The Antique Shop That Was Gone the Next Day

I was killing time before an appointment, wandering a street of old buildings downtown, when I found an antique shop I had never noticed. Narrow, deep, packed floor to ceiling with the good kind of clutter: clocks, lamps, boxes of postcards, furniture stacked on furniture. A little bell rang over the door when I went in.

The owner was an elderly man with a waistcoat and a soft voice who let me browse and then, when I lingered, told me the history of half the objects in the place. He was wonderful company. We talked for the better part of an hour. There was a small mantel clock I fell in love with, brass and walnut, but I did not have the cash on me, and he said, kindly, that it would keep, and to come back tomorrow.

I came back the next day with the money. I found the street. I found the buildings on either side, which I remembered clearly. Between them, where the shop had been, there was no shop. There was an old bricked-up doorway, the brick grey and weathered and obviously decades old, no bell, no window, no sign, nothing that had been open to the public in a very long time.