It was a mistake putting the rock shop next to a boba shop. I know that now. Every afternoon the shop fills up with groups of teens lugging around big plastic cups of brightly colored tea. Their sticky hands touch every tiny basket of stones, smear over the shiny purple peaks of the amethyst cathedrals, slide along the velvet curtains along the walls, muck up the glass cases like dogs with their noses to a window.Today four girls come in. They’re wearing the uniform of the local high school— white collared shirts untucked over tan pants and skirts. Two of them have cardinal-red sweatshirts tied around their waists. I hear them whisper to each other in low voices they think I can’t hear.
“I heard there’s a back room where all the magic stones are kept,” they say. “But there’s no door. You can only find it if it wants you to.”
I chuckle to myself then spray the glass counter and wipe it down with a rag. I try to look like I’m not watching them.
The girls try to look casual. They spread to the four walls of the store. They feign interest in a Picasso jasper sphere, an obsidian tower, the rough druzy edges of a crystal that twinkles in the light, and the reflective silver surface of a tumbled hematite. They slowly back up to the walls and push aside the velvet curtains (black, red, green, and blue), searching for a hidden door or hallway. They are patient. They work their way from corner to corner, looking under every bit of velvet. They check under each wooden display table, each rug, for a trap door. They look up for doors in the ceiling. They look back at each other, hopelessness and embarrassment dawning on each face.
When their plastic cups are empty, they drag their feet to the counter, now shiny clean, and deposit little handfuls of stones for purchase.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” I ask the first. There’s a small mirror on the counter, that only faces me, and I take a look in it to see how the first girl sees me. An ancient woman with matted gray hair down to my hips. A wart on my nose. A wayward tooth. Original, I think.
“Um, yes. Thanks,” She hands over some money, and I clink the stones together into a tiny paper bag.
The second girl steps forward. “Did you find what you were looking for?” A peek in the mirror shows that this girl sees me as impossibly gorgeous. Big brown eyes. Skinny braids down my back. A low-cut skin-tight dress over perfect curves. I smile beautifully at the girl.
“I did. Thank you,” she says, smiling back, blushing. She takes her tiny bag of stones.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” I ask the third girl. The mirror shows that I am round and rosy cheeked. I wear an apron for some reason (in a rock shop? A strange imagination for this girl, or a lack of one).
“Yes, thanks,” the third girl says as I drop her stones into the tiny paper bag.
“And you,” I say to the fourth girl. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not exactly,” she says. “Maybe next time.”
“Maybe next time,” I agree. In the mirror I’m a petite, young woman with pixie-cut brown hair and an oversized black sweater.
The girl is still standing there, and I realize I’ve forgotten to bag up her stones. She looks like a younger, less rested version of how she sees me— short black hair over a round face, black-framed glasses obscuring the bags under her eyes. Her school uniform is two sizes too big, and she is lost in it. I roll the top of the paper bag over to keep the stones from slipping out and hand it to her.
“Excuse me. What’s your name?” the girl says.
“Oh, um,” I haven’t had to think of a name in a while. “Luisa.”
“Kay.”
She has already turned around and is walking out the door before I realize that Kay is probably her name.
Kay comes again the next day, alone, tea-less. She is wearing her cardinal-red high school sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. The sweatshirt is wet, and I guess it must be raining outside, though there are no windows looking out front to know for sure— only big shelves of window displays backed with more velvet.
“Where are your friends today?” I ask.
“Those weren’t my friends,” she says. “Just some kids from class.”
I think back to when I saw them whispering to each other— but no. Three were whispering. Kay was off to the side.
I watch her pace around the store, touching everything, as if one of the bookcases might shift to reveal a secret passage. A loner, I realize. And persistent.
I smile as my regular, Tina, walks in, shakes off her umbrella, and sets it beside the door. Her blue skirts swish around her legs and her silver jewelry clacks together with each step. She gives me a quick nod, and I watch Kay’s face as Tina heads straight to the left-back corner of the shop next to a tiered display of cracked-open geodes, lifts up a flap of red velvet, and disappears into the back room.
