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They looked good. Everyone did, Ellen thought, smiling, as she slowly studied each face in the newspaper picture. And they were in colour too. All nice red lips and hints of rosy cheeks. The reporter hadn't mentioned that - the colour part - so it was a pleasant surprise, though they were on the front of the Saturday Lifestyles section just like he said they'd be. The picture was a good size, in the upper right-hand corner of page D1 - above the fold. Ellen had rented a movie once about people who worked at a New York newspaper and she remembered how they talked about "above the fold," and how it was important. A big deal, even. She was pleased. And she turned a little in the chair that she had pulled in tight to her kitchen table and glanced back towards the living room. "We look good, girls," she called. Then Ellen thought of how she was so glad that she had worn the purple dress with the lace collar, the faux-pearl necklace, and the pearl-drop earrings for the photograph after all.

And she was glad too that she had taken the time this morning to fix her hair and put on her make-up before she went out to get the newspapers. She bought one paper at each of the three gas stations, two convenience stores, and two grocery stores closest to her house. She didn't think any of the clerks had recognized her, but still, just in case, she didn't want to be seen as vain by buying a whole stack all at once. And even though the clerks probably hadn't had a chance to look through the newspaper yet, later, when they did, she wanted them to recall her properly. Modest and well presented. And remember that she had looked just as nice standing there in person as she did in the picture. Ellen knew she wasn't pretty, but she thought she wasn't bad for forty-two. The freckled young man at the Irving had called her "Miss" instead of "Ma'am." "Will that be everything, Miss?" he had asked, nodding down at the newspaper. Ellen said it was and she smiled at him.

It was that paper, the one from the Irving, that she looked at now. The other six were neatly stacked on the kitchen counter and she had already taken out a ruler, pencil, and scissors to set beside them. She'd look it all over first though. She still had to read the article and memorize the best parts so she'd be prepared for when it came up later in conversation. But now that she saw how good the picture was, she knew the article would be all right. Ellen had already decided that John Mason, the reporter who had interviewed her, was wonderfully clever. "Collector way 'a head' of the game," was what the caption under the picture said. She read it aloud. "Did you hear that girls? Martha, spread the word." She turned again in her chair to face the living room. She looked to the spot where she had posed for the picture in front of the huge cabinet containing her collection of lady head vases. "They're vintage china vases shaped like the head and shoulders of well-dressed ladies. They were used by florists decades ago to help sell fancy bouquets," Ellen had told John for the article. She had about eighty of them. The one she called Martha was on the left end of the bottom shelf. Martha wore a painted purple dress with a painted lace collar, a mini faux-pearl necklace, and tiny pearl-drop earrings.

The phone rang before Ellen could get back to reading the article, and even though it was Mrs. Dunbar, the old woman from next door, she was still delighted. Mrs. Dunbar called because she had seen Ellen's picture in the newspaper. She had home delivery and Ellen could imagine her opening her front door just a crack, looking both ways, then picking the paper up off the step. Now she still wasn't sure that Ellen should have "gone and done it," Mrs. Dunbar said. But all the same, Ellen thought, there was just something in someone else acknowledging that the picture was there.

Mrs. Dunbar had been a friend of Ellen's grandmother and Ellen kind of inherited her along with her grandmother's house. Mrs. Dunbar lived alone too, spending her days knitting pink or blue caps and booties for the preemie babies at the hospital - "those poor things starting out that way" - and watching television beamed in through the satellite dish that her daughter and son-in-law from Ontario had installed for her. She said she liked watching the shows on unsolved crimes and mysteries the best. But Ellen thought they just filled her head with ideas and made her more paranoid.

Mrs. Dunbar hadn't wanted Ellen to be interviewed and photographed for the paper because she feared she might get a stalker. "That's all it takes sometimes," she said. So to this Ellen had said, "This is New Brunswick," which somehow, surprisingly, she seemed to accept and understand. But then Mrs. Dunbar had another concern about Ellen. What if the article put a different kind of idea in someone's head? What if her house was burglarized? There had been a lot of break-ins lately. Things stolen or vandalized. Surely Ellen must have read about them in the newspaper. "Susan Brennan lost all her Royal Doulton figurines," Mrs. Dunbar said. And as she sat sipping tea in Ellen's living room on the day Ellen first mentioned that the reporter was coming, she listed off everything else that she could remember was taken. "My, what people keep in their houses these days." Gone were stereos, fax machines, televisions, VCRs, computers, digital cameras, jewelry, antiques, and silver dollars.

