Ascendancies (89 page)

Borislav took the black doll again, checked the seams and detailing, and rapped it with his cane. “You sell these dolls to anyone else, Fleka?”

“Not yet.”

“I could move a few of these. How much you asking?”

Fleka spread his hands. “I can make more. But I don't know how to make the little straws of carbon. There's a tutorial inside the machine. But it's in Polish. I hate tutorials.”

Borislav examined the fabrikator. The machine looked simple enough: it was basic black shell, a big black hopper, a black rotating plate, a black spraying nozzle, and the black gearing of a 3-D axis. “Why is this thing so black?”

“It's nice and shiny, isn't it? The machine itself is made of little straws of carbon.”

“Your cousin got you this thing? Where's the brand name? Where's the serial number?”

“I swear he didn't steal it! This fabrikator is a copy, see. It's a pirate copy of another fabrikator in Warsaw. But nobody knows it's a copy. Or if they do know, the cops won't be looking for any copies around this town, that's for sure.”

Borislav's doubts overflowed into sarcasm. “You're saying it's a fabrikator that copies fabrikators? It's a fabbing fab fabber, that's what you're telling me, Fleka?”

A shrill wail of shock and alarm came from the front of the kiosk. Borislav hurried to see.

A teenage girl, in a cheap red coat and yellow winter boots, was sobbing into her cellphone. She was Jovanica, one of his best customers.

“What's the matter?” he said.

“Oh! It's you!” Jovanica snapped her phone shut and raised a skinny hand to her lips. “Are you still alive, Mr. Boots?”

“Why wouldn't I be alive?”

“Well, what happened to you? Who robbed your store?”

“I'm not robbed. Everything has been sold, that's all.”

Jovanica's young face screwed up in doubt, rage, frustration and grief. “Then
where are my hair toys?”

“What?”

“Where are my favorite barrettes? My hair clips! My scrunchies and headbands and beautiful pins! There was a whole tree of them, right here! I picked new toys from that tree every day! I finally had it giving me just what I wanted!”

“Oh. That.” Borislav had sold the whirling rack of hair toys, along with its entire freight of goods.

“Your rack sold the best hair toys in town! So super and cool! What happened to it? And what happened to your store? It's broken! There's nothing left!”

“That's true, ‘Neetsa. You had a very special relationship with that interactive rack, but…well…” Borislav groped for excuses, and, with a leap of genius, he found one. “I'll tell you a secret. You're growing up now, that's what.”

“I want my hair toys! Go get my rack right now!”

“Hair toys are for the 9-to-15 age bracket. You're growing out of that market niche. You should be thinking seriously about earrings.”

Jovanica's hands flew to her earlobes. “You mean pierce my ears?”

Borislav nodded. “High time.”

“Mama won't let me do that.”

“I can speak to your mama. You're getting to be a big girl now. Soon you'll have to beat the boys away with a stick.”

Jovanica stared at the cracks in the pavement. “No I won't.”

“Yes you will,” said Borislav, hefting his cane reflexively.

Fleka the Gypsy had been an interested observer. Now he spoke up. “Don't cry about your pretty things: because Boots here is the King of Kiosks. He can get you all the pretty things in the world!”

“Don't you listen to the gypsy,” said Borislav. “Listen, Jovanica: your old hair-toy tree, I'm sorry, it's gone for good. You'll have to start over with a brand-new one. It won't know anything about what you want.”

“After all my shopping? That's terrible!”

“Never you mind. I'll make you a different deal. Since you're getting to be such a big girl, you're adding a lot of value by making so many highly-informed consumer choices. So, next time, there will be a new economy for you. I'll pay you to teach that toy-tree just what you want to buy.”

Fleka stared at him. “What did you just say? You want to
pay this kid for shopping?”

“That's right.”

“She's a little kid!”

“I'm not a little kid!” Jovanica took swift offense. “You're a dirty old gypsy!”

“Jovanica is the early hair-toy adopter, Fleka. She's the market leader here. Whatever hair-toys Jovanica buys, all the other girls come and buy. So, yeah. I'm gonna cut her in on that action. I should have done that long ago.”

