“What did he do for a living back in that world, Hal. do you know that?” probed Rupen intently.
“He was a writer, Rupen, a writer of fiction, mostly. His personal library was extensive, very varied, some fiction, but mostly nonfiction reference books. He gave me some of those books when he noticed my interest in them; the rest I’m keeping here in my palace for him until he decides upon and establishes himself in a permanent seat. Some of the works of fiction in that collection give him as the author. Now, why do you put to me these questions, Rupen?”
“Hal, when you have me oversee the packing of the effects of His and Her Grace of Norfolk, out at your country palace, it was a damned good thing you did. Those so-called ladies were all of them the most light-fingered and larcenous types that I have run into in a lifetime of dealing with real sharpers and outright criminals. I finally was forced to bring in some of those nuns and have those hussies-in-waiting strip-searched, and even then, I’m sure that some of them got away with some goodies here and there. Had I not been on the scene, there might well have been damn-all to pack left, by the time they had all taken what they wanted of it.
“One of them, I don’t know exactly which one, had hung a pouch of gold and silver coins under her skirts, and the nuns found it and gave it to me. None of them are coins of this world, Hal; all are from my world, though most are older than my actual time, or Foster’s either, for that matter. All of the silver and many of the gold coins are from late-nineteenth- or early-to-middle-twentieth-century America; the rest of the gold coins are what were then called ‘bullion coins’—each of precisely an ounce or a half-ounce weight of a certain purity of gold, weight and purity both stated on the coins—and the ones in that bag came from the Union of South Africa. Canada, Mexico, and Switzerland . . . with a single exception.”
He reached into his belt-purse, fumbled for a moment, then drew forth a small silken drawstring bag. From the bag he extracted a not-quite-round golden coin about two centimeters in diameter. He laid it upon the table between them.
Naturally, the Archbishop picked it up, and after straining to read the worn lettering on the obverse, he drew a silver-framed lens from out his own belt-pouch and adjusted its elevation up and down until he could pick out the lettering.
“Rupen. this is a Sicilian coin. It was minted at Palermo. It looks quite old.”
“As I recall, it was about two hundred years old when it was bought and defaced by someone I knew, Hal. Turn it over and tell me what it says.”
The Archbishop found that the reverse of the antique coin had been shaven or possibly ground down, and upon the thus-smoothed surface had been engraved letters and numbers in a flowing, flowery script.
He read aloud, ” ‘From C.A. to R. A., My Prince Charming, Honeymoon, June, Sicily, 1970.’ But Rupen, why would anyone so ruin an old thing this way?”
Rupen looked as if he wanted to spit. “Because she was a spoiled, selfish bitch. Hal. I know, please believe me, and that is a gross understatement of the woman’s character, too. She ‘gave’ it to me, but she was the one who had it pierced and wore it to flaunt about, after we got back from a thirty-two-day honeymoon that ended up costing me an average of seven hundred dollars a day . . . and that was only the bare beginning, too.
“Hal, my second wife, Carolyn, could go through more money in a day of shopping than I could’ve imagined possible before I married her, and with less of value to show for the money she’d spent, too. She would be on hand without fail, charge plates in hand, every time one of the big stores had a junk sale. We ended up having a cellar and an attic actually crammed with boxes of useless items she’d bought ‘because they were reduced’—shrimp devein-ers, egg slicers, cheese wires, three-minute hourglasses of cheap plastic, bales of plastic dishes and bowls and tumblers and cups and cutlery.
“That she bought clothing and jewelry and shoes and whatnot was far easier to understand than her endless collection of pure junk. And God knows she loaded up on clothes and shoes and jewelry, hats, belts, toiletries, a million and one assorted accessories, furs, yon name it, and always only the best that my money would buy, too.
“Hal, I was making damned good money, but I couldn’t seem to make it come in as fast as she could shovel it out. Not only was she a big spender, she was a big giver, as well; she thought nothing whatsoever of writing thousand-dollar checks to one of her ’causes,’ a large number of which seemed to have to do with radical or at least left-liberal politics, these being the exact antithesis of the culture in which she had been reared.
“But she was always giving money to various members of her family, too, and not only money, either. I recall coming home from a busines trip to find the entire dining-room set gone—table, chairs, sideboard, matching custom-made corner china cabinets, serving cart, the works. Carolyn was not home, of course—there was a junk sale on somewhere downtown that day—but the cook told me that Carolyn had had some movers come in, load the furniture on their van, and deliver it to the home of one of her brothers.
“Hal, when that happened, we had only been married about eight months and living in that house only about two of them, and that set of furniture was brand, spanking new and had set me back over five thousand dollars. I phoned the company and told Bagrat that I was back in town but I wouldn’t be at the office until the next morning, then I settled down to wait for Carolyn.
“She didn’t show up until well after eleven that night, reeking of whiskey and loaded down with shopping bags full of plastic and metal and glass junk . . . plus a bracelet that I’d never seen before.
“When I demanded to know why she’d given our furniture to her brother, who happened to be a thirty-odd-year-old doctor working for the Veterans Administration and could, conceivably, afford to buy his own damned furniture, she began to scream that I was a selfish bastard, that since I had not even been bom in the U.S. I had no right to be making the kind of money that I was making, but that since I was making it anyway, she meant to see that it went to benefit the people who should rightfully have it. She pointed out that as she was my legal wife of record and that as the Commonwealth of Virginia had on its books a community property law, she had as much right to dispose of any property bought after marriage as I did. She went on to say that if I didn’t like what she did or the way she did it, i could pack my bags and leave and she would charge me with desertion and divorce me, and that she had no doubt but that in such circumstances a court of law would give her everything she asked for, which would be everything I owned, plus a hefty amount of monthly alimony.
“She snagged a bottle of Scotch out of the kitchen and kept belting it down straight between screaming and cursing and threatening me with financial ruin and telling me candidly just why she really had been willing to marry an unpedigreed mutt like me to begin with. Finally, she threw the empty bottle at me. then passed out cold, and I undressed her and put her to bed.
“It was a few minutes later, when I was rambling through the huge purse she habitually carried, trying to find the receipt tor the new bracelet so I could know how much I’d been soaked for. that I found a gift box, custom-wrapped. Feeling a little guilty for the fight we’d had, I opened it. Inside was a gold cigarette lighter and a case of what was patterned like snakeskin with gold fittings; the lighter had been engraved and the engraving read, ‘to S.F. with all my love C.’
“Well, Hal, I dumped the purse at that point, found her checkbook, and figured just about what she’d written on our joint account since the last statement, and the next morning, while she was still snoring, sleeping off her drunk, I went out and rented a panel truck and a storage garage, then took everything that I really treasured out of that house and put it either in that garage or in a new, large safety deposit box. Then I withdrew from the joint account all but a few hundred dollars over the amount of checks she already had written. Then I went and found myself a damned good divorce attorney and asked a hell of a lot of questions, and armed with his advice, I started laying plans to get out of I’qffaire Carolyn as painlessly and inexpensively as was possible, given the way that the divorce courts of Virginia seemed to be loaded in favor of the woman in almost any proceeding.