The spice shop is never quiet. Jars clink when they’re stacked, metal scoops scrape against bins and the air carries the overlapping scents of a thousand kitchens. The shopkeeper is the axis it all spins around, toggling between two modes: languid, as if the register counter were a chaise lounge; or electric, buzzing to life the second a group of salon-fresh, sixty-something women drifts in from next door. He greets them with the same line—something about how they’re spicier than anything in his store—and they laugh as if they’ve never heard it before.

Today, though, he’s working one-on-one. He flips a jar of sumac between his hands like a baseball while teasing a regular, a woman in zebra-print pants with a diamond wedding ring the size of a quail’s egg. “Have you left him yet?” he asks.

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