“Tala used to own this pair,” Ana said, holding up a pair of spectacles for me to see. The oval lenses were framed in glass filled with nebulae, turning a rich mauve-blue at one moment, a bright golden-green the next.
Every now and then, stars formed, twinkling, and floating around the lenses and toward the temple arms.
“Lisa would love that,” I said. Lisa was my girlfriend. She got her first pair of prescription glasses two weeks ago, just a simple pair, framed in black, square and serious. She said the glasses made her look like a dork. I wondered if lenses framed by star-forming clouds would make her look less of a dork. Probably not.
“I’ll give you this pair in exchange for your most treasured memory of the night sky,” Ana said.
I had several. My top choices? There was a meteor shower last February with Lisa beside me, sitting open mouthed and speechless. I had a clear view of the night sky in Bohol as we lay in the sand, momentarily forgetting the impending end of summer vacation.
“No thanks,” I said, smiling as I remembered.
“Good for you,” Ana said.
I almost asked what Tala’s eye grade was, but then realized that for an entity that oversaw all the stars of the universe, Tala most probably had perfect vision.
“Tala gave this to me in exchange for this.”
This came out as a grunt as Ana leaned sideways to pick up another item. “The mask of Alunsina,” Ana said. “She said she’ll have someone pick it up for her today.” It was a golden half-mask with a handle, and covered in garnet, sapphire, and amethyst. Ana held it up to her face, and the mask turned the soft pink and yellow of dawn.
My jaw dropped. “Wow.”
“Wow, indeed,” Ana said, cradling the mask in her hands. “I think Tala had underpaid me in this deal.” She laughed.
“What did Alunsina get for it?”
“A good night’s sleep,” Ana said. “She just wanted to get rid of the thing. It bores her, she said. Alunsina gets bored a lot, ever since she relinquished the realm of the golden dawn and became a mortal. She said it’s hard to become too aware of the passage of time. The minutes now weigh on her, when before she could watch a century pass in the blink of an eye.”
“She should have an Internet connection at her house,” I said.
Ana found that hilarious. “I’d tell her that when she drops by. Can you hand me that box, please, Eric?”
I came upon Ana’s little pawnshop by accident a month ago, when I found myself cycling through this street looking for a pen I dropped. It was hours after school. I came from the bookstore with this expensive fountain pen that my father wanted for his birthday. I had it wrapped and all, but I was so busy speeding through the road to reach home in time for dinner that I didn’t realize I had lost my gift until I touched my breast pocket. I had to get off my bike and walk back to retrace my path. Thank goodness it was a residential street, quiet and cozy, the houses all elegant and expensive and bordered by flower gardens, not a dark alley where I could lose things other than that blasted pen.
I passed by a group of boys playing basketball, but I had my eyes trained on the ground, so I only heard their voices and the thump and clink of the ball as it hit the pavement and, occasionally, the ring.
All of a sudden all sounds disappeared. I looked up in surprise and found myself on a stretch of road lined with quaint little shops. One sold secondhand books, another dresses and jewelry, and still another, lamps and chandeliers. All of them were closed, however, except for this one store lit by a yellow light from inside.
“Lost something?” a woman said.
That was the first time I saw Ana. She was in her thirties and looked breathtakingly beautiful, her lines as defined as the stars in those forties films that Lisa liked so much: dark lids, red lips, wavy hair. And yet there was something very warm about her presence. If this were a film I’d cast her as the hot aunt who didn’t have children of her own, but could have been an excellent mother.
I found myself saying, “I lost a pen.”
“Ah,” Ana said. She was in the process of moving a large flowerpot closer to the door. The flowerpot contained the biggest sunflowers I had ever seen. She straightened up and wiped her palms on the side of her jeans before going inside. Her shop had a display window, behind which a hand-painted sign rested on a stand and read, Ana’s Pawnshop. Taped right on the glass was an announcement written with a black Sharpie: (1) ASSISTANT NEEDED. PART-TIME OR FULL-TIME.
