A Hidden Gift

 I needed an anniversary gift for my husband—well, technically he wasn’t my husband. At that point, we had lived together for eight years. We never had children. We’d just decided to avoid the expense of a wedding. Emotional expense, mostly, I mean. Then, after a while, a wedding seemed silly.
At any rate. At any rate, I couldn’t find a gift. After shopping all day, in the district of little storefronts, looking at watch fobs and bowties, bottle-rockets, bowie knives, and walking sticks, I hadn’t bought a thing. At the end of the last avenue, I turned a corner, strolled a few blocks, doubled back, and found a narrow side-street I’d never noticed before. A hand-carved signboard read “Secondhand Shop of Saints’ Relics.” The shop window was fogged. I went in. A little bell tinkled above the door.
Bone fragments and splinters, a stray piece of hair, a handful of ash, a bag full of teeth. A gilt book of hours, a piece of shroud, a toenail, dollops of oil in thin vials, a metal spike, a frayed rope, a blue swan’s egg on a fringed pillow, and something that looked like a tiny velvet pouch filled with dried-out boogers. These were some of the things on display around the shop or beneath the glass case.
While I examined the objects, a thin blond man stole out from the back of the shop. He wore a tattersall suit jacket with a pocket square. His eyes were a serum, gray as willow-buds. The closer he came, the less certain I was of his age. Likely he had dyed hair, veneers on his teeth, work done on his face that made his wrinkles look deeper.
“How much for the boogers?” I asked, tapping the glass counter.
“Ah, yes yes yes! Excellent choice, Madame. For you—” he took them out, loosened the pouch string, then set it on the top of the glass. “For you—” he said, then wrote a price on a slip of paper which he passed discreetly to me.
“What’s your return policy?”
“Ok, half price,” the man said. “If you buy today.”
“What saint did they belong to? Is there a story that goes with them? Do you have a certificate of authenticity?”
“I guarantee they are potent,” the man said, thrusting them toward me. He poured some out in my palm. A few spilled on the floor.
“These were involved in some miracle?”
“Of course, no doubt,” the man said. They seemed to glow, translucent yellowish green. Little mesmerizing crystals. Something like flakes of petrified wood. “I’ll leave you to think it over.” With that, the man scurried off again behind the back curtain.
I shook them back into the pouch. Felt their collective weight, heavier than one might expect. I crumpled a couple bills on the glass case, all the cash I had in my purse at the moment. I stepped out, feeling the cool night air caress my face, as the bell tinkled again.
I never gave them to my husband—my lover, my partner I mean. I gave him something else that year, I forget what. Monogrammed cufflinks, probably. I don’t think he would have appreciated a saint’s relic anyway; he never liked dreamcatchers, evil eyes, singing bowls, those sorts of things. He was very clear-headed, practical, and self-assured. It’s something I admired about him.
That anniversary was years ago now.
I’ve kept the pouch to myself, high on a shelf in my closet behind my frumpiest sweaters. From time to time, I’ve taken it out. I’ve wondered about what-ifs and counterfactuals. Calamities I hadn’t known I avoided, catastrophes which had swerved away from me. What miracle had the little pouch enacted; what charmed powers had held sway over our existence? What benign secrets might’ve bonded us closer?
We’ve led a long and happy life together.