It was her silent affirmations that kept her from going completely insane. My landlady is a nice person. I'll just pay the rent, stay a few minutes, and leave. Patti held her breath outside the door, where a Christmas wreath's red and green streamers still blustered in the April wind. She swallowed hard and knocked. She wished she could just shove the rent check under the door, like most of her friends, but June, her landlady, was different-she wanted her payments delivered in person. Patti readjusted her iPod cord and turned up the volume, buying her some distance. Sometimes, June invited Patti over to chat. Patti, in the most polite ways she could find, declined-she was too busy with other things, like studying and working part-time at the bookstore.


June's gentle "C'mon in, Hon," drifted past the door and pierced the song Patti had on. Patti turned the doorknob and walked into the living room. June's eyes were hard to see behind her thick glasses. She motioned for Patti to sit down at a table cluttered with porcelain unicorns and candles, all coated in a layer of soft dust. From a television perched in a corner of the ceiling, a home shopping channel blared.


Patti smiled at June without sitting down, and reminded herself that her landlady just lost her husband, Charles, this past year. It doesn't hurt to be friendly. She means well. Out the window, Patti caught glimpses of other students walking to class. She looked at her watch and tried to remember if there was somewhere she was supposed to be. She dug through her purse for the rent check and placed both it and her cell phone on the table.


June leaned back in her brown recliner, grasped the remote, and turned down the television volume. The yellow caftan she wore spread across the chair, which was pulled close to the table. She smiled at Patti and didn't take the rent check; it fluttered in the ceiling fan breeze and landed against one of the candles.


Patti, willing her cell phone to ring, tried to focus on the shopping channel man. He was intent on selling a porcelain unicorn tinged purplish-blue. It came with an attractive display, the man added with growing enthusiasm, if customers ordered right now.


"It's pretty, isn't it?" June lost the remote in a fold of the chair and nodded at the screen.


Patti clasped her hands to keep from fidgeting with the spoon-fork-knife wind chime that hung inside the house instead of outside. Leave it alone. Pay attention. "Yes, ma' am."


"My Charlie ordered one for me last year. It looked just like that." She sighed, stared into space, and frowned at the table. "He liked the porcelain ones best."


The rent check was about to drift from behind the candle and underneath one of the other unicorns. Patti, her feet shifting from side to side, started to remind June about the rent, but her cell phone buzzed on the tabletop.


June ignored the phone, sat up in her chair, and moved her ring-crusted fingers amidst the glass figurines. "I'll show the blue unicorn to you," she said, "the one Charlie gave me. It's here somewhere..."


Patti noticed that her rhinestone-covered cell phone cover, still dancing across the table, matched the thick jewels chunked on June's fingers. The television man, his face filling the screen, told them there was only a few minutes left. She caught the phone and snapped it open with a quick "Hello?"


June murmured something about making iced tea, but kept her seat in the recliner. Her glasses scanned the unicorns one at a time.


"There's only two minutes left for this incredible offer!" the man on the shopping channel cried out.


In the middle of Patti's phone call, June handed her a porcelain blue unicorn. Patti stared at this glass figure's gold horn. At June's nod, Patti took it in her palm. Like everything else on the table, it was preserved in last year's dust. Patti set the unicorn on the table, a few inches from the edge. The rest of the figurines faced her in lifeless, glossy rows.


A UPS truck rumbled to a stop in front of the house. June stood up and walked in slow steps to the door. "I ordered some clear glass ones," she said, though Patti was still on the phone. "You'll like them. Charlie preferred the colored ones, but it doesn't hurt to try something new."


"I have to go," Patti said to her phone, and started to walk away from the table.


"Stay there, Hon, I'll be right back," June said. She opened the door.


The UPS man gave June the electronic clipboard to sign and glanced at the television, the shopping channel still going strong. "It's fragile," he said, handing her the box.


"They all are." June smiled. "Patti and I were just about to have some iced tea-won't you join us?"


The UPS man took his clipboard, straightened up, and pointed to the brown van still chugging outside. "Maybe another time," he said, and turned toward the door.


"I have to get going, too," Patti said to June. She clicked her cell phone shut and moved to the door too fast, bumping the table. The blue-tinted unicorn fell off the edge and landed without a sound on a throw rug at Patti's feet. 


Something pinched her toe. Patti saw the horn first, stuck to the bottom of her flip-flop. She tried to pull it off, but the glass tip poked through her shoe and into her big toe until it drew a drop of blood. The rest of the unicorn rested nearby, intact. "I'm so sorry," she said. The speck of blood grew larger when she yanked out the horn and placed both it and the figurine back on the table. Patti winced. The UPS truck roared down the street.


June looked at the blue unicorn and shrugged, although her lips tightened. "It's easy to fix, happens all the time." She turned to her new box of unicorns, clear instead of painted, and lined them up on the table. At first, she kept them separate from the dusty ones. A few seconds later, though, she mixed them up. Without looking at Patti, she took the rent check and placed it in her caftan pocket.


On the front door, the Christmas wreath streamers quieted. Patti ignored her toe and took another step toward the door. She saw the sharp-horned figures on the table, all pointing at her. Her toe throbbed harder. She walked back to the chair, sat down, and motioned June to the television screen, where the announcer, calmer now, was moving on to music boxes.
 

Gail Folkins' essays have appeared in SLAB, R-KV-RY, and Lifewriting Annual. Her nonfiction book about Texas dance halls is under contract with Texas Tech University Press.