Real Gold

With several minutes to spare before she planned to catch the 6 train, Ruby upended her large bag onto the sofa. Items collected for too long tumbled out: ripped Kleenex, Met Opera and New York City Ballet stubs, grocery receipts, bank ATM slips, all of which made it difficult to find the essential items: cell phone, keys, reading glasses, new red lipstick, earplugs, Metro card, all surrounding her Rolleiflex camera. 

Although she hadn’t performed in years, a cumbersome bag didn’t go well with her lithe dance figure. Determined to carry as light a load as possible, she still returned most of the items to the bag and was gathering up the rest to throw in the wastebasket when a shiny ring fell off the sofa onto the floor.

Surprised, Ruby stared as it rolled across the parquet and stopped just inches in front of a table loaded with African violets, all cloned from one given to her years ago by her mother. She hadn’t purchased a ring. Ron, her boyfriend, hadn’t given her one and wasn’t going to anytime soon. She’d overheard him tell a young blonde at a bar about a month ago that he didn’t want to get married but envied those fortunate enough to find the perfect partner. Ruby wasn’t sure he’d meant for her to hear his announcement.

The morning sun cleared the top of the building across the street, and a stream of sunshine entered Ruby’s living room, landed on the floor where the ring lay, tantalizing, teasing, and with a promise for the future.

Her horoscope, the first item she read every morning in the Daily News, had told her: Real gold is when you pay attention to a person you’ll meet. Ruby liked to think she was too sophisticated to believe in the daily forecasts, but this was different: first the horoscope and now the ring. 

Would Ron have dropped a ring in her bag as a surprise, a unique way of giving her an engagement ring? No, because he’d cancelled their date last Wednesday, and she hadn’t heard from him since.

She picked up the ring and held out her hand, weighed it visually and physically. Two baguette-shaped stones lay on each side of a large sparkling center stone. It was too solid for an inexpensive costume piece, but the ring might contain zircons or maybe even diamonds. Only a jeweler or a person who knew jewelry would be able to tell the difference. 

She dropped the ring into her trousers’ right pocket, threw the strap of her bag over her shoulder, and grabbed a pink scarf from the table by the door. She carried a scarf most of the year, even in hot months, to wrap around her neck for warmth on the train, the air-conditioned cars often cold in the summer. 

On the five-block walk to the subway, Ruby stopped at a jeweler’s where she’d recently had new batteries put in her watch. She pressed the white button at the door and was buzzed in. Pulling the ring from her pocket, Ruby gave the woman behind the counter her best smile and laid the ring on the glass case that held many sparkling rings. 

“Could you tell me if these are real diamonds?” Ruby asked. “Without having to do an appraisal?”

“Very nice,” said the dark-haired and dark-complexioned woman. “Let’s put this on a black cloth. Are you wanting to sell?”

“I just want to find out if they’re real diamonds.”

While the woman examined the ring, Ruby explained that she’d found it in her purse.

“It isn’t yours?”

Ruby shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“They’re diamonds, well-cut. See how they sparkle. High quality. Colorless. The ring may not have been worn. The band has no scratches.”

“It’s beautiful,” Rudy said. “I’ve always wanted one, ever since I was a toddler and wanted to wear my mother’s.”

“You don’t want to sell?”

“Do you think I have it by mistake?”

The jeweler raised her dark eyebrows, probably thought she’d stolen it. That’s when Ruby noticed everything about the woman was dark: black dress, earrings, dark-rimmed glasses, as if part of the dramatic style had reached beyond intention. Nothing balanced the look. Hair dyed too black, penciled eyebrows too heavy. The woman wanted to be noticed, to be remembered.

“It’s expensive, isn’t it?” Ruby asked. 

Again the woman raised her eyebrows.

Ruby thanked her and picked up the ring from the soft black cloth and returned it to her pocket. She left the store and walked the last two blocks to the 6 train to head downtown for Saturday overtime work at a private bank only a few yards from Wall Street. Employee reviews were scheduled to begin in less than a month, and the atmosphere had risen to a level of tense but smiling happy-to-be-working faces. Several people had been laid off a few months earlier, and Ruby didn’t want to be the next person asked to leave.

She reconciled her nine-to-five finance job and her artistic life, a former dancer turned amateur photographer, by her title at the bank, senior design editor. The words sounded lofty, but she knew the most creative endeavor she accomplished at the office was where she placed statistical data and graphs among the financial verbiage. No page could have too many words or too many numbers. The bank believed that readers of such stuff expected this balance.

Ruby followed a large group of people down the stairs to the subway and felt the ring press against her thigh. When the train pulled into the station, instead of heading to the less crowded front or end of the train, which she usually did, she entered a crowded center car. Today was different and she would behave differently.

