Chuck’s soul froze up in horror.
“He’s fascinating, of course,” lied Chuck.
“Lee painted some real crap,” said Leroy Neiman’s friend.
“No, no,” lied Chuck. “No, no.”
“I was so privileged to be at his ninetieth birthday. You know, most of his birthday parties Lee invited only women.”
The table chuckled at the venerable rascality of the incorrigible Leroy Neiman.
10
Maria had seemed excited about the auction. She had promised to be in Burbank by 9 a.m. sharp to pick up Chuck. He stood there waiting. A Ford Focus arrived. Someone stepped out of the driver’s seat and peered. She was long-legged and dark like Maria, but much younger. She wore something fashionable that resembled a bellhop uniform from a 1960s science fiction movie. Chuck took one step in her direction. She examined him inquiringly. He pointed at himself. She raised her perfectly waxed eyebrows over her round black-lensed glasses in response. He crept closer to the car like a deviant.
“Are you…?” she said.
Chuck said he was Chuck.
“I thought so. Get in.”
Chuck got in. So did she. She turned down the radio and put it in gear.
“Where’s Maria?” said Chuck.
“She’s sorry. She couldn’t make it. She sends her apologies.”
“Are you…?” said Chuck.
“Oh, I’m…”
“Are you her daughter?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I am. Angel.” He realized that she wasn’t calling him an angel, she was saying that her name was Angel. “Now, where are we going again?”
That morning the auction started with a pair of “Venetian Painted Blackamoors.” Chuck apologized. “Bob Hope wasn’t a racist,” he said. “I guess everybody had some Venetian Painted Blackamoors.”
“No bigs,” said Angel. She was the understanding type.
“Will there be food?” she had asked him on the way. He had said no, so they stopped and he got her a breakfast burrito to go. But he was wrong. There was a pyramid of bagels and a much larger crowd than yesterday’s attacking them. At the feet of the Ichabod Crane type next to Chuck languished a paper plate scattered with crumbs, a smeared black paper napkin, a plastic cup with a dribble of OJ left in the bottom, a torn cellophane peppermint wrapper.
Memorabilia seemed to be running higher today, and there was more energy, a wild rumble of nattering that never stopped. A fellow manning the phone table shouted like a revivalist, giving a spine-tingling “YAH!” or “YUP!” whenever an internet customer gained the top bid.
The Cancel My Reservation pot came and went in a breathtaking shaft of anticlimax, rocketing past him to $1,200. Chuck was astonished and crushed. Angel could see it. “You should have gone for that three-hundred-dollar little table that was really ugly,” she said. “Or his old boot brush. That was a keeper.” She found the whole thing amusing and, apparently, absurd. She was drawn nevertheless to a pair of lush, worn, burnt-orange velvet armchairs, susceptible as anyone to the intimate guile of the bantam auctioneer, though she dropped out quickly, shutting down his seduction with such deftness that Chuck could see the wonder and respect glimmer in his cagey eyes.
As the auction went on and Chuck made his bereaved and hesitant failures, she kept solemnly tapping the catalog photo of Bob Hope’s grungy boot brush and raising her eyebrows suggestively. It worked every time and he couldn’t help laughing, down as he was in spirit. She smelled like a bubble bath and made the hairs stand up on his arms. He couldn’t think.
11
There was a lunch break between the morning and afternoon sessions. Angel and Chuck walked to a Beverly Hills deli with an aged clientele. He had chopped liver and explained things. The hours were running out. The last of the lots were coming up, and only a few remaining items would do for his sick friend. He couldn’t afford a single distraction. His goal required all his concentration. Had she seen how expensive everything was today? It was crazy.
“I know, you kept saying, ‘That’s crazy!’” she told him.
“I did? Out loud?”
“Uh, yeah. Like nine times.”
“How mortifying,” said Chuck. “But I mean, somebody bought Bob Hope’s Webster’s Dictionary for two hundred dollars. It’s a Webster’s Dictionary. That’s crazy.”
“Well, you were really going for that shitty box,” she said.
She meant the small crate of roughly joined planks, stamped all over with DANGER! LIVE INDIA MONGOOSE: THE SNAKE EATER. “When box is opened,” the catalog declared, “a spring mechanism releases a furry tail and loud noise.” It was listed adorably as “BOB HOPE NOVELTY TRICK BOX.” Chuck was sure he had the only legitimate reason to bid on it, and found his deadened capacity for amazement jolted back to life when it swiftly rose in price and, like everything else, out of his range.
“You’re getting this dude a gag gift, right?” said Angel. “So I think it would have been hilarious if you got him a gag. I mean, a gag gift that’s a real gag? Hi-lare.”
Chuck was bewildered and hurt. How was something from Bob Hope’s home a gag gift? He hadn’t thought of the box like that. He knew that Donny, lying there on his deathbed, would have gotten a real kick from handling this rare old piece of crude machinery that Bob had used to lay a cornball shock on the jaded partygoers of Palm Springs. Donny would think of some tough guy like Robert Mitchum whipping back his hand in fear and everybody having a snort of hooch and laughing about it around the old acrylic cocktail table. Chuck hoped it wasn’t heart trouble, though Donny would appreciate going out that way, mortally stunned by Bob Hope’s novelty trick box. Chuck had missed out on that frosted glass Christmas tree. It hadn’t seemed worth paying attention to. But it came with a note from Mitchum, which Chuck had noticed too late. That old softie, that big lug, giving Bob a Christmas tree. Who would have expected such tenderness and sentimentality in such a mismatched pair? They were just like Chuck and Donny.
“A Bob Hope fashion award. That’s a gag gift,” Angel said.
Chuck couldn’t explain to her why a Bob Hope fashion award, which indeed he had bid on for Donny, wasn’t a gag gift.
“Do you even know who Bob Hope is?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” she said. “Hey, look. I have a friend who likes to dress up like a teddy bear and put on a diaper and wet himself.”
“Okay,” said Chuck.
“I drew a picture of him with a Hungarian flag as a diaper, and I posted it to my tumblr,” said Angel. “I started getting all these angry comments, like, this is disrespect to Hungary or whatever. And I was like, ‘Whatevs’ or whatever. I was like, ‘My friend is from Hungary and he loves this picture.’ So you see?”
Chuck didn’t see. He didn’t see at all. She was speaking gibberish. Or he was. He looked across the booth at her and was flooded with feelings. It wasn’t fair that Maria had to get older, replaced by this newer, firmer model, wearing clothes that might have been manufactured before Maria was born. People died and clothes lived forever? Something. Time had gone and got fluid on Chuck. He was one of those movie ghosts who doesn’t realize he’s dead until somebody points it out. His head swam and he must have looked a wretch. Angel reached across the table and touched his ghostly hand.
“The keychain was cool,” she said, trying to make him feel better.
He pulled his hand away.
“The keychain was not cool. Twenty-two hundred for a keychain. I’m starting to feel like there’s something bad in the world.”
“Any kind of membership card is cool,” she said. “It said on it that all theater managers should extend every courtesy to Bob Hope and his party.”