Chapter Eight

“Good morning, Edison!” the local postal woman called out happily. “Invent anything today?”

“Not yet!” he replied as he ran past her.

She looked gorgeous in her red cloak and luxurious black hair tucked and pinned neatly under a flat-brimmed hat, and her heart was as big as the giant bag of mail she had slung over her shoulder. She strolled through the street, pushing her mail trolley with its large wicker basket.

Around her, Cobbleton was aflutter. Townspeople finished hanging the star on top of the evergreen that stood like a lonely sentinel in the square. Everyone was bustling to and fro, lunching or shopping for Christmas, which was in a few days’ time. Ms. Johnston abandoned her mail trolley and marched straight for the pawnshop. She stopped and took a moment to collect herself before she turned the corner and pushed open its double doors. Jeronicus, still tinkering on the cuckoo clock at the counter, barely registered her. She turned and clamorously attempted to shut the doors behind her before taking a deep breath and spinning excitedly back to face Jeronicus.

He stood. “Good morning, Mrs. Johnston,” he said with the semblance of a smile.

She twirled her midnight-blue skirts. “Good morning, Jerry.” She took a few steps into the silent, squalid shop as Jeronicus sat back down. “It’s so dark in here,” she remarked. She hit buttons, one by one, on a switchboard, and sconces and chandeliers flared to life, much to Jeronicus’s chagrin. Ms. Johnston rejoiced. “Perfect!”

“I kind of liked it the way it was,” Jeronicus told her matter-of-factly.

Ignoring the comment, she sauntered up to him. “How’s my favorite pawnbroker? Hmm? Who’s not really a pawnbroker but wants everyone to believe he is? Hmm?” she teased. “Jerry?”

He set down the cuckoo. “I’d be better if you called me by my name.”

She lifted a defunct telephone and spoke into it in a low, sultry tone. “Hello, Jerry.”

“It’s Jeronicus,” he corrected, but not unkindly.

“It’s Jerry!” she sang with a playful wink.

Jeronicus blinked again. “You have something for me today, Mrs. Johnston?”

She scowled and leaned over the countertop. “It’s Ms. I’m widowed, remember? He’s dead. Gone. Ain’t never coming back.”

Jeronicus looked up at her. “I’m sure he’s in a better place.”

“Jerry the Jokester.” She fished a letter out of her mailbag and handed it to him. “Here. You might want to open this one. You’re three months late on your gas. Actually, it’s four, but you overpaid the month before, so they gave you a credit.” She dangled the letter in front of him.

When he reached for it, she yanked it back a few times until he managed to grab it.

“Mrs. Johnston, I would appreciate it—”

“Ms.,” she interjected.

“If you refrained from opening my mail,” Jeronicus concluded. He opened the letter and considered it for a glum moment before stashing the overdue bill into a jumbled letter drawer.

She feigned surprise. “It’s just a sixth sense I have.” She extended another few letters for Jeronicus. “A gift . . . knowing what’s inside . . . without seeing it,” she proclaimed, jerking the letters away every time Jeronicus reached for them, until finally he seized them. This time, she held tight and began giggling. Finally, she let go, and he fell backward in his chair, dropping the letters, knocking over Edison’s mop, and falling against an archaic grandfather clock whose pendulum no longer swung, succumbed to a timeless existence.

He straightened. “Mrs. Johnston, I don’t have time for this today.”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Jerry!” she growled. “Lighten up! You’ve just got to smile.”

Jeronicus did his best to ignore her, but when he wiped off the counter with a rag, Ms. Johnston rang its little bell, jarring his senses. And when he crossed the floor to buff an antique violin with snapped and fraying strings, Ms. Johnston followed like a relentless shadow. She knew Jeronicus was down on his luck ever since he lost Joanne to her sickness, and since Jessica packed up and left home. But she also knew that there was still hope for him to be happy again, maybe with someone like her by his side to let in some light. She glided on a tall ladder.

He shook his head at her behavior. “You do realize people can see you from outside.”

She leaned close to him, fluttering her eyelashes.

Just then, a man burst into the shop, looking prim and proper in a dark blue cloak and top hat with a burnt-orange waistcoat and gray muttonchops connected by a thick mustache. He regarded Ms. Johnston.

“Mrs. Johnston was just . . .” Jeronicus made to move away from her. “Delivering the mail.”

Ms. Johnston sighed and spun away from him. She dug into her mailbag and handed a letter to the man. “You know, your cousin is visiting for the holidays,” she told him. “Merry Christmas.” She reached the double doors.

“Hopefully my favorite cousin,” the man mused, eyeing the letter.

