YOUR TREASURES
ALM No.94, October 2026
SHORT STORIES
The store was called Your Treasures. Or something like that. Garrett Walker had never seen it before and he had been passing this way down 5th Street on his way to lunch, five (sometimes six) days a week for close to two years. As far as he knew, the particular storefront hosting Your Treasures had stood empty just as long—its dark windows bereft and smeared over with dirt.
And now…
Garrett Walker stood in front of one of those now bright windows, puzzling it out. Perhaps the proprietors of this new shop had moved their stock in over the weekend when he had been off and he just hadn’t noticed it on Monday or Tuesday? Still, it was odd…
Behind the plate glass that Garrett was frowning over was a purple velour display on which various items were carefully arranged. Chief among these—like a brass sun around which the other objects seemed to orbit—was a slightly dented tenor trumpet, its casing shiny and yellow.
Garrett put one hand to the window and stroked the glass gently. He had had such a trumpet a thousand years ago, in high school. When he had, and proudly, been the first trumpet in the St. Xavier High School Pep Band. The horn even seemed to have the same dings in its bell as that beloved instrument, now long lost.
A warm feeling, nostalgia?, an unfamiliar feeling really, rose up in Garrett’s heart. Under his breath he hummed a few bars of “Onward To Victory.”
The St. Xavier fight song…
Instead of passing on to the deli where he usually spent his lunch hour, Garrett decided to investigate the inside of this shop. See what other “treasures” it might contain.
Of course, there was a bell that jingled as soon as he twisted the knob on the peeling door. No surprise there…
Quaint quaint quaint
The inside of Your Treasures was cool and dim, its interior lighted mainly, it seemed, by an ornate Tiffany-style chandelier, its expansive amber bowl alive with geometric forms, hearts, and colorful lines. Garrett’s maternal great-grandmother had had, a long time ago, such a chandelier hanging in the center of her musty dining room. His earliest memory had been lying under that chandelier, staring up at it as if it were the Hope Diamond or something. He couldn’t have been three or four then and his own suburban house had possessed no such exotic furniture.
“Good afternoon, sir!” a thick, jovial voice boomed from across the room. Garrett looked down from the antique chandelier. Standing on the far side of the room, as if he had suddenly materialized there, was a portly man wearing a white vest and a lavender shirt. He had a neatly trimmed beard, short black hair. Dark, twinkling eyes. He reminded Garrett, actually, of that one actor. What was his name? He had played a butler in some silly sitcom Garrett used to watch when he had been about the same chandelier-struck age. Three or four.
“Hello,” Garrett replied, nodding at the man. Who smiled back warmly. Mr. French. Mr. French. That had been the TV butler’s name. “Did you all just open here?”
“Why…no,” the proprietor said, pursing his lips and shaking his head slowly. “Why we have been here for quite some time now.”
It was odd but the man had a precise, clipped British accent. Just like the actor in that stupid show.
“Oh, really?’ Garrett said, glancing around the store. There were shelves, display cases, tables everywhere. Jammed with flotsam and jetsam. Baubles and bric-a-brac. In one corner—close to the door—was a walnut rolltop desk, its burnished tambour shut tight. Another warm wave of nostalgia swept over Garrett. He had had exactly such a desk when he was a kid. Had done his homework at such a desk from the time he was nine until…
He couldn’t remember…
Curioser and curioser
“Why, yes…” Mr. French said, enthusiastically. “Going on sixty years now.”
It was Garrett’s turn to purse his lips. That was patently ridiculous. There had been no store, no Your Treasures here four or five days ago, let alone sixty years on. It had all been empty storefront. Smeared, dark windows. An eyesore among eyesores in the crumbling downtown square where Garrett toiled day after day as a security guard/supervisor.
Another dead end on his life resume of sixty years.
Sixty…
Odd…
Before Garrett could refute the veracity of Mr. French’s claim, the portly man produced, as if by sleight of hand, two identical oblong boxes. He clutched these in his beefy paws and now brandished those objects toward Garrett.
“Here sir our some of our treasures. Two you might really be interested in. We have had these in our stock now for close to fifty years…”
Garrett stared at one of the devices. It was a vintage walkie-talkie, circa 1970s maybe. A General-Electric walkie, actually, a black antenna affixed to the top of its gray plastic casing like some supple finger. Below a vent-like speaker, a bright orange button stood out on the instrument. A focal point designed especially for sending out antique dots and dashes. Morse Code. The Morse alphabet was arranged, helpfully, on a black label around this pill-shaped button. Like a primer for myriad exotic, electronic conversations.
“I…” Garrett, began, dumbfounded.
