The Tavernier Stones (12 page)

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Authors: Stephen Parrish

BOOK: The Tavernier Stones
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On the way into the store she had whispered to David, “I’m not going to kiss him. The last one tongued me.”
“You’ll do exactly as you’re told,” he had replied.
Now the two leaned over the showcase like children in an ice cream parlor. David asked Bowling if they could see the ring again. After retrieving it from the safe, Bowling louped it quickly before presenting it to David with a flourish. David, his hand shaking ever so slightly, gently eased it onto Sarah’s finger.
“Nothing has ever looked, or felt, so right,” Sarah said. “Oh, dear. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.”
She returned the ring to David. As she did, she accidentally knocked her purse off the showcase, spilling its contents onto the floor. When she bent over to pick up the articles, she gave the assistant manager an ample view of …
No underwear.
David handed the ring back to Bowling, who had the dazed look of a man who would never, ever recover from what he had just seen.
“Let’s not wait any longer, Delbert,” Sarah said. “Let’s get it right now.”
They quickly agreed on a price. Bowling would continue to hold the ring for the young couple until they returned with Delbert’s “daddy” in tow. They had to pry him off the golf course and bring him to the store personally, so he could pay with his platinum credit card.
“You do accept those, don’t you?”
Sarah kissed David on the cheek. Then she leaned over the showcase and kissed Bowling full on the mouth.
“Oh my,” Bowling said. “Oh my.” He louped the stone again, focusing on the dab of pink nail polish centered low on one of the pavilion mains. Satisfied, he snapped his loupe shut and returned the ring to its hold envelope.
“What’s that book you have there?” he asked David.
“Book?”
“The one under your arm.”
“Oh, this book. It’s about maps.”
“Sounds interesting. I always wanted to learn about maps.”
Go on, patronize me, David thought. You’ll get yours before this day is over. “One hour,” he said. “Two max. Don’t sell it to anyone else before we get back.”
“Oh, no no no, of course not.”
David and Sarah left the store with Sarah clinging to David’s arm, battering his ear with kisses. “Thank you thank you thank you …” On the sidewalk, out of sight, she pushed him away and donned her trench coat. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“This way,” he said. “Through Independence Park.”
 
Bowling put the hold envelope containing the biggest sale of his career into the safe and locked it, spinning the combination wheel so hard that Felicity heard the clicks from across the showroom.
“So you got it after all,” she called over to him. “What happened, did the be-back bus get caught in traffic somewhere?”
He took his jacket off—in violation of store policy—and draped it over the high-school class ring display. He raised his arms in the air and pumped them in jubilation. “
Yeeeooow!
”
Customers entered the store and Bowling was obliged to wait on one of them, but his heart wasn’t in the mission, and he failed to make a sale. Meanwhile, Felicity sold another gold chain.
No matter. Tomorrow, the manager would open up the store like it was just another Monday morning. He would see the sales ticket from the previous day, and his jaw would drop. The owners would no doubt promote Bowling to manager of the next store they opened, maybe one on Market Street. And he’d be damned if he’d allow Felicity to set so much as one high-heeled foot in it.
An hour passed. Bowling was standing at the front window like a greenhorn, looking for Delbert Farrington III and his fiancée. He could still taste that kiss! He pretended to be checking the weather. No be-back bus in sight.
Another hour passed. What was taking them so fucking long? A thought occurred to him, and he dismissed it. He tried to calm himself by dusting the inside of a case, rearranging the display to make it less symmetrical (Felicity!), and cleaning the glass top with window cleaner.
The thought occurred to him again. Again, he dismissed it. Something had delayed them, that was all. Golf courses were big places.
By the time another hour had passed and the couple still had not returned, a hollow, sickening feeling had lodged in Bowling’s gut. Shaking nervously, because he knew what the consequences would be if his suspicions were correct, he removed the hold envelope from the safe and tested the ring with a thermal conductivity probe.
The stone failed to register as a diamond.
 
