I spend hours in the gargoyle store. I tell myself this is the sort of traveller I am; I don't go from tourist attraction to tourist attraction, I just want to learn one thing from one place. But of course there's more to it than that. I'm not sure what, just more.
The first time the shopkeeper says anything to me, it's "If you don't mind, I'm going to get a cup of coffee from across the street." He nods at another fellow in the entranceway. "He'll watch the store." I had just made my mind up to ask him about the golden roses, too. I don't really want to ask the other fellow, so I patiently wander through the place again. This time I notice an egg carton filled with small carved skulls.
Some time later, the shopkeeper returns. His face lights with surprise. "Wow! You waited!"
I inspect the roses with care before I finally risk picking one up. I notice that whoever made them let some of the gold pool in the cups of the petals. "How much is this?" I ask.
"Thirty-five dollars," he answers.
My heart sinks. I can't possibly spend that much. Still, it's a way to draw him into conversation. "Where did you get them?"
"From a leprechaun," he says with what appears to be a deliberate twinkle in his eye. I just look at him. "Really!" he insists, again seeming to play up the cute. I shake my head. Another customer walks in. I put the rose back but stay nearby to listen to him sell. He's very, very good at it. Something like three out of every four people who walk in the door in the course of this long afternoon-to-evening leave with a purchase. I've known enough people in retail sales to understand how remarkable this is.
I have come up with the profound thing I want to say, but I wait until he is finished talking to some potential customers. It takes a long time, but they finally move away from him toward the back, and I step forward. I've decided I've been long enough in his shop that I owe him the truth. "Those paintings," I say, waving a hand at all the half-formed faces. "I don't know what to make of them."
"What do you mean?"
"They're a little--I don't know--" I fumble for a word. "Disquieting? They make me uneasy."
"The artist calls them 'soul paintings.'"
"That might explain it." Trapped souls, I think to myself. "I can't make my mind up about them," I continue aloud. "I can't figure them out."
"That's good, though, isn't it?" He looks like he wants to be helpful. His voice is still quiet but earnest. "Things you can't make an easy decision about are the most interesting."
Not a bad answer. Maybe my gut instinct about both the paintings and this place was off. Maybe there's a far more complicated dance going on between the plaster saints and the skulls. And then finally I think of Kahtah. I realize there isn't going to be an easy answer about her, either.
I'm not sure yet what I've gotten out of being here, but I'm glad I've come. The shopkeeper is a busy man who sells a lot of Irvings while I hang around. I listen to him explain the difference between gargoyles and chimera, chimera being the creatures standing on the roof of Notre Dame and gargoyles the creatures leaning over the edges. He never gives a dull answer to any question. Someone asks him how he has acquired such a range of merchandise.
"It comes to us," he says. "We've never gone after anything with intent."
"But--I mean, what kind of distributor do you work with?"
"Time," he responds. "Time is its own distributor." The questioner gives up. I catch the shopkeeper's eye from across the room and we grin together as though sharing a private joke.
In between customers ("They're lucky skulls," he explains to one man) I chat with him about his stained glass windows rescued from demolished churches and about the book I've come to Boston to promote.
"You're a writer?" he asks.
I nod. "You never know. You may end up in a story." He seems amenable to the idea.
By the time I leave I am running late for the event I came to Boston for. But as I run for the T, the city's subway/bus/trolley, I'm thinking of the story I will write. I imagine this shopkeeper meeting himself on its pages; I imagine talking to him again through it. The shroud or fog covering those faces in the paintings, that's what I didn't like, I decide suddenly. When I write about this, if I can do it, I'll make sure there will be no shroud between what I mean and what I say.