Here She Lies

her.
    “It’s time.” Bobby took both our mugs to the counter and we went back outside. Gentle cloud-dappled sunlight bathed the whole west side of the street and sidewalk as we returned to Simonoff Antique and Estate Jewelry.
    A bell tinkled when Bobby opened the glass door. I followed him into a small but gracious space lined with wood and glass jewelry cases. A delicate clear-glasschandelier was suspended from the ceiling and the walls were covered in dusty framed prints of midcentury abstract expressionist paintings by Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko — obvious ones that I recognized as readily as anyone — as well as some Calder and, surprise, a Basquiat. In the back of the store a window had been carved over the jeweler’s work area and we saw a gray-haired woman hunched over a table, squinting as her weathered hands manipulated the latch end of a necklace with the pointed tip of precision pliers. At the sound of the bell she looked up at us and I saw that her eyes, now relaxed, were bright, bright blue.
    “Good morning.” Bobby walked toward the back of the shop, smiling.
    “Morning,” the woman answered in a reedy voice.
    “Glad to find you in,” Bobby said. “We came by before and saw the sign.”
    “Yes,” she said, “I’m sorry about that. My husband, Gaston, usually opens and I come along later, but he’s under the weather today. How can I help you?”
    “We were wondering if we could get some earrings appraised.”
    She pushed back her chair and vanished for a moment, then reappeared through a door in the shop’s back corner. She was tiny, not even five feet tall, and I guessed in her seventies. She wore a long fringed denim skirt, battered Birkenstocks, a red long-sleeved turtleneck and not an iota of jewelry. Positioned now behind the counter, she introduced herself.
    “I’m Ellery Simonoff. Do you have your appraisal item with you?”
    “My wife’s earrings.”
    I took them off and gave them to the woman. They looked like fallen stars in the earth of her craggy brownish palms. “They’re only zircons,” I said.
    “Well, there are zircons and there are zircons and there are...” She squinted at the earrings and her voice trailed off as she set them on a worn velvet display board. We stood in front of her while her thickened fingers placed one earring in her opposite palm. She studied it through a magnifying monocle squeezed over one eye. Using a pair of steel pincers, she lifted it up and turned it around, inspecting it from different angles.
    “This is what we call a bezel-set cubic zirconia — a very nice one — six millimeters, almost one full carat, set in sterling silver. The stone is white. The cut is round brilliant. You see the silver setting, how it encompasses the stone?”
    Bobby and I both nodded, keen students. His expression was serious and a little disappointed (it seemed to me) at the detailed description of the zircon, whereas I could not have been happier at this news that my precious earrings were certifiable fakes. Winning a marital argument always felt like a reprieve, usually fleeting, but so much had hung on this one. The relief was so satisfying I could feel the tension melting out of me. So... my earrings were fakes; Julie was just plain Julie (no surprise there); she would have Lexy home by noon; and Bobby and I could put our ugly middle-of-the-night argument behind us and go in search of the real spendthrift thief who was pretending to be me.
    Mrs. Simonoff continued. “It’s a knockoff of a popularTiffany earring designed by Elsa Peretti. I’d say that someone did a decent job with this one.”
    Bobby took the earring from her palm and held it up in the diminishing light from the window. Minute by minute, clouds were moving in. More rain was on the way. “It looks so real.”
    “Well, it would, to the untrained eye.”
    “What would it sell for?”
    “Around thirty dollars for a pair.”
    He put the earring on the velvet board beside its mate, which Mrs. Simonoff now carefully picked up. It sparkled for a moment before the natural light from the window darkened completely and outside the first trickle of rain began.
    “This earring?” She switched on a bright lamp and moved the earring beneath it. “Look carefully.”
    We bent together over her palm, bronze and vivid in the small spotlight. The second earring seemed to flash and flicker, almost jump out of her hand.
    “Another white round brilliant, but this one’s a full carat set in