“How about a little celebration?” David cupped Sarah’s breasts from behind and kissed the back of her neck. She was never more appealing than when she appealed to others.
“Don’t.” She wriggled free, kicked her high heels across the bedroom, and flopped down on the bed. “Christ, my feet hurt.” Her eyes narrowed, and David knew what was coming.
“Let me wear it for a couple of days,” she said.
“Not even for a couple of minutes. People who take chances like that pay for them by spending time in a cage. I’ve been there, and I don’t want to go back.”
“So prisons do rehabilitate after all.”
“Well, they make you more cautious. If that’s rehabilitation, then I’m as rehabilitated as I’ll ever get.”
“If it’s so dangerous to hold it, why did you bring it here?”
“I couldn’t get a meeting with Zimmerman until this afternoon. Besides, I wanted to scope it. It’s the one luxury I allow myself. So, if you’ll excuse me …”
He took the ring into his workshop and mounted it under the binocular microscope. Peering through the scope’s eyepieces, he brought the stone into sharp focus at successive depths, from the surface of its table to the tip of its culet.
Sarah followed him into the room and waited quietly.
He searched the stone thoroughly, but at ten power couldn’t find any clarity characteristics. He switched to thirty power, moving the stone around because its diameter now exceeded the field of view. Nothing. Using a long needle, he probed dust particles on the surface to make sure they weren’t inclusions reflecting from deep within.
Still nothing.
The stone had been listed as VVS1, so where were the inclusions? At this magnification, David enjoyed the sensation of exploring the interior of a diamond cave, one that glowed a soft bluish-white above the scope’s dark-field illumination. It was art, it was poetry. Sometimes it was even music. He understood the fascination microbiologists had in their subject: private, unlimited access to an otherwise inaccessible world.
He flipped the ring to view it through the pavilion. Nothing. He unmounted the diamond by bending the prongs away with needle-nose pliers, then inserted the loose stone in a clamp; if there were any characteristics, they must have been hiding under the prongs.
Still
nothing. The stone was flawless. Ten power was strong enough, but to see nothing at thirty power was a unique experience. He had heard stories of art historians traveling to Europe to view paintings they had studied only in photographs, and dropping impulsively to their knees at first sight of them. And there you had it.
So why did they call it VVS1? It could only be that whoever graded the stone for Nineveh & Shimoda had not been confident of his call. Flawless stones were so rare, if you didn’t find any clarity characteristics, you assumed you missed them.
“David.”
“What.”
Sarah was standing directly behind him. “I think we should discuss a change in our business relationship.”
“Do you.”
“Yes. I think until now the profit sharing has been a little lopsided. I suggest we adjust my share to better reflect the important—the indispensable—role I play.”
He turned off the scope, folded the diamond carefully into a stone paper, and tossed the naked shank into a jar of old gold. “I agree completely,” he replied, deadpan.
“You do?” His back was still to her, so she couldn’t judge his expression.
“Indeed, I do. Profit sharing
has
been lopsided. You’re getting more than you deserve.”
“We’re a team. You can’t do it alone. We should split the take fifty-fifty.”
“Bullshit. We don’t split the
work
fifty-fifty. I do almost all of it.”
“You didn’t have to kiss the bastard. Did you get a whiff of his breath?”
He swiveled his chair around to face her. “Come here. I’ll make it up to you. Give
me
a kiss.”
“Keep your hands off. I’ve earned fifty percent, and I want it.”
“Don’t you realize how replaceable you are? All you bring to the job is your pretty legs. This town’s
full
of pretty legs. But how many guys do you know who can cut a decoy like yours truly? If you don’t like the money, go back to modeling underwear. I’m sure somebody, somewhere, hasn’t heard of you—maybe in Pittsburgh. Go out to the sticks, where they don’t know you. Go back to Zimmerman,
where you belong
.”
She swung her hand in a wide arc to slap him, but he blocked the blow with his forearm. Tears of pain came to her eyes. “I bring a lot more than a pair of legs,” she cried.
“How
dare
you spoil this moment for me with your talk of ‘profit sharing’?”
“I also bring knowledge of the operation—and your past.”
He stood up and grabbed her shoulders. “You want a bigger cut? I’ll give you a really big one.” He manhandled her toward the bedroom. She tried to wrench her shoulders free but was no match for his upper body strength. So she dropped to the floor and kicked.
He caught her legs in mid-kick and dragged her, squirming and jerking, into the bedroom. There he hooked his right arm under her knees and swung her up onto the bed.
“I’ve got an idea,” David said. “Let’s invite one of your girl-friends over and have a threesome.”
“I have a better idea,” Sarah responded, gasping for breath. “Let’s invite her over, have a twosome, and leave
you
out.”
He stepped into a pair of shoes and starting tying them. “I’m tired of breaking up with you,” he said. “This is the last time. I’m going to attend my meeting now, then go to Tien Chau’s for lunch. Maybe I’ll even get laid. When I come back, I expect you to be gone.”
“I’ll go. Believe me, I’m happy to shake this shit hole. But I’m broke, you know that. I need my cut before I can leave.”
He turned his back on her. “Sue me for it.”

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