"I'll meetcha in fifteen or twenty minutes," Mike shouted. "It won't take me long," and throwing out his hands to signify that there was nothing he could do about it he disappeared.
Chris started off once more, passing the bleak little Victorian church perched on the hill above Mr. Wicker's house. An empty lot cut into by Church Lane gave a look of isolation to the L-shaped brick building that served Mr. Wicker as both house and place of business. Chris paused to look below him. Even from where he stood, fifty feet above the house, the slope of the hill was sharp and the plan of the house below him could be plainly seen.
It was built like an inverted L, the short wing faced towards the street and the traffic of Wisconsin Avenue. The longer wing, toward the back, had a back door that opened onto Water Street. The space between the house and Wisconsin Avenue had been made into a neat oblong flower garden, fenced off from the sidewalk by box shrubs and a white picket fence. Behind it, along the other side of the long wing, lay a meticulously arranged vegetable garden and a few apple trees.
His gaze moved back to the house itself. It seemed to have been built at about the same time as the vacant storehouses opposite, for they had a similar look of design and age. The windows of Mr. Wicker's house had smaller panes of glass than were used nowadays, and like the warehouses across from it, Mr. Wicker's had many dormer windows jutting out from the slated roof. Unlike the warehouses, however, which were rickety and down-at-heel, Mr. Wicker's home was well cared for. The windows—except for the bow window of the shop to the right of the front door—had shutters painted a pleasing bluey-green, and at their sides could be seen the edges of gay curtains. The traffic freeway rose high above the roof, dwarfing the old house and casting a deepening shadow over the whole length of Water Street, shading even Mr. Wicker's back door, so close did it rise beside the house. The air was filled with mechanical sounds—the roar of cars speeding up the hill, the grind of gears, the shuddering throb of wheels along the freeway, and the clanking bang of chains and weights in the factories along the shore.
The sun was dropping, and the sky behind Chris made a sinister promise for the following day. A livid yellow stained the horizon beyond the factories and gray clouds lowered and tumbled above. The air was growing chill and Chris decided to finish his job. All at once he wondered how his mother was, and everything in him pinched and tightened itself.
At the foot of the hill he reached the house. As he came to the bow front the old familiar excitement that always seized Chris when he looked in Mr. Wicker's window touched him again, and he stopped to look at its well-memorized display.
For as long as he had stopped to look into Mr. Wicker's window, which was as far back as he could remember, Chris had never known the objects to vary or be changed. There were three things that always caught his eye, amid the litter of dusty pieces. On the left, the coil of rope; in the center, the model of a sailing ship in a green glass bottle, and on the right, the wooden statue of a Negro boy in baggy trousers, Turkish jacket, and white turban. The figure was holding up a wooden bouquet, the yellow paint peeling from the carved flowers. The figure's mouth was open in an engaging toothy smile, and its right hand was on one hip, on the chipped red paint of the baggy trousers. The ship, so often contemplated by Chris that he knew every tiny thread and delicately jointed board, was a three-masted schooner, sleek of line, painted—at one time—a dazzling white. Now with dust dulling the green sides of the bottle, its sails looked loose, its sides grimed. But the name still showed at the prow, and many a time Chris, safe at home in bed, had sailed imaginary voyages in the Mirabelle. It lay there snug and captured, as if at the bottom of a tropical sea, seen through the glass sides of the bottle, and Chris never tired of looking at it.
But perhaps the coil of rope, so meaningless, so meaningful, held his imagination by an even stronger hold. Why a coil of rope in an antique shop? Who would want it? People bought rope in a hardware store—there was one farther along M Street near the old deserted Lido Theatre. But here, in an antique shop? Chris shook his head as he stared. He had never seen anyone go into Mr. Wicker's shop, now he thought of it. How then, did he live, and what did he ever sell?
A sudden car horn woke him from his dream. He looked up, seeing for the first time the small card hung at eye level in the window. In a beautiful script such as Chris had never seen before, but very legible, the card read: