The pawnbroker kept her coffee the way she liked it, two sugars and no lid, and asked after her daughter's knee before he asked what was in the box. It was the microwave. He wrote the ticket without looking anything up, because her name was already in the system with eleven previous entries, including the ring, and he had never once made her feel small about any of them.

On the shelf behind him her guitar sat between her father's watch and the golf clubs, dusted, priced, patient. Forty dollars. In the parking lot she understood that the only person who had said her name kindly in a month made his living off the worst day of her week. She sat in the car a while. Then she called her sister back, finally, and let it ring.