Salted Wound

Chapter 34 Zamari- Dec 1, 2018

I pull up outside of Ana's house in the car, which I finally have for a day, and text her I'm here. I invited her to go look at the antique store by her house since she likes old vintage stuff, and surprisingly I find it interesting, too. Luckily, she agreed to go once she got out of work and I have an excuse to spend a few hours with Ana. I tug the sleeves of my hoodie further down over my hands as soon as I put the phone down. The air conditioning in the car works perfectly, but for some reason, the heater is another story. It's not always reliably hot, and will sometimes just give out without warning. Today is one of those days.

Ana slips out of her house and hurries to the car, her own hoodie pulled up nearly to her nose to avoid the cold breeze blowing by. She pulls the door open and climbs in, shivering as she says hello and pulls on the seatbelt. I pull away from the curb and she rubs her hands together to warm them.

"No heat today?"

"Apparently not, the car ain't feeling it today," I say, turning the corner before I reach into the backseat, feeling around without taking my eyes off the road.

"Ah damn, she wants us to freeze." She says and glances into the backseat as I continue to rummage.

"What are you looking for?" She asks, and I don't answer, I pull a blanket out of the seat and drop it on her side of the car.

"Mmmm," she snuggles into the blanket, and I glance at her with a smile. She has her eyes closed and her nose buried in the blanket.

"It smells like you." She says and I laugh.

"I don't know how to take that."

"It's a compliment." She says laughing with me.

I pull into the parking lot of the antique store and Ana snuggles further into the blanket.

"I don't think they'll let you bring that inside," I say, and she groans, tugging it higher over her face.

I open my door and she yelps at the cold breeze that invades the mildly warm car.

I finally drag her out of the car and we rush into the building. I take a deep breath of the antique-store air, a smell significant to old nearly forgotten items that found a new purpose. We had both come here separately many times and had been texting about it a few days ago. We both have an affinity for getting old things cheap and using them in a new way.

Ana heads toward the book section and I meander through the tables set up near the front that have boxes and boxes of pure junk. Broken door handles, old fountain pens, CDs that are basically unplayable from the number of scratches on them. Who even listens to CDs anyway? This is my favorite part of the store, both because it's the cheapest and because I like looking through the broken and forgotten things left behind and wondering who they used to belong to. What kind of house they were in if it was more like mine, or something like dads. I try not to visibly grimace at the thought of dad. Mom has stayed firm on the fact that Jade and I are going to the baby shower at the end of the month, and I can't really imagine much worse of an evening than spending it tiptoeing around the fact that we'll be there to celebrate the finalization of his new family, of the fact that he doesn't need us, and by the lack of invitation for mom obviously doesn't care much for the fact that we belong to her now, not him.

"What are you so deep in thought about?" Ana asks, and I jump slightly. I hadn't even heard her approach. I continue to sift through the junk as I answer honestly.

"My dad. He used to stop by any garage sale he saw, Jade and I loved to go with him and look for new toys, especially those little toy soldiers. We used to throw them in the air and pretend they were coming down from an airplane."

She smiles slightly at the recollection, and her fingers dance over the items in the box next to me, not really looking for anything in particular.

"Have you seen him lately?" She asks, and I immediately shake my head.

"No, not since dinner a while back with him and Jenny." I hesitate a moment and continue. "She's having a baby shower right before Christmas that my mom is making Jade and I go to."

I pull out a salt shaker that looks like it survived battlefields in the civil war and tip it on its side, trying to discern what it's original shape used to be.

"You don't want to go?" She asks and I give her a look.

"I'd rather spend the night with Harold."

She snorts and mutters, "That's definitely an image." Under her breath. "I mean, the baby is gonna be your little brother or sister, you might feel differently later, especially if you miss out on it."

I shrug. "It's hard to see the baby as my own flesh and blood when my father barely feels like it." I finally say, and immediately wish I hadn't. Ana and I are friends, but I don't think we've reached the level of friendship where I can say gooey shit like that. Surprisingly she takes it in stride and says something that surprises me.

"I'll go."

I pause raiding the box to turn to her, incredulous. "To the baby shower?"

She nods.

"With my father and his wife?"

She nods again.

"To make me feel better about being forced to be there?"

"You really need to cut back on the drugs, they're affecting that brain of yours." She says teasingly and I continue to just look at her in admiration and surprise.

"You really are fantastic." Red creeps up her cheeks, and before I can turn back to my rummaging, a thought smacks me in the face and I spin back toward her.

"What about Luis?"

Her face twists in a way I wouldn't expect since I mentioned her boyfriend and not Hitler, but the look is gone as quickly as it appears and she says dismissively. "Don't worry about that, I'll deal with him."

I raise a brow and she waves her hand at the box in front of me, bringing my attention back to my treasure trove, subject dropped. I focus back on the task at hand and move aside a broken frame and an old wooden napkin holder before I stop. Sitting innocently on the bottom of the stained and falling apart cardboard box is a key. Not a normal house key like you would see now, but a really fucking old brass key, like the kind you would see in old movies when the main character is thrown in the dungeon of the castle when he's on his way to save the princess. I pick it up and turn it over. The key is dull metal, but not rusty. The top curls up into a fleur de lis. One side is engraved with lettering I can't quite make out in the dim lighting of the antique shop, the other with the continuation of the fleur de lis, vines and leaves curling halfway down the length of the key.

"Wow," Ana says, pulling my attention to her.

"Think of all the things it unlocked," I say quietly, turning it over in my palm.

She tips her head to the side and says, "You should get it."

Exactly what I'm thinking, but even this old shop knows a good piece of junk, no way it will be as cheap as the amount of cash I have on me right now. And I don't know what I'd even do with it once I had it. I hesitate before dropping it back into the box.

"Nah, I don't have anything to do with it. Let's keep looking."

I turn to the next box, and Ana pauses at the box with the key before following.