Jovanica clapped her hands. “Can I have lots of extra hair toys, instead of just stupid money?”

“Absolutely. Of course. Those loyal-customer rewards will keep you coming back here, when you ought to be doing your homework.”

Fleka marvelled. “It's completely gone to your head, cashing out your whole stock at once. A man of your age, too.”

The arts district never lacked for busybodies. Attracted by the little drama, four of them gathered round Borislav's kiosk. When they caught him glowering at them, they all pretended to need water from his fountain. At least his fountain was still working.

“Here comes my Mama,” said Jovanica. Her mother, Ivana, burst headlong from the battered doors of a nearby block of flats. Ivana wore a belted house-robe, a flung-on muffler, a heavy scarf, and brightly-knitted woolen house-slippers. She brandished a laden pillowcase.

Thank God they haven't hurt you!” said Ivana, her breath puffing in the chilly air. She opened her pillowcase. It held a steam iron, a hair dryer, an old gilt mirror, a nickeled hip-flask, a ragged fur stole, and a lidded, copper-bottomed saucepan.

“Mr Boots is all right, Mama,” said Jovanica. “They didn't steal anything. He
sold
everything!”

“You sold your kiosk?” said Ivana, and the hurt and shock deepened in her eyes. “You're leaving us?”

“It was business,” Borislav muttered. “Sorry for the inconvenience. It'll be a while before things settle down.”

“Honestly, I don't need these things. If these things will help you in any way, you're very welcome to them.”

“Mama wants you to sell these things,” Jovanica offered, with a teen's oppressive helpfulness. “Then you can have the money to fix your store.”

Borislav awkwardly patted the kiosk's fiberboard wall. “Ivana, this old place doesn't look like much, so empty and with this big hole…but, well, I had some luck.”

“Ma'am, you must be cold in those house slippers,” said Fleka the Gypsy. With an elegant swoop of his arm, he gestured at the gilt-and-glassed front counter of the Three Cats café. “May I get you a hot cappucino?”

“You're right, sir, it's cold here.” Ivana tucked the neck of her pillowcase, awkwardly, over her arm. “I'm glad things worked out for you, Borislav.”

“Yes, things are all right. Really.”

Ivana aimed a scowl at the passersby, who watched her with a lasting interest. “We'll be going now, ‘Neetsa.”

“Mama, I'm not cold. The weather's clearing up!”

“We're going.” They left.

Fleka picked at his discolored canine with his forefinger. “So, maestro. What just happened there?”

“She's a nice kid. She's hasty sometimes. The young are like that. That can't be helped.” Borislav shrugged. “Let's talk our business inside.”

He limped into his empty kiosk. Fleka wedged in behind him and managed to slam the door. Borislav could smell the man's rich, goulash-tinged breath.

“I was never inside one of these before,” Fleka remarked, studying every naked seam for the possible point of a burglar's prybar. “I thought about getting a kiosk of my own, but, well, a man gets so restless.”

“It's all about the product flow divided by the floor space. By that measure, a kiosk is super-efficient retailing. It's about as efficient as any sole proprietor can do. But it's a one-man enterprise. So, well, a man's just got to go it alone.”

Fleka looked at him with wise, round eyes. “That girl who cried so much about her hair. That's not your girl, is she?”

“What? No.”

“What happened to the father, then? The flu got him?”

“She was born long after the flu, but, yeah, you're right, her father passed away.” Borislav coughed. “He was a good friend of mine. A soldier. Really good-looking guy. His kid is gorgeous.”

“So you didn't do anything about that. Because you're not a soldier, and you're not rich, and you're not gorgeous.”

“Do anything about what?”

“A woman like that Ivana, she isn't asking for some handsome soldier or some rich-guy boss. A woman like her, she wants maybe a pretty dress. Maybe a dab of perfume. And something in her bed that's better than a hot-water bottle.”

“Well, I've got a kiosk and a broken leg.”

