“Where are you from?” ventures Simon.

“From India.”

“So you’re Indian.”

“So you are too, no?”

“Yeah. I suppose. They don’t mind you selling rugs from Russia?”

“The rugs are older than our countries. But I don’t sell rugs. I sell beauty,” he says with dignity.

“How much does it cost?”

“Beauty costs a lot.”

“How much?”

“From the middle range. About five hundred.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s a lot, but it will outlast you. You can give it to your kids.”

“I don’t got no kids.”

“Your wife.”

“Don’t got one a them either.”

“Your parents, then. Somebody.”

“I don’t got anyone. And I don’t got five hundred dollars to put on my goddamn basement floor,” he says hotly.

“It’s okay, okay,” says the salesman reassuringly. “It’s okay. Look at it this way. You’ll have the basement. Your room, whatever, but the rug will stay with you. Become part of you. Wherever you live, it will make it better.”

Simon says nothing.

“Come here. I want to show you something. You must see them.”

He beckons Simon to a waist-high stack of six-by-nines. He begins flipping them back like the pages of a huge telephone book. He mutters to himself, skipping over whole countries and tribes, styles older than any structure in the Midwest.

“Not Chinese. No, not Indian. Ahhhhh,” he says.

He stands back and gazes at the exposed rug tenderly. Simon looks closer, too. The red is the rust of dried blood, the brown a dark chocolate. Simon cranes his neck and the close pile takes on a sheen like liquid and the borders are both smooth and angular, a rope in red and white, twisted in on itself over and over again. Simon reaches out and touches the rug with the palm of his hand. It is soft and stiff at the same time, like deer hair.

“What’s it made outta?”

“Wool.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“How’d they get the design in there?”

“It’s all knots. Thousands of knots tied together. They shear off the top to make it even.”

Simon keeps looking.

“How much?”

“Six hundred fifty.”

Simon stands up.

“I don’t got six hundred and fifty.”

“Six.”

“Don’t got it.”

“Tell you what,” says the salesman, turning as if a discussion of money shouldn’t take place in front of the rug. “I need someone to help me move these, unload the truck once a week. Fifteen days of work and it’s yours. That’s forty dollars a day. I’ll set it in the back in case anyone else wants it.”

“When do I get it?”

“When you’re done.”

“I don’t know.”

Simon doesn’t know what to say. He can feel Vera walking farther and farther down the street. Crossing over the bridge, receding in the rain-damped air.

“I don’t know.”