Pawned

"Is this going to kill me?”

The shopkeeper made a sound not unlike a chuckle and shook his head.

“Now what would be the point in that?”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I’ll store it, keep it safe, should you decide to come back for it.”

“And if someone wants to buy it?”

“My prices aren’t for the faint of heart Mr Piper and my day-to-day clientele tend not to be interested in this sort of thing. But if someone were to come along with the means to make me an offer… well, that’s a risk you’ll have to take.”

-

Jack had passed the pawn shop countless times on his three mile walk to work. He told his co workers that he liked the exercise but if he were honest, he begrudged paying bus fare for a ten-minute ride. So, he walked. To and from work, come rain or shine and at the end of every week, he would make a note in his little black notebook of all the money he had saved by travelling on foot.

He was fastidious in his record keeping; every receipt and expenditure was neatly filed away in the leatherbound book he carried with him at all times. Not even a pack of gum was purchased without a note made in the book- $0.60, spearmint, Wrigleys.

He was preoccupied with money, or so Melissa said. He let it rule his life, counting every penny, dissecting every purchase. But she was reckless, buying dresses that cost the same as their rent and filling the apartment with orchids and ferns that died within the week. Jack had grown up scraping by but Melissa? Melissa was a Proust and the Proust’s had more money than they knew what to with. At least they had done, until Melissa was about to turn eighteen and her mother spent her daughter’s inheritance on lawyers’ fees. Her father had been “skimming a little off the top” at work which was the family’s preferred way of discussing his embezzlement. So, her safety net was gone and, approaching thirty years old, she still wasn’t used to living within her means.

On occasion, she would walk Jack to work and, on those mornings, they would always stop at some shop window so Melissa could gaze at the carefully curated display within. The pawn shop would often catch her eye, her imagination was wild and sprawling and she would pick out a diamond and ask Jack if he thought it has belonged to a baroness who was pawning her fortune to run away with a young lover? Or perhaps the ruby pendant in the window was a blood amulet, cursed by an ancient vampire queen! Whilst Melissa’s eyes were fixated on the jewels and trinkets, Jack was fixated on her. Swept up in her tinkling laugh as she spun her stories and rendered helpless by the excited flush in her cheeks when she’d turn to see what he thought of her tale.

He was not so easily swept up by the shop itself. He had glanced in the window on passing a few times, his animal brain captured by the glinting gold watches and winking diamond bands displayed front and centre to entice passers-by. The jewellery had never captured his imagination but once or twice on his walk home, he would find himself thinking about the guitars hung in rows along the walls of the store. Who had they belonged to? And what songs had their owners forfeited for the sake of a few hundred dollars? He liked to think that their owners had traded in their instruments to buy new ones, but he couldn’t quite convince himself that was the case.

Jack did consider the store briefly, to pick out the ring he would give to Melissa but instead, he bought one new, choosing a modest band with a tiny diamond, twinkling softly like a very, very, distant star. He had filled their apartment with her favourite flowers- $39.99 a bouquet, hand tied, six bunches- and got down on one knee in their living room. She didn’t cry, as he secretly hoped she might, but when she said yes, Jack swore he could feel his heart swelling in his chest as his own eyes threatened to fill up.

A few days later, Melissa announced that she wanted a fairy tale wedding with hundreds of guests, a grand manor house, champagne on every table. It hurt Jack to reign her in, to tell her that they could just about afford a dozen guests and a meal, if they were lucky. Her smile faltered and the tears that were absent a few days prior, started to well in her eyes. Still, she promised she would find a way to pay for the wedding of her dreams and, despite his protests, Jack could focus on charting their finances in that little black book of his.

And he did just that. Pouring over receipts and notes and desperately searching for corners to cut and savings to make. Late one evening, he came across a business card in his pile of papers that he couldn’t remember filing in his book. Written in ornate script on pale grey card were the words:

“Pravum’s Pawn Shop- The Heart of the Community”

Jack scoffed as he flipped the card over. The pawn shop? Really? With its neon signs and barred windows, he would hardly have called it the heart of anything, except, perhaps, desperation. The handwritten note on the back, however, gave him a moment of pause.

“Wanted: One Jack of Hearts. $20,000 cash. Will also accept one Heart of Jack’s.”

A creeping sense of unease washed over Jack, though he was at a loss to explain why. He tucked the card into the pocket of his notebook, wishing he could remember when he had picked it up, but deciding shortly after to call it a night. His head was much too foggy to continue unpicking budgets and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was suddenly very out of balance in his world. He slept restlessly that night, dreaming of blackjack tables, of free-flowing gold coins, of the lub-dub beating of a fresh and bloody heart hung on a wall alongside a row of old, forgotten guitars.

