Ichigo didn't like New York as much as he used to. It had become a city less than welcome to him, and he tried to avoid it.
That hadn't been easy, not when so many of his father's former clients were ready to sell back their stones in the wake of Homeland Security's new lease with the Internal Revenue Service, or the new money coming out.
He sat in the small bar, watching the pool game a few yards away, waiting for the elderly Italian man across the table to finish frowning at his paper money. The new bills coming out always confused the old-timers. They didn't understand something that wouldn't make as much sense as the old monetary notes.
He ran a hand through his orange-brown hair, biting his tongue to keep his rising irritation in check. His patience had thinned since he'd taken over his father's business, what was left of it.
"Sure, I'll sell them to you, but I can't accept these old bills, Mr. Gralini," he said, trying to clarify the issue for the third time that evening.
"Says they're legal tender, Ichigo." Gralini jabbed a bony finger at the fifty dollar note in his hand.
Ichigo moved their set of whiskey glasses to the side, his tone lowering as the pool game continued. "When presented outside the United States. They're International notes. Pan-Ameros. Good only outside of the U.S. Besides, they're obsolete since the new notes came out. You have to check the date."
Gralini sat back and scratched his balding head, his round belly between him and the small table he shared with the younger man. Ichigo, at his twenty-four years, didn't have the years necessary to make thim he expert that he clearly was, but Gralini had know his father, Kurosaki, before he'd disappeared. He'd been one of the best-connected jewelers in North America, and that was enough to vouch for his son.
He shook his head. "We never used to need new ones. Nothing wrong with the old ones. They used to have presidents on them, you know."
Ichigo sighed, waving to the waitress for two more whiskeys. "I've seen them. We've been through this before. You have to convert when the new notes come out.
"These changes, all coming so fast. First the money, then declaring gemstones as income; gemstones shouldn't be against the law."
"Well, undeclared stones are. You know how they're governed. Stones count."
The waitress brought their drinks and left. Gralini downed half of his, leaning over the table closer to Ichigo. "I want something to pass on, Ichigo. The tax man will get all my grandchildren's inheritance." He glanced around the bar at the men playing pool and at the other tables. The music was some mournful ballad, and while it wasn't what he'd have chosen, it added enough cover noise. He set a small box on the table.
"All the gemstones from the jewelry store, it's all been chemically coated. Declared. Not like what I bought from your father. If it was clean, the grandchildren could sell it to someone such as you, and get a better price, right?"
Ichigo nodded. "Did you register them?"
Gralini's eyes twinkled. "Sadly, no. I am an old man, and my memory fails, when I choose it to."
Ichigo grinned, drinking his whiskey. "Good."
Gralini nodded. "Now, how do I get the wash off?'
"It doesn't come off, Mr. Gralini." Ichigo watched the older man's face fall. It was this way with so many of his father's clients, resisting change, but unable to circumvent it. "But you could have them recut. Repackaged."
Gralini looked hopeful at this mention. "That would do it?"
Ichigo nodded.
"You could do it?"
"No problem." Inscriptions, insurance IDs, chemical washes, and everything else that had become the jewelry business confused gemstone holders. A matter that the newly created Division Five of Homeland Security/IRS had found advantageous. It was also instrumental in driving out the best jeweling familes, and had taken his own parents to their graves. "I'll recut them, and you needn't buy new clean stones from me." He finished the whiskey. "But you do need to keep up with the new local money."
Gralini nodded, pushing the box across the table to Ichigo.
*****
The house at 9681 Beecher Road in Musgrove Wisconsin was much like the other older farmhouses on the road, spaced by acres of what had at one time been farmland, large and roomy, and closer to town than they'd ever been before. A quiet, unassuming neighborhood, where the median age of the homeowners was seventy-two, which made York fit right in.
He didn't farm anymore -- hadn't in years. The machinery and much of the acreage had been sold off to individuals wanting a sizeable chunk of quiet, and what remained of his three hundred acre farm was enough to live on and watch the deer and occasional coyote cross. He hadn't yielded to the urban sprawl the township planners had tried to force upon him since his wife had died. Hadn't yielded to much over the last few years.
Milton York's aged eyes looked over the contents of the table in his silent kitchen, his tall, lean form bent over the stones. She was the only one left now, Rukia was.
In his fingers he turned the blue sapphire wedding ring, and then looked to the photo on the table propped against the wall of he and his bride of nearly fifty years.
"Lovely woman, Rose," he said to her. Even in death he saw her only as he ever had. Alive, beautiful, ready for anything.
He sighed, slipping the ring into a small blue velvet pouch, then reached for his cane leaned at the edge of the table and stood.
*****
Outside the York residence it was a sunny, vibrant day, with the summer's heat rolling down the two lane road surrounded by maple trees. Across the road was another farmhouse, on its wide porch one of the younger couples, being only in their late sixties, that lived on the road. As York followed the stone walkway to the mailbox at the roadside, Frank and Grace Combs watched from their porch, he in his usual slat-backed rocking chair, she on the glider that squeaked, fanning herself with an old church bulletin.
York waved to them. "Frank! Grace!"
Frank nodded. "Going into town, Milt?"
York nodded, waving again. "See my grand-daughter!"
He slipped an envelope into his mailbox and took the sidewalk that now ran along the roadside into town four blocks away. It was an easy walk, except for the heat of the day that was increasing as the morning wore on. Musgrove lacked many conveniences, but a prompt bus run was not one of them. He reached the bus stop fifteen minutes later, and caught the bus heading to Indiana.
And to Rukia's house.