Ms. Johnston twirled back around. “Nope.” And with that, she left.

The man flipped the letter over, seeing that it was indeed sealed.

“Mr. Delacroix,” Jeronicus said, drawing his attention.

The banker regarded him with tenderness. “Jangle.”

Jeronicus crossed to a tiny table. “Just the person I’ve been waiting for.”

Mr. Delacroix followed close behind. “Yes. Which is why you haven’t answered any of my inquiries.” His voice dripped with sarcasm, despite being one of Jeronicus’s biggest believers.

Jeronicus gulped. “Yes, I’ve been thinking—”

“Jangle,” Mr. Delacroix cut in, loosening the cuffs of his jacket, “for the last thirty years you’ve been promising something sensational.”

“Yes. And I have a thought,” Jeronicus said with a nervous little chuckle.

“Yes! Something spectacular,” Mr. Delacroix stated.

Jeronicus picked an empty gravy boat off the table. “Silver.”

Mr. Delacroix sighed. This was what he’d had in mind?

“You melt it down,” Jeronicus continued. “It’s a three-point-five. It’ll be a four-point-five next year—”

“Something stupendous,” Mr. Delacroix cut in. “Something that will show the bank they’ve made a return on their investment.”

“Which is why I need more time.” He began flipping madly through a book. “Look, I can show you—”

“I’m sorry, Jangle,” the banker said, “the bank can’t wait any longer.”

Jeronicus kept flipping. “Just take a quick look—”

Mr. Delacroix stuck a hand in the book to stop him. “Jeronicus, listen to me! Either come up with the money you’ve borrowed by Christmas—”

“Which is just a few days away,” Jeronicus griped.

“Or show me the revolutionary invention you once promised,” he finished.

Jeronicus racked his cobwebbed mind. “Something revolutionary?”

Mr. Delacroix nodded curtly.

Jeronicus thrust an old domed adding machine onto the counter and his once-skilled fingers punched the keys. “Take the circumference of spectacular . . . divided by the second derivative of sensational.” He hit a final key, and the machine printed out a little square of paper. “It’ll take approximately . . .”

Mr. Delacroix snatched the page and read it, his bushy brows vanishing into his deepening wrinkles. He let out an unamused exhale and handed the paper back to Jeronicus. “Two thousand years?” he asked skeptically.

“That may be a miscalibration on my part,” Jeronicus excused.

Mr. Delacroix turned and strode away from him. “The invention, or the bank will seize Pawnbroker and all its assets,” he warned.

“Wait!” Jeronicus followed on his heels. “Mr. Delacroix!”

Mr. Delacroix paused in the doorway to humor him.

Jeronicus raised his hands in surrender. “I would lose everything,” he pleaded.

“I’m sorry to say it, old friend”—he looked around at the scattered shop—“but it looks like you already have.” His eyes settled sadly back on Jeronicus. “Merry Christmas.” And with that, he was gone.

“Merry Christmas.” Jeronicus’s lip trembled as he dissolved to tears. He had to think. He had to do something. He felt as off-kilter as his shop. It was all he had left. It may have changed, but it was still filled with so many fuzzy memories of his wife and his daughter and his delighted customers. “Something revolutionary . . .” he mused. “Something revolutionary . . .”

Within moments, he was padding up the spiral staircase to his secret workshop. He slid a trunk out from under a desk and hoisted it up. It was a dusty old travel trunk, one painted with flowers and stickered with papers from around the globe. He traced his fingers along the stickers before taking a deep breath and creaking open the lid. There he found, buried among knickknacks and scrolls of paper, a sleek red notebook. The letters JESSICA J printed on the front shone just as they had in Jessica’s happy, cozy childhood.

He opened to the first pages of a child’s doodles and found words like EXPLORE and TRUTH and LOVE and FOCUS, and there was a crayon-drawn Jangles and Things with the phrase THE MOST MAGICAL SHOP IN THE WORLD. There were even stick figures of the three of them together.

What he’d give to go back in time, to cherish those moments once more.

He turned to a page marked by a glossy red ribbon. It showed the designs of a smiling robot with giant eyes and a cherubic face: THE BUDDY 3000. His fingers grazed the illustration.

The shadow of a long-lost smile twitched across Jeronicus’s lips.

Then, something else in the trunk caught his eye, something small wrapped in a soft brown cloth. He removed the fabric to reveal a dusty glass cube with a gold-trimmed door. Through it, he saw dozens of little gears angled in every direction. He used his sleeve to lovingly polish it.

“There you are,” he breathed.

Could this robot be his something revolutionary?