"Take this! It's my migraine medicine. Will knock you out for the rest of the day, but when you wake up, you'll be cured," shouted one bald, pink-scalped man at the back of the crowd.
"I really can't afford to be knocked out," I began, but a spray of mist hit me full in the face, and I started choking.
"Lavender. Works every time," said the sweet voice of the apple-cheeked, white-curled menace who'd just sprayed what smelled like the inside of the Dead End Funeral Home into my open mouth and up my nose. Luckily, she was too short to have hit me in the eyes.
"I—" Cough, cough, cough.
"I appreciate it, but I'm—" Cough.
"Fine," I gasped weakly.
"I have an oxygen tank on the bus," another man called out. "Should I go get it?"
"No, no, please," I said, images of him keeling over from asphyxiation down the road filling my alarmed and lavender-scented brain. "I'll just go get some water in the back. Thank you all so much. Eleanor will ring you up. Thank you! Have a wonderful week on your vacations."
I stumbled to the back room, grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, and downed it in a few short gulps. Then I washed the lavender off my face, but I swear some was stuck up my nose, because I kept sneezing.
The door opened, and a tall, white-haired man with a windburned face and the kind of muscle that came from a lifetime of hard work leaned in. "Ma'am, sorry to bother you. But my wife had a lot of migraines, and the only thing that helped was to lie down in a dark room with her legs propped up against a wall and her, pardon me," he said, his cheeks reddening. "Your, um,behind,needs to be as close to the wall as possible while you hold a hot compress on your eyes."
My mouth fell open. "I—um. Thank you."
He blushed again and disappeared, and I fell back against the sink, not sure whether to cry from the pain or laugh at all the "cures."
Eleanor popped her head in next. "Tess, are you okay?"
"I am." And I suddenly was. The spike of pain was gone, and only a dull throb remained.
"I wouldn't bother you, but someone wants to buy that bat, and you said—"
"I said to get me if that happens. Okay." I took a deep breath and followed her back out to the shop, where most of the GYSTers were heading back to the bus, but a man and woman wearing matchingI Hate Rollercoastersshirts waited beneath the very high shelf where the taxidermied animals stared out at the room from glass eyes.
"I want that," the man said, pointing. "Never seen one of them before. What kind of bat is it?"
I was prepared to answer this question, thanks to Google and a long and enjoyable trip down the curving rabbit hole of zoo and ornithological websites. "That's a Buettikofer's epauletted fruit bat. One of my former boss's friends brought it back from his travels in Sierra Leone, and his wife didn't want it in the house."
Okay, it was a very weird-looking bat, even for bats. I mean, if vampires really turned into bats, I'd expect them to look like this one.
"It's awesome! I'll take it," he declared, all enthusiasm and determination.
"I'm not sure," his wife said, more on the hesitation and "ick" end of the emotional spectrum.
"Well, it is unique," I said, getting it down for them to look at. "I've never seen another one like it in all my years at the pawnshop."
Mrs. Rollercoaster's face screwed up into an "I just bit into something nasty" expression, but her husband's face glowed. I grinned, recognizing a true collector, and prepared to barter.
Pawnshops couldn't survive without collectors.
But I had to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day, so full disclosure, first.
"Ah, the thing is—"
"How much? I warn you, I won't go over two hundred," said Mr. Rollercoaster, who clearly saw himself as a master negotiator.
I glanced down at the hundred-dollar price tag and tried not to smile. "Well, you'll be happy to know I'm asking for only half that, but I have to tell you the truth. The reason the former owner's wife didn't want it in the house is that it sometimes wakes up and flies around at night. One time she woke up to find it crawling in her hair looking for bugs to eat. So it would be a good idea to leave some grapes out for it, just in case."
Mrs. Rollercoaster shrieked, smacked her husband on the arm, and then dragged him out of the shop. I sighed and put the little bat back on the shelf, gently patting its head with one finger. "Maybe next time, buddy."
Eleanor sighed too. "Mrs. Sharma didn't want the brooch, either. She said it gave her a 'bad feeling.' I swear, it's a wonder we don't have more customers running screaming from the shop, considering."
