2 - Undervalued

Frieda ground her teeth. Shouting “Fuck you, Val!” wasn’t worth the effort. She was kicking the snow off of her boots on the back mat. She hadn’t even unzipped her parka yet.

“Girl!” Her dad’s girlfriend glared as she leaned back from the front counter. “Get your ass in gear.”

“Be there in a minute!” Came out despite “Die screaming in a fire, you harpy slut!” standing ready on Frieda’s vocal folds. The weather had delayed her a little. It wasn’t snowing hard; she was early for her four pm shift.

Frieda liked working after school at her dad’s pawn shop. She had spent so much of the last four years only seeing him a couple of weekends a month. If he didn’t have such garbage taste in women, she’d have asked to move in with him for senior year.

She stowed away her winter clothes in the back office. She threw off her top and was dragging her uniform polo out of her bag.

“What are you doing?” Val growled back again. “Put your tits away.”

Frieda managed not to bite again as she pulled on the blue polo. Her name was sewn in below the label. She pulled her braided ponytail out of the neck of her shirt. She walked up front. It was ten to four. There was no one in the store and the floor was a mess of muddy boot prints. The mud had dried hard.

“Finally! I’m going for a smoke.” Val was fifteen years older than Frieda. The older woman was attractive, with short cropped red hair, large breasts, and a round ass. She was tall, with long legs. Frieda was only a little shorter at five eight. Val wasn’t wearing the company logo. She had on a stylish black silk top that Frieda’s father had overpaid for.

There was nothing Frieda hated more than her dad proving himself to Val with expensive gifts. The scraping flint of Val’s 18 karat gold lighter set Frieda’s teeth on edge. She might’ve hated the disrespect Val showed to what her dad had built more than any of Val’s other bad habits.

“Go outside this time. Dad doesn’t like the smoke alarm going off again or the whole store stinking of cannabis.” Frieda tried to say.

“It’s snowing out.” Val scowled off the high schooler’s warning.

“The fire--”

“I’ll go to the back window.” The redhead rolled her eyes and only agreed to shut up the girl. She slammed the office door shut before falling into the main chair. The window was in the storeroom, not the office. Frieda hoped Val remembered to pull the battery from the alarm. It was better to end a shift reinstalling a nine volt than explaining to a fireman how stupid the woman was. It didn’t matter. There was nothing more she could do. She grabbed a mop bucket from under the counter and dragged it to the back to fill it up.

She had mopped out the front, Windexed the display cases, sold some cheap jewelry to junior high girls, and sent Jerry, the old stamp collector guy, off with the rare misprints her dad had found for him. It was turning out to be a good shift. A few more comers and goers. It was near six when Val came back out of the backroom. The front was miraculously fully cleaned and empty.

“I got the cash, you can sort the deliveries.” She told Frieda in a dismissal.

“If you want I can just go get supper at Sub-Way and you can--”

“Please, you’ll leave me here til close.” Val interrupted. She flicked her head to the back room. “Deliveries.”

“You’re not my real mom.” Frieda muttered as near inaudibly as she could. It was probably the nicest thought she had about Val all day.

“What did you say young lady?” The older woman snapped.

“I was just--”

“You think can just take out your spoiled little rich girl shit out on me?” She growled. “I--”

“I was just being a snot.” Frieda shrugged. “I’ll--”

“You’ll be answering to your father is what you’ll be doing,” Val huffed. “When he gets home there’ll be hell to pay. I hope he finally has the sense to fire your spoiled ass.”

Frieda kept her temper in check. If she did get fired, then there wouldn’t be anyone to watch the store when her dad went on his business trips. They happened so often now. Frieda prayed her dad was unfaithful. She even wished he found some girl that’d make him never want to return and see Val. He didn’t need the store. With the internet and couriers, he kept his head above water. She liked to hope that he bothered to keep the store to be in town and see her. She liked to imagine that if he found some French girl, or two, he’d refuse to come home and Val would starve in short order. Plus, Frieda’d love to visit France.

Her fantasies of Val vs the polar vortex got her through the first couple of boxes. Everything had its paperwork. It was a nothing chore. Like mopping or cleaning, It should’ve been done. She’d seen the ledger, it was a slow day for January. The slowest month. Fucking Val.

The bell alerted her to the customer coming in. She’d have rushed to the front to handle it but that would just get her in deeper shit by Val. Frieda opened the last box.

“Oh, hey, hi.” The warehouse was small and it was easy to overhear. “I was in yesterday. I had, uh, the other girl look over these coins.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Val said and Frieda could hear her stepmother wasn’t smiling. Frieda would’ve dropped the box in her hands and rushed to the front. She managed to get it up on the shelf first. Christ, she had to hurry though. She had been way wrong about those coins. She’d called her dad after the guy had left. He, the customer, needed more info. “And you’re looking to sell?”

Val hated purchasing. She’d cut the guy to the bone. The idea of money going out of the store was abhorrent to Val and Frieda knew it.

“Uh, yeah.” he said. “She had given me a quote as to a hundred and eighty a coin. I was hoping to sell these eleven and ... That’d be about two thousand bucks, right?”

“Crap! Crap! CRAP!” Frieda hurried as she stuffed the box on top of the shelf and scurrying down her stepladder.

