Whenever we go for walks the dog now pulls into Captain’s Treasures at the corner of Lewis and Queen East. The place bills itself as an Antique Store (“We’ve got the best booty around”) but it’s little more than a space full of a man’s mismanaged and disorganized belongings. In short, it’s the basement of a borderline eccentric that just happens to be open to the public.
When the weather’s nice, the owner, a rather unfriendly man in his 70’s with one of those protuberant bellies that looks immensely powerful, sits out front. He looks like a farmer and he doesn’t much like to talk, but he does keep a cache of dog treats, and this has won the love of Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund. He smiles a bit when he sees her, digs into his pocket and then produces a treat, and this has earned the undying loyalty of my dog and established a kind of friendship between the man and I.
The other day there was a really cool, but really junky looking Schwinn bike in front of the store. It was about 40 years old, needed everything done to it, weighed about 250 pounds and was overpriced, but it had once been beautiful, and this made me love it.
I went in the store and spoke to the owner about it, telling him the price seemed high for a bike that needed that much work. He seemed crabby, telling me that on eBay they were four times what he was selling it for. We began a half-hearted negotiation, but he was having none of it, telling me that a girl had seen it earlier in the morning, loved it and was bringing her mother back so they could buy it. I imagined a hip 17 year-old girl, just beaming as she rode the bike down Queen Street, finally the perfect Fashionista she always dreamed she could be.
We continued our listless haggling for a bit, but it became clear that the guy just didn’t have the energy or patience for it. He was feeling sick, he told me. I suggested that he close up shop for the day and go home and rest, but he waved me off, “ Nope, you got to work everyday, cuz if you don’t, you just die. That’s the way it works. I’ve seen it.”
We then talked for some time about his health, and he seemed relieved to have somebody to whom he might unburden himself. In no time at all, this laconic, wary man was telling me all about the internal machinations of his body, and the fear–now melting into resignation– he felt toward that. For twenty minutes we traded stories of doctors, health care systems and surgeries, and when I left I think he felt a little bit better, maybe even encouraged and less like an old man sitting alone in a roomful of his unwanted treasures, life slipping away.
The next day when I passed by, I saw that the old bicycle had been sold and that the store, for the first time, was closed. It was a terribly bittersweet moment standing there on the sidewalk, imagining the happy girl now riding off on her Schwinn and into the rest of her life, and the older man, taking the day off work for the first time, now sitting in a physician’s waiting room, thumbing through an old magazine.