Garrett Walker had had such a walkie-talkie set. When? In the dark ages of the 1970s. A treasured Christmas gift, when he had been ten or so. A gift from good ole magnanimous Santa Claus. He remembered that he and his younger brother, Gary, had immediately ventured out that morning to test the radios. That they had traipsed through their snow-clotted neighborhood, amazed at how clearly they could talk to each over blocks of distance.
Gary…
As Garrett continued to stare at the vintage walkie, he thought about his only brother, Gary. Who was now fifty-eight? Fifty-seven? A retired Marine Corps officer now living in Oahu, Hawaii with his second wife. Paradise after many many years of being shot at. He and Garrett rarely spoke anymore, mostly because of trivial political differences. Actually, the last message he had received from his brother had been a short text via phone. Maybe four or five months previous. A text Garrett had not had the energy really to respond to.
Are you doing OK?
No. Garrett was not doing OK. He had not been doing OK for a very long time now.
He thought also about that long-ago Christmas day, when he and his brother had talked with each other, miraculously, over the same walkie-talkies, the distance between them growing greater and greater.
All those snow-dusted suburbs…
I am now at the creek on Eddy Street. Would you believe it is totally frozen? Over
I am at Bill’s Market, here. It is closed, of course. Sure could go for some penny Bit O’ Honeys…Over.
And they had also made awkward stabs at that orange Morse key as they moved further and further apart.
What God hath wrought…
Dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot…
Whatever had happened to those magical walkies? Garrett remembered that they had not lasted far into the New Year of 1971, actually. He had had a friend over from school, shortly after the Christmas break. His only friend really at the parochial prison they attended: Blessed Heart. He could not even remember the boy’s name now: some squirrely dude with sandy hair and a pronounced black mole above his upper lip. And that kid had stepped on the antennae of one of the walkies, accidentally of course, snapping it off close to the casing. Ending all magic forever and forever.
Just another broken toy for the garbage men…
“These two are in mint condition,” Mr. French said, as if, somehow, he were reading Garrett’s mind. “You should try them sometime. They work perfectly.” As if to illustrate, he turned one of the radios on now and, with a flick of his thumb, depressed the orange Morse key.
Dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot…
“Sometimes,” Mr. French said, “it really helps to send out a cri de coeur. An SOS to those we love. And who love us back…”
What was the portly man talking about? Still, Garrett could not stop thinking about that bright Christmas Day. About how miraculous those little walkie-talkies had seemed back then. And he couldn’t stop thinking about that last text message his brother had sent to him from his distant island paradise. Where it never snowed at all
He should have texted SOMETHING back. SOME SOS.
Because, truthfully, Garrett Walker was not doing OK.
Mr. French nodded slowly, sympathetically. As if he were reading Garrett’s disparate thoughts.
“You should look around. Look around,” he said. “I am quite sure, young man, that there are many items here that will interest you. Many items that might bring you some needed joy…”
Garrett noticed that the walkie-talkies that Mr. French had been holding were gone. (Another sleight-of-hand magic trick?) His thick hands were now empty and he extended them toward Garrett. As if he were all set to perform yet some new illusion.
“Umm, I might,” Garrett replied, brusquely. “And your name, sir?”
The proprietor laughed heartily.
“Oh, I am being remiss,” he said. “Bad for business that. Here…here sir is one of our cards. Should have produced one for you tout suite.”
And from one of the pockets of his white vest Mr. French (or whatever his name was) produced a small, even whiter card. Which he proffered to Garrett with much formality. As if he were just performing another trick.
“Your Treasures,” the man said, nodding solemnly. “At your service.”
And that was mostly what was on the stiff white business card that Garrett now scanned. In embossed ash-blue letters it read:
Your Treasures: At Your Service
And immediately below that:
Mr. Sebastian: Proprietor
There was nothing else on the card, whatsoever. No address. No phone number. No web-site link or e-mail.
Curioser and curioser…
“Why..?’ Garrett said.
“You are wondering,” Mr. Sebastian said, “Why there is such scant information on our card? Why there is no need for anything else, Mr. Walker. Our clientele all find us in due time. Or they never find us at all…”
Before Garrett could even ask how Sebastian knew his name, or what he had meant by his last little statement, the proprietor pointed toward the door and that rolltop desk.
Garrett let out a sharp gasp.
“Yes…yes,” Mr. Sebastian said. “You might recognize that vehicle over there, Mr. Walker. Indeed. A fine chariot there. Indeed…”
Propped up against one corner of that antique walnut was a bike. And not just any bike. Ah, no. A Schwinn sting-ray bike. A metallic blue two-wheeler with a banana seat and ape hanger handle bars. Such a sweet ride had probably not been manufactured in this country for forty plus years…
Such a bike was the first ride Garret Walker had ever owned…
“Blue,” Garrett whispered, continuing to stare at the vintage Schwinn. Holiest Grail of all the bicycles.
