Re: The Thief/The Flibbertigibbet
Growing up in a middle class borough, in an old house that tumbled out siblings and cousins like a basket of kittens, he’d only ever been one of many. He wasn’t the tallest, so he didn’t run the fastest. He never got the best grades. He could crack a joke with his mouth turned sideways and make his sisters laugh until they wet their stockings, and he could charm the scales off a python. That was it, his lot. It was dead decent, kept him up to his eyeballs in sweethearts all through school. But if he didn’t want to die of boredom with a wife and five babies by the age of twenty-six, he’d been forced to figure out another path. Wasn’t his fault that the yellow bricks running that road were made of strangers’ diamond rings and golden heirlooms.
Yes, he knew he was handsome. It was sort of like knowing he had brown hair, or that his Bubbe made the best goulash west of the Delaware River. And he’d never understood the appeal of playing coy any more than he did the point of letting his sisters beat him at gin rummy just because they were younger. How was that ever going to get him what he wanted out of life, he’d argue til he was out of breath.
“I’m not a good liar,” he confessed, conspiratorial aside as he spared her another glance up from the trunk’s unceremonious dissection. His eyes twinkled coal-dust dark. “Of course that’s probably what a good liar would say, right?” The bracelet jangled merrily on its way into the inside pocket of his jacket, corduroy an unfortunate playmate for silver and the embossed logo of a luxury jeweler that cost more than he’d make in six months if he went back to his factory job.
Not that he could have explained it, but Ezra knew without rooting any deeper into the steamer trunk that he’d hit that particular jackpot. Only one treasure per mark, if he found something real good. He moved on down the aisle to a stack of hat boxes. “It’ll sell,” he said, real mild-like. “Not for cost, no. I’ll be lucky to get fifteen percent. But nothing ever does, that’s the dishonesty tax.” The first box held no hats, but photographs. Those walked the fine line of worthless and sentimental value, which meant they were no good. But the flask tucked against the curved edge of the box, that flashed in the light, polished and sterling and with a fancy pair of initials engraved on the back. Perfect.
“The hunt,” he said, holding the flask up the air like he’d won it at a midway game. “For meaning. The things that people only gift with love and adoration, the irreplaceable. The stuff,” and he spun the cap off the flask with a flick of his thumb, eyeing the lady’s fine things from one aisle over as she rummaged. “That will make them think twice about taking memories for granted. Say, are those feathers?”