Salty Beans, Chapter 5.1

"In very beautiful clear glass bottles"

In very beautiful clear glass bottles, row on row, dwelt the precious crystalline grains through which the shop came close to living up to the promise of its name: Every Kind of Salt. There were lavender salts and pink salts, and salts of all the many shades on the spectrum between pink and lavender—salt from the sea, and salt from wherever else it was that salt came from, nobody knew for sure. Clarissa heard the hoarse whispers that Samson had bought the place for her, but it had been Clarissa’s idea, and just as much her money as his.

Some of the glamor had worn off of salt, and Clarissa didn’t make it down to the boutique district that often anymore. When the bell dinged on the door, the small staff, stunned to see her, bustled around unconvincingly, dusting off the bottles, and so on. One of them had to tell two others who Clarissa was.

“Don’t mind me,” said Clarissa. “I’ll be in my office. If anyone comes in asking about the Flince Memorial Railroad Car Residency, send them straight back.”

She touched the doorknob to her little office with some anticipation. She remembered how Howard Hughes had vacuum-sealed a modest home on a quiet Las Vegas street immediately after abandoning it. They opened it up, many decades later, after he died, and discovered a grilled cheese sandwich still sitting on a plate. She might have been making up that story in her head. Anyway, that’s what it reminded her of, opening the door to her little pastel office, a sweet memory in aspic.