Another vision came to his mind, then. And another unsettling wave of nostalgia. That very same bike, propped up on the cement of his parents’ backyard patio. A thousand centuries before. On the occasion of his eighth birthday. The greatest gift ever. A bright bow, the same color as the Schwinn’s wild frame, affixed to its immaculate banana seat.
Big Blue…
“You really should go and check it out, Mr. Walker,” Mr. Sebastian said, helpfully.
What was this miraculous place?
Your Treasures indeed.
“Happy birthday to me…” Garrett sang/whispered. And he did walk across the store. As if in a dream. To stand in front of that ride. Marvel at its sparse elegance. Its chrome beauty. As he had a thousand centuries before.
Big Blue…
He ran an index finger slowly down the slope of the banana seat. As if he were a scholar touching some ancient, sacred text.
“How much…how much? For the bike?” Garrett said. His words came out in a strangled hush, as he continued, as if in a dream to pet that smooth seat. He was dimly aware that Mr. Sebastian was now standing behind him, very close to his right shoulder.
And yet, the man also seemed a million miles away…
Odd.
“Price?” Mr. Sebastian answered, laughing. “Why…priceless, Mr. Walker. Or-contrariwise -worth very little. Very little at all. I tell you…why don’t you sit down on that bike. And then you tell me exactly how much it is worth.”
Garrett was about to answer the man. Tell the proprietor that he did not have time anymore for his enigmatic nonsense. That he had to be going. Certainly his lunch hour was nearly over by now…
Instead, he did exactly what Mr. Sebastian requested. He grasped the handlebars of the Schwinn. And swung his short body over until he was astride that beautiful banana seat…
To be immediately BLOWN AWAY…
For he was no longer in the store. No longer in a place (or time) called Your Treasures. No. He was now plummeting swiftly downward in another place (or time) ostensibly on the same bike. It was all he could do to keep the bars steady, to keep the little bike straight. As he rocketed downward. His boots not even touching the pedals…
Where!?
Garrett felt dizzy and disoriented. And exhilarated at the same time. A not unfamiliar feeling, really. A feeling he had stored away a long long time ago in the database of his memories.
“Granville Street!” Garrett shouted/sang. As the Schwinn continued to skyrocket downward. “Mr. Sebastian!”
For that was where Garret Walker was now. Back in his old neighborhood. The neighborhood where had grown up. And on Granville: a street that ran parallel to his own. He managed, as the bike continued to descend, to glance over to his left at the curb. And there, indeed, was old Mrs. Woerhle’s house: a brick bungalow that had been torn down in the late 90s, as far as he knew…
Another place…Definitely another time…
What the hell was happening?
Garrett and Gary’s Crazy Tour of Death was what was happening.
Undoubtably
Back when he had been nine and his brother Gary seven, they had dreamed up such an excursion. A way to fill the slow, sleepy summer vacation. They had scouted out, on their respective bikes, points they thought were interesting in their (mostly) dull suburban neighborhood. Points where danger, mystery, and adventure seemed to lurk like copperhead snakes.
And this had been one of those points.
The Granville Street Mount of Death.
What had been the other salient points on that long long ago tour? Had there been seven of them? Seven?
Yes. Seven. Like the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World…
As his treasured Schwinn continued to race down Granville, Garrett’s mind raced as well. He summoned up all the names in his careering memory. All the inflated names he and his brother had attached to the stops on their Crazy Tour.
First Stop: Granville Street Mount of Death
Second Stop: The Dungeon of Rabid Dogs
Third Stop: The Haunted Ashley Mansion
Fourth: Devil’s Bridge
Fifth: Hell’s Crossroads
Sixth: The Lair of the Grassman
Seventh Stop…
Home.
Garrett’s feet now went to the pedals of Big Blue. And he immediately found himself back in that dusty curio shop. Astride a parked bicycle with a banana seat.
Your Treasures
“Priceless,” he whispered, his heart pounding in his chest.
Mr. Sebastian was now standing in front of the bike. He smiled at Garrett and nodded. Rubbed his neat beard with satisfaction. As if he had just completed a landmark transaction in the environs of his little shop.
Maybe he had?
“What?” Garrett said. His heart starting to return—slowly, very slowly---to its normal cadence.
He dismounted from the bike,now, reluctantly. Stood next to it. Once again, he stroked the banana seat. As if it were the mane of some valued pony.
