I buy two different labradorite rings from a woman who tells me she only reads books that are beautiful and full of grace. She’ll read just a few pages every night, and it’s a sort of meditative practice in that way. The language needs to be beautiful, but she says they don’t even really need a point. They don’t need a point or a plot, only beauty and grace. She especially doesn’t like violence in books.
When I tell her I do like violence, we’re both surprised but I think I mean it.
When I taught for the first time, every single book I chose was about death. I didn’t know that about myself until students pointed it out, and it made me feel exposed, like I was stripped bare before them. All the best books are about death and dying though, and I do mean that. She says something to me about how reading violent books before bed isn’t good for your sleep, and I tell her she’s probably right. The dreams I do remember always are bad, and the rest fade like wallpaper. Last night I dreamt I was driving and mine was the only car on the road for miles and miles. I keep looking but never see another car and I don’t know where I’m going, but I wake up before I can ever find out.
She tells me she’s reading a new book right now that her daughter told her to check out, and it’s one I’ve read before. It’s all sex, she says, and it makes me wonder if she still stops reading after a few pages or if she lets the characters finish first.
I try to tell her that it’s a good book, but she says it’s not really her thing. Still, she asks for my favorite author. I hesitate but tell the truth, and she writes it down like she’s going to actually check it out. That’s when I ask her also about the signet ring I wear on my pinky. Is there any way I can fix it?
Where did you get this?
At a consignment shop, I tell her. I got it at a local consignment shop. This morning, I found it bent out of place. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know how this could have happened.
It’s good quality. She left her tools at home that day she said, but gold is a soft metal.
What?
Good quality metal bends. This could be 14 karats. Maybe even 24.
I tell her that when I found it and it was my initial, I felt like I had to buy it.
That’s great. That’s so great. It’s in style right now, too. On the pinky like that.
Thank you. Yeah, I say. Yeah, it felt like fate.
She asks me how much it was, but I tell her I don’t remember for sure. A good deal, though. I only know it was a good deal. I didn’t know that about good gold or how metal gives way.
I am trying the gold labradorite ring on my right ring finger right now and the silver one on my left pointer. She advised against the first one on my index, and it takes me a second to remember which one that means. That was because of the shape though, set east to west which means sideways. Those don’t elongate, so she says she thinks she would see me more in long round or oval one on my index instead. There’s another customer browsing as well, and I apologize for standing in the way as she comes near.
I want a gold ring someday, but it’s funny that good gold bends. At first I think it’s a bad joke, but then I wonder if it’s actually a good metaphor. I don’t think you should have to change yourself for love but know that love changes us anyway. I don’t know how or when my little initial ring bent, but it’s unrecognizable. I bent it back the best I could, and I’m wearing it still. But when I take it off, all I can see are the angles that break up the curve. With pointer and thumb, I tried to shape it back to the way it used to be. It’s not the same, but I don’t think people can tell when I’m wearing it. I just have to know it myself. The gold labradorite I’m trying on now is not good gold or rather it’s just not as good, and I think it might be almost better that way.
The woman tells me not to let her forget to give me the properties for labradorite and then runs off for a minute. We’ve talked like this before, too. I talk to her every time I come to the nice mall. She got this table sometime this past year, but she just moved it to this better location on the same ground floor. When she returns, it’s with a square card for me to keep. At the same time that I’m reading it, she tells me from memory that labradorite is good for protecting myself and protecting my energy. It will strengthen my aura, which is good. The stone is the holographic blue green of a beetle shell or an oil spill, and she tells me this is known as its flash. I love all these private worlds and secret languages, like when I learned about the scent of aldehyde in perfumery. When you search it up, and I have, they describe it as an abstract smell: soapy and fatty, fresh and frost, the smell of sunshine. Certain scents have what they call sparkling qualities, and I love that it’s made up of metaphor. There are no other ways but to misunderstand. The labradorite set in gold has a great flash to it. The silver one has less flash and the price reflects it.
She asks me what I do, and I tell her again. Then she tells me more about her daughter who lives nearby and is around my age. We talk so much that we forget if I’ve already paid or not, and she has to look it up. I had not. When she does charge me, I look away.
Afterwards, when I get back to my car, I sit in the parking lot for a long time. It’s been snowing since I woke up, and now it’s getting dark again too. When I drive home, the traffic is rhythmic and I get stopped at every light. That’s just how it goes sometimes. In the cold dark of winter, the red taillight of another car falls across my face. When I catch myself in the rearview, I’m basking in its lonely warmth.
There are people in cars all around me, but we are all alone inside them. I turn up the heater and roll down my window to let the wind brush across my cheeks. When my mom calls my phone, I let it go to voicemail. I turn up my volume and play the same song on repeat until I can no longer hear it.
Later on, I spend my night watching videos on the rings.
I watch older women with long hair describe the stones they’re selling online and I read every comment. I search up sparkling labradorite and aldehyde flash and pure energy, and I follow the thought. When I scroll through the replies, I understand what they’re saying. Their language is now my own. I have the brightness up all the way on my screen as I hold my phone right up to my face in the dark of my bedroom. This is how my phone casts my single shadow on the wall, a puppet projection of myself.
Lost this way, I am both here and not. I’m between words and then I’m beyond them, and all that I leave behind is the space I filled. I don’t need to put it into words to know that I’ll wear these rings until they rust and then some. I’ll take the protection she promised while I can, until the metal and meaning both give way and ring my skin in bruising stains. Then, I’ll wear the shadows till they fade, too.