When she got to Random Accessories, Jake wasn’t there. She considered waiting for him inside, but she didn’t want him to take her by surprise. She waited and waited, leaning against the doorpost in the cold until twenty minutes past five, when she was so cold that she had to go indoors. She positioned herself so that her face was framed right in the window where several primate-type skulls sat on display, along with about ten newspaper articles elucidating the store’s claim to fame. (Amsterdam Avenue man himself had since been relocated to the Museum of Natural History—at great profit to Mr. Random—for further testing.) Half past five came, then five-forty, as she stood displayed in the store window like an exhibit. People walking down the street couldn’t help staring at her; perhaps she was the missing link. At five forty-five she read the backwards figures on the glass door and saw that the store would close at six. In a panic she abandoned her post at the window and stepped over to the shelf where she had seen the tefillin a few weeks earlier. But to her astonishment, the tefillin had disappeared.

She began scouring the store. She looked behind the pamphlets, between the sewing machines, inside the rooms of the mouse house, even underneath the skulls. There was no mistake about it. The tefillin were gone.

Leora walked up to the woman at the cashier’s desk, who had clearly noticed her earlier but had chosen to ignore her. The woman was once again engrossed in wrapping a set of plastic fish in newspaper. Stuck-on pieces of masking tape elongated each of her fingers, like claws gone limp. After a few moments, she finally looked up. “Yeah?”

“Excuse me, I was wondering about a piece of merchandise I saw here a few weeks ago, and I can’t seem to find it now. Is there a storage room where it might be?”

The woman’s lips smacked together, making a popping sound. Leora realized she was chewing gum. “We don’t keep no back inventory. Probably moved.”

“Moved?” Leora asked. Not that tefillin walking off by themselves would be all that strange, she thought to herself, considering where else they had been.

“Yeah, as in, moved. M-O-V-E-D. Sold.”

“Sold?” Leora asked. Her voice squeaked.

“That’s what I’m telling you,” the woman said, cracking her gum again. “This ain’t brain surgery.”

Leora thought for a moment of the scientists at the Museum of Natural History cracking open the missing-link skull, as if they might find a missing-link brain inside it. “See, but you don’t understand, this isn’t the type of thing someone would buy,” Leora stuttered, confusing even herself.

The woman looked unimpressed. She peeled a piece of masking tape off her ring finger. “What’re you looking for?”