Blue…Big Blue
The bike. No copy here. It had to be his very own…
“Why, of course,” Mr. Sebastian said. As if it were all incredibly obvious. “Our little store IS called Your Treasures. YOUR treasures Garrett. Every item in this store is something—some toy, some book, some record you once loved dearly. Something you loved…and lost along the way.”
Garrett thought about everything he had seen in the shop so far: the horn in the window, the chandelier, the desk…
Big Blue.
It had to be true…
“And how…” Garrett sighed. “How?”
He truly wished he could get back on the Schwinn. Pedal hell-bent for that next stop on the crazy tour of death.
“Because,” Mr. Sebastian replied, simply. “Because you need this place right now, Garrett Sean Walker. Because…you are not doing OK.”
Are you doing OK? his brother had texted him from his far-away island.
Was he going insane? Was that what this now was all about? His chronic grief rising up to bite him like some phantom copperhead. Another stop on the tour?
No…he had not been doing OK since Alicia’s death. All meaning had left his life on that auspicious day. When that slim, pale doctor—the antithesis of this Mr. Sebastian, really—had slipped out into the antiseptic waiting room of the hospital to inform him that his wife of thirty-five years was gone. Dead. Another victim of the 21st -century pandemic. Gone like one of these baubles here.
Alicia
Perhaps his greatest treasure.
That doctor had announced his wife’s death to him in a flat, reedy voice. As if he were merely reading statistics from a teleprompter or something…Garrett had scoured that same doctor’s eyes as he had rattled on, searching for something: a softness; a connection; some knowledge of the world that his wife had built for him over thirty-five years. All the precious treasures…
There had been nothing but a dull-gray need to get away…
How did people expect him to continue? How DO you continue when you really have lost everything? When some crazy, lethal assemblage of proteins brings down your chief treasure?
The fortress you have built most of your life around?
And after it happened, people had expressed their condolences, of course. Sent cards and flowers. Flowers and cards…
But they all expected Garrett Walker to resume his life now. Without fail. Tick Tock Tick Tock. Put on his wool uniform. His silver badge. They all expected him to get up on the horse…er bike and move. As if there had never been, really, anyone in his world named Alicia. Alicia Garrett nee Parry.
Just another lost bauble. Another broken toy…
Two days after Alicia’s funeral he had stood in the cold basement of their little ranch house and had knotted one of his belts around a pine rafter. Made a quiet noose for himself. Garrett still did not know what had kept him from going through with it. Sticking his neck into that makeshift gallows. Kicking out the folding chair he had stood on to create said gallows. He had stood there on that chair a long time. An eternity it seemed. Willing himself to go through with it. Be with his wife again (hopefully). But no---he had been too chickenshit of course. In the end he had just unloosened the belt. Threaded it around his black pants again.
For another, interminable, work day. Hours to buy more worthless stuff with…
“Alicia,” Garrett said, out loud. “Alicia,” he repeated, searching Mr. Sebastian’s cool black eyes.
“Your wife…your meaning. I understand, completely,” the proprietor replied, nodding. “Right this way, Garrett.”
The man now placed a firm hand upon Garrett’s quivering shoulder. Drew him away from the bike, the desk.
Drew him toward a dark recess on the other side of the shop.
“Here are those items,” Mr. Sebastian said, nodding.
And behind a long glass display case, once again carefully arranged on purple as if they were relics, were more items. More baubles.
Garrett let out another gasp.
For there, in the very center of the case, was a gray linear photo frame. And encased in the frame was a single, wrinkled page of yellow stationary, its surface mostly covered in handwriting. A black sloping cursive he knew all too well…
Alicia…
He knew, immediately, what the document was without having to inspect it too closely. No. He had read it a thousand times, maybe more. It was a letter his now dead wife had written to him. Thirty-seven years ago. So long ago. The letter where she had first professed her love to him. They had just graduated from college then: Bowling Green State University. Where they had met as juniors. And she had had to go away that summer, after graduation, to Texas. Amarillo. Some internship working for the Amarillo Globe. He had gone back to his hometown of Norwalk Ohio to do absolutely nothing that summer really but get stoned with high school friends and watch horror flicks on Cinemax. He and Alicia had promised to write to each other. He cared for her. But that had been college.
