Chuck had to laugh, imagining Bob Hope fishing around in his pockets for his keychain so he could get into a movie for free. She really understood nothing about Bob Hope’s place in the world. Soon she and her kind would be the only ones left on earth, a race of long-legged eternally youthful superbeings who smelled invigoratingly of soap.
“I have to go back alone,” he said, signing the receipt for lunch.
“Well,” she said, “give me a hug.”
She stood up. He gave her a hug. He squeezed her too tight. He couldn’t help it.
He watched her leave, a glimmering alien pharaoh’s daughter parting a sea.
Chuck went into the deli bathroom, where he saw a stooped nonagenerian in a black suit. Chuck slipped past him into the stall and heard him out there knocking things over in big, chiming crashes. When he came out the old man was funereal as ever, bent over the sink, giving his crooked, lavender hands a slow and proper bath that never ended. Nothing Chuck could see was out of place.
12
The auction house was a riot of cold cuts. Why did Chuck keep missing the free food? He returned to his seat. Things tumbled from the mouth of the man seated just in front and to the left of him: particles of bread; the pale, curled sliver of a sickly tomato; two confetti scraps of lettuce. The sloppy eater turned around to stare, his irises so round and dark he looked like a cartoon character. Eventually, once the auction was underway again, he moved on. A worker in a dark blue uniform jacket cleaned up most of the mess. This place was like a soup kitchen.
Chuck dozed and had a vision of big ants crawling on a windowpane and a blue jay eating purple dragonflies, only its beak was broken. He woke himself up with a yell and found he was bidding on seventy swirled goblets, yellow and green. He bid some more. He drove up the price with what felt like horror and pulled out just in time to lose.
He glanced over minutes after losing a crystal ice bucket and saw it in the cabinet at the end of his aisle, so much smaller than he had thought, and wondered if he were really as coarse as he seemed, judging worth by size. In Atlanta in the early ’90s, Veda had taken him to the birthday party of Ronnie Rude, a man with Down’s syndrome who worked carrying ice in a bucket from table to table at the Clermont Lounge.
The Clermont was a kind of seedy club with weathered strippers who threw glitter and sang “Happy Birthday” to Ronnie Rude, and the glitter fell on the sad cake in the dark.
As its part of Atlanta had become gentrified, the Clermont had maybe turned ironic, a gag, a novelty trick box, maybe overvalued by nostalgists and underground purists, or maybe its reality was insulted by slumming yuppies from Buckhead. Now they were turning the adjoining flophouse into a boutique hotel. Veda would have been appalled. Supposedly there were plans to keep the Lounge intact — a living historical exhibit, the Colonial Williamsburg of despair. Chuck wondered what people were willing to pay for things, and why. He was fascinated by those who knew which kind of trash was the good kind, like Maria with her cheap but excellent bleeding fried chicken from a grimy storefront, and the authentic pig’s foot he had seen bobbing around when she stirred her red beans and rice. It was a mysterious talent. Veda had always been very big on “authenticity,” but Chuck hadn’t thought about it much since she’d stopped being around.
He bid on a pewter ice bucket and remembered saying aloud while flipping through the catalog, “I don’t know why people collect pewter.” Now he did.
By the time the Baccarat ice bucket came along, he skipped it. He had developed ice bucket fatigue.
Behind him, a fresh and inexplicable crowd suddenly streamed in, greeting one another with excited squeals. He swooned in the hot jacket.
Around lot 576, a third set of Judith Leiber belts from the personal wardrobe of Bob Hope’s wife, Chuck realized that he had entered a pleasant state of resignation, like freezing to death. He lazily smiled as he thought, Wow, Dolores Hope sure liked Judith Leiber belts.
The woman in front of him bought some belts. The auctioneer had flashed his confident yet pleading grin at her. She was putty in his hands. Cruelly waiting for confirmation of an internet bid that would take the belts away from her, he snapped, “Chew faster!” The guy who yelled “YAH!” or “YUP!” was eating as he worked. Just jamming crackers in his mouth while he fucked with people’s dreams.
They wouldn’t even let Chuck buy Donny an “American Cinema Award.” What in the hell was an American Cinema Award? Chuck could’ve given Bob Hope an American Cinema Award. It was so generic as to be totally meaningless. This auction existed because people burdened Bob Hope with piles and piles of crap wherever he went, to get an honorary degree in Utah or wherever. Stuff with his name on it, like diamond-studded belt buckles. Cufflinks and straps of leather emblazoned with his face. A Cross pen culminating in Bob’s own miniscule head, plaques and bowls, melted-looking clay jugs, cheap trophies with detachable cowboys on top, frosted glass eagles and airplanes, Christmas ornaments and autographed globes, medallions and plaster busts, a barber pole. After a while it probably seemed more like a torture than an honor. They may as well have been gobs of spit flung in hateful rage, these treasures. Maybe it was a relief to die. The world is too full. Angel had been right about the Bob Hope fashion award, which Chuck had approached with a dumb earnestness that a member of her generation couldn’t comprehend. The Nothing American Cinema Award for Nothing went for $2,500.
Then there were the clowns.
So many porcelain clowns.
“We should get Bob a clown, he’s funny.”
How many clown figurines had been unloaded on Hope by well-meaning dolts per year? Man lives to a hundred, he can accumulate a number of unwanted porcelain clowns. At some point he had so many that people really started to think he liked them, or so went the story Chuck told himself.
After half a dozen lots of clowns, the auctioneer said, “More clowns! What a shock,” and got a nice ripple. Sotto voce, he leaned into the microphone: “How many more pages of clowns?” After that, people laughed almost dementedly, in a Pavlovian way, whenever he said “clowns,” and finally that was just Chuck. Old Chuck laughed until he cried, barely keeping it together. Hey, maybe that was normal auction behavior. No one seemed to mind.
Chuck bought Donny some porcelain clowns. They were a gag gift. Angel had nailed it again. But there was a problem when Chuck tried to check out. The reception desk claimed that someone else had won Chuck’s clowns.
He was so foggy he almost believed them. Harried superiors in headsets appeared. A chicly turned-out clerk rifled through accordion folders. At last it was determined that Paddle 188 had won the clown figurines.
“That could be a simple mistake,” Chuck said. “I’m Paddle 187.”
It looked as if negotiations were hopeless when the next person in line came up beside Chuck to engage a secondary clerk. This meticulous sport put down his paddle and Chuck saw that it was 188. The person who had been helping Chuck was ecstatic at the coincidence. She confirmed on the spot that Paddle 188 had not bid on the porcelain clowns. Chuck gave the guy a friendly nudge and said, “Ha ha, you almost got some clowns you didn’t buy!” He was rewarded with a withering squint. Paddle 188 looked like the X-Files villain who enjoyed giving haircuts to corpses.
They brought Paddle 188 a book by Phyllis Diller, one she had signed to Bob. Paddle 188 opened it up and said, “Oh my God.” Chuck glanced over and saw the full-page inscription in neat, packed lines of red ink, but couldn’t read any of it before its new owner smacked it shut.