“All us men have a broken leg. She thought you had nothing. She ran right down here, with anything she could grab for you, stuffed into her pillowcase. So you're not an ugly man. You're a stupid man.” Fleka thumped his chest. “I'm the ugly man. Me. I've got three wives: the one in Bucharest, the one in Lublin, and the wife in Linz isn't even a gypsy. They're gonna bury me standing, maestro. That can't be helped, because I'm a man. But that's not what you are. You're a fool.”

“Thanks for the free fortune-telling. You know all about this, do you? She and I were here during the hard times. That's what. She and I have a history.”

“You're a fanatic. You're a geek. I can see through you like the windows of this kiosk. You should get a life.” Fleka thumped the kiosk's wallpaper, and sighed aloud. “Look, life is sad, all right? Life is sad even when you do get a life. So. Boots. Now I'm gonna tell you about this fabrikator of mine, because you got some spare money, and you're gonna buy it from me. It's a nice machine. Very sweet. It comes from a hospital. It's supposed to make bones. So the tutorial is all about making bones, and that's bad, because nobody buys bones. If you are deaf and you want some new little black bones in your ears, that's what this machine is for. Also, these black toys I made with it, I can't paint them. The toys are much too hard, so the paint breaks right off. Whatever you make with this fabrikator, it's hard and black, and you can't paint it, and it belongs by rights inside some sick person. Also, I can't read the stupid tutorials. I hate tutorials. I hate reading.”

“Does it run on standard voltage?”

“I got it running on DC off the fuel-cell in my car.”

“Where's the feedstock?”

“It comes in big bags. It's a powder, it's a yellow dust. The fab sticks it together somehow, with sparks or something, it turns the powder shiny black and it knits it up real fast. That part, I don't get.”

“I'll be offering one price for your machine and all your feedstock.”

“There's another thing. That time when I went to Vienna. I gave you my word on that deal. We shook hands on it. That deal was really important, they really needed it, they weren't kidding about it, and, well, I screwed up. Because of Vienna.”

“That's right, Fleka. You screwed up bad.”

“Well, that's my price. That's part of my price. I'm gonna sell you this toy-maker. We're gonna haul it right out of the car, put it in the kiosk here nice and safe. When I get the chance, I'm gonna bring your bag of coal-straw, too. But we forget about Vienna. We just forget about it.”

Borislav said nothing.

“You're gonna forgive me my bad, screwed-up past. That's what I want from you.”

“I'm thinking about it.”

“That's part of the deal.”

“We're going to forget the past, and you're going to give me the machine, the stock, and also fifty bucks.”

“Okay, sold.”

With the fabrikator inside his kiosk, Borislav had no room inside the kiosk for himself. He managed to transfer the tutorials out of the black, silent fab and into his laptop. The sun had come out. Though it was still damp and chilly, the boys from the Three Cats had unstacked their white cafe chairs. Borislav took a seat there. He ordered black coffee and began perusing awkward machine-translations from the Polish manual.

Selma arrived to bother him. Selma was married to a schoolteacher, a nice guy with a steady job. Selma called herself an artist, made jewelry, and dressed like a lunatic. The schoolteacher thought the world of Selma, although she slept around on him and never cooked him a decent meal.

“Why is your kiosk so empty? What are you doing, just sitting out here?”

Borislav adjusted the angle of his screen. “I'm seizing the means of production.”

“What did you do with all my bracelets and necklaces?”

“I sold them.”

“All of them?”

“Every last scrap.”

Selma sat down as it hit with a mallet. “Then you should buy me glass of champagne!”

Borislav reluctantly pulled his phone and text-messaged the waiter.

It was getting blustery, but Selma preened over her glass of cheap Italian red. “Don't expect me to replace your stock soon! My artwork's in great demand.”

“There's no hurry.”

“I broke the luxury market, across the river at the Intercontinental! The hotel store will take all the bone-ivory chokers I can make.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Bone-ivory chokers, they're the perennial favorite of ugly, aging tourist women with wattled necks.”

Borislav glanced up from his screen. “Shouldn't you be running along to your workbench?”

“Oh, sure, sure, ‘give the people what they want,' that's your sick, petit-bourgeois philosophy! Those foreign tourist women in their big hotels, they want me to make legacy kitsch!”

Borislav waved one hand at the street. “Well, we do live in the old arts district.”