sell the items faster – she wouldn’t be the first girl on the internet to make a living from her looks –
but there was something in her earnestness that stuck to Charlie as more than just a fleeting crush.
The way she held and knew her things seemed to create a sense of worth around them. He wondered,
in a rare moment of poetic longing, if he were to be held up by this girl, would he too appear more
valuable. He thought that might be a nice line for something, so he jotted it down somewhere for later.
He emailed her, and asked her politely if he could return the record. She responded almost immediately. But why? Didn’t he enjoy the record? It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the record, he explained, but
the record was not intended for him, and the person it was intended for no longer wanted it. She said
she understood, and that these things happened. Somehow, Charlie was able to tease out the exchange
to such an extent that meeting Rose in person to refund the record eventually seemed like the most
logical thing to do.
Rose was a junk shopper, and spent most weekends riffling through cardboard boxes at open-air
markets. She would haggle insistently, but without much confidence. Rogue strands of hair would
torment her as she attempted to argue, making their way from a loose ponytail to the front of her face.
She would push the hair back with the flat of her palms, only for it to swoosh forward again seconds
later. To any seller, she seemed constantly flustered, and this was easy to prey on.
Charlie knew this because on their first date, she had taken him on a hunt. Mostly, it had been
awkward. Rose could muster enthusiasm for things Charlie could only pretend to care about, and his
falseness toward it all unsettled her. She heard herself dampening her excitement, something she had
never felt the need to do for a man before. They waded through miles of broken kitchen appliances
almost wordlessly.
Thankfully, when Rose Pao did find something for which she could not hide her enthusiasm – a
Japanese Rainbow Brite lunchbox with a broken handle – Charlie felt as if he could finally be of use.
The seller of the lunchbox was able to take advantage of Rose because he sensed how much the
thing inexplicably meant to her. As Charlie was utterly immune to caring at all, he was able to swoop
in and negotiate on Rose’s behalf. The lunchbox was sold to her for £2.50, brought down from its
initial offering of £18. Even though, as Rose joyfully outlined, the lunchbox was both discontinued and
a limited edition, and was of some collector value. None of this mattered. It was junk to Charlie, it was
junk to the seller, and it was Rose’s ability to see its worth that ultimately threatened to bankrupt her.
His haggling had made him the hero of the day. He acquired two more items for her – a rusted
tobacco tin and a rabbit-shaped garden ornament – and they finally began to relax around one another.
Rose would fall in love with something, and Charlie would tear it to shreds in order to convince
someone else to let it go. He kissed her next to a stack of second hand postcards.
The kiss was going on for too long and he was beginning to resent it. He had wanted her as a snack
between meals, but now felt as if she was consuming him whole. When it stopped, she pulled away
and looked at him squarely, mildly, in a thorough but well-practiced study. He saw a feeling rise in her
and immediately pass, like she had seen in him a brief flicker of firelight that just wasn’t enough to
keep warm by. She frowned and turned away to look at a rotary telephone.
“Why do you bother with any of this, if you just sell it six weeks anyway?”
“It’s nice to just have things,” she said “even if it’s only just for a second.”
They didn’t go out again.