All the seats were taken and while waiting for the doors to close, Ruby wrapped the pink scarf around her neck, covering as much skin as possible between her chin and shoulders. The doors closed and Ruby grabbed onto the vertical bar in front of her.

Her friends, mostly artists, dancers, writers, didn’t wear rings like the one that had rolled out of her bag. Maybe a woman had turned down a marriage proposal. Or could a disappointed man have deliberately dropped the expensive ring into her bag? After being rejected the man was distraught, and he’d selected Ruby out of all the people on the train or in a restaurant or walking down the street or even in her office, and dropped the ring in her bag. 

Or a woman had discovered her fiancé was cheating on her, a trader or investment banker like Ron, some guy with money from the size of the diamonds. The woman wanted no more of her fiancé and his sidestepping. Good for her. That’s what the cheater deserved: to have his ring discarded. But why had the person given the ring to her?

Maybe she’d been sitting beside the disappointed woman or man, possibly on a bench overlooking the Hudson River, eating lunch and watching sailboats controlled by captains who captured the wind effortlessly, weighing choices as they tacked their way to the Atlantic. She’d sailed a couple of times with Ron on his 42-footer, but he’d mentioned he preferred sailing with the guys in his firm.

At Grand Central Ruby switched to a 4 train in order to get to downtown faster. When the 4 stopped at the Wall Street Station, she pulled the ring out of her pocket and put it on her engagement ring finger. It was a good fit, size six, the jeweler had said.

When she arrived on her floor, the eighteenth out of fifty-six, she headed to the small kitchen and, although right handed, poured coffee with her left. It was difficult to take her eyes off the ring. In a short meeting with two partners in one of the conference rooms, she held a pen in her left hand and kept it on the table, but she wrote nothing on the yellow pad in front of her.

Even on Saturday both partners who sat across from her wore dark suits. Ruby had on a navy blazer with her jeans. At first neither man mentioned the ring. She hadn’t expected a comment, the firm conservative and old school, as polished as the table where they sat.

After they’d discussed the new brochure going out to clients, where and how much financial date should be included, the shorter partner, Mr. Arnold, finally glanced at her left hand. He was bald, and a few employees made fun of him because they said he walked like a duck. The third time Mr. Arnold looked at her ring he said, “Beautiful.”

Startled, Ruby thanked him but didn’t go further with the lie, although unless someone in her office had slipped the ring into her bag, no one there would know if wasn’t hers. She lived in a city so large she could disappear, even from herself, like falling into a silence when days could pass when she communicated with only her doorman. Good morning. Good evening. And when she retreated to her cubicle in the bank. Good morning. Good evening.

People knew little about her. Bits and pieces she’d let escape: born in Wisconsin, bad knees from leaping across stages, even ending in proper pliés. She’d taken up photography after her parents died within weeks of each other, their promise greater than till death do us part, so much in love that one couldn’t survive without the other, equilibrium in the partnership gone.

Mr. Arnold smiled at her when she left the conference room. What if he had dropped the ring in her bag? But what if Ron had given it to her? She needed to sort out Ron before she leaped to a crazy conclusion. That might be why Ron was out of sorts: because she hadn’t found the ring, hadn’t said anything to him.

She thought she’d gone too far the night she told him she loved him. He’d hurried away, hadn’t stayed the night.

Ruby stared at the ring. She knew Ron went to strip clubs on the West Side Highway with his stockbroker buddies. He’d talked about the gorgeous young girls, effectively slamming her never-to-be-that-young-again state, as if wanting to confide his lust for the younger women, stacking them next to her, who came up short not only in youth, but also in one or more body parts, small breasts.

Their affair was simple. Dinners. Sleeping at his or her apartment. Sometimes he brought flowers and wine. Sometimes she bought ties for him. She loved the shiny silks. The night she’d told him she loved him, she’d discovered he didn’t like desserts. She’d made pot au chocolat that evening, and he’d asked her how could she forget something so important about him. And it was odd how little she knew about him after six years. Why had she not noticed he never ate sweets?

She pulled her phone out of her bag, stood, and searched for anyone in a cubicle near her. Almost everyone who’d come in that morning had already gone home. She sat and called Ron.

“Hey, babe,” he said, “What’s going on?”

“I found it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The ring in my bag.”

“What ring?”

“The one you gave me. I’m sorry I didn’t find it sooner.”

Ron gasped or choked, a strange sound traveling from him to her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t leave a ring in your bag.”

“You’re not messing with me?”

“Hardly, but I’ve been thinking about calling you.”

