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  At my behest he described for me this sacrament. According to Young Charles, the wandering parson had proselytized but briefly, and then brought forth a gentleman’s snuffbox.

  “The lid was a scrimshaw of angels blowing trumps above roiling seas, and what else could it be? For I am as dauntless as a whale now!” He whirled again, rubbing his sooty hands over his face and through his greasy hair, which stood out like the hide of a porcupine. He snatched up his tongs and again applied his demi-nail to the flames. “Within was a powdered host, like salt, like the dried tears of the Son Himself, praised be He, and I knelt before the parson and took his sacrament like a gent takes his snuff, and the Lord, the Lord, the Lord was full in me in a nonce! The Spirit of the Lord crawled my skin and filled my eyes and all was His roaring sacred Light—but not light in the eyes. It was a Light in my brains.” He tapped his forehead to emphasize this, leaving a smear of ash. “And my internal eyes remain unhooded now. I can see God’s Godliness in every crumb and morsel of His creation now.”

  As he spoke he completed another nail and quenched it. The steaming nail he then tossed into a large cask already overspilling with like nails. The whole cask steamed, for all its contents were fresh forged, two days’ work done in a single morning. As I marveled at this industry, he was already pulling forth his stock to begin the next nail.

  “And what fealty does the Lord demand for this New Sacrament? For this wondrous Manifest Gospel? Naught but spoons and buckles!” He cackled at this, like a bawdy crone at her hearth. “Buckles and spoons for the Lord!”

  I asked Young Charles if he had retained any of this powdered host, and his eyes aglittered, but guardedly. Though he muttered on, he spoke no further to me—although I was the only soul visibly present.

  The first thing I heard stepping back through the portal—even before my vision had cleared and the ecstatic shivers had finished running off me—was Chico laughing.

  “Damn, holmes!” He called out, a caricature of himself. “You been to Colonial Williamsburg, or down to the strip club?” I blinked away the portal dazzle. Chico shook his head, still grinning.

  Taylor swiped at the wall-mounted tablet and the portal collapsed with a snap. “You do look sorta flushed, and you’re grinning like a loon. Just in case it doesn’t go without saying, I don’t think you should be hooking up with people in the past. That’s... that’s weird.”

  The sweaty blacksmith jumped to mind. “I didn’t!” I blurted out too quickly, because I hadn’t, hadn’t laid a finger on him. I don’t think he would have been amenable. “It’s just portal rush!”

  “What the hell’s portal rush?” Taylor asked.

  “You know, the rush you get from—” but Chico waved it off.

  “Whatever, Pablo. What’s your haul?”

  I dug into my satchel and brought out the two spoons. Until you lay hands on the real deal, it’s easy to forget that basically all of our “silverware” is really cheap pressed steel. Actual silver silverware is heavy and dense, not bright like jewelry, but gun-metal grey. Chico nodded his appreciation, holding the spoons out delicately. They practically glowed in the cheap fluorescent light. He tinged them against each other and they sang like crystal. “Niiiiiiice!” he sang out in spot-on harmony. Chico produced a chamois, wrapped the spoons so they wouldn’t knock together, and then slipped them inside his jacket pocket. He held out his hand, palm up, like a bellhop waiting for a tip.

  I stared at his hand. Taylor rolled his eyes.

  “The snuffbox, Pablo,” Chico chided.

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah.” I dug around in the satchel, and then searched my pockets, and came up with it. Chico shook it and seemed satisfied when he heard nothing. Then he squinted at me, gears grinding in his head.

  “You left the rest of the ’teenth with whoever, ¿verdad?”

  “With the sweaty blacksmith, yeah. Like you said.”

  He scrutinized my face, like a cop does, shifting his head from side to side as he checked my pupils, peering at my nose and eyes like a horse buyer. He watched me, just standing there breathing. It made me nervous, even though I was clean as a whistle.

  “The blacksmith,” I added, trying to fill the void, “he seemed... he seemed like he’d spread the Good Word. Evangelize. But a sixteenth of an ounce isn’t much.”

  Chico smiled, showing his eyeteeth like a cartoon wolf.

