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The bell above the door rang as the old man stepped inside. He looked around at the cluttered chaos of the antique shop and sighed. In one corner at the back of the shop was a desk with an antique till. Next to it stood a turquoise card machine, and behind the desk sat a student. The man looked him over. He was scrawny, hair standing in spikes, his t-shirt bearing a slogan of which two words may not be uttered on daytime TV and would certainly lift a few eyebrows at night.
"Any urns?" the man asked.
The student looked up from a large text book on psychology.
"Excuse me?"
"Any urns," the man said. "Do you have any urns?"
"Try a funeral parlor, dude." He returned to his book. The man walked deeper into the store. Past the century old tables where families used to eat, past the wine glasses now silent in toast. Past nick-knacks and old fashioned jewelry no longer worn. Past lamps, books, cutlery, paintings in gilded frames, their paint cracked and splintering, their painted heroes long forgotten. A hobby horse without a tail. He ran his fingers over the satiny wood and one of its glass eyes.
"Bit old for that, aren't you?"
The man looked over his shoulder at the student.
"I had one just like this when I was small. Maybe I've grown too big, but a person is never too old to dream. Once this horse was alive in the mind of someone."
The student looked at his book and back at the old man. "Whatever you say." He went to the index, running his finger past the words, stopping every few moments to look at the man.
He took one book after the other from the shelf and looked at the black and white photographs of inventions long forgotten and the pen drawings of lands that was no longer distant or unknown.
"Just browsing, sir?"
He nodded and cleared his throat. "Just browsing. Lots of memories in this place, you know. Think of all the people that have owned these things."
"They're dead."
He placed the book back on the shelf a little harder than what was necessary, disturbing a couple of layers of accumulated dust. The door of the shop opened in a sudden burst of wind, banging closed again and sending the bell into a frenzy of false ringing.
The student barely looked up.
He went to the other side of the store where he could see some vases. He looked at them one by one until he saw the green and blue one he had had made. It was shaped classically, like the vogue was at the time. A few cracks marred its surface, but it still held together. The top, however, was sealed with bronze which held a small lock. Now that he looked at it, the design seemed foolish, more like a spoutless teapot than a stately urn.
"Found something?" The student looked at the man over his book. For a fleeting moment he wondered if the shop had a panic button.
"I did, I found the urn I was looking for." He held it up for the student to see.
"Are you paying cash or credit?"
The man paced over to the table and sat the urn down. "I don't think you understand - you see, this is my urn."
"Oh, yeah? Prove it."
The man took a small key that hung on a chain beneath his shirt and placed it in the keyhole of the lock.