Ashish suddenly appears from the back, weaving between the stacked rugs, amazingly able to keep his upper body straight and gracious, the hips of a salsa dancer.

“You must be Candy.”

The girl nods.

“Please. This way. I’ll show you to the back.”

The girl clicks along on her too-high heels and wafts past Simon as she follows Ashish. He turns to look at Simon. “That’s enough for the day.”

Simon looks down at Ashish. “Candy?”

“All kinds of people buy rugs.”

“Not people named Candy.”

“No?”

“No. People named Candy just like to fuck on them.”

Ashish opens his clasped hands in either supplication or explication. “Simon. I am a businessman. I know the price of what I want.”

“Sure, boss.”

“Do you want to finish later? Please? I will pay you for a full day.”

“Sure. Sure.”

Simon lays the carpet down and dusts his hands. He walks to the back room where Candy is leaning against the office chair.

“Excuse me,” he says.

“You, too?”

“What?”

“You, too? It’ll cost extra.”

“You’re leaning on my jacket.”

She looks over her shoulder and sees that her ass is pressed warmly against his coat, doubled over on the chair back.

“You sure?”

“Sure I want my jacket?”

“Sure you gonna leave.”

“I got what I want.”

“Really,” she drawls, “I imagine if you did you wouldn’t be workin for him,” she says, tilting her head, the hairs on which do not budge, toward the main door.

“I know I don’t want you.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I aim to,” he says and he slides his coat out from under her. She moves just enough for it to pass, letting it brush against her tight pants.

Simon walks to the front where Ashish is waiting by the door. He holds it open for Simon.

“Knock yourself out, boss.”

“I aim to,” he says with a mustached grin.

He shuts the door behind Simon and throws the bolt. Simon looks over in time to see Ashish’s hand, with thick dark hairs on the back, flip the Yes We’re Open! sign to Sorry, We’re Closed and then the hand retreats and the lights go off.

“What the fuck ever,” Simon says to himself under his breath as he squares his shoulders and turns into the jewelry store.

Jerry is at the counter aimlessly sizing all the rings and placing them back in their nests of mock velvet. His pasty skin—like that of a high school sophomore unaccustomed to either light or kind attention but used to the illicit fluorescence of habitual ferocious Princeton plain-sewing—is showing from the short sleeves of his dress shirt and his black pencil tie is shiny and specked with ketchup, A cheap jeweler imitating an accountant, imitating a second-rate jazzman.

“Well, if it isn’t the blues brother.”