Kay’s face goes pale, and her eyes widen. The hood falls away from her head. She looks like a statue, frozen in her spot.
A few minutes later, Tina comes back out holding a large, white orb with flecks of blue. It’s glowing yellow in the middle and is levitating an inch over Tina’s palm. Tina winks at Kay, picks up her umbrella, and walks back out into the rain, tucking the orb beneath her arm.
Kay, finally cured of her shock, runs to the geode display and swings the velvet to the side, looking for the door.
“Where is it?” Kay asks, looking up at me, her wet hair stuck to her face, her hands still searching along the plaster walls for any opening. “How do you get to the back room?”
“What do you want from the back room?” I ask, clasping my hands together over the glass display case.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what is it that you need? What would you want to get from the back room that you can’t get right here in the front?”
Kay drops the velvet curtain and looks up at me. “Something— something magical,” she says. She looks down at the floor as if embarrassed by her answer.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.”
I straighten up and brush my fingers through the short hair that Kay has given me. “Why don’t we chat for a bit.” I pull out a small table and two fold-out chairs. I lay out two pale yellow teacups and saucers. “What kind of tea do you like?”
“Tea?”
“Yes, what’s your favorite?”
“Chamomile, I guess.”
She doesn’t question the steaming teapot that I pull out from behind the counter and set on the table.
“Have a seat.” I pour us each a cup. The steam rises up in aromatic swirls. “Why do you want to get to the back room?”
“I want to see something magic,” she says, more sure this time.
“And if you did find something magic, what would you want it to do for you in your life? What’s so wrong in your life that you need magic to fix it?”
Kay considers for a while, drinking her tea too fast to taste it. “It’s hard to put into words. I feel…I feel like everyone wants me to be quiet, to slump into a happy, normal life. I get good grades. I get along with my family. I have the things a happy life should have. But I want to know, is this all there is? Going through the motions? Doing your best? A few happy moments strung together over time?”
I’m not used to such raw honesty. I smile without thinking.
I put a hand over hers, focusing on the skin of my palm to make it warm and soft. “And is it enough if I tell you there’s more to your life than that? That at each phase of your life the meaning of it all will change? That there will be moments of intense joy and pain, powerful connection and healing solitude? That the last sound you make in this life will be you laughing, not with bitterness but with good humor and joy?”
Kay fidgets with her empty teacup. “But how could you possibly know that? I could die tomorrow and this is all there is.”
“Maybe, but that’s not what I see in your tea.”
She looks down at the little heap of soggy chamomile flower bits at the bottom of her cup. “That’s what my tea leaves said?”
“In this case flowers, but yes.”
Kay hasn’t come by in a while, but I know it’s not because my prediction has eased her mind.
No. I can feel her all around. I hear her quiet steps through the mud as she takes slow laps around the shop, thinking things through, dwelling on the mystery. No, not dwelling, obsessing. I can feel her hands on the outer walls, searching for a door, measuring the walls. I can tell by the look on Tina’s face and the faces of my other regulars that she’s tracked down everyone she can find who has been to the back room. That she’s heard the other names I go by: Lottie, Luz, Leonora. That she knows my other faces.
When she finally comes back in, she looks like she hasn’t slept in days. Her cardinal sweatshirt hangs over her like a blanket, and there are even darker circles hiding under the bottom rim of her glasses. Her brows are knit, and her fists clenched. My heart aches for her, but I know she can’t go to the back room like this. I know what a disaster that would be.
“Where is it?” she says, like she’s ready to fight.
“Sit,” I tell her. I pull up the table and chairs. I pull out the yellow teapot of chamomile tea. “You’re getting obsessive, and it’s not good for you.”
Kay walks over and looks into the teacup. “How do you always have hot tea ready?” she asks.
“Ah. You noticed.”
“And where do you go at night? I waited all night for you to come out. I’ve never seen you outside of this shop. Not once.”
“I don’t really leave the shops.” I take a sip of tea.
“So, you sleep in the back?”
“Something like that.”
“Why won’t the door open for me?” she whines. Oh right, she’s still a child. “Why can’t I find the back shop?”
