The following is an excerpt from the story That Second Pair of Glasses:
Isaac said to Harry the optician, operating from a booth in a flea market and wanting it known that he was fully licensed, that they must and could only be blond tortoise shell. He said he had lived out in the cold for too long with the silver titanium frames he was presently wearing, and that it was time to go with a color and material that warmed his face. Harry had a look that was dark but not invisible. You saw him as a kind and alert animal who had a side to him that wanted more than your money. It could only have been Sedona, Arizona, his town of birth, that did this to Harry, Isaac knew, some desert experience in which the devil had been everywhere but in which God himself was also present. The two of them went deep into their time together with only diffident contact and yet progress was being made, if you considered the number of frames Isaac tried on and rejected. Several times he was ready to call it quits and cried out in his distress that he was wasting Harry’s time, but Harry came back strong with his reassurances and gave Isaac the encouragement he needed to go on. Isaac was up front with Harry. He told him that he was working from the idea of the perfect shape, which would be round and not too small, as his previous glasses had been, and that he had seen something approaching this ideal at a nearby store, and perhaps the thing to do was to purchase those other frames and come to Harry solely for the lenses. We cannot say with full certainty whether this information galvanized Harry to extend himself beyond his normal range of service, but we do know that he showed a persistence that suggested a sale was in front of him if only he went the extra mile, and that a question came from Isaac in the midst of this process to modify the manner of their interaction, the question being why this small accessory should be so important, causing Harry’s face to light up as he delivered the answer that glasses came to represent a period in one’s life and an association of pain and hurt and disappointment with them and so the fussiness was an attempt to find a new pair that wouldn’t take the buyer back to that old and, in memory at least, sad place. Following this Harry said he had an idea and went to the back of the store, returning with a pair of frames he said had just come in, frames of exquisite quality from a well-known designer, and yes, they were the blond tortoise shell and though their shape was square it was found by Isaac that they were rivaling the pair that approximated the ideal. And although it was many minutes before Isaac could come to a final decision Harry saw that he had him in the bag.
Download this story as a pdf: That Second Pair of Glasses