“Two thousand’s about what we’ll resell them for.” The box was poorly balanced and Frieda managed to scamper back up and catch it. “We have to house it, and shop it around, and that takes money too. I could manage seven hundred for the box.”

“She actually said you’d be reselling for about four to five thousand actually.” He claimed. “I tried for about two fifty a coin and she talked me down to a reasonable one eighty.”

“She’s a bit young and naive.” Frieda left it on top of the stepladder as she was running up to the front. “I assure you seven hundred is what we can do.”

“I guess,” He was scratching his hair as he looked at Val.

“Wait!” Frieda shouted. Val tried to burn her stepdaughter’s face off with the superheated daggers coming out of her eyes.

“Oh, hi,” He said to the girl he recognized coming to the front. “Your colleague here was--”

“Oh, I’m her mother.” Val declared.

“You’re not even my stepmother.” Frieda barked. The diamond on Val’s finger was a countdown timer until that wasn’t true. May there never come a first Sunday in June. “I’m sorry, I was going by what a book had told me. I sent the picture to my father, the owner.” She waved to the store. “I really have to talk to you about the coins.”

“Frieda...” Val said through clenched teeth. “I’m with a customer honey.”

“Yeah, but Dad said--”

“Go on, I’ll handle this.” Val reasserted herself.

“I’m confused.” The guy said. He was rocking the cover of the wooden box open and closed. “Look, I’d really like to get these off of my hands--”

“They could be worth 4 million dollars!” Frieda barked.

“What?” He said... “I thought you said they were a collection of spare change.”

“I said they were common, and I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry, may I speak with you in the back, Frieda?” The older woman looked to the younger with a face full of murder. “This’ll take just a moment.”

“No, Val. There’s one last crate to unload in the back, it’s on the stepladder.” Frieda smiled warmly for the customer. “Dad gave me specific instructions and literature to share with this man. I’m sorry but you’re in the way.”

The older woman gave the customer the fakest of smiles and swept out of the room.

“Um, OK. Uh, What?” The man asked.

“Here,” Frieda took a folder of pages and envelopes out from under the counter and opened it. She flipped through until she had a typed letter and printed photo from an Egyptian mansion. “Before World War 1 this collection belonged to a French man living in Memphis, Egypt. The family has been seeking to recover the collection ever since ... Look, I’m sorry, I forgot your name from yesterday.”

“That’s OK. I was struggling to remember yours and I think your step--your dad’s girlfriend said it in front of me.”

“Charming.” Frieda chuckled a little. The guy was kinda good looking, though thirtyish was kinda old to the 18 year old’s brain.

“No that’s the prince. My name is Owen.”

“Frieda.” She smiled. “Nice to meet you for the second time Owen.”

“Likewise, Frieda. OK, about these coins.” He said.

“Right! This family, the Carres, apparently had this set in their family for generations and even now are very keen on having it returned to them.” She said. “You don’t have all the pieces, though there is some reason to think they only had 16 to 20 coins themselves. They believe there were thirty in the set.”

“That’s what the Romans paid Judas to betray Jesus.” Owen nodded with a faraway look. “And they’re willing to pay 4 million dollars for them?”

“I rounded up to get the words out faster.” She blushed. “I’m sorry.”

“Rounded up from what?”

“From 200 000 euros a coin. So 2.4 million for the twelve...” She frowned. “I was thinking there were twelve. I’d have to get out the calculator again, but it was 3.6 million Canadian.” She frowned at the red velvet stages inside the box. “You did have twelve yesterday?”

“I had twelve until about twenty minutes ago. Thinking they were about 200 bucks apiece, I overtipped a nice girl.” He was white faced. Then he laughed, and shook his head. “You know what? I gave away 200 bucks. They weren’t worth 200 000 euros to me earlier this afternoon.”

“That’s ... What?” Frieda frowned.

“OK, so you know that these are--”

“We’re not certain.” She shook her head. “They could be from the set the Carres are looking for. The chance is good but not certain. I couldn’t let you sell them to Val without telling you though. Dad would’ve been disappointed ... At least in one of us.”

“Well then.” He said with a sigh. “How do I find out for certain?”

“Dad’ll be able to look at them.” She promised. “He’s going to pick up a primer from one of the Carre family and check it against your coins. I’m afraid, he won’t be back in town until the middle of next week. Or maybe as late as a week from Sunday.”

“Oh,” Owen drummed his fingers on the glass countertop. He took a long sigh. “So, I gotta keep ‘em. Should I leave my number?”

“That would be great!” Frieda pulled out a leather tied black notebook. She flipped it open to a new page. “Dad’s a huge coin nerd, I’m sure he’s going to go off the wall facilitating this. If you still want to sell when it’s all done.”

“That’s a receipt book.” Owen noticed. “Hey, how about I leave this with you.” He picked a coin out of its recess. “And you sign off on it, and when your dad gets in, looks at it, and gives me a call, he’ll be able to give me positive or negative news right from the get go.”

“Are you sure? They’re really valuable.”

“I’ll trust you signing the receipt.” He looked over Frieda’s shoulder and shared a conspiratorial smile when she looked back as well. Val was back there. “OK?”

“This is great!” She said with a grin. She wrote out the receipt, took a picture with her smartphone of the coin in Owen’s hand, and shuddered when he pressed the coin down in her palm.