God. What an antique idea!

He hurries down the stairs–thump, thump, thumping all the way–and rounds the corner to the main room just as a car pulls into the nearby lot. A man in a suit gets out. Prim. Proper. New.

Important, the email was labeled. I made sure of that.

The man in the new suit walks across the lot–tap, tap, tapping all the way–and reaches the door just as the antique man pulls it open.

There’s a split second of shock and silence. Confusion.

The man in the new suit greets the antique man. “Hello, sir.” Young voice. New voice.

The antique man stammers back, “Um…Hello? Who’re you?” Old voice. Antique voice.

“I’m Mr. Charleston.”

The antique man stares, wrinkled eyes squinting in the early morning sunlight. “Who?”

“Mr. Charleston. From the bank?”

“I don’t know what you’re…”

Mr. Charleston extends his new files–printed only out of necessity and not of convention–to the antique man. The antique man leans in, reads, and reddens.

Screaming ensues. There’s more antique “Gods” thrown in, some door slamming, a phone call by Mr. Charleston, and eventually, some cops in shiny, new cars.

This is even better than I planned.

V

When it’s all done and over with, the antique antique store is an antique home,  sitting empty with it’s fancy new “for sale” sign next to it. The antique man is no more–at least no more where everyone can see him–and the antiques within the former antique store are no more, carted off to who knows where.

I don’t particularly care where they’re taken–I’m sure everyone somewhere else will want them–as long as they’re not here. Because here is where I am, and where I am, whenever I’m there, should exist in a wholly antique-free state. As a wholly antique-free state.

As far I’m concerned, I’ve liberated this place. Liberated it from the awful grip of the antiques and the obsessiveness that comes with coveting the past. Now, the world can move on, unhindered.

Now I can move on, unhindered, for no longer am I an enigma like the antiques. Because the antiques are no longer enigmas, for they are no longer here. Which can only mean that I am now an enigma all unto myself, with no other to share in my unique position.

Hm, still not an anyone of the everyone, I suppose.

But then again, if I were to ever become an anyone within the everyone, then I would risk falling prey to the other enigmas that occasionally emerge from the depths and reel the common anyones into their deadly grasps. As an enigma all my own, I am wholly exempt from my enigmatic kin.  And as long my enigmatic kin continue to be either short-lived or easily hidden from everyone, then there’s really no threat to me.

As close to perfect as you can get, I suppose.

With that thought, I rise from the bench across the street from the antique home on Downing Street and whistle my way to my own new home.

Antiques were an enigma.

I remedied that.