BAE'S DAY 2011
Today is Bae's Day. On this day, wherever he is, if he still lives, Bae turns—
Gold has no idea. Curse this place, anyway, with its unpredictability.
Today is also Miners Day, some sort of vague post-harvest holiday that no one really knows the origins of, probably just some sort of marketing invention, like Mother's Day-
or Father's Day.
At least with the other holidays, gifts are exchanged; today, only greeting cards will be sold, and those damn candles.
Gold has arranged his week with this realization in mind. He's made a list—he loves his lists—of all the little tasks he can do around the shop, since he will have no sales today. Trouble is, he doesn't feel like doing a damn one of them. Because today is Bae's Day.
He doesn't bother with the shop today. Strange how irresponsible he's become of late, now that She had arrived, now that the Change is just around the corner. Not that anyone would notice. The shop does little business even during the Christmas season; he's purposely priced his wares beyond value. Take that old leather kickball, for instance; that worn out old leather kickball that no one gives a second glance to. What child would want that at $200, when she could have a brand new, $20 regulation soccer ball signed by some star athlete? Just one child would, really, and, truth be told, Gold is saving it for him, just as he's saving the glass mobile and the rowboat and the trio of crossed swords on display near the front door. Because Mr. Gold Pawn Broker and Antiquities isn't exactly a shop, if truth be told; it's a storage facility, with objects being cared for until their owners return for them.
And that day is coming soon. He ought to be happy about that—well, yes, he is happy about that; just around the corner lies the day when he can unload all this junk, be free of it, be free of Storybrooke with its quaintness and its coldness and its fakeness. Any other day he would be happy about that, just not today, Bae's Day.
Curse the shop, curse Storybrooke, curse this land, curse this life.
And in his mind's eye he can see the Evil Queen doing a little pleasure jig, because all that cursing is part of her desired outcome. The little annoyances of everyday life in this land give her constant satisfaction, for they are a reminder that everyone in Storybrooke has been torn from everything and everyone he or she loved in the old land. The only trouble is, to fully feel the loss, one would have to remember, wouldn't one? And that was one of his little inventions: the memory loss that came with the curse. She'd argued against it, of course, but she was in such a rush to enact the curse that he easily talked her into it, claiming vagueness would cause even more pain than a clear memory would. That constant nagging at the back of one's skull that something important had been forgotten—it would never go away, unlike a true memory, which would stretch and distort and fade and be let go of. Or so he claimed, with his gold eyes gleaming like large coins, with his crackbrained grin through his crooked teeth.
The forgetting had been one of his loopholes, his personal escape hatch to forgiveness. Yes, the curse is my fault, but at least I blessed you with forgetting. Imagine the pain you would have felt these twenty-eight years of waiting for the Savior, if you had been burdened with your memories.
Gold doesn't have to imagine.
And so he leaves his cluttered pink house, locking the door, jiggling the knob to be certain the lock holds, and he strolls—or appears to stroll—down three blocks, around the corner, down another block to his shop, with its brand-new window and its double bolt and its "closed" sign, and he jiggles that knob too, and when he is satisfied, he strolls—or so anyone would think, just an impeccibly dressed man on his morning constitutional—another four blocks to Granny's, the only place in town doing business today, doing a booming business selling coffee and hot cider to the volunteers who are setting up the Miners Day booths in the town square. At least one tenant will have no trouble paying her rent this month.
On the flip side of that coin, the nuns had set up their booth hours ago but, from the looks of the overloaded boxes at their feet, haven't sold a single candle. Mary Margaret and Leroy's door-to-door enterprise has failed as well. The convent's rent will go unpaid this month, and one month hence, he will have the unmitigated pleasure of hand-delivering an eviction notice to Mother Fairy. Not that that will get rid of them, of course; they can't exactly leave Storybrooke, now can they? But at least they will. . . disperse. Somewhere.
As he strolls, he passes people all headed in the same direction, all of them in groups. The groups stop their chatter and part to pass around him, then once they have left him behind, the groups reform and resume their yammering. No one greets him. No one glances at him.
Only three people in this town can look him in the eye; everyone else owes money to him or avoids him on general principle. Of those who can face him, one he hates (though he wouldn't say that aloud), one he loves (though he wouldn't say that aloud), and the third he isn't too sure about. Needs, certainly. Respects, perhaps.
He has been watching the others, now that She has arrived. He overhears the gossip about David and Mary Margaret; he observes the tug-of-war between Regina and Emma with Henry stuck in the middle; he even sees the yearning growing in the handyman's eye as he gazes upon the ditzy nun. As he knows Regina does, he notes their pain—but truth be told, he envies it, because they are at least within arm's length of each other.
Despite her booming takeout business, Granny has vacant tables, so he sits down and waits, and waits, and waits, for Ruby to return from her incessant deliveries to town square and take his order: one cup of coffee, black (he hates coffee; in the old land, he always took tea) and two slices of wheat toast, dry. Ruby raises an eyebrow and cocks a hip at him—his appearance at the diner is a rare event, since he usually has his meals delivered to his home, where he can dine in peace—but she accepts the order without comment.
The toast won't take long; that's why he ordered it. He resents sitting here alone when all around him, people scurry about in pairs and packs. Once he has eaten, he will be obliged to move along, back to a customerless shop or back to a house he keeps cluttered so that he can pretend it isn't empty. Or, he supposes, he could go where they are going, to the Miners Day fair. And do what? Buy a candle? Watch the children cram teeth-rotting cotton candy into their mouths? Watch the young lovers win stuffed lambs for each other in the ring toss?
Perhaps he will go to a movie. He resents those too—if only movies and photographs had been around in the old land—why didn't he think of that when he was Rumplestiltskin and could have conjured them? Then he would have more than a kickball and a tea cup to hold onto.
In his old old age he has become quite the curmudgeon. All in accordance with Regina's plan, of course.
He abandons his toast and collects his cane. He lays money on the table to cover his check—a ten. He almost takes it back—ten dollars is far too large a tip for dry toast and coffee—but some compulsion drives him. A memory, or not even a full memory but an echo of a memory, of a child in the old land who was called Ten and his mother who should have been called Nine but instead went by the ridiculous nickname Rumpie. Like Bae, this is their special day. Like Bae, they are out there too, waiting, though they have no memory of it.
Today is the fourth day of the first month after harvest, Bae's Day, and for the first time in twenty-eight years he remembers that, and it hurts like hell.
The Savior had better get a move on.