Mrs. Dunbar worried about Ellen and what she might set herself up for. Just like she worried about the unseen dirt and germs and possibly even curses that she brought into her house when she brought one of those lady head vases back from a flea market. And like she wondered what else could be slipped inside the brown cardboard boxes Ellen received in the mail when she bought a vase off the Internet. But Ellen had told her not to think of it. And even now on the phone when Mrs. Dunbar asked if she had seen the write-up today about the latest robbery, Ellen said, "But, you know I never go out in the evenings." Which she didn't, not since almost a year ago when she broke up with her boyfriend. And she wondered then for a second if he would see the newspaper.

"Well, I must say, you do look lovely in the photograph, Dear," Mrs. Dunbar said. "And that man who wrote it seems quite clever." She said she even thought the title was entertaining.

"Collector 'Head' Over Heels for Vintage Vases," Ellen said. She could read the half-inch type from where she was standing across the room. She couldn't help but smile.

John Mason had come on Monday. Ellen got permission to leave her job at the hotel reservation call center two hours early in order to be interviewed at three o'clock. And she had to stay an extra half hour each of the four days after that to make up for it, but she thought it was well worth it. The day of the interview she got up at four in the morning in order to double check that all the vases and everything else that she had cleaned the night before were still clean. Then she made date squares and Nanaimo bars and baked three different kinds of cookies. As it turned out, John didn't eat any; he was still full from a late lunch. But he did, however, say that they looked and smelled delicious.

Ellen had thought a lot about what she was going to say to him when he came. She practiced answers to questions she figured he would ask, so that her quotes would sound right when she finally really said them. Ellen imagined him sitting in her dusty rose wing chair, "So how did you start collecting?" She'd always begin, "Well my grandmother had the prettiest little one always sitting on the side table in the entryway. She kept daisies in it in season, then dogtooth violets, then bluebells." Ellen did a search on flower seasons on the Internet to make sure that she listed off the flowers that her grandmother had in their correct seasonal blooming order. She made changes as she practiced - dogtooth violets went first - then committed this to memory.

On that Monday, when John actually began asking his questions, he both turned on a tape recorder and wrote things on a note pad. He said "Uh huh," and "Right" a lot and Ellen began to worry a bit that he wasn't paying enough attention. She reminded herself that he was a professional though. And she was sure to answer each question to its fullest in case something she said inspired him. She told him how she knew that a famous Hollywood actress collected head vases too. And how she even knew her bidding ID on an online auction site and how she bid against her sometimes - but Ellen was careful not to name drop. And John didn't pry. She talked about some of the nice vases she bought at the local flea market and two that came from a Saint John auction. She said that the vases were really quite collectible and valuable - especially in the States - but she didn't give him any solid numbers. Mrs. Dunbar wouldn't have liked that. And she also didn't tell him that once she spent half a paycheck on one - a beautiful Carmen Miranda vase detailed with exquisite hand-painted fruit.

Ellen was surprised that the interview with John and the four quick photographs he clicked off after had only taken twenty-five minutes. Then she wondered what else she could have said and how it would all sound written out. It was so exciting. After John left she called the antique dealer downtown who had given him her name. She had left it with the dealer in case he ever got any of the vases in. John Mason had called to ask him about some local collectors to write about in a new series on hobbies that he was doing. Ellen was grateful to the antique dealer and told him so - even though she figured that he sold all his vases to dealers down in the States who he thought he could get more money from. But maybe after he saw the newspaper, he'd change his mind.

There were other people too - besides her ex-boyfriend and the antique dealer - that might give the newspaper article a second look. Ellen thought of them as she still sat in her kitchen, two hours later, her favourite quotes and passages from the article now fixed in her head. One time a man she didn't know had said something to her in the parking lot outside the grocery store. He was a small man with a red face and hair and he wore a baseball cap. The man saw her try unsuccessfully to open her car door because she had forgotten she had locked it. She rarely did, but she had stopped at the post office first to pick up one of the head vases that she had bought online and she thought she'd feel just awful if anyone took it. The man said, "Yeah, you better keep it locked, Baby," then with a certain smirk he seemed to nod to the rust above the wheel wells and the little dent near the car's rear end. Ellen was so surprised that she didn't say anything at the time. But then later at home she thought of things she could have said to him - mean things about the size of certain body parts. In her head anyway, but she didn't tell the girls.

And there were people too who had been to her house and had seen the collection who she hoped now would read the newspaper. Like the plumber who said he had a vase "like one a them" at home; he laughed and said he used it as an ashtray. Or even like Mrs. Dunbar's granddaughter, who had been a childhood friend. She stopped in with Mrs. Dunbar to visit Ellen one day last summer. "You sure do have a lot," was all she said.

And then Ellen thought more about her ex-boyfriend Duane and how she really, really hoped he saw it. When they had broken up for no reason that she could tell other than he had decided they were no longer right for each other, he said that the head vases creeped him out. He didn't like the fact that they were always there staring. And why the hell did she talk to them? It had been a low blow. He knew she didn't talk to them in a crazy way like she expected a response, or that they had any level of understanding like a pet did. She talked to them because it seemed like a fun and creative thing to do. She talked to them because it was interesting - like her and like the collection itself.

