PAWN SHOP

“What could I get for this?” I asked between breaths as I finally laid 150 pounds of myself on the counter.

It felt so ordinary to look down at me--the part of me that wasn’t going to make it . The eyes were shut, and my body lay awkward and motionless, like a bird stunned after hitting a sliding glass door.

The blend of cinnamon, Pine-Sol and cigarettes invaded my lungs. A cracked glass display case protected guns and pearl necklaces from the Pawn shop customers. CD’s of Sonny & Cher, “accordion favorites,” and a selection of movie soundtracks, dusty, were stacked on nearby shelves. An ancient green telephone seemed to glare at me from its dis-guarded and forgotten home, oddly placed in the company of fine crystal.

A broken yellow Miller Beer chandelier, repaired with the unsubtle use of duct tape, gave soft gold light to a stringless guitar, one oar, and an electric typewriter with a note “power cord missing.” An AM/FM portable cassette player was marked “No AM. No cassette.” My eyes were drawn back to the useless green telephone, unable to shake the feeling that it was taunting me.

“Where is that thing?” the store owner mumbled to himself as he pawed through a drawer of wires and cloudy sandwich bags full of screws. His face had been shaped by years of examining wedding jewelry and family keepsakes, while keeping himself at arms length from the broken lives and frantic last grasps at hope of the poor souls who surrendered their treasures.

“Here we go.” A hand emerged with a silver and black stethoscope.

“Original owner?" he said more as a statement than a question, never really looking at me.

“Yes,” I replied.

He plugged the black rubber ends of the stethoscope into his ears, and with the robotic movements of a morgue technician, placed the cold instrument to the chest of my haggard body on the table. I held my own breath while he listened, my gut tightening into a knot as the inevitable pawn negotiations began.

Where was I? a part of me wondered. And if I was laying in front of me, then who was the person still standing, hoping, praying for a miracle? Was all of this a twisted dream that I would soon wake from? I was startled from my thoughts as the store owner gasped, “Geeez!” He flinched. "You got some big miles on this young pup!” he declared. Before I could gather an explanation, he cut in, “What do you want for it?” I felt weak and small.

From an open back office, ancient posters of naked woman caressing power tools stared in hollow silence. A message of danger from somewhere inside me flapped its wings like a crazy bird. It was a feeling of anxiety that I knew well. It was a feeling I had always heeded. The man leaned toward me, “What...do... you...,” then whispering, “want for it?”

My heart was pounding. Adrenaline ushered me far from my body, far from this broker of the broken. Numb, I told myself to just speak the words. If I could just breathe! I was certain I was choking as air refused to enter my lungs. “I...” pushing my courage forward from that deep place inside me that still believed, “I’ll trade him,” I placed a hand on his/my bony and withered shoulder with great care, “for her soft kisses, and the sweetest eyes, and a smile..." I paused, even though I knew the words, words that had come from my Soul. I wanted them to sound to this man they way they did in my own ears, "and a smile that speaks of love,” I feel myself, my entire being, spilling everywhere as I now, in shock, am barely able to stand.

“For THIS?” he almost shouted. He patted the lifeless chest too roughly while noticing a new customer bringing in a stereo speaker.

“This body could spend a full day just holding hands,” I broadcasted to several customers, feeling bold for the first time. It was too late to turn back.

“Dear me, yes! Everyone wants a hand-holder!” he mocked. His serrated words entered my abdomen with a smooth swirling motion. His steel eyes entered mine. “Phone rings of the hook for a man who can hold hands for a full day!" he laughed almost coldly.

The false smile left his face and with one greasy index-finger pointing to the body, he said, “So are you going to stand here and tell me that you’ve never had a problem here? Please! I’m going to take a look at this gentleman’s stereo.” He greeted the new customer at the other end of the counter and continued with his life of determining the value of the world, of executing fate.

With care, I lifted and cradled the body in my arms and turned to leave.“Have you tried the classifieds?" I hear his voice call out from behind me. "No one’s going to give you a trade for that thing. ” A lady who had been sweeping opened the door for me, but her eyes would not meet mine. I balanced the weight as I re-entered the busy world.

People stared, thinking there was something wrong. Others looked away out of respect, I think. I walked almost blindly, my own eyes downcast.

Even out on the street, at any moment, I knew she might find me. I could taste her, as though somewhere before all of this, we had danced between orange-red skies and restless oceans. The memory felt like a kind of morning, as if we had together watched the beginning of one enormous day. A voice from behind me echoed, “No one will want a heart like that!” My left hand rushed to cover an ear. “Of course they will,” I whispered.

I thought about the way she smelled, like tiny white meadow flowers.

Back on the street, I did my best to pretend he was light, as though my knees could not buckle, as though I didn’t need a break--ever. After a moment leaning against an orange dumpster in an alley, I announced with new strength, “No God would orphan you. No God.” I let my voice carry all the determination and conviction I could muster.

With my arm cradling his knees, I held his hand. He knows when I hold his hand because his heart really starts going. I began to think about her again--the way her hair will feel like the lightest feathers from angels' wings. But with him having been through so much pain, it wouldn’t be fair. Is it right to sacrifice all his loss, all his pain, for this fleeting memory, for the possibility that she might be real?

So I told him our story. I tell him that I imagine God has lined every person in the whole world up in front of me. I scan and examine all of them, and every time, I still pick him. He loves that story! And this time, as I told the story for maybe the thousandth time, I’ll be damned if I didn’t hear that ‘glug-glug’ sound in his chest!

Each time I tell the story, more and more of it seems to get lost in my gasping for air. The life it has taken to support this body of sorrow has little will anymore. Like a familiar old friend, my knees began shaking again, and the sting of sweat was met with the familiar silent screams.

“You are my lucky ticket," I say to my body as I pick up my pace--needing to focus my mind on getting home. "And soon I will lay you to rest once and for all. We will trade-in all you’ve been through. And there she will be... soft kisses, the sweetest eyes, and a smile... that speaks of love.”

It just sounds bad in a pawn shop.