I half expected Lizard to leave when the time for the auction came, but he didn’t. In fact, he had obviously passed muster because he had a paddle, number nine, and he took a seat several rows ahead of me and off to the right.
Maud’s mirrors and candlesticks were to be the third and fourth items up for sale, and the goblets, the tenth. Bidding was brisk for the first few items, but I had little competition for Maud’s possessions and got both the frames and the candlesticks for what I considered a satisfactory price. I then sat back to wait for the goblets. Sharon Steele had not yet bid on anything, so I figured she was waiting for the goblets too. I knew her to be a conservative bidder, so I thought I stood a reasonable chance of getting what I wanted.
Sharon was number eighteen, I was twenty-three. When the goblets came up, opening with the reserve bid, a number of people put in bids, but by the time the bidding reached $230, only Sharon and I were in. The auctioneer seesawed between the two of us until we got to $300, Sharon’s bid. This was Jean Yves’s limit, but I raised her to $310 hoping that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. Sharon, it seemed, wanted these pretty badly too. By this time I was mentally calculating how much of a loss I was prepared to take. Jean Yves was a good, no, a great customer, and business wasn’t bad these days. But Sarah and I would never get rich, and as the saying goes, on a good month we could almost pay the rent.
As another saying goes, he who hesitates is lost.
The bidding hit $400, and for a few seconds I lost my nerve. Much to Sharon’s surprise and mine, someone farther back raised the bid to $450, and the gavel came down. “Sold to thirty-one,” the auctioneer said.
I was sitting dealing with my disappointment when a voice I knew only too well came from behind. “I think Jean Yves will be pleased with the goblets, don’t you?” the voice asked amiably.
Clive. I turned around to find my ex-husband, a smug expression on his face, sitting directly behind me. He was very elegantly attired, maybe Armani, I remember thinking—Moira would know—with very trendy little wire glasses and an expensive-looking haircut.
“Why are you doing this?” I hissed at him. He was stroking his moustache as I spoke, a gesture that at one time, I seemed to recall, I had found profoundly attractive, but which now just incensed me.
“Doing what?” he asked innocently. “I just thought I’d pick these up for Jean Yves. I was afraid Sharon would get them, so I leapt in.”
“You didn’t do it for Jean Yves. You did it for the same reason you opened up across the street from me,” I whispered, acutely conscious that people nearby were watching us, but too angry to care.
“You did it to spite me,” I went on. “Why? I gave you half the money for the store, and surely Celeste has enough money to keep you in style,” I hissed.
“But it was never the money, my darling. I just need a chance to express my creativity,” he said.
Yeah, right, I thought. “I’m not your darling,” I sputtered, getting up from my seat and heading for the door.
By the time I’d climbed over the legs of several people sitting between me and the aisle, the tears of rage I was determined not to show pricking at the back of my eyes, the bidding on the next item had already begun. As I was about to stumble out the door at the back of the room, I saw someone lurking—there is no other word for it—behind a potted palm. I could not imagine what he was doing there. He didn’t appear to have a number, and he looked, if anything, even more out of place than Lizard. He was dressed completely in black, and he was concentrating very hard on the bidding that was going on. As I went by his hiding place, he turned, his concentration broken by my passing, and for a moment he stared right at me. It was all I could do not to gasp out loud. His eyes were very dark and hooded, and the backs of his hands were covered in dark hair. For some reason I cannot explain, something about the way he held his arms out from his body, almost like pincers, reminded me of a crab, or perhaps an enormous black spider, and a poisonous one at that. His eyes held mine for a second or two, and then he turned back to the bidding.
Intrigued, I turned back as well. The bidding was getting really competitive, and two parties were battling it out for something, number nine and number thirty-one: Clive and the Lizard.
The item that was being auctioned was a box of small objects that had not been claimed in customs and was therefore on the block. I’d seen it on my quick survey before the auction began. I really hadn’t taken much notice of it, and in my haste to get out of the place, I hadn’t heard the description of it from the auctioneer. My vague recollection was that there was a fair amount of junk in the box, and maybe a couple of things that looked interesting, although nothing I cared about.
But I knew which object held Clive’s attention: a small carved jade snuff bottle. Collecting was one of Clive’s passions, and on a scale of one to ten, snuff bottles would score a nine point five with him. He had an impressive collection which at one time we’d displayed on the shelf beneath a glass coffee table in our living room. I’d managed to find a few nice ones as Christmas and birthday presents, and he’d invariably been pleased with them.
The bidding was getting quite hot and moving up fast. Lizard, when he wasn’t holding up his paddle, was casting desperate glances back toward Clive. The price continued to rise. Clive was leaning forward in his chair, and Lizard was mopping the sweat from his brow; he wanted the box that badly. But it was clear that Clive had the resources, Lizard did not.
As the gavel was about to come down on his bid, smelling victory and convinced he had won, Clive leaned toward a pretty young woman sitting next to him and whispered something to her.
And then, on impulse, I did to Clive what he had done to me. I held my paddle up, and before he knew what was happening, I found myself the proud owner of a box of junk that was suddenly worth, by my own action, $990. It was a malicious thing to do, to say nothing of infantile, reckless, and even foolhardy.
It was also one of the worst mistakes I have ever made.
2
Clive got them!“ Moira shrieked. ”How awful!“
We were sitting in the little office at the back of the store, just after closing, contemplating the wretched box of junk I’d purchased. As we did so, Diesel, an orange cat who holds the title of Official Shop Cat, leapt up on the table and stuck his nose in the box. After a moment or two of poking about, he looked up and, giving me a look of pure disdain, stalked off to more interesting and rewarding activities. “Dumb, I know,” I said to the little beast’s retreating back.
My moment of triumph at having wrenched the snuff bottle away from Clive was very short-lived. In fact, I didn’t make it out of the building. The feeling lasted only until I used my personal credit card (how could I charge this moment of madness to the shop?) to pay for it. The $1000 tab, $990, to be precise, put my credit card perilously close to the limit, and I skulked back to the store in despair.
An hour or so later, Moira appeared, her dark hair in a sleek and sophisticated new hairdo, dressed in a long grey cotton sweater with matching leggings. She looked spectacular, as usual, and I had the feeling she had a date, but she said she’d just been passing by and decided to drop in. I had my suspicions that Alex, sensing my gloom, had called her, but neither of them said anything.
“I think what you really have to do,” Moira said, after a few minutes of quiet contemplation on both our parts, “is to get someone to make this jade thingy into a pendant of some sort which you’ll wear every day. Every single day,” she added, “while you parade up and down in front of Clive’s store.”