I moved closer and settled my bike right beside the flowerpot. The pawnshop was cluttered but looked snug and warm, with its gleaming hardwood floors and a certain syrupy smell in the air. Ana was behind the glass counter. At her elbow was a wicker basket filled with letters. All of the letters were unopened, which I later learned were sealed with moss-green wax bearing two intertwined M’s. On the other side of the counter was a bare table with two chairs.
“Is this it?” In her hands was a rectangular box with a silver bow.
“Yes,” I said in wonder. “How did that get here?”
“Lost things arrive here to be found,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. “Do I have to pay for this?”
“No,” she said with a laugh. “I only sell the unclaimed items.”
I looked at the shelves. “That’s a lot of unclaimed items.”
Ana looked wistful. “People lose things every day. Most just give up looking and forget.”
I was curious about the shop and the sudden sadness in Ana’s voice, but I was pressed for time, so I thanked her and said goodbye.
(It must be mentioned, though, that despite the time I spent looking for the pen on that street, and the time I spent inside Ana’s shop, I arrived home in time for dinner.)
I visited again the next day, staying at least an hour, having tea, eating bread, and looking over her inventory. She said her tea was made from the boiled petals of rosas, gumamela, and sampaguita, and was incredibly sweet and refreshing. I was sure she had ingredients besides the flowers; if I were to boil the exact same petals I would just end up with something foul and slimy.
Ana said the lost objects appeared in the storeroom behind the shop, located beside Ana’s kitchen and her bathroom (she slept in a bedroom upstairs), and would remain there until claimed. If the items remained unclaimed for 30 days, they would be moved to the shop to be appraised and sold.
The shop had all sorts of things. Wineglasses and mugs, magnifying glasses and spectacles and sunglasses of all shapes and sizes and colors, tables and chairs from various eras, curtains and clothes and bags and purses, typewriters, cameras, shoes and boots and pumps, chests of jewelry, musical boxes, dolls and other toys, lace and silk, bronze candelabras, combs inlaid with pearls, hats adorned with hand-sewn designs and rhinestones, large vintage buttons, books and notes and letters.
“My human clientele look through the shelves for items they could use as décor,” Ana said. “Some of these things were too old and broken to be worn or used. They pay me with human currency, and that’s what I use to pay the humans who come in to pawn their products. My non-human clientele, on the other hand, usually just end up bartering each other’s items. They have no use for human objects, and humans more often than not refuse to pay the price I ask for the items of magic.”
“Is this an orientation?” I asked, and Ana looked at me in surprise, and burst out laughing.
I knew before we finished our tea that I would ask about the sign taped on the display window, that she would (perhaps jokingly) ask me to apply, and I would pretend to consider and say yes. I would say yes; she was a nice, sincere lady and I liked her and I could taste her loneliness in the very bread she served.
And this was exactly what happened.
I didn’t need a part-time job, but working with Ana was a pleasure. I only worked after school because I spent the weekend with Lisa (and Ana understood that).
Ana didn’t really need a helper. Clients didn’t come in droves. But she only had her books and she couldn’t understand the appeal of TV or radio. She was hungry for constant company.
My schedule was like this: school, have lunch with Lisa, extracurricular shit (through Lisa’s clever maneuverings I found myself signing up for the school paper, and now I couldn’t find a way out anywhere), say goodbye to Lisa, change out of my uniform, go to Ana’s shop. That would be around four, so I’d arrive in time for tea and bread, then I would clean up, check the storeroom for new items, and help Ana move the heavier objects around the shop.
Ana opened her shop late, because clients usually came in at night, like nocturnal customers prowling a convenience store for their chocolate fix.
There was always the usual pawnshop business of this-wristwatch-for-cash, but I had also seen my share of interesting trades. A blind girl exchanging her singing voice for sight (Ana stored the girl’s voice in a jar and placed it on the topmost shelf), a basketball player exchanging a week’s worth of laughter for the quick mending of a broken bone. There was one night when a man came in and bought a bottle of storm clouds. He claimed to be a poet.
