Free Pockets of Darkness by Jean Rabe

The ledge would be slippery. Time to go.
    One more pass, she decided. One more. If Marsh’s friend had gotten a shabti here, there had to be something else, right? Something Harry Black or Brown or Gray had missed. She returned to the bedroom, fingers twitching in time with the CPAP. First to the closet, then to the bureau, the nightstand, and then the bed; all of it one more time. One more. Bridget froze. The bed.
    Beneath the bed.
    She crouched and reached under it, the fringe on the comforter tickling the back of her hand. She had the sensation of being watched, yet a glance confirmed the man was still sleeping. Next, she had the more welcome sensation of desert heat and a dry wind. The shabti hadn’t been the only thing from Egypt in this apartment. Indeed, Marsh’s friend Harry had missed something.
    She stretched farther, careful not to move the comforter, holding her breath and stealing herself for … there! A dizzying rush suffused her, images of dark-skinned men with shaved heads and wearing symbols of Ra and Horus. Her fingers closed on the handle of a satchel, and she fought against the ancient glimpses that shot behind her eyes. Bridget forced the pictures down, and slid the case—a battered, oversized briefcase—out from under the bed.
    It was heavy, promising something very interesting inside.
    The leather looked old and carried the pong of dead fish, but Bridget didn’t care about the smell. What an amazing thing it must hold! A treasure from the time of the pharaohs. She wanted to delve deeper, to look inside this very instant and run her hands over whatever it was, get high on the history of the object and trace its passage through the centuries. She stopped herself from reaching for the clasp.
    Time for the discovery later, she thought, back at her brownstone. If she lost herself to the history here, she could well get caught.
    The CPAP machine continued its sonorous accompaniment.
    Bridget left the room, then the apartment, strapping the heavy briefcase to her back and climbing down the wall into the darkest part of the alley. The snow was coming harder still, mixed with ice pellets, so cold it was like shards of glass striking her face. She squinted through it as she hurried to the nearby subway stop at Eighty-Sixth and Broadway.
    “Wait,” she told herself as she settled onto a cold plastic seat. “Wait. Wait. Wait.”
    Bridget would force herself to not open the briefcase until safely back at her brownstone in Fort Greene. Then she would see what slice of the past she’d managed to lift from the tenth floor of the building at Eighty-Fifth and West End.
    ***

Nine
    Locking herself in her study, Bridget sat cross-legged on a large golden-beige rug—an over-dyed Turkish oushak woven in 1910. She valued it at only $6,990 because one end of it was faded and frayed. Sometimes she meditated on it, palms against the nap and using her psychometry to draw out images of the long-fingered women who had deftly fashioned the flower and vine patterns and who she imagined to be her friends. Watching them weave soothed her, and the climate during the time the rug was woven was lovely and so far removed from New York City’s winter. This morning, however, she kept the weavers away and fixed her gaze on the smelly briefcase.
    She concentrated.
    Oddly, she could not date the satchel; conflicting pictures danced behind her eyes. Likely a patchwork of hides—parts of previous garments and purses recycled and dyed to the same dull-brown shade, a myriad of faces from previous owners. Running her fingers over the leather, she felt it rough in some places, smooth in others, thicker along one side. Why a moneyed man like Elijah Stone in the Eighty-Fifth apartment would own it was a puzzle. Perhaps a hand-me-down from a relative kept only for sentiment’s sake. Or maybe it was a convenient pick-up from a resale shop in which to hide something of great value. She saw flashes of Elijah, the man’s manicured hands