  “’xactly, Pablocito.” He spirited the snuffbox away with one hand and simultaneously produced a fat roll of twenties with the other. He counted out twenty-five bills. “When you got a inelastic vertical demand curve, scarcity is the name of the game. Econ 101, cabrón.” He handed over the stack and left, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll call you in a week or two for an encore performance, Pablocito.”

  I drove home in a haze, buzzed from the portal, but anchored to reality by the knot of twenties crammed in my pocket. Back at my apartment, despite the buzz, I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  The next morning I was halfway through a bowl of store-brand flakes before I realized I’d never turned my phone back on. When I plugged in and powered up, it blew up with chimes, vibrations, chirps, and trills.

  What I noticed first was how badly I’d overslept, because the phone is also my alarm clock. It was almost noon. My gut sank. The voicemail and notifications did nothing to lift its spirit.

  There were seven texts from the floor manager at Stalk, the up-and-coming finedining gastropub where I waited tables. The first was genial:

  COME IN ~1HR EARLY? NEED BRUNCH PREP W/MICHAEL B/C OTHER MICHAEL NO-SHOW. KITCHEN TIME&HALF TIL DOORS.

  The final text read:

  A$$HOL3: DO NOT COME IN TIL WE TALK!! YOU ARE WRITTEN UP!!!!!!!!!

  This was followed by two emoji: a gun and a skull.

  There were also voicemails, several from Stalk—which I deleted unplayed—and one from Jenny at Voice Talent, Limited. It’s a good company run by two very earnest Mormons, the wry name totally unintentional. Jenny was super sorry to be the “bad news bear,” but the client for the three radio spots I had slotted for that morning—which I’d slept through anyway—had backed out. She and Jon and John were super disappointed, too, but all thought I was a super fun guy to work with and they’d be super-super sure to reach out the next time they had a client that was a good fit, okay?

  The last message was from James, my boyfriend. But before I could check it my phone rang, a number I didn’t know with a 617 area code. My phone said that meant “Boston.”

  It was Chico.

  “Hey, Pablocito, we gotta meet up.”

  He didn’t seem super enthusiastic, but definitely better than the floor manager, who was at that very moment fuming through my shift, schlepping trays of asparagus and morel tapas and pushing this cut-rate Beaujolais we’d gotten cheap from some shady distributor in Montreal.

  “I thought it’d be a week or two?” I nervously peered out my windows. A stooped man in a straw hat led a waddling old terrier down the sidewalk. Neither of them looked like narcs or narcotráficos.

  “Yeah, well, now it’s now. You like Mexican?”

  I said I didn’t, because I don’t, but Chico seemed distracted.

  “Great,” he replied and gave me the address of a strip-mall mom-and-pop taqueria. “Let’s have lunch.”

  “Wait! When?”

  Chico sighed, and I could hear him rolling his eyes. “Now. It’s lunch time.”

  He hung up, and I scrambled to get dressed.

  The place was crowded, and Chico was already seated and crunching through a plate of flautas when I got there. As I picked my way to his booth, a frumpyish gal in large, dark sunglasses and a charcoal cardigan ducked out of the bathroom and joined him. Chico slid a cellphone—presumably with a 617 area code—across the table to her, and she tucked it back into her purse. A waitress immediately brought her a red plastic tumbler filled with a large volume of ice and a small volume of diet cola. Chico scooted over and motioned for me to join him on his side of the booth.
No one asked if I wanted anything.

  “Peggy,” he said through a mouthful of lettuce, “This is my actor, Pablocito.”

  She stitched her brow. “A blue-eyed Pablo?”

  “Paul,” I said, offering my hand.

  “Pablo, this is Peggy. She collects spoons and shit.”

  “I’m an adjunct professor with the history department at UNC.” She took my hand and shook it once, briskly. “I specialize in Colonial and Early Republic material culture.” Peggy dug a rolled piece of black velvet out of her purse. She unfurled it, revealing a drawer’s worth of spoons.

  “Chico says you’re a fine actor. You didn’t get burned as a witch, so I suppose that’s true.”