“I needed the rain,” he said. “I couldn’t write in this goddamn heat.”
“What did he pay for that?” I asked once the man had left.
“That’s just a week’s supply of storm clouds,” Ana said, “so I only asked for six months of his life. I’m going to use that for my sunflowers. That way, they wouldn’t wilt for a long time—isn’t that fantastic?”
I hoped the man wrote good poems.
Ana also had a lot of visitors, mortals and immortals alike. I was there when Alunsina banged in, wearing a short black dress and dark sunglasses, and smelling of acrylic. “A human!” she said when she saw me. “How interesting.”
I wondered about the sunglasses. It was six in the evening.
Ana embraced her and arranged their teacups on the small table.
Alunsina was asking about the mask. “So who finally bought the damn thing?”
“Tala did.”
“Tala?” Alunsina burst out laughing. “Where will she use it?”
“It’s a good accessory for an evening gown,” Ana said.
“What, she’ll throw a party? Good grief.” She turned to me, and I realized that it wasn’t acrylic wafting off of her—it was cheap gin. “Hey, if Tala ever invites you to her party, don’t go. She’s as dull as a dying galaxy.”
I didn’t have first-hand experience, obviously, but I was pretty sure a dying galaxy would be anything but dull. I believed it would be fantastic, breathtaking, heartbreaking. Not dull. But ex-immortal or no, Alunsina was drunk and seemed unstable, so I just nodded my head.
Alunsina’s gaze strayed toward Ana’s wicker basket of unopened letters. “Ohhh,” she said. “Is the queen giving you a hard time?”
Ana sighed. “I bet they’re strongly worded missives regarding my refusal to become a stockholder,” Ana said. “I’m happy with my small shop. I don’t need dividends.”
“You shouldn’t have trusted her,” Alunsina said. “She’s corporate now. She’ll screw you over one of these days.”
“Sorry about that,” Ana said, after having seen Alunsina out the door.
“Who’s the queen?” I asked.
Ana looked at me a moment, then smiled and shook her head.
“Sorry,” I said, my face reddening. “I couldn’t help overhearing—”
“Alunsina and her big mouth,” Ana said, laughing. “It’s all right, Eric. Who is the queen? I own this shop, but the rest of the block is owned by Mariang Makiling.”
“I see,” I said. “But doesn’t she live in a forest?”
“This is the forest!” Ana said, gleeful, as though she had caught me in a trap. “Was. We’re sitting right in it. A corporation bought the land from the government, tore down the trees, burned the grass, and filled it with concrete and buildings. Instead of hurling curses all around, however, Mariang Makiling simply dusted herself off and struck a deal with the mortals. So now she’s a stockholder and a businesswoman. I believe she now responds to ‘Marie’.” Ana shrugged. “I don’t blame the poor girl. She’s suffered through a string of heartbreaks. If she believes she could heal by jumping into finance, then good for her. I just hate how the business has affected her, how she now treasures the impersonal. She’s been sending me letters instead of coming here to have tea with me.” She shrugged and waved a hand toward the wicker basket, as though she wanted to banish it away from her sight. “Did you think what Tala gave me in exchange for her mask was useless?”
Alunsina had been berating her about it. “No,” I said. “I think it’s a really cool pair of glasses.”
“Yes, but I’ve broken the frame.” Ana took out a jar sealed with a black rubber cover. The contents of the jar sparkled. “I’ve poured the nebulae here. They’ve been busy. Look how many stars they’ve made!”
I peered at them and smiled and nodded my approval.
* * * *
I wanted to ask her why she bought the shop in the first place, but it seemed that every time I planned to ask her, Ana would talk about something else, deftly changing the subject.
