Becky's Doll

Clark's Antique Shop

Clark's Antique Shop

13 November, 2010

   Tiffany Jensen read out aloud the black bold headlines on the newspaper even though she was alone in the antique shop. It was a habit she had acquired by reading out loud to her late presbyopic father. Even at old age, her eyesight was as sharp as a preying beast. A whole school building, the Dale Academy had been burnt down by a fire due to inexplicable causes. Ever since her little boy had drowned in the river, any news of deaths shocked her to such an extent that at times she received sudden panic seizures. Most of the students and teachers had lost their lives in the dreadful accident and Mrs Jensen's eyes moistened while reading it.

Neatly folding the paper in half and lightly placing it on her reception desk, she resumed her dusting and cleaning. She moved around the shop mechanically as her mind was preoccupied by the thoughts of those innocent lives lost during the accident. She stopped briefly at the faded words written on the glass window.

"The Clark's antique shop," she rolled the words in her mouth. She didn't seem to notice the missing l or the fading The. As a small girl she used to view the world from the glass window and she always found it intriguing. She was used to the grey rainy haze licking the streets wet and the rough undulations on the old broken roads. Those were the only things that remained constant throughout the years. New intimidating modern buildings rapidly arose around her cute little shop. It seemed to her that the world grew younger as her each strand of hair turned white.

Mrs Jensen shamelessly received immense pleasure in spectating the streetwalkers. It was her favourite guilty pass time. Especially in this wintery season, she was obsessed with the fur lined coats and leather bags that some women wore while strolling the streets. She found it entertaining when they bickered on about the unpleasant weather or when they slipped on sleet washed streets.

Onset of winter was always accompanied by light drizzling and grey mist. Most people found it inconvenient and that part of town was always dark and damp. However Mrs Jensen loved the weather since it let her utilise it for her profit making means. In advance she would bake meatloaves and hot tea. When it would start to rain and soak people's coats, the spicy scent of her meatloaves and finely heated room tempted the window shoppers to stop by. If luck favoured this poor desperate old lady, Tiffany's customers would be enchanted by one of her antiquated items in her shelves and buy it while savouring her cinnamon tea.

Mrs Jensen's tactic almost never worked. It was usually the construction workers and teenage smokers that walked these streets. They neither had the bucks nor the taste for her priceless items collected by her father during his lifetime. The men in smart suits and women in ermine coats dashed into their fancy cars when droplets hit the back of their proud necks. And today was no exception, she had lined her delicacies on a table and waited. A thick mist descended on the street, clouding the windows of cars but it failed to rain. She sighed, a puff of her warm breath faded the words on the glass window.

Like the candy wrappers and old newspapers that littered the streets, like the stumpy stones that tripped people and like the greyish clouds in the sky, the Clark's antique shop blend in too well with it's surroundings. It's presence never really mattered. Tiffany was certain that if her antique shop suddenly vanished in thin air, it wasn't going to make any difference except that the estate dealers would be ecstatic. The thought of a sky scraper arising in place of her shop scared her more than it should. And it wasn't that she never received frequent visits from such dealers and important businessmen pleading with her to sell off her land for several accompanying zeroes that would surely never fit in a cash cheque. Probably it was her old deteriorating brain cells that made her so adamantly refuse the offer.