You Break It, You Buy It - 1. Response to prompt 490

Clayton was already rolling his eyes with impatience, and this was only the third yard sale he and Gary had been to. "Gary, come on. I don't want to waste the whole day doing this. It's so warm, we could be at the beach."

"I'm gonna look at the jewelry." Gary strolled away from the younger man, who promptly got absorbed in his phone. On a table cluttered with horrid decorative dishes and glassware was a sign, "YOU BREAK IT, YOU BUY IT." Well, pleased to make your acquaintance, too.

Under the table was an old locked wooden box. Gary picked it up and addressed the woman in the floppy hat sitting by the cash box. "Is this for sale?"

The woman looked up from her magazine and frowned at the box. "Ten dollars."

"Ten dollars!? What's in it?"

"I dunno. It's old. It's worth twenty."

"Well, can I open it and see what's inside? It's locked."

"I don't have a key. So you'd have to break it open. And--"

"I know, I break it, I buy it."

"That's right."

"I'll give you five."

"Eight."

"Seven."

"Eight."

Eight was too much, but Gary's curiosity was piqued, and he probably wouldn't starve for lack of eight dollars. "All right." He handed her a twenty.

"You got anything smaller?"

Gary fished out three one dollar bills. "Here, you can give me a ten and a five. That's the best I can do."

"You need a receipt?"

"No."

Clayton walked up and peered at the box. "What's that?"

"It's an antique box from Tsarist Russia used to store the shrunken heads of excessively inquisitive little queens."

"Jeez, I just asked."

"Here you go," the woman said, handing Gary three five dollar bills.

Gary thought he really shouldn't give Clayton such a hard time. He himself had been young once, young and impatient and unappreciative in so many ways. He himself had had an older lover, who put up with more shit from Gary than anyone should have to, and still Gary was the one who broke it off. And then he'd ended up hearing about his lover's death third-hand.

Tucking the box under one arm, he intertwined the fingers of his free hand in Clayton's and said, "OK, let's go to the beach."

********************

By the time they got home, Clayton was in a much better mood and Gary was wretchedly sunburned.

"Thanks, Gare, that was just what I needed. A little volleyball, a little swim in the surf, some men to ogle, and way too much junk food." He moved to hug Gary, who shrank from him.

"Don't touch, please. These may be third-degree burns."

"Oh, sweetie, I wish you'd use more sunblock. I keep telling you."

"I'm going to see if we have a good spray anesthetic in the medicine cabinet."

They didn't, of course. Gary made do with aloe vera.

"So now I don't get to touch you for -- how long?"

"It'll probably be better tomorrow."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

Clayton bounced around the house for another hour and then, as he often did, suddenly crashed. "Wow, I am so zonked. I'm going to bed."

"I'll be up in a minute."

"OK."

Gary joined Clayton in bed but couldn't sleep. There was no movement he could make comfortably. He tried lying without a pillow, which was no better. He thought about a cold shower, then thought it would probably feel like being attacked with nail guns. He threw off the blanket, then threw off the sheet, and finally gave up and got up.

Downstairs, he saw his yard sale purchase sitting on the kitchen table. "I bought you, so I might as well break you."

It wasn't difficult to pry off the lock with a screwdriver. He just thought it was a shame to ruin the box. Oh, well, there's no other way to see whatever someone went out of his way to make sure nobody could see.

The lock bent and broke with a snap. The lid opened. There was no treasure of Monte Cristo inside, just some cabinet-card style photos, a couple of old postcards, some scraps of paper. But, wrapped in a dish rag now stiff with age, there was a ring. It looked like a school ring. Definitely a man's ring. It was massive and had a motto in Latin around the stone.

Gary examined one of the photos. Probably taken before 1920, maybe a little after. Two men faced the camera, slight smiles on their faces. The man in back, perhaps thirty-five, had his arms around the one in front, who looked to be in his early twenties.

There was a photo postcard showing the same two faces, peeking through the holes in a silly boardwalk painted scene, so that the older man's face was on the body of a snake and the younger man's was on the body of an exotic bird. The snake was eyeing the bird hungrily. On the back of the postcard was written, "To Johnny, my favorite waiter. I'm sending that ring you liked so much and something to make sure you come back here. P.S. Did you keep that dish rag?" It was postmarked New York City.

One of the scraps of paper was a ticket, a paid train ticket from Los Angeles to New York. It was unused.

There was another postcard, a Manhattan skyline. On the back it read simply, "Johnny, Why? --Neil."

Los Angeles isn't far from here, Gary thought. New York sure is, though.

What had happened? These few scraps lying in this box for almost a hundred years -- what did they point to?

Gary started sobbing. He couldn't stop. Clayton came down and stood close to him. "Gare? What is it?"

Gary grabbed him, pressed his head to Clayton's waist, and sobbed. Clayton put his arms around him. "Ow, ow, ow," Gary said.

Clayton pulled his arms away. "No," Gary said, "put your arms back." Clayton did. "Ow, ow, ow," Gary said again.

"I don't get you sometimes," Clayton said.

"Neither do I," his lover answered, rocking back and forth through the pain.