Until that night I began yammering on about this little girl who went missing. Like I said, Ana didn’t own a TV, and she didn’t seem particularly interested in the newspapers, but it was all over the news and one moment I just found myself talking to her about it. The girl was last seen leaving her kindergarten class with her yaya. While watching it, my mother mentioned that other girl who disappeared years ago. It was the same scenario: last seen with the yaya leaving school. A day later, they found the girl’s shoes in the playground. Little pink shoes with straps and silver buckles. The girl had been missing for close to a week now. They couldn’t find the yaya, too. No calls, no ransom demands. Just those pink shoes.
“That other girl was found dead inside a Samsonite bag three months after,” I said “The bag was fished from a river.”
“How horrible,” Ana said. “I hope the missing girl won’t end up the same way.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“Have you had a person suddenly appear in the storeroom?” I asked.
“A person?”
“Humans get lost, too,” I said. I imagined the little girl suddenly appearing in the storeroom, bewildered but safe.
“I deal with lost things,” said Ana. “Lost humans are beyond my realm.”
I thought that was the end of it, so I just nodded and busied myself with the inventory list.
“I’ve lost a little girl, too,” Ana said, all of a sudden.
I was so surprised I didn’t manage to say anything.
“But no. She’s not really lost.” Ana wiped her palms on her jeans, watching her hands as she did so. “My, I’m an awful storyteller. Let me start again,” she said. “I fell in love.”
Ana was still Anagolay then, she said. She visited the world, fell in love with a mortal, gave birth to a girl, and lived as a married woman and a mother for years. But the man fell out of love, and Anagolay found herself abandoned.
“We met in this town, but he has moved away,” Ana said. “I decided to stay here because I have fallen in love with the place, and there is still that faint hope that he’ll come back. Maybe then he’ll explain why he did what he did.” Ana gave me a sad, resigned smile. “He took our daughter with him.”
“That’s awful,” I said. I almost asked for the man’s name. I thought maybe I could Google him.
As though reading my mind, Ana said, “I tried looking for them. But then I thought, if I find them, what then? What use is it, to find people that don’t want to be found? They’re not lost: one decided to remove himself from my world, one was taken away. Better if I wait for them to come to me.
“So when I heard about Mariang Makiling’s business endeavors, I visited her and asked if I could be given a piece of land in this realm. I paid a portion of my influence for a small shop and her protection. With her glamour protecting this property, this is definitely the safest spot in town. In here, you need not worry about fire, or floods, or the sort of evil that forces men to throw a dead child into a river. I can sleep soundly with the front door unlocked. It’s a good deal. I run my shop, and I sit here and wait.”
If the missing girl’s mother knew this, she would have bought protection for her child in a heartbeat. I would. I would buy protection for my family. For Lisa.
But Mariang Makiling asked a big price in return, and I didn’t have powers to barter.
* * * *
Meanwhile, the letters bearing Mariang Makiling’s seal kept ending up inside the wicker basket. More than once I was tempted to open one of them, but I kept my hands to myself and did my work without saying anything.
One day, a man in a suit dropped by the pawnshop. I had just arrived and wasn’t even done putting butter on my bread when the little bell on top of the door tinkled. I thought we had an early customer.
“Greetings, Anagolay,” the man said.
“Greetings, Michael,” Ana said, rising. “But please, call me Ana. Eric,” she said, turning to me, “would you mind it so much if you moved to the counter?”
We were sitting at the table. “No prob,” I said, and took my tea with me.
I saw Michael glance at the wicker basket and sigh. “I see you haven’t read any of Marie’s letters.”
Ana sat down again. “I don’t want to become a stockholder,” she said, a bit grumpily. “And I came to Mariang Makiling when I bought this shop. Would it be too much if she showed courtesy and came to me?”
“Don’t take it that way,” Michael said. “She’s really, really busy. And the letters aren’t about the stock control issue.”
“Then what does she want?”
“They’re tearing down the building, Ana,” Michael said. “Marie’s human partners want to build a mall.”