And this was life…
Garrett could, without looking at it, recite that little yellow missive verbatim. It had been an epiphany in his life. It had made him get off of the damn couch and start taking stock. To know that someone really cared…
Garrett, I miss you so much. I think about you every day I am in this hell hole. I never really told you this at Bowling Green, but I love you Garrett Walker. There, I said it. I love you, dearest. I really really do…
And Garrett had realized as he had read that bright letter right out of the mailbox, the cicadas stuttering overhead in the front yard oak tree, a hangover answering them back in his pounding morning head that he loved Alicia Parry. That she was the meaning his life was missing…
Tears started to well in Garrett’s eyes. They fell down upon the display case housing that precious letter. As they had upon the same unsheltered item thirty-seven years before…
If such a wrinkled letter were to come up for auction, say at Sotheby’s, Garrett Walker would be the sole bidder on such an item. And the bidding would have to start at one million dollars.
And he, in his ardor, would probably try to outbid himself…
Alicia
He could see, through the display, the little hearts that Alicia used to dot her Is with at twenty-two.
More tears
There were other items in that display case. Other items he recognized that orbited around that precious letter. Like electrons around the nucleus of an atom. Like the stuff in that outside window had seemed to orbit around his old tenor trumpet…
Through his blurry eyes he could see…could see
A brass butane lighter, the initials GW etched on its case in elaborate Gothic letters…
A dog-eared paperback: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
A silver harmonica, the legend Marine Band scratched into its metal cover plate
And more tears fell down upon the case. For these were all small items Alicia had gifted him for Christmas. Inexpensive items really but items that proved over and over how much she knew his tastes. How much she loved him beyond money…
After he had threaded that belt back in his work pants, gotten down from that flimsy chair, he had actually gone searching for that harmonica. He remembered how excited Alicia had been when he opened the box. He had told her for several years that he wanted a harmonica. That he wanted to play blues on a harmonica. He could still see her brown eyes, how they had danced with pleasure as he had put the instrument to his lips and had gone up and down the reeds. Just making noise…
“I have to…I have to…go outside,” Garrett said. Daubing with one index finger at his eyes.
“Why of course. Of course,” Mr. Sebastian replied, brightly. “Take your time, Garrett. Take all the time. All the time that you want. Your Treasures will still be here when you get back. Will still be here for quite some time…”
It was odd but Garrett could no longer see the proprietor at all. It was as if he had suddenly disappeared. Like those walkies had earlier. Another magic trick. But his avuncular voice still seemed to boom and echo through the shop. As if it were issuing from every item. From the chandelier. From the interior of the old walnut desk. From every display case and dusty shelf…
Your Treasures the store itself seemed to sing to him. As more tears fell from his eyes.
He felt also a hand on his shoulder. A hand that he assumed was Mr. Sebastian’s. Squeezing. Reassuring him.
Garrett stumbled now toward the entrance of the shop. Opened the door with some difficulty and stepped outside.
Quaint quaint quaint sang the bell above the door, once more.
Garrett Walker stood outside of Your Treasures, breathing in lungfuls of cold December air. The lunchtime traffic on 5th Street jolted him back suddenly to his workday existence. As a few errant tears fell from his eyes to the cracked, white pavement.
“Alicia…” he murmured. And the sound of her name came out of his mouth in a great white plume. “Alicia…”
As he stood there, all that had transpired in the shop, all the marvels he had just seen, spun around in his mind. The tenor horn. The chandelier. The desk. The walkies. Big Blue. Everything. Like more dazzling electrons around some solid nucleus.
“Alicia,” he said again. Clutching his thighs and bending over. To keep from whirring away entirely with the kaleidoscope of treasures now glimpsed.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Garrett Walker stood up. His eyes dry once again. His mind (relatively) clear…
He turned, once again, toward the store called Your Treasures. Prepared to go back inside.
And gasped…
For the window display, where his high school horn had been prominently centered on purple, was no more…
No. No. All there was dark plate glass. Bereft and smeared over with dirt.
Empty. At it had always been.
“Mr. Sebastian…” Garrett whispered. Putting one beefy palm to the window. Stroking the glass gently. “Alicia…”
He stood that way for a long time. Touching the opaque glass. Wondering what strange miracle had just transpired in his life. What it could all mean. He was dimly aware, as he stood there, that his lunch hour had to be over. That he was probably late for work.
He happened to glance down at the pavement as he stood there. And close to the brick façade of the building was a card. A small white rectangle with an uncoated matte finish. He thought it might be the same business card that Mr. Sebastian had handed him earlier, that it had fallen out of his uniform pocket somehow.
Had he put it there? He really could not remember.
Garrett bent down and picked it up. Turned the card over with trembling, cold fingers.
And there, in the center of the card, on raised ash-blue script were these words:
Your Treasures: At Your Service
Garrett Sean Walker Proprietor
Subscribe to FREE digital flip copy of the Adelaide Magazine printed edition.