Antiquities and Tangibles

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The bell above the door to Martin Grinde’s shop tinkled a chime of surpassing beauty as a young woman pushed her way in. The door had the words “Antiquities and Tangibles” written in flaking gold-and-black letters on the frosted glass, but Mr. Grinde thought of it merely and eternally as “my shop.”

The woman’s hair was the color of wet beach sand, her coat the color of wet cement, and her forehead a relief map of furrows, face so scrunched in some effort or anxiety that it was impossible for Grinde to tell if she were pretty or ugly or plain.

“Welcome to my shop,” Mr. Grinde said as the woman looked around the press of overflowing shelves, racks, tables, and cubbyholes. Her face smoothed out and she even smiled briefly—she’d seen the Mirror of Jade, he suspected, which gave you a fleeting glimpse of your own best face—and that was answered, then: she was plain, but a rather determined-looking sort of plain.

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