Toys, Toys, and More Toys

Tommy shrugged noncommittally, but relief swept over him. If Mr. Sinterklaas wanted to offer help, that was completely different. “If you have time, I don’t want to keep you if you’re in a rush,” Tommy said, “But if you have time and wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate it.” Tommy danced around the question exactly, the vampire still leaving room for him to abandon him. At least his neighbor wasn’t giving him that twinkle-eyed smile, as if he was laughing at Tommy. “Come on in, if you wish,” he said and went back in holding the door open for the old man. The darkness of the shop was no problem for Tommy, but looking back at the pleasant old man, he wondered if the man could see anything at all. There was too little light to adjust to.

“Hold on a moment and I’ll get some lights on,” he said and left his neighbor at the door to find the light switch which dimly illuminated the shop. “Be careful and don’t touch anything,” he cautioned as he motioned the man to the back room. After a moment, he wondered how it was that Mr. Sinterklaas trusted him not to be luring him into the bowels of his shop to drain him. Tommy shook his head, maybe some vampires would, it was dangerous to trust one, even if Tommy himself would never dream of it.

In the small backroom, the glass had been swept from the floor, and the expensive equipment meticulously cleaned and pushed back on the counter or put on their respective shelves. The smell in the backroom was even stronger and more muddled than in the main storefront, strongly smelling of flowers from his most recent concoction. As the old man joined him, Tommy motioned to the offending shelf the only empty shelf on otherwise packed walls that ran the length of the room. “I put in the screws and added some new bases, but it has to hold a lot of weight and…” Tommy reached up and easily wriggled it. “See?” He said, finding his own sullen tone a little alarming. He couldn’t remember the last time he had whined but it was starting to sound like he was getting close.

Tommy frowned at the shelf, which appeared to be level to his untrained eye, but seemed to sag sadly in the middle. Looking at it now, he considered himself lucky it hadn’t taken out the two shelves under it, which did house some half-finished concoctions. He couldn’t risk it falling again. The ‘bases’ Tommy had screwed in were little more than haphazardly cut wood from the left over planks he had used to build a raised bed five years ago.