  “Why does everyone keep making that joke?” I wondered aloud in mock bewilderment. She carried on as though I hadn’t spoken.

  “You may be a great actor, Paul, but you need an education in spoons.” She plucked one up. “Here’s one from your haul from last night. Coin silver, elliptical bowl; plain. It’s something a man of means might have used daily. But—” she indicated the top of the handle. “See this rounded, upturned handle with the mid-rib? That’s a little fancy; a well-off tradesman bought this to put out for guests, to show off a little. He was feeling prosperous. We know it’s pure coin silver, and we know it’s from Massachusetts in 1770.” Now she smiled. “And it’s part of a set; you got a pair. All together, that pair is probably worth a grand.” All the air went out of the room. It suddenly seemed like someone had cut the highs and turned the bass way up, making the lunchroom chatter throb in my chest like an electro kickdrum.

  One thousand dollars. That’s over four hundred and fifty hours of work at my waiter’s hourly. Even if you figure in a good night’s tips—which wasn’t guaranteed; Stalk was highfaluting, but Asheville isn’t Manhattan—I’d still have to work ten good shifts to walk away with that much money.

  A grand for thirty minutes of acting. Peggy reached out and took my hand. Chico stopped chewing briefly and smirked.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said without a trace of sarcasm. “You’ll do better next time. I’ll show you how.”

  She let go and turned her attention back to her spoons. Chico returned to his flautas.

  “Everything you get, historically speaking, is equally precious. And the provenance is beyond dispute. But despite what we know,” she tipped a nod to me and Chico, “We can’t document the provenance of these items—they have, after all, skipped several hundred years of probate, auctions, passing from collector to collector, all that. So we sell to individual collectors, not institutions. Individual collectors with resources— and tempers. Just to forestall any clever innovations: If we scammed a university or museum and got caught, they might sue us, but would probably just sweep it under the rug. Bad press. But if we get caught scamming these collectors, they will hammer our hands flat. That’s not just a vivid turn of phrase, Paul. I could show you pictures. They’ve shown me pictures.”

  Chico grunted and nodded, but never stopped working his flautas.

  “That said, our clientele also places a premium on decorative flourishes and interesting back stories,” she smiled primly. “Which we clearly have. An institution wouldn’t offer that premium.” She pointed to a spoon all the way to her right, one of the ones I’d brought back. “Here’s your spoon. It’s plain, but nothing to be ashamed of. See the bowl? It’s elliptical, an everyday spoon.” She indicated another spoon, further to the left. “This has an elongated oval bowl, and, look,” she flipped it and pointed to the back, where a clam-shell shape stood out at the joint of the handle and bowl, “A swag-form shell motif. Fancy. Believe it or not, a collector will pay for that, even though it’s of little historical import. It’s the same with these bright cut designs on the handles.” She indicated several other spoons with ornate designes that seemed to glow up out of the dull gray silver. “Revere was especially adept at these. They impress the pants off buyers. I once sold a spoon just like this to a man from Southie who was buying it as a gift for James ‘Whitey’ Bulger.”

  “Revere?” I asked, “Paul Revere? As in, comma, Midnight Ride of?”

  Peggy smiled and Chico snorted his mirth. “You thought Chico was just sending you back in time to fleece rural blacksmiths of random dinnerware, Paul?”

  “But if I collect the spoons from the villagers, aren’t they going to disappear from the museums and collections where they already are?”

  Peggy scrunched her nose. “Of course not; these spoons never made it into any collections or museums, because you went back and took them before they could.”

  “Is that really how it works?” I asked, slackjawed.

  Chico chortled again. “No, but it’s like that. You’d have to ask Taylor that runs the portal. All that counts is that nothing you do through the portal does shit to the here and now. We are literally creating wealth here, holmes. The government should be giving our asses a tax break and shit.”

  Peggy shrugged it all off; however it worked, it wasn’t her problem.