She knew instantly what was coming next. He wanted to break up.

“We need to stop seeing each other,” she said. “I’m feeling a little crowded.”

He didn’t answer.

“Are you there?” she asked.

He’d hung up. She wanted to call him back and say she was joking, say she missed him, give him the words as a gift, but she put her phone back in her bag. Ron wanted fun conversation, which she could no longer force. She’d surprised herself by saying the breakup words. The ring had given her courage.

Ruby looked down at the ring and then stood. She’d worked long enough for the partners to notice her effort. She pulled the new red lipstick from her bag and applied it in front of the mirror on the wall of her cubicle, first on the upper lip and then the lower. 

When she stepped into the hall, Mr. Arnold yelled from his office, “Thank you for coming in, Ruby. Have a good evening.”

Ruby smiled and waved. Mr. Arnold waved back and Ruby walked to the elevators. Poor Mr. Arnold. So many people were alone, not completed by a loving partner. If Mr. Arnold walked like Ron, no one would laugh at him.

Did she love Ron because he didn’t love her, although he’d cared when they’d met? She was sure of it. In the beginning she’d sensed an unspoken promise that they would always be in love. What had happened? If she weren’t so serious and were more fun, would Ron still want to be with her?

She stepped off the elevator into the main lobby on the first floor. When she left the building, she didn’t put in her earplugs like she usually did. Today was different: the ring, her acceptance that Ron was gone. She pulled the camera out of her bag. Taking photos helped her to pay attention to her surroundings. She’d known for a long time she and Ron shouldn’t be a couple. She’d be all right. All she had to do was open her eyes and look and take a shot. 

Wanting to walk she headed to the Brooklyn Bridge subway entrance, two stations away from where she could have gotten on. And it happened, the most common event on a crowded New York sidewalk. Someone stopped without warning, a man she’d been walking behind, both moving at a fast, steady pace, until the man stopped and she ran into him.

“Damn,” Rudy said.

“Sorry ma’am. Are you okay?”

Texas drawl. Maybe first time in the city. Middle-aged, balding, could lose some weight around the middle. She watched him after his eyes left her and traveled up and down the lacey terra-cotta panels of the Woolworth Building on the other side of Broadway, the building neo-Gothic, like an old church in Europe, although finance was the point here not religion.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said the Texas.

He aimed his camera at the top of the building and zoomed in.

He’s an engineer, an architect, or he loves beauty, Ruby thought. 

“It used to be the tallest building in the world,” Ruby said. “Now it’s about twenty-something just in New York. It’s nicknamed the Consumer Cathedral.”

“Have you been inside?” he asked.

“You can’t. Unless you know someone to do that.”

“I have a kind of pass. Would you like to go in?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve wanted to for so long. May we take photos?”

“I don’t see why not?”

Crossing Broadway she saw him glance at her ring finger.

“It isn’t real,” she said. “I wore it to the office this morning to see if anyone would notice.”

“And?”

“One person commented. It was a stupid idea.”

She pulled off the ring and started to drop it in her bag when her eyes landed on a disheveled young woman in tight, torn jeans sitting on the sidewalk next to the entrance to the Woolworth Building. The woman stared at Ruby and jiggled a paper cup that had a small amount of change in the bottom.

“Should I?” she asked the Texan.

“It’s your ring.”

Ruby dropped the ring into the cup. She’d seen someone do that in an old black-and-white movie or she’d dreamed it.

“It better be real,” the woman said.

Ruby looked away.

The Texan nodded to the woman, still rattling her cup, and he dropped in a twenty-dollar bill. He turned to Ruby.

“Does that camera of yours focus automatically?”

Ruby smiled. “It was my father’s. I have to do the work. If I pay attention, work on the focus and the picture, sometimes the result is what I’m aiming for, rather than floating along, taking a shot here, another one there.”

“I understand. I’m in the city at least once a month. This is the first time I’ve carried my camera. I’m seeing all sorts of buildings and places, faces I’ve never noticed.”

“Like we’re only passing time unless we stop long enough to pay attention. I’m glad I ran into you.”

He glanced up at the Woolworth Building. “After we finish here, do you know where there are water tanks on tops of buildings?”

“They’re all over the city.”
She had shots of lots of wooden water tanks and didn’t need more. She was running out of space to store her work. Dragging him to her favorite spots would mean calling friends to gain access to buildings for great rooftop views. She wouldn’t ask him to her building, not yet, where she’d shot the best water tanks. Maybe his next trip to the city, if he called her.

“I’d like that,” she said. She wasn’t compromising just to please the Texan. Maybe she’d discover something new. 

First appeared in Crack the Spine Volume XVI, 2017