Have you got a T.V.
I beg your pardon.
Have you got a television. We’ll give you the bookcase for eight hundred dollars and a television said Eliza.
Nothing in the shop, but I have a cranky black and white object out back I never watch. You’d be welcome to it.
Is it a deal.
He looked like he could hardly believe it. I couldn’t. If I wasn’t so hungry I might have said something. It isn’t laughter ruins reason.
Why don’t you help me get it out of there.
The bookcase was in three separate pieces. Together we lifted the base, the writing slope and the upper plinth from the trolley and sat them right way up in the middle of the shop. Nice work everyone almost screamed at once. The sun in the leaves outside filtered through to the glass ovals.
Now he said, if you go through there you’ll find the television in the second room on the right. Just unplug it and you can bring it out here like that. We ducked under the rag into a corridor. Doesn’t want us to see where he keeps his stash grumbled Eliza, squinnying for the doorway. It’s probably in that dense book. I bet it’s one of those fake ones with the pages cut out. A camouflaged sarcophagus. His burnished assiette. Vehicle and its freight, one sinking into something. We found the television in a mock Tudor living room with the curtains drawn, a worn in velvet armchair with the foot rest levered out, a lowboy, a liquor cabinet, a few rugs and journals lying around on modest furniture. I sometimes have the eye of a murderer. I pulled the plug and we carried the curved plastic box between us into the shop. It was orange. That’s it he said, a respectable distance from everything. It’ll fit in that trolley won’t it. We lifted it in. He counted eight hundred dollars in cash from one hand to the other then he passed the wad to Eliza. Uniform and divisible. Never let your feelings get away from you. You’ll be getting into antiques yourselves with that thing. Be wanting a computer soon, not a mirage but rasterized.
We have a whole flat full of stuff to get moving. Do you know someone who could value it all for us. We didn’t think of it before.
He gave us the name of a friend at the Old Ark on Wentworth Avenue, or was it City Road. We said goodbye then. I preferred not to look at what we were leaving behind. Somehow Eliza and I found our way back to the wharf. At the ticket booth she stuffed the fresh money in her sock and I broke the last of the original notes. The last pair of white mice, the last bow tie. The dish rolled into the microscope. It was a rough crossing. We tried sitting inside but Eliza felt ill, so we threw the blanket over the latest idiot and chocked the trolley with our feet on the deck. I am giving up my goods. What do you want to do now I said through all the bitter spindrift that flew between us. Not bitter. You want to get a meal in Chinatown, or we could go back to the Bourbon and Beefsteak and order Sonofabitch Cowpoke Stew.
She tapped her fingers to her mouth.
I gotta buy cigarettes she said irrelevantly. Too much salty. Perhaps she didn’t hear. Then, I am for staying in, ya bastard.
6
You’re Rose’s niece, well I’m pleased to meet you. It’s a terrible disease. Had a cousin. Ted Sullaman had one brilliant heel dovetailed to the handle of a stepladder, the other hovering over the final rung and both hands outstretched towards a beaded and nickel plated lamp where it sat with some cardboard hat boxes on top of a wardrobe. His hair was oiled down like patent leather and his serge suit quickened in a smooth dent across his shoulders when he turned to greet us. Hang on I’ll be with you in a sec. He lurched and grabbed the lamp by the stem in one hand, thumping the wardrobe with his knee so it shook, the price tag spinning on its blue thread. It wasn’t a price tag, these were auction rooms. Eliza and I stood waiting in a clearing among the cases and tables and sea chests with initials stencilled onto the lids. Carpets had been rolled up between them and they all held lamps, animalier, telephones. Among the electroliers and the other light fixtures something like an umbrella had been strung to the high ceiling. Sullaman came down rattling.
So Alf Siv is still in business. What’s his secret. Well anyway I’m glad to hear that. The smaller dealers are a dying race. Getting pushed out by the market. Art. International sales. Sotheby’s and Christie’s are here to make a killing, whole atmosphere is changing. It’s in the air as they say, and you can hear it. They sound like the B.B.C. You know, dah dah dah daaah. Victory for the ancestors. Whose is that marble lion. A man. My stars, well hello sister.
Hello.
What brings you here.
We’re looking for a valuer. We have some furniture, silver and things. An apartment’s worth we want to get valued. We were told you could do it.
I’d be glad to but I can’t at the moment I have my hands full. Got a monthly auction coming up. My wife though is an expert. I could ask her for you.
Is she expensive.
Couldn’t tell you how much it’s going to cost until she sees what you’ve got. But you won’t find anyone more reasonable. Give you my word.
We accepted. She could probably be around by the end of the week. Was there anything we had to do in advance.
Just make sure she can get to everything.
It was, strictly, Eliza’s turn to do the dishes. She turned the hot water on full blast and pulled up a pair of rubber gloves. While she worked over the encrusted remains of our partnership I beat the carpets on the balcony. Whole motifs broke loose. I watched as the threads, weightless, slowly turning, were borne away on insensible currents. That lifted my spirits. I had just thrown an especially skeletal carpet off the balcony in the hope that it would be untraceable by the time it hit the gutter when Eliza emerged through the steam in the kitchen doorway tugging at the bruised gloves until they everted. I wiped my forehead. We were ready for her.
The doorbell rang on the dot. Mrs. Sullaman was a tall, plumb shouldered woman with a severe haircut and divinely inscrutable eyes. At least you might have called them that. She pursed her lips and put out her hand. Elizabeth. And you must be the waif. Maxine. My name is Mrs. Sullaman; I’ve been told you need some material valued. Shall we see what I can do.
She put down a huge crocodile skin bag in the centre of the room and looked around her. It’s even bigger than I imagined. What a building.
I haven’t told the half of it. What is is not, not this piece of paper. A very spacious building. I feel I haven’t been entirely accurate. There’ll be time to go back. What exactly did we want to draw her attention to.
All of it.
For what purpose.
Profit.
Catalytic, preferably.
If you simply want to hawk it I can stop at market value. If you’d like to try anything at auction I could give you an estimate of realisable value on top of the first.
Market value will do.
Fine, well ideally I ought to have your instructions in writing but I can do that myself. I have your names and address. All I need from you otherwise is a clear statement of ownership. I charge by the hour so let’s not make this unduly protracted.
Eliza opened her mouth but Mrs. Sullaman had already turned to unclasp her crocodile bag. Her silk bloused arms plunged in repeatedly until she’d drawn out two scrolls of bubble wrap, a few strips of old linen, a foolscap notebook, a tape measure, a pair of scales, a marbled portfolio, a magnifying glass, a camera, a receipt pad and a pencil case. She chose half a pencil, slung the camera on its leather band over her shoulder and took up the notebook. I’ll photograph something if I think I need a better look at it. That probably won’t be necessary. With some places you can tell more or less straight away what you have on your hands. I have my tables of hallmarks and makers’ marks, and I know what to look for.