Elliott Mabeuse - Triad

The first time I saw Ellen Rothko was when I walked into Boyle's Antiques on Clark Street, looking for old records. She was showing a woman some antique earrings, their heads bent over the display case, and when she heard me come in, she looked up and caught my eye, shocked me with her beauty, and then lowered her face again, leaving me standing there gaping like an idiot.

She was simply one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, with a model's adolescent angularity coupled with a woman's easy grace. She had a rich torrent of Tuscan-red hair and her clear brown eyes were framed by green glasses, probably intended to make her look older, but instead just emphasizing her youth. Only the intelligence in her eyes kept her beauty from being too easy and gratuitous. That intelligence took the form of an open and almost confrontational curiosity, as if she wanted to know right away what I could do for her.

When I came to know her better, I realized it wasn't a look she gave to everyone.

I was someone special from the start.

I was on my usual rounds of the antique and second-hand stores, looking for old records, and I'd expected to deal with Morty Boyle, a man I knew fairly well and didn't much like-a greedy, avaricious dealer-so I was a bit surprised to find her there. I thought Morty must have hired some new help.

I walked in and made myself unobtrusive while she dealt with the woman, and when she was done, I looked up to find her regarding me with that look.

"Hi, is Morty here? I'm a friend of his."

She shook her head. She was wearing a dove-gray sweater, and her glasses were on a neck chain, a charming touch, as if she were trying hard to look older than she was.

"Mr. Boyle? No, he's not here anymore."

"So he finally sold out, huh? He'd been talking about that for years. You're the new owner?"

She nodded. "Me and my husband Eric. What can I do for you?"

I stuck out my hand. "I'm James Sawyer. I deal in old records-78's, 45's, some LP's, but generally the old stuff. The older, the better."

"Ellen Rothko." She took her glasses off and let them hang from the chain. I wondered if they were prescription or whether she just wore them for show. She took my hand and shook it.

I can't say there was any sort of shock that went through our hands, but there was something totally captivating about her eyes, and she regarded me as if she were trying to place my face.

I felt the same way. She was half my age, but there was this distinct feeling of having met her before, as if we already knew each other. I wondered whether she might have been a student in one of the classes I taught, back when I was teaching at the city college. That had been about seven or eight years ago, and she looked to be about the right age.

That feeling of recognition lasted only a moment, but it left me strangely shaken.

Nothing reminds me of my age like meeting a former student, now all grown up.

"Are you selling or buying, Mr. Sawyer?" she asked. "Selling, I hope, because we really don't have any records. We just did a thorough inventory."

"Oh, buying, mostly. Morty used to take any old records he found and set them aside for me to go through. I know the market pretty well and pay top dollar. But if you get anyone looking for something special, you can let me know too. I can generally dig up most anything that's still available, and I'll split the profits with you. It's the rare stuff I'm really looking for, though"

"Well we deal mostly in furniture and hard goods, and Eric takes care of the collectables. Here he is now."

A young man came walking out of the back, wiping his hands on a rag. He was as handsome in his way as she was in hers, a perfect yuppie couple, but he had more of the predator in him, a sharp wariness. It didn't surprise me. Those are qualities you need to make a living in this business, which can get very cutthroat.

When Ellen introduced us and told him I was looking for old records, he brightened.

"Records? I'm not into that myself. But I come across them at house sales and things like that. What are you looking for? How much are they worth?"

I kind of played it down. I didn't want any competition. The vintage record business isn't what it used to be. Most of the old 78's have already been discovered, and my main business now was in old LP's and 45's, most of which I sold to Japanese collectors. Still, any fool could go online and find records that were fetching up to a thousand dollars a copy, and Eric was no fool. I could see him listening to my every word.

I knew what he was thinking. Vintage recordings is a specialty market, a business unto itself, and as with all collectables, you've either got to be an expert in the field or have an expert working with you if you ever want to make any money at it. Eric was thinking I could be his expert.

I didn't mind. After all, that's how I worked. I'd go into these old stores and shops and tell them what they had and appraise them, and if the stuff was really valuable, I could usually fix them up with an interested buyer and we'd split the profits. I was always perfectly honest. I did it for love of the old music, not the money.

"What sort of music is it?" Ellen asked.

"Oh, I handle all sorts of stuff, but especially country blues, primitive stuff, music from the 20's and 30's. That's my own personal weakness-Blind Lemon, Petey Wheatstraw, Son House, Robert Johnson. I also handle early jazz and jug band, hillbilly.

Twenties pop. There's a market for that stuff, if you know who to sell to."

"So youre a collector yourself?" she asked.

I shrugged. I wasn't about to tell them what my collection was worth. "Yeah, some. That's how I got into it. I turned a hobby into a low-paying career, you might say."

She smiled and combed her hair back from her face, a fetchingly vain, slightly flirtatious gesture. I wasn't so old that I didn't appreciate the move. For some reason, she liked me, and I responded.

There are three kinds of people in collectables: those who do it for love, those who do it for money, and those who do it because they can't help it-the born collectors who have acquiring and dealing in their blood. Ellen was the first kind, Eric the last, with a good portion of the greedy part thrown in. He loved the money, but he loved the 4

wheeling and dealing more. Everything was negotiable to him, and every transaction was some sort of deal, this for that.

As I said, I was really only in it because of my love of the blues, and once the talk turned from the money to the music itself, Eric lost interest and drifted off. Ellen seemed in no hurry for me to leave, though. Business was slow and talking to her was easy. She was a rapt listener and already knew a lot about rural America in the twenties and thirties and the popular music of the time. She had an attitude and imagination like mine, and I could tell that for her, the past still lived.

We talked about Tin Pan Alley and the pop music explosion that occurred in the teens and twenties, about the piano roll business, the development of early jazz and race records. I hadn't talked so much in ages and she hung on every word, and now and then I caught that look in her eye again, something deep and curious. Finally I had to go, afraid of overstaying my welcome and burning her out. She made me promise to come back and bring her some recordings. They already had some old record players capable of playing the old 78's, and she wanted to hear the music for herself. She asked me to teach her.

I kept my word, and their shop became my second home. I struck a deal with Eric: I'd put a box or two of records in his store and we'd split the profits three ways. Any records he came up with that I priced, the same deal, cutting Ellen in on it too. It was an overly generous offer, but at the time I wasn't really doing much business and I wasnt much of a negotiator, so I let him set the terms. Besides, it gave me an excuse to hang around.