Beth Sherman
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We Pay Cash
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             Because the guy is 45 minutes early, Leah has to throw on her clothes still dripping wet
from the shower. His name is Dimitri and he’s younger than she expected. Mid-40s with a
droopy mustache, and a pregnant looking stomach. A sharpie, she hears her mother say. Someone
who’ll fleece you with no regrets. He walks through the apartment quickly, taking in the broken-
down furniture and stained carpeting. Leah has had two other dealers come already. She knows
what might be valuable: 29 pieces of majolica, some costume jewelry from the 1950s, a Pyrex
set, a stamp collection. Everything else is either broken or falling apart. Mom had a lot of stuff,
Dimitri says, pausing to examine the bottom of a majolica teapot. Unsigned. Her mother used to
wander through the apartment touching the majolica as if it might disappear when no one was
looking, stroking a vase’s hidden curves, the green and blue ceramic pieces precious as
gemstones that were too big to wear. Leah shows him the one Wedgwood plate in the collection,
tells him her mother was a shopaholic. He laughs. The others did too. But her mother kept
spending as if it were Monopoly money. This condo, with its two mortgages and small terrace,
the leaky toilet and original kitchen, is Leah’s inheritance.

             Dimitri can tell the daughter is overwhelmed. In his line of work, he’s seen it all.
Valuable paintings decaying in attics, hoarders and hagglers, relatives fighting over sterling
teaspoons. He marks everything up 70 percent, sells it at the Antiques and Design Center in
Miami. He pays cash. Sometimes people ask about his accent. He lies, claims he’s Ukranian.
Which is only half a lie because his mother’s from Odessa. It’s bad to be Russian right now.
Hospitals bombed, grain silos bombed, apartment buildings sheared in half, an entire country
reduced to rubble. Just this morning, he read about a woman found half naked in a storm cellar.
She’d been kept there for months before the soldiers finally strangled her.

             Dimitri is talking about how young people don’t collect majolica anymore. Or Pyrex. Or
stamps. I can give you maybe $400 for all of it. Leah knows it’s too little. Her mother spent
$8,000 on majolica in the 80s. Leah has the receipts. But her mother’s stuff is practically
worthless now, the way a new car depreciates in value the moment you drive it off the lot. With
the funeral expenses, taxes, the mortgage balance, the money she has to pay Hunks Hauling Junk
to cart everything away, she owes $157,000 she doesn’t have. Fuck you, Mom. Instantly, she
hears her mother counter, is that a nice way to talk?

             Is this her, Dimitri asks, picking up a photo. The woman in the picture has old world
glamor: bobbed hair, Kewpie doll lips, an impish smile. Yeah, says the daughter. About fifty
years ago. There’s something about the eyes that Dimitri recognizes. Not fear exactly, but
foreboding, as if the woman in the photo knows none of it ends well. Dimitri offers ten bucks.
You can keep the picture, he says. I just want the frame. Sure, says the daughter. Why the hell
not? Her voice sounds muffled, like she’s choking back tears as she heads to the basement for a
carton and some shopping bags he can pack everything in.

             When it comes down to it, Leah thinks, watching him wrap the majolica in newspaper,
her mother liked stuff better than people. Stuff doesn’t talk back, her mother announces. Her
mother’s voice is faint but audible. Stuff doesn’t hurt you. Leah says, When did I ever hurt you?

             Dimitri pauses, brandishing a teacup in one hand. What? The daughter looks as nervous
as a runaway cat.
             Nothing. Could you hurry up? I have another appointment at eleven.

             These Americans, always in a rush. They have too many possessions. You could fit what
he owns in a duffel bag. A news alert pings on his phone. Russian Missiles Bomb Maternity
Ward and below it, a woman on a stretcher clutching a baby that looks like a broken doll. He
blinks, stares at the baby, the way its neck tilts. The baby will never grow up, never own a dish,
or get married, never have a daughter of her own. There are worse things in this world, he thinks,
staring hard at Leah, than not being able to sell a stamp collection. There’s suffering and
violence. Random violence that hits when you least expect it – when you’re washing a glass,
sitting on the toilet, feeding your newborn baby.

             ​After Dimitri leaves, Leah fixes herself a peanut butter sandwich, washes it down with
flat seltzer. She wanders from room to room. Then it hits her. He’d taken the picture along with
the frame. That picture of her mother on the beach at Coney Island. When her mother was young
and gorgeous and her life was gift-wrapped with hopeful ribbons. Leah feels worse than when
they’d lowered the coffin into the ground, worse than when she realized she never got to say
goodbye or undo all the hurtful things they’d said to each other. The word bereft comes to mind
and she spits it out. See, says her mother, more gently this time. Now you know.

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Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her stories have been published in Portland Review, Blue Mountain Review, Tangled Locks Journal, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, Sou’wester and elsewhere. Her work will be featured in The Best Microfictions 2024 Anthology and she’s also a Pushcart and a multiple Best of the Net nominee. 
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