-

Melissa became distant over the next few weeks and Jack had a constant knot in his stomach accompanied by the unshakeable thought that she regretted accepting his proposal. She no longer kissed him goodbye in the morning, she was quiet and introspective and when he brought her home a bunch of lilies, albeit from the grocery store, she barely smiled. The further Melissa seemed to get, the less Jack slept and one Tuesday evening, some time after midnight, he studied the heavy bags under his eyes in the mirror and decided that the following day, he would make a visit to Pravum’s Pawn Shop.

-

The man behind the counter was older and smartly dressed, looking almost out of place in the small, cluttered shop. His clothes were crisp and complemented by a pair of round glasses, framed in gold and perched on the end of his nose. Jack couldn’t read the expression on his face, but his eyes were dark and reminded Jack, unpleasantly, of a shark’s. Still, he smiled widely when Jack pushed the business card across the counter towards him.

“Ah. You’re here about the deal?”

“Is it… is it real? $20,000 in exchange for…”

“Your heart. Yes. “

“Wouldn’t my soul be worth more?” Jack smiled feebly, a little joke to lessen the surreal feeling washing over him and the thumping emanating from the heart in question.

“Oh yes. But the soul is much less tangible than the heart and I prefer my acquisitions to be tangible. We are but a humble pawn shop after all.”

This response did little to reassure Jack who was beginning to understand what it felt like to be a rabbit with its foot caught in a metal trap.

“Is this some kind of marketing scheme? I really don’t have much worth selling.”

The shopkeeper shrugged, his smile slipping slightly.

“I don’t have much time for sceptics, Mr…?”

“Piper, Jack Piper.”

“Jack. If you don’t want to trade with me, you are welcome to go on your way. But I think you know deep down that this is very real, and you have something very valuable to pawn. Something worth around $20,000 perhaps?”

$20,000. Just enough to give Melissa the wedding she had dreamed of; one with a banquet, a band and a sparkling white ballgown. Jack pictured the smile splitting her face and the life flooding back into her eyes when he told her what he had done for them. He’d pick up her favourite flowers on the way home and it would feel like he was proposing all over again. He pushed aside the gnawing panic in his gut and found the courage to shakily voice his biggest concern.

“Is this going to kill me?”

-

With a pen that felt disconcertingly unceremonial, given the circumstances, Jack signed his name on the contract before him and didn’t fail to notice the smile on the shopkeeper’s face grow a little wider as he did so. He passed the paper across the counter and realised he had been holding his breath.

“Is that it?”

“Almost. Let me fulfil my end of the bargain.”

With a flourish, the shopkeeper signed a handwritten receipt which he passed to Jack and began counting the money out in worn twenty-dollar bills. He worked slowly and meticulously, and Jack wondered if he was taking his time on purpose, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Finally, the last bill was counted, and the shopkeeper smiled once more, a grin this time, showing sharp, white teeth as he pushed the stack of bills towards Jack. The pile was smaller than he imagined it would be. Jack tucked the money into his coat and the moment he did so, his breath caught in his throat.

He felt a great tremor within him, his heart seemed to crumple, tighter and tighter like a balled-up sheet of newspaper. For a moment, he was terrified, certain that he too would crumple to the floor, a discarded bauble, to be swept up later by the still grinning shopkeeper. But the moment passed, the paper in his chest unfurled slowly and the terror gave way to a slight tremble in Jack’s limbs.

“Will that be all, Jack?” The shopkeeper asked, mildly.

-

Jack wandered, fuzzy headed into the evening. His feet carried him along the familiar route home, but his thoughts were far flung and peppered with numbers. He was shaken from his trance by the sickly-sweet smell of lilies wafting from the florists’ open door. He felt a tugging in his brain, pushing him towards the shop though he couldn’t for the life of him remember why.

He found himself inside, gazing at succulents in terracotta pots and briefly distracted by an orchid with bright magenta bruising the edges of its petals. He turned to leave with a shrug and was halfway out of the door when the florist called out to him.

“Sir? I think you dropped this.” She was waving a small piece of paper in his direction, a handwritten scrawl on one side. Jack shook his head.

“Not mine but thanks anyway!”

Without a second thought, he turned on his heel and stepped back out into the night.

-

The shopkeeper examined Jack’s signature, admiring for a moment, the sweeping curl of his handwriting. Satisfied with his contract, he took the paper to an aged chest in the back room of the shop. Producing a key from his pocket, he opened the ornate lock, emblazoned with tiny symbols no layman could possibly understand. With a flick through the files inside, he took Jack’s heart and filed it under “P” for Piper. Right between “Laurence Pendleton” and “Melissa Proust”.