“You will.” I take a deep breath hoping she’ll mirror me and take one herself. “You need to relax. I know that’s hard, but that’s the only way you’ll find it. I can’t open the door for you. It opens on its own. And the door doesn’t respond well to obsession.” It’s learned a lot about obsession from me, I don’t say.
Kay sits in the chair and rubs her eyes. “Okay,” she says. “I can do that. I can work on it. And then I can find the back room?”
“You’ll have a better chance.”
Kay drinks her tea, her eyes darting around the room, trying to catch a glimpse of the door.
“Don’t you have homework or something? Are you getting it done these days?”
Kay slumps in her chair. “I might have dropped the ball a little.”
“Why don’t you come in after school? Bring your homework. You can do it here.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Why not? You’ll be able to keep an eye out for the back room while still keeping up with your studies. It’s a win-win.”
“It’s not a win-win if you don’t get anything from it,” Kay says, a curious look on her weary face.
“What do you mean?” I say. “I’m rooting for you.”
Kay comes in the next day with a big cup of green boba tea and a backpack full of textbooks. I set her up at the little foldout table near the cash register, and she pulls a giant textbook out of her backpack, a pink plastic case of sharp pencils and frog erasers, and a folder full of worksheets.
The regular cohort of boba-clutching teens doesn’t notice her, as they go about mucking up the stones and display cases. I wait ‘til the group leaves to wipe everything down again.
“Why are you always cleaning everything?” Kay asks, looking up from her mountain of work.
“Sticky hands,” I say. “All of you kids come in here with sticky, sugar-tea hands.”
Kay looks at her own giant cup of tea, mushy black boba beads congealing at the bottom. “Why don’t you just have a sign? No food or drinks allowed?”
I put down my rag and look over at her. “Has anyone ever told you, you might be a genius?”
Kay smiles and gets back to work.
Time passes, and Kay catches up on her homework. I pour us tea at four each day. Around five she gets up and takes a walk. She tells me there’s a lake out there, people walking dogs, children feeding ducks and snow-white geese. Fish bigger than the cash register with great big O’s for mouths. I walk her to the door at six and lock up.
Three months pass just like this. Three happy months. And then one day, she is sitting at the table, working on an essay for a history class, when she looks up and sees the door. There it is, standing ajar behind the cash register, like it’s always been there.
Kay catches her breath and looks at me. I nod and gesture to it. It’s time.
It’s bittersweet to see Kay walk through the door and close it shut behind her. I am happy for her, but I will miss seeing her here.
She’ll come back, like the other regulars, but she won’t stay long each time. They never do. And I’ve grown accustomed to seeing her at her little table working on her assignments. I’ve grown used to our 4 o’clock teas, to her stories from outside, to her constant questions about where I go at night, where the back room is, who I am. I’m happy for her, but my heart aches as I see her walk through the door and into the back room. All of her wishes finally coming true.
Kay walks into the back room and closes the door behind her. Little bells jingle on the door, and she jumps a little as the door latches closed. She looks surprised to see me behind the dusty wooden counter here in the back room and turns around to look back at the door.
“It’s okay, Kay,” I say. “It’s me.”
“How are you here, Luisa? You were just in the other room!”
“I’ll explain first, and then you can look around.” I have an old Victorian dollhouse that I lift up and set on the counter. I put a knit finger puppet over my left index finger and another over my right index finger. I place my left hand in the bedroom so that it looks like my finger puppet is just rising out of her luxurious four-post bed. Then I place my right hand in the kitchen so that the other finger puppet looks like she’s cooking oatmeal on the stove.
“I am larger than I seem to you. What you see is just a tiny part of me, the part in the rock shop. I am also here in the back room. Both of these are me, neither are all of me or even that much of me. Just like these two finger puppets can be in two places. They are both me. They are both tiny parts of me.”
“What are you?” she asks, and there’s more fear than fascination. Not the way I’d hoped this would go.
“I’m just me,” I say. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I want us to be friends.”
Her shoulders relax, and I watch them ease down to her sides.
