9

While Amity held Snowball and reassured him, one of Falkirk's two underlings took everything out of the five-by-three-foot cage: the gnawing blocks, the exercise wheel, the miniature ladder with the observation platform at the top, the little blue mouse house with white shutters and a roof of shingles painted like slices of cheese, the drifts of shredded newspapers in which the shy rodent liked to burrow and hide away. One agent soiled two fingers and realized what he had touched and said, "Hey, the little bastard shits in his own cage," and Amity said, "Well, he's a mouse." Jeffy showed the intruder to the powder bath to wash his hands, whereafter the guy took the lid off the toilet tank to look for whatever, most likely for the key to everything.

As Jeffy expected, they searched the place top to bottom, turning everything upside down, or almost everything.

In the workroom, as two of his other men opened and closed drawers and cabinet doors, Falkirk looked around at the radios and at the collection of costume jewelry also made out of Bakelite, everything sitting on open shelves. His expression was not one of investigative interest, but rather that of an elitist of the ruling class who found himself in a humble thrift shop with inadequately deodorized plebian customers. "What's all this stuff?"

"I polish the jewelry, fix broken clasps. I put new vacuum tubes in the radios. Sell it all to collectors."

"Collectors? For kitsch like this? People actually buy it?"

Jeffy pointed to the discolored shell of the Bendix, under which the key to everything was hidden. "This potential jewel cost me sixty bucks at a swap meet. Cleaned and polished, it'll look like that"—he pointed to a radio on which he had worked—"and then I'll sell it for maybe six thousand at an antique show. And I've seen women fight over the best Bakelite necklaces."

"You're shitting me."

"That was my mouse," Amity said, her hands folded around Snowball.

Falkirk's face stiffened with contempt, his expression out of proportion to the moment. "You think you're pretty funny, do you?"

"No, sir. Not as funny as some."

At his sides, the man's hands formed into fists. His lips were pale, his stare icy. "I know your type."

Jeffy was disquieted by Falkirk's sudden, acidic antipathy toward the girl. To distract the agent, he plugged in one of the fully restored radios, a Fada.

The vacuum tubes warmed, and the AM-only dial brightened. The radio's sleek rounded form and rich golden plastic with the grain and depth of quartzite spoke of an age when even everyday items were designed to please the eye; the object embodied a desire to charm that had been lost in this era of bleak utilitarianism.

Falkirk stared at the radio with puzzlement and disdain.

When Taylor Swift sang forth from the nearly century-old set, he said, "She's hot, but she doesn't sound hot coming through those speakers. They sure aren't Bose."

"I'm selling nostalgia. This is a little bit how music sounded back then," Jeffy said.

"Nostalgia is a dead end. We either progress or slide backward. Slide far enough backward, everything collapses."

Jeffy smiled and nodded. "I understand that point of view. I just want to slide back a little ways to when people didn't spend all day staring at screens and trying to tell other people what to do and think, back to when a day seemed twenty-four hours long instead of twelve, when you could breathe."

"If that's what you want," said Falkirk, "better stay here in your little house, never go outside. This is the closest you'll get to living forever in yesterday. The world turns faster every year. The human race is on a rocket ride, Mr. Coltrane. A rocket ride. That's our destiny."