The Shop That Rented Better Tuesdays

How it begins

The Tuesday in the stockroom had started going stale.

Rosa could smell rain, burnt toast and a conversation nobody had finished.

She checked the return label.

Customer dissatisfied.

Reason: Husband still dead.

She stood very still.

The shop sold better days.

That was the phrase on the window.

Not perfect days. Not impossible days. Just small improvements to ordinary Tuesdays, exchanged with a receipt and a sensible limit on the weather.

This customer had bought six.

Rosa looked through the little square of glass in the storage box.

A man sat at a kitchen table.

Two cups.

One untouched.

She knew him.

Mr. Finch bought bread from the market opposite and always asked whether she had eaten.

He had never mentioned the shop.

At ten, he arrived carrying another return.

"This one has too much sunshine."

"Was the weather not what you requested?"

"It was. That's the trouble."

He placed the box on the counter.

Inside, a cheerful man watered a garden that seemed almost aggressive in its success.

Mr. Finch watched him for a moment.

"I don't recognize myself."

Rosa opened the complaints form.

There was no field for that.

"Would you like your original?"

He looked toward the stockroom.

"I was hoping you still had it."

"The kettle's boiling."

He smiled.

A small, complicated smile that none of the improved Tuesdays seemed able to produce.

The manager emerged from her office.

"We don't encourage backward exchanges."

Rosa kept one hand on the box.

Outside, rain began falling on the market.

Mr. Finch lifted his collar.

For several seconds, the real Tuesday and the one in storage smelled exactly alike.

Rosa tore up the complaints form.

"Take your time," she said.

The manager made a note.

Rosa found she was less frightened of the note than of the cheerful man who had never needed anyone to share his tea.