Gerard blinks in mock seriousness. I gulp at my beer like a panicked woman. Gerard and Eleanor count their money, rolling it and unrolling it, making cylindrical silver towers. It's two against one. People stroll by, some stop and browse, others keep on going. Others say they'll come back. "People are always saying they'll come back, and then they never do," I say. Both Eleanor and Gerard look quickly up at me from their money cups, as if I have somehow accused them, one against two. "Just noticing," I say, and they return to their money.
A very beautiful black-haired woman in a denim jumper walks by, and, noticing our sale, stops in to poke and rearrange the merchandise. She is tan and strikingly gray-eyed and all those things that are so obviously lovely you really have to give her demerits for lack of subtlety. "Oh, is the dog for sale?" She laughs rather noisily at Magdalena, and Gerard laughs noisily back (to be polite, he'll explain later), though Eleanor and I don't laugh; he is closer to her age than we are.
"No, the dog's not for sale," says Eleanor, recrossing her legs. "But you know, you're the very first person to ask that question."
"Am I?" says the beautiful woman. The problem with a beautiful woman is that she makes everyone around her feel hopelessly masculine, which if you're already male to begin with poses no particular problem. But if you're anyone else, your whole sexual identity gets dragged into the principal's office: "So what's this I hear about you prancing around, masquerading as a woman?" You are answerless. You are sitting on your hands. You are praying for your breasts to grow, your hair to perk up.
"A clunker," whispers Eleanor, noticing Gerard. "Get yourself a clunker."
i'll probably watch a lot of TV specials: Sammy Davis singing "For Once in My Life," Tony Bennett singing "For Once in My Life," everybody singing "For Once in My Life."
"can i interest you in a Liz Claiborne?" says Eleanor, pulling down the black skirt from the tree. "I don't know much about designer clothes, but supposedly Liz Claiborne is good stuff."
The beautiful raven-haired woman in the denim jumper smiles only slightly. "It's okay except for the lint," she says, gingerly lifting the hem of the skirt, then dropping it again. Eleanor shrugs and puts the skirt back up in the tree. "No one knows anything about character anymore," she sighs, and lurches back toward the tables where she piles up old complimentary airlines magazines and back issues of People and Canadian Skater.
"Just this, then, I guess," says the woman, and she hands Gerard a dollar for a record album. I look quickly and see that it's a Louis Armstrong record I gave him last Christmas. When the woman has left, I say, "So what's this, you're selling gifts? I gave you that record last Christmas and now it's in our yard sale?"
Gerard blushes. I've made him feel bad and I'm not sure whether I intended it. After all, I have sold the wine decanter my brother gave me last year, his foot jiggling, his entire impossible life printed on his face like a coin.
"I've got it on tape," Gerard says. "I've got the Louis Armstrong on tape."
I look at Eleanor. "Gerard tapes," I say.
She nods. She's looking through some old People magazines that she wants to sell for a dime apiece. "So, Billy Joel's getting married to a fashion model," she is saying, flipping pages. "What can you expect from a guy who writes 'I don't want clever conversation' and calls that a love song." Pretty soon Eleanor has lost it and is singing "I don't want clever conversation, I just want gigundo buzooms."
"Kip loves Billy Joel," she adds. "The man's got the taste of a can opener."
It's every man for himself out here.
i will move to a new apartment in town. I will fill it with new smells — the vinyl of a shower curtain, the fishy percale of new sheets, the peppery odor of the landlord's pesticides. I will take too many hot baths — a sex and alcohol substitute and an attempt to get reoriented. At work, suddenly, no one will seem to understand when I'm joking.
we are actually doing fairly well in the yard sale, though the sweaters aren't a big hit since the weather's warm. "I'm sorry about the record album," says Gerard, putting his hand on the part of my thigh where the shorts end.
"That's okay," I say, and go into the house and bring out a lot of junky little presents he's given me in the last two years: crocheted doilies, Crabtree and Evelyn soaps, a drawer sachet that says, "I Pine for You, and Sometimes I Balsam." They are all from other yard sales. They have sat for years in someone else's drawers, and then in their yards, and now I'm getting rid of them. I suppose I'm being vengeful, but I never really liked these presents. They are for an old maid, or a grandmother, and now's my chance to dump them. Perhaps I'm just a small person. Sometimes I think I must love Magdalena more than I love Gerard, because when they both take off for California, I want Magdalena to be happy and I want Gerard to mope and lose his hair into his water dish. I don't want him to be happy. I want him to miss me. That is not really love; I suppose I understand that. But perhaps it is like a small girl who for one baffled and uncharmed instant realizes her rigid plastic doll is not a real baby — before she resumes her pretending again. Perhaps it is like a football player who, futile and superfluous, dives in on top of the manpile, even after he knows the tackle's over; even after he knows the play's completed and it all had nothing to do with him; he just leaps in there anyway.
"Oh my god," cries Eleanor, picking up the balsam sachet. "I've seen this in at least two other yard sales."
"I got it down on Oak Street," says Gerard. "Is that where you saw it?"
"I don't think so." She holds it up by two fingers and eyes it suspiciously.
for a while I'll find myself talking to myself, which will be something I've always done, I'll realize, it's just that when you're living with someone else you keep thinking you're talking to them. Simply because they're in the same room, you assume they're listening. And then when you start living alone, you realize you've developed a disturbing habit of talking to yourself.
As medication, I will watch a lot of HBO and eat baked apples with sour cream. The whites of my eyes will chip and crack with scarlet. Only once or twice will I run out into the street, in the middle of the night, with my pajamas on.
by three-thirty-five business really winds down. I have already sold my ladderback chairs and my Scottish cardigans. I'm not even sure now why I've sold all these things, except perhaps so as not to be left out of this giant insult to one's life that is a yard sale, this general project of getting rid quick. What I really should have brought out is the food Gerard and I still have: potatoes already going bad, growing dark intestines; parsley and lettuce swampy in plastic bags; on the shelf above the stove, spices sticking to the sides of their bottles. Or I should have brought down all the mirrors — the one in the bathroom, the one over the dresser. I'm tired of looking into them and putting on so much make-up I look like a prostitute. I'm tired of saying to myself: "I used to be able to get better-looking than this. I know I used to be able to get better-looking than this."
It all gives me a stomachache. "There goes my dowry," I say when a ten-year-old girl actually buys the "I Pine for You" for a quarter. I feel concerned for her. She is mop-haired and shy, with a small voice that whispers "Thank you." She walks with tiny steps and holds the sachet against her chest.
I'm looking at the sky and hoping it will rain. "This gets dull after a while, doesn't it," I say. "I'd like to close up, except we advertised in the paper we'd stay open until five." Very few cars drive past on Marini Street; some slow down, check us out, then rev up their engines and speed away. Eleanor shakes a halter top and shouts, "Same to you, buddy."