I almost choked on my tea.
“And she’s allowing this?” Ana said. This was the first time I saw her look so distraught. “But I own this shop.”
“Yes, we’ll provide you with another venue. But you’ll have to pack up and leave by tomorrow. We had given you several months, but you never opened the letters and you never replied.”
Ana chewed on this. Then: “Let me speak with Mariang Makiling.”
Michael placed his briefcase on his lap and said, “I really just came here to present you with the documents—”
“Tell her to come.”
Michael sighed. “Very well,” he said, and dialed a number on his cell phone.
I didn’t hear Michael talk to anyone on the other line, but he suddenly told us, “She’s here,” and the glass door banged open and in strode a woman in a white business suit and red pumps followed by two female assistants and another man in a suit.
The woman, who had long ebony hair and light-brown skin, looked stern and no-nonsense, her arms crossed as though she would rather be elsewhere. Her assistants looked bored, unimpressed with the pawnshop’s display. The other man in a suit, probably her bodyguard, was wearing sunglasses and looked like he couldn’t care less.
Mariang Makiling flipped her hair over a shoulder, and the shop was suddenly filled with the heady scent of sampaguita.
“Greetings, Maria,” Ana said, and Mariang Makiling slumped her shoulders, smiled, and drew Ana closer for an embrace. I thought even this sudden friendliness was artificial.
“Greetings Anagolay,” she said. “I assume Michael has told you the news.”
“Is there no way I could keep my shop?”
“You will keep your shop, Anagolay. We’ll just relocate you.”
“Where? Somewhere near?”
Mariang Makiling didn’t reply.
“I am sure,” Ana said, “that you could let your mortals build this mall or whatever-it-is around me. I paid for this space dearly, Mariang Makiling. I paid for protection.”
That got to her. Mariang Makiling placed her hands on her hips and took a deep breath. Her female assistants typed on their BlackBerrys, Michael sighed and fidgeted, and the bodyguard stood as still as a sentinel.
“All the memories of your life’s greatest love,” Mariang Makiling said after that long pause, “and you can keep your shop.”
Ana received the blow as gracefully as she could. “That would include memories of my daughter, Maria.”
“So be it,” Mariang Makiling said. “Consider my terms, Anagolay. I have a business to run.”
And so they left. Only Michael looked apologetic. Ana only said, “Well”, and nothing else, and I left her with her silence.
Then it was time to leave. As I was picking up my backpack, Ana tapped me on the shoulder. I turned, and I felt a jar shoved into my hands.
“It’s a gift,” she said. “I believe Lisa will like it.”
It was the nebulae from Tala’s spectacles, the star-forming clouds that I admired but for which I refused to give my night sky memories. Ana had tied a red bow around the lid, and attached a card that said, To Eric and Lisa, from a dear friend.
“Don’t do it,” I said.
Ana looked surprised. “Don’t do what, Eric?”
“Don’t give her what she asks for. Just relocate. If it’s protection that worries you, buy locks, buy a stun gun or a bat, buy a proper cash register. I’ll help you! Don’t give her what she wants.”
But that was all in my head. All I really said was: “Are you going to move?”
Ana smiled. “I haven’t decided yet,” she said. “I wonder, though: if somebody asked you to part with your unpleasant memories, wouldn’t you say yes?”
“But your memories with your husband and daughter couldn’t be all bad,” I said.
“I know,” Ana said. “That’s the tricky part.”
There was silence as I put the jar carefully in my backpack.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” I asked.
But it was as though Ana didn’t hear me. “Good night, Eric,” she said. “Take care.”
What else could I say? “Good night, Ana.”
I walked out the door and heard the familiar tinkle of the bell. I looked back as I moved my bike. Ana, nestled in that yellow glow, smiled and waved goodbye from behind the glass door. I smiled back, gave her a salute, and pedaled away, the jar inside my bag quickly filling with stars.