Gems | 9 December 2021

Nestled in their settings, the glint of the gems was dazzling.  Through the store window they reminded me of the backlit liquor bottles which seduced me into my first bar.  We’ll be together soon, my beauties.  I promise.

BNR Response

I lingered on my way out of La Arcada even though I was running late to an appointment.  I cast one last, longing gaze at the jewels in the window and thought to myself, “Please don’t let the Bimbo lock up tonight, Jules,” hoping the owner of the jewelry shop would wait for my return so the job could be done properly.  Every time the Bimbo locked up it took me hours longer to open the following morning thanks to the catastrophes she inevitably created: gems mixed up, rubbing face to face, improper stacking leading to many gems falling entirely out of the velvet trays…many of which we were never able to retrieve.  Unacceptable!

I didn’t always think she was a Bimbo.  When Jules first introduced me to Jackie I’d felt a kind of kinship with her.  She reminded me of myself when I first started apprenticing under Jules at Heart Shaped Box.  This was back when Jackie’s now-ex-husband was still involved and the store was named Jules’ Jewels.  The details of the sudden divorce and subsequent business name change were suspect at best, in retrospect, but I guess it was none of my business.  Back to Jackie.  Jackie had a way of dressing, a way of carrying herself – elegant and sensual all at once.  She had the credentials and the ambition to really make something of herself.  I saw promise in her.

However, in the last year all that had changed.  The scenario I encountered upon my return to the boutique had become all too familiar: Jackie was strategically draped over the case of freshwater pearls, allowing her crisscross top to fall open and expose her Agent Provocateur brassiere.  (I know the brand because I have the same bra in nude.)  Mr. Spencer, on the customer side of the glass, had his card on the counter and his face virtually touching her decolletage.  His head was cocked to one side and his eyes were fixated on Jackie’s cleavage as if they held an optical illusion in a Carnival fun house.  It was the Spencer’s 21st wedding anniversary this Saturday and I had called his office earlier to remind him that we had Mrs. S’s wish list at the ready.  I opened the door just slightly and overheard Mr. Spencer cooing at Jackie, “C’mon, you know you want to come out with me again…Maybe this time I can give you a pearl necklace.”  The welcoming bells jingle jangled with my full extension of the door and all eyes were suddenly on me.  It was clear the jig was up to everyone except Jules, who emerged from the back with Mr. Spencer’s receipt as she cheerily put a gift-wrapped jewelry box in a fresh gift bag.

“Mr. Spencer!”  I purred, “So pleased you made it in today!  I trust that you’ve been taken good care of in my absence.”  I lifted up the countertop and glided up next to Jackie, the contrasting fabrics on our hips rubbed together like opposing Velcro.  This was the sixth large commission this Bimbo had taken from me in fewer days, and her antics were really starting to hit me in the pocketbook.  I’d seen the Spencers through the toddler years, through the affairs, and recently, the empty nesting.  I’d cultivated caring relationships with them, as with all of my customers, over decades.  I wanted them to have the best and I knew what the best was for them.  The best was not Jackie.  Not this Jackie of the past year, the floozy who “accidentally” forgot to button the middle portion of her blouse and who let her fingers wander on the inner elbow of my clients’ Brioni suits.  The Jackie who had butterfingers and had a few too many lost items on her shifts.  My commissions were all going to her cleavage.

Mr. Spencer quickly departed, flashing Jackie one last hopeful eyebrow raise over the shoulder, and it was time to lock up.  Jules was rushing, she had her sunglasses on already and the keys to the Lotus in her hand when she told me that she and Jackie had a client dinner at Lucky’s that they’d be “lucky” to arrive fashionably late to.  Fine by me.  GTFO.  As I locked up, I think about all the times during the past nine months where I’d tried to talk to Jules about Jackie.  There was the time I hired the mediator, the lunches spent in “mentor” mode, and many frank conversations in the office that all ended poorly.  Jules was certainly another who had fallen under Jackie’s spell, and I was at my wits’ end trying to get her to snap out of it and see the truth. 

It was while I was putting the last few trays of jewels in the safe that it all became clear: I would start by locking up and securing all the gems, making my visible exit on the close circuit surveillance cameras and pulling down the shades, only to return several hours later.  I would slip in through the freight entrance where the camera had broken last month.  I would take my favorite pieces, notably: the 7-carat sapphire antique Tiffany cocktail ring, the widely photographed bespoke engagement ring that a Hollywood A-lister had consigned after his latest divorce, and the Cartier canary diamond pendant necklace that Jessica Chastain had worn to Cannes in the wake of her renewed Scenes from a Marriage fame.  I’d suspected that Jackie was squirreling away the missing jewels somewhere in the ice box until she could unload them on one of her Johns at a discount.  Unlike the missing semi-precious gems and odd diamond studs, however, these losses couldn’t be simply written off the balance sheet.  Jules wouldn’t be able to let this one slide.  I would never be a suspect because I had devoted my entire life to Jules and the store, and I’d suffered for it: I’d been held up at gunpoint no less than a dozen times over the past 25 years, I’d lost two marriages to my dedication to the store, and I’d never had children as a result.  Once Jackie was discovered for the thieving tramp that she truly was, Jules would once again see me as the steadfast partner I had been all along, and all would be right with the world.

The plan was working flawlessly, and I congratulated myself on how well everything came together given the haphazard planning on my part.  I entered, opened the safe, delicately lifted our largest treasures from their slumber and relocated them in the icebox.  Just as I had suspected, there was a false bottom to an ice tray where the skank had hidden a rather astounding amount of “lost” merchandise.  I secured the safe once again and was just about to leave when I heard an unrecognizable sound coming from the office, which created a buffer between the front of house and the kitchen and safe rooms.  Without thinking, I unlocked the door to the office and flipped on the lights.  Jules and Jackie were a tangled mess of bare limbs, that Agent Provocateur brassiere dangling from the green editor desk lamp.  “What the fuuuuuck?” I whispered, as Jules lifted her head from the delta of Jackie’s thighs.  Well, this certainly complicates things.