Barton Beck
Barton Beck
You’ve had a full life, and now you are enjoying the fruits of your labors. You have put together a small fortune and in your retirement run an antiques shop with Edith your wife of 40 years.
The weather in Florida is good, the people are pleasant, and even though you don’t sell much merchandise, you get to get out of the house, hunt down precious antiques, and get away from your darling Edith.
You love her, but after all this time you’re just about ready to strangle her. Nothing you do is ever good enough, she’s got an argument for every word that comes out of your mouth, and quite frankly you have heard everything she has ever had to say a million times already. Kvetching, kvetching, always without stopping! About every little thing. Everything you do and everything you say is subject to dissection and criticism, from what deli you buy your lunch from to where you go to temple.
No, its good to get away.
The only thing that you two agreed on was on how much you liked setting up young couples, kindling in them the spark and watching it grow into beautiful love. Young people these days need all the help they can get when it comes to love and marriage, and old-timers at the marriage game like you and Edith are just the right people to guide them, even if they dont know yet that they need the guidance.
You liked your life, in general and felt no reason to ever do anything else. Until a few months ago when you tracked down a curious set of daggers. By the looks of them, they are very old, but are really a collector’s dream. They have remained perfectly intact and generally in perfect condition. The jewels that the sheaths are encrusted with look like they were the original ones in the settings which is highly unusual by itself, but if that were not enough there isn’t even a bit of tarnish anywhere, and the blade does not seem to have dulled at all over time. There is no evidence of cleaning or sharpening, and though you know better, you could swear that the daggers look now exactly the same as they did when they were first made.
You were not sorry to pay a hefty price for them. You just knew you’d make your money back easily. They were so spectacular that upon acquiring them you didn’t return to the store and lock them away there, but brought them straight home. You couldn’t wait till next morning to show them off to Edith.
She didn’t appreciate the gesture at first (she never does) and started up yelling about people breaking in to steal it and not being able to sleep at night, but once she took a good look at them, she finally saw what made you so excited. For the first time in years the two of you ate in silence and spent the evening without a single fight, admiring your amazing finds.
Even though you’d planned on selling the knives, Edith and you agreed after a while that you couldn’t just sell them to anyone. It had to be someone who understood their worth. Until you found such a buyer you agreed that keeping the daggers at home would be much safer than at the shop.
You’ve been feeling kind of restless, and decided to take a vacation. When Edith suggested a quiet little place in Brazil called Almeirim, it sounded just perfect, and soon you were on your way. You brought the daggers with you, of course, for safekeeping. There isn’t much going on here. Really its just a village, but there are some interesting people, and the scenery is simply captivating. You could spend the rest of your life in this paradise.
People You Know:
Edith Barton- Your darling wife. She just drives you meshugge!
Father Gabriel- The Jesuit schoolmaster. You never understood what sort of a messed up God would require his followers never to marry or have children. Those poor Catholic schmucks...
Madame Catalina- A strange lady. Some sort of a gypsy. So many of these charlatans running around in the world today!
Krysti Nuyen - A very pretty shiksa, but she really needs to tone it down. She'll never find a nice man to settle down with dressed like such a nafka.
Horatio Salvadore - A nice young man that lives in the village.