Ellen spent the afternoon busying herself with yard work. She mowed the lawn using her electric mower, then cut some flowers from the little garden she had planted along the driveway. She took the flowers in and arranged them in the lady head vase with the blond hair and pink hat that she kept on her coffee table in the living room. Then she went back outside and pulled weeds. She waved and smiled at the people in the cars that drove by, and she wondered if they recognized her.

She read the article over again at suppertime. She didn't actually read it while she was eating, in case of spills, but as soon as she was finished she smoothed one of the clipped-out pieces of newspaper on the table. It was still exciting. And she thought then that it had to be the start of something good. And maybe she would even meet someone because of it. Maybe someone would see how special and important it was, then think the same of her. Not that she expected some random phone call from an anonymous admirer - that would be as silly as Mrs. Dunbar's stalker - but maybe someone who had already noticed her just a little bit would now notice her more. Like the tall, thin, brown-haired man at the post office. Now they would have a topic of conversation because once he saw the newspaper story he would know what was always in the boxes she got. Ellen had noticed that he didn't wear a wedding ring and he looked about her age. She wondered too about a man at work, at the call center. His station was only four down from hers. And though they had never spoken, he did smile at her from time to time.

Ellen thought of these and other things throughout the evening as she watched TV. She thought of John Mason. And she thought that maybe she should call him, like she had the antique dealer, to thank him. But somehow it just didn't seem like enough. She should get him something - a card, no, a gift! It seemed like a wonderful idea. And she could even go right away; it was still only eight-thirty and she knew the mall was open until ten. It was a perfect excuse to go out, she thought. Put herself out there - the start of something good. And maybe at the mall people would recognize her, surely most people would have read the newspaper by now. She wondered if she should wear the dress from the photo - the dress she had made to match Martha's - but maybe it would be too much. She decided instead on a soft pink sweater set and burgundy slacks that she had worn to her job interview. She redid her hair and make-up. She said, "Not bad," looking in the mirror. Then, "Here I go girls, I'll see you all later."

The mall wasn't very busy, but still, out of the people who were there, Ellen noticed that a few looked at her. An older lady distinctively smiled and nodded. A young man whispered something into the ear of a young woman. A baby pointed. And at the card store when Ellen bought John's card and the pen and pencil set she had decided on - what better gift for a writer - the cashier complemented her on her outfit. It all made Ellen happy. So much so that she stopped at the drive-thru at Dairy Queen on the way home and bought a dipped cone. She sat alone in her car in the parking lot and ate it, but she didn't mind. It had been a really good day for Ellen. The best one in a long, long time, she thought. It was nearly eleven when she pulled in her driveway.

"I'm home girls," Ellen called out when she went in through the front door and straight up to her bedroom to change. She put on her long nightdress and robe and took John's gift into the spare bedroom to wrap it - only then did she notice that something was wrong. Her computer was missing from the desk in the corner. And the little radio that usually sat on the nightstand was gone too. She felt instantly sick. Oh no, she thought. Oh no! She ran back to her bedroom and realized that the jewelry box wasn't on her dresser. Then, oh no, oh no. She could hardly bear to think it. The girls! She didn't know if she could bring herself to look. She went downstairs and checked the back door first. The glass was smashed; it was how they'd come in. She felt weak, but then she forced herself to do it. She went into the living room - she noticed her television and VCR were missing - then looked to the large cabinet, holding her breath. She was startled by what she saw. Everyone was still there. She stared. How could it be? She looked away and back again and even Martha sat untouched on the left side of the bottom shelf. Ellen could hardly believe it. The robbers hadn't wanted them.

Ellen sat in her dusty rose wing chair for three hours and practiced what she would say to the police, just the way she had for her interview with John. She felt a bit uneasy and almost hated to call them at all, but that just wouldn't do. She had thought of Mrs. Dunbar and the newspaper. But she didn't think it was because of her story in the paper that the break-in had happened - no, not that - there had been burglaries in the neighbourhood before and she had just been foolish going out tonight, got carried away. Instead she thought of the articles on the other robberies, of everyone else's list of what was stolen or wrecked. How John and the other reporters mentioned all the valuables. Everyone would know her now, Ellen thought, when her write-up was in the paper. They'd know the robbers had slighted her. Oh, how it might look.

So when Ellen had her answers to the police's most likely questions memorized, she knew it was time. She had to be strong. "I'm so sorry girls, but it's for everyone's good," she said. Then, setting her hand down beside Martha, she swooped it across the whole bottom shelf. Ellen closed her eyes as she heard the crash.