316
PARTISAN REVIEW
store and asked what they cost, though he knew it was a mistake to ask.
He was right. The price was even higher than he had guessed. It was
nearly half of his inheritance. Those earrings plus the cost of the trip
would leave him barely enough money to pay his rent in San Francisco,
and he didn't have a job waiting for him when he returned.
He left the store and walked about the streets looking in other store
windows. Every item that caught his attention was soon diminished by
his memory of the swirl of gold and the impassioned red glob within.
Those earrings were too expensive. An infuriating price.
It
had been
determined by a marketing demon, thought Beard, because the earrings
now haunted him. He grew increasingly anxious as minutes passed and he
continued walking the streets, pointlessly looking into shop windows, un–
able to forget the earrrings.
He was determined not to return to the jewelry store, but then he let
himself think, if he returned to the story only to look at the earrings - not
to buy them - they would be gone. So it was too late to buy the earrings,
he thought, as he hurried back to the store. To his relief, they were still
there and more beautiful than he remembered.
The salesperson was a heavily made-up woman in her fifties, who
wore a black, finely pleated, silk dress and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. She
approached and stood opposite Beard at the glass counter. He looked
down strictly at a necklace, not the earrings, though only a little while
ago he'd asked her the price of the earrings. She wasn't fooled. She knew
what he wanted. Without being asked, she withdrew the earrings from
their case and put them on the counter. Beard considered this highly im–
pertinent, but he didn't object. As if making a casual observation, she said,
''I've never seen earrings like these before. I'm sure I'll never see any like
these again."
"They're much too expensive."
"Do you think so?" She looked away toward the street, apparently
uninterested in his opinion.
It
was late afternoon, nearly closing time. Her
indifference to Beard's remark annoyed him.
"Too expensive," he said, as ifhe were inviting her to haggle.
"Should I put them away?" she asked.
Beard didn't answer.
"They are expensive, I suppose," she said. "But prices fluctuate. If
you like, I'll keep your business card and phone you if the earrings aren't
sold in a few weeks."
Beard heard contempt in her voice, as if she were saying the point of
jewelry is to be expensive, even too expensive. He drew his wallet slowly
from his jacket pocket, and then, with a thrill of suicidal exultation, he
slapped his credit card, not his business card, on the glass beside the ear-
