quote:

I once had a Little Old Lady totter into my store. She was perfectly charming, even adorable, in a sort of Old School way. You could tell that every few days, she went to the hairdresser to have her hair set; she would never leave the house without putting on her face. She wore pill box hats and smart little dresses. A right proper Little Old Lady, perfect in every way. When she showed me the ring she wanted to repair, I turned green.

It was a pearl ring: A single white pearl glued onto a post and placed on a gold band. Simple, elegant and beautiful. The stench that emanated from this ring would kill a vulture. It was encrusted, around the pearl and under her finger, with black goo. The pearl itself was pock-marked like the moon… no, it was worse. There was a massive crater on one side that had scraped a third of the pearl clean away.