Richaud unwrapped a pink stick of gum. It was nothing like a cigarette. He rolled it into a cylinder. Still nothing like a cigarette. He tossed it into the bin. The gum left the smell of cinnamon on his fingers. He roused Pete off the couch and into the studio to recreate the cosmic alignment of the instruments in preparation for the arrival of The Wide. Pete swallowed his sigh. Despite Richaud’s wry terminology this was one of the more boring rituals of the recording process that Pete had to endure in his assistant’s role. A tedious sound checking routine that anyone could perform, but that Pete was not allowed to avoid. He thought of free lunch, free breakfast, free dinner as he put on headphones and picked up the first guitar.

Years ago Richaud had told him the four rudimentary steps of guitar playing. Pin the strings against the neck with the fingertips of your left hand, sound them with the right, get famous, meet girls. He had said the first step was the hardest, those that followed were progressively easier. In Pete’s experience step four was harder than step one. He wondered if Kas was seeing anyone. She didn’t look too young for him.

A recording from last night sounded through the headphones. On the other side of the glass Richaud fiddled with the desk then sat back and twirled his finger at Pete to get him rolling. Pete started hesitantly on steps one and two. Richaud did not care what he did as long as he kept strumming until, through some mysterious sequence of button pushing and knob turning, the “cosmic re-alignment” was complete and he was directed to the next instrument. His fingertips started to hurt. Richaud twirled his finger some more. There was a little a Japanese place near here that he and Richaud liked, a hole in the wall that did great sushi. They didn’t deliver, but that was a bonus, a chance to escape the build up of sour cigarette and adolescence that this band exuded, an opportunity to drive Richaud’s car. When he stepped down out of the car and people saw the designer driving glasses perched on his head they would think he was the money. The music stopped. Richaud was motioning him to move on to another instrument. A cramp was building in his left hand. He wiggled the fingers, trying to relax them. Re-aligning the bass was going to painful.

The antique shop Hugh’s father, Anders, owned was a crystal garden maze of glass cabinets containing trinkets and practical bric-a-brac that had survived the course of their fall through history and handling. Combs with hand cut teeth, brass belt buckles; rings, razors, coins; surgical instruments, inkwells, pocket watches; teacups, snuff boxes, opium pipes; the contents of the wooden drawers and shelves that other dealers sold.

There was not much conversation, just convivial greetings and both straight to family business. Hugh produced the item and his father produced a fine loupe, suitably ancient and decorated. He turned Hugh’s item over and back, over and back, held it under the beam of the flex lamp, disappeared into his office behind the counter, returned drumming his fingers against his bald spot, his brow reassuringly raised.

What Hugh had was set with six matched rubies, extraordinary in quality and similarity, and a little more than a carat each. What the rubies were set in appeared by its grain to be ivory, but the grain was too large and the material too hard to be elephant ivory, so perhaps from the tooth of another source, a large source, perhaps aquatic, going by the dimensions of the piece and the even colour of each edge. It must be quite old and trafficked as there are faint markings on the back, a relief worn down by handling rather than an act of vandalism. Given the durability of the material it must have passed through many hands or been in the constant clasp of several owners. Despite his concerns, Hugh had committed the crime, highway robbery, with the price he paid Bob, bless his rodent-like intelligence. The legality of the entire transaction, as with any involving Bob, was still questionable, but he had come out on top after all, way on top, back in the black.

Anders offered to hold it for Hugh in his safe, the only device in the store crafted in this fresh century. A moment of thought in that direction was given, but it would do no good for Hugh to lock it away, it must be moved on, up the ranks to thicker wallets. Trouble only starts when these things are found, which gets easier the longer they sit still. Convert it to cash and it was Bob’s word, the frailty of which was already known to the police, against Hugh’s. He may remember that lunch in that bar. He may have been drunk when he bought it. He could already recall hurling it in disgust out of his car window, into the pedestrians on the footpath. Perhaps one of them picked it up, wondering why this plastic geegaw had been aimed at them.

No vault was safe enough. Anders shrugged, antique dealers understand the complexity of ownership and Hugh was a sensible lad. He popped the piece in a little velvet drawstring bag and handed it back to Hugh. Their farewell handshake had an extra dip. Outside, Hugh slipped the piece, he was beginning to think of it as the last domino, out of the velvet bag and into his outside coat pocket. Anytime he wanted he could check it was still there, tick his nails against it, or turn it over a few times, out of sight of the world.

During the drive to the studio The White were silent, sucking their cigarettes, semi-conscious behind their sunglasses. Hugh called ahead to the studio to alert Richaud that they were en route. An unpopular, high traffic branch of his internal, eternal, calculations called to him – the ins and outs for this fresh month so far. Investments were steady; expenses a little too high; luxuries, those precious necessities, much too high and putting too much in Bob’s pocket. The single malt lunch, the budget on hand in cash, and Bob with his wares - an expensive hole he might not climb out of this month. So begins the third in a row that looks to end in the red, in brackets, with a minus sign hanging from its left side. In the background the moody exhalations of The White sound like the expressings of a small steam engine ready to roll.