Live music could be heard throughout every canlde-lit corner of Abandonato's Italian Restaurant on first street. Awkward silence would follow.
In the northwest end of the establishment, where seating was only available by reservation, a young man and woman sat at a particularly isolated table-for-two with an enviable view of the moon on the river. Their only company was their waiter, who seemed to busy elsewhere.
The young man was Kale Brassica, and he was explaining, "Last night I dreamed about a graveyard. I think I owned it. Everybody left behind all the time they had had wasted in life, and I was able use it however I wanted. Then this voice told me that all the time I was wasting in my life, I would have to leave behind when I die. Then I woke up."
"Listen, Kale," the young woman said, "I really like you, and everything, but I think we should just be friends for a while."
Nodding momentarily as he processed her words, Kale admitted, "I think we should, too. If that's what you really want." His eyes fell from hers, ignoring her elegant dress, and landed decidedly on her half-finished plate Chicken Mafalde. "So, we're splitting the bill, right?"
The next morning was early for Kale, not at the hands of a sleepless night, but because he knew what Sundays did to the prices at garage sales. He locked his doors and brought his ten-speed out to the street.
Kale bought seventeen carefully-selected items from the three garage sales he'd visited by lunch time. When three o'clock had come, he'd made and haggled for over fifty purchases. He'd been past his home four times to empty his bags. By five o'clock, he'd been to eight sales. Twice today, Kale had ended up selling items to men who were actually running the garage sales. As Kale had figured out a while back, not all people were as accustomed as he was to having cash on hand and not spending it.
After an estate auction that had gone rather well, Kale retreated to his final stop for the day. He tied his bike to the skeleton of a phone booth with a storage-unit padlock and a dog-leash choke chain he had found in a park the year before. Kale had long-known that if he parked his bike here, he could keep an eye on it from the counter inside.
Rook's Pawn Shop was owned and operated by two brothers and their younger sister. The youngest brother, still Kale's senior, was Lawrence, and he seemed to be the clerk on-hand today, standing at the counter with his back to the door, watching a television mounted above some file cabinet beside the taxidermied head of a fork-horned Mule Deer.
"Still haven't sold that four-point," Kale observed over the ring of the entry bell.
"Not so far. What do you have for me today, Kale?" Lawrence asked, before even having turned around.
Kale set his shoulder bag on the show-case counter and removed a few assorted baubles from the bag, as Laurence muted the volume, and put on the pair of half-moon bifocals he kept tied to his neck like a librarian. He and Kale didn't immediately make any real eye contact. Kale explained what he thought his items were worth, and tucked away a couple of objects that didn't peak Laurence's interest.
"How about that toy car?" Lawrence asked, pointing to Kale's half-open bag.
"That one, I'm selling online," said Kale. "You know you can't give me what it's worth."
"Ninety-five."
"Nope," Kale said, and he shoved the toy car in the shoulder bag aside. Lawrence scribbled on a clipboard and handled a few of the items. He asked Kale what he paid for of a beer stein that was among the assortment. Kale worded the truth in his favor.
After a few minutes in the cash room with the shadow-dance of a ceiling fan chopping the walls, and the two of them chewing the fat about the contents of the gun case the whole time, Lawrence finalized his offers, and returned to the counter with more notes on his clipboard and a tan rubber band around his wrist. Kale read over the bids immediately, deciding to accept two of them and haggle on a two more. When they'd agreed on what was fair, Kale signed the usual permissions and stuffed his take-away in the big pocket of his wallet.
"That's better," Kale said. "Now I feel like dinner last night didn't cost me anything."
"What? Did you strike out again?"
"Well, you don't see me buying any jewelry, right?" Kale asked through a half-smile. He shouldered his bag, ready to depart, until something in the show-case caught his eye, and he stood there still a moment. Kale nodded at the case. "Uh... that pocket watch in there. Was that on display yesterday?"
Lawrence raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes behind his glasses. "Actually, I just got that one in the books. I only put it in the case this morning."
"Alright," said Kale, his eyes darting to and then back from his bike parked outside the pawn-shop window, "Let's have a look at it."