“I spent most of my life collecting this crap,” I say gesturing to the main room. “I was obsessed with finding more and more and more. My whole life was consumed by it. Sort of like you were obsessed with finding this room.”
She nods, understanding.
“I’m older than I look. This is the third act of my life, and I didn’t want to spend it pillaging and hoarding. I wanted to give it back.”
Kay nods again, but she is looking around the room, eyes flitting from one shiny thing to the next.
I put the dollhouse back behind the counter. “So,” I say. “Do you want to see some magic rocks or what?”
“Please.”
Kay follows me into the main room, shocked by how large it is. One wall is a full display of rocks— some emanate smoke and sparks, some hover above their shelves, some are pure gold and too heavy to lift, some smell sweet like maple syrup or a warm mug of hot chocolate.
But there are other walls. Beside the rocks are jars upon jars of tea with kettles that always steam but are mercifully quiet. On the wall across from the rocks are shelves of books, some with spines falling off, some shaking on their shelves, some wrapped in fabric to dull the sounds of their insufferable wailing. And along the last wall are all my antiques— candelabras with black flames, silver platters that reflect the future, a threadbare armchair so comfortable you can nap in it even when you don’t feel tired. There are two other people back here, milling about. Picking things up and putting them back again— my regulars from the other shops.
“What is this?” Kay says.
“It’s the back room. But it’s the back room for all my shops. It’s where I keep my best stuff. Was it worth the wait?”
“Yes,” she says. Kay walks around looking at everything. “Are there doors to all your shops here?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re in all those shops?”
“Yes.”
Kay makes a move to sit in the armchair.
“I wouldn’t sit there unless you have time for a nap,” I say. “I picked something out for you specially. It’s right over here.”
I lead her to the wall of stones and pick up a small gold box. Inside is a black stone on a silver chain. “May I?”
“Please.”
“It’s just a trinket,” I say. “A good starter amulet. Nothing too powerful. Nothing you couldn’t accomplish all on your own.”
I clasp the chain around her neck. Kay holds onto my arm for support as she sways toward the ground. Then she rights herself and smiles. “It feels like taking a hot bath,” she says.
“Yep.”
“It feels like watching the rain out the window.”
“Yep.”
“It feels like drinking hot tea with you.”
“Aww…” She’s going to make me cry, and I hate crying around customers. I unclasp the silver chain and set the stone necklace back in the box. “Don’t wear it all the time. Just when you need it. Wear it while you ponder the big questions in your life.”
“Thank you,” she says. She reaches into her pocket. “How much does it cost?”
“Are you kidding? Everything back here is priceless. This is my gift to you.”
I am not surprised to see Kay the next day, looking lovely and rested. Her hair is combed. Her skin is clear and rosy. Even her clothes fit.
What surprises me is the two big plastic cups of boba tea in her hands— one red and one green.
I let the confusion show on my face and point to the new sign in the window, the one she designed and printed herself: No food or drink.
“I know, I know. I thought this could be an exception.” She walks over to the glass display case with the register on top and sets down the two cups, where they leave two wet circles. “I was up late last night thinking about you,” she says. “And I thought that maybe if you’ve never been outside the shop, then maybe you’ve never tried boba. Am I right?”
“No, I haven’t.”
No one’s ever given me a gift before. Not unless they wanted something. But what is left for Kay to want? The door to the back room opened the second she stepped in. And nothing is off limits. She can take whatever she wants.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Kay says. “But I didn’t know what flavor you’d like. So I brought strawberry and green apple. You can try both if you want.”
My eyes fill with little beads of water that quickly start to steam. “That’s so nice of you,” I say, wiping the tears away. “You didn’t have to…”
“I know that,” Kay says. “I wanted to.” Then she grabs the small fold-out table and pulls out her textbooks and her folder of assignments. “It’s still okay if I do my homework here, right?”
“Of course,” I say, my eyes steaming and steaming. She wants to stay.
I pick up the green apple tea and put my mouth around the comically wide straw. Kay beams at me as my mouth fills with tea, cold as ice and impossibly sweet.