  She selected another spoon from her roll, identical to mine—I assumed it was the other from the pair, and then she flipped them both. One was blank, the other had REVERE set in a little rectangle crookedly stamped along the length of its handle. She pointed to the blank spoon. “This is yours,” then the other, “and this is much, much better. Most of the utensils and silver you see in Quansigamog Pond will be from Revere’s workshop—I can identify them with confidence—but we get seven times as much if the piece bears his mark. He used several in his career. He inherited the business from his dad, Paul Revere Sr., and used some of his marks, too—” she flipped several more spoons. Two showed a PR, one in italics, the other straight. Another showed •P. REVERE in a rectangle with a little dot before it.

  She pointed back to the first two identical spoons, mine blank and hers with the mark of REVERE. “To review: Your spoon will get us five hundred dollars. If it bore the mark it would be worth thirty-five hundred. There’s a lot of moving parts on this deal,” she looked at Chico, who had finished off his flautas and was now sipping his horchata, watching. He nodded curtly. “So it’s important you come back with a stamped Revere every time. And small items, like spoons, are the least of it. Something like a tankard or quart cann—”

  “A can of what?” I asked, legitimately confused.

  Peggy smiled and shook her head, “A ‘Boston cann,’ with two ns. A tankard has straight sides and a lid; a Boston cann is more like a big mug: no lid, bulbous body. That style is sort of Boston-specific, and so it’s big with my Cambridge collectors. A cann or tankard will sell for over fifty thousand dollars. Provided it bears the mark of patriot and silversmith Paul Revere, comma Midnight Ride of.”

  Peggy smiled, then hit me with her coup de grace: “You get a flat fee for trips where you return with spoons and buckles, but you get a percentage on something like a quart cann. Seven percent.”

  As she rolled up her spoon collection the numbers rang up in my head—I’m a waiter, after all, and seven percent is just shy of half of a fair tip. Seven percent on fifty thousand dollars is thirty-five hundred, more than I’ve made in any given month in my entire working life. Thirty-five hundred dollars for thirty minutes of work, for thirty minutes of acting.

  I couldn’t help but smile at her. She smiled back like the canary that ate the pussycat, her hands folded primly over her velvet roll of priceless spoons.

  But, of course they had a price. It all had a price. I could get 7 percent of that price.

  Chico slurped the last of his rice milkshake and stood.

  “Boy am I exhausted,” Peggy said idly, and then with just a little too much import:

  “I could really use a latte.” Chico, digging through his pockets for his cash, produced a meticulously crumpled ball of paper, coughed, and absent-mindedly tossed it on the table as he continued sorting through pocket junk. Peggy snapped up the ball before it had even stopped jouncing around. She mumbled a thanks and im
mediately walked out.

  Chico finally came up with a twenty dollar bill and laid it on the table next to his clean plate. “You not hungry, Pablo? What up with that?” I started to answer, but he wasn’t listening. “Anyway, I’ll call you in, like, two weeks, a month—after we sort some shit out on our end.”

  From the Journal of Pastor Ephraim Otis, Quansigamog Pond, Massachusetts, 1770

  For nearly a fortnight this barefoot, wandering parson has returned daily, and yet I fail and fail again to make his acquaintance. I grow to suspect that the smith, Young Charles Bull, endeavors to conceal from me this parson’s comings and goings.

  Members of my flock have become increasingly withdrawn from our small congregation, but are far from idle. The village hums with their industry. It seems that every cottage burns late into the night, looms and needles and wheels in constant, restless motion—even on the Lord’s Sabbath. Broadcloth, stockings, caps, tinware, pottery, cask upon cask of nails—all are stockpiled in great heaps, then freighted each two days to Boston town by Young Charles. He returns late in the night—seemingly no longer in need of sleep—having traded all this stock for a rich-man’s saucière or tankard.

  In the village there is a great mania for silver. Not a spoon remains, and barely a shoe or kneebreech retains its buckle.

  I fear the Devil has come to Quansigamog Pond.

  It was almost three weeks before Chico called me. During that time Voice Talent, Limited lined up and lost another gig, and my manager at Stalk continued to give me the cold shoulder, shorting my shifts and giving me ridiculously vacant sections. I think he was starving me out. So I was pretty glad to finally get Chico’s call; five hundred dollars goes quick.