Inside, amid the clutter of tables and chairs and equipment and bolts of upholstery fabric, a lot of people were taking notes or laughing and talking to one another. At a card table near the back, a woman had you fill out a form attached to a clipboard. For a second, Jocelyn remembered her aunt’s flip-out at the eye doctor’s. At least there had been a medical reason for it. Her mother was just plain crazy. The woman handed out white cards with big numbers written on them with black Magic Marker when you returned the form. The girl Jocelyn had seen earlier — Alex? — was fanning her face with her card while her boyfriend rummaged through tool boxes. He was black-haired, with a tattoo of a rifle piercing a skull on his bulging bicep and sagging pants. He wore unlaced red high-tops. “You gonna bid on the King?” the woman sitting behind the card table asked the guy wearing a cowboy hat, who was standing in front of Alex and her boyfriend. “They all came out of the same house, which I heard belonged to the ex-husband of Lisa Marie Presley!” she said. “Her mother, Priscilla, got to be married to the King, and she ran off with the yoga instructor!”
“Well now, you slept with the King, yourself, in Las Vegas, didn’t you? Wasn’t that what you was telling me the other night, about all that hot sex?”
“Go on!” the woman said, laughing, handing him number 38. “One thing’s for sure, and you’re the living proof of it: we won’t see the likes of him again.”
“There it is! Look!” Bettina said. “Such beautiful green velvet. And notice the delicate carving on the wood. I believe it’s a real Eastlake parlor set. We should get it for you, Jocelyn.”
“I don’t want that shit,” Jocelyn said.
“Language,” her aunt said halfheartedly, walking off to get a number.
“I’ll bet you’re sorry we came,” Jocelyn said to Raleigh. “But hey: it’s a distraction, right? We can try to forget the Nick scumbag exists. And it’s what Bettina wanted to do.”
“That’s true,” he said. “It pleases Bettina. She grew up in Michigan, you know, with her grandfather and grandmother. Her grandmother taught her to love old furniture.”
Raleigh stuck out as not belonging in this crowd. She hoped she did, too. Bettina fit right in. She waved her number at Jocelyn and began to inspect the things close to where she’d gotten her bidding card. Jocelyn hung back, making sure to keep a distance between herself and her uncle. “Loving you, loving you!” the cowboy sang, gesturing toward a dozen or so Elvis lamps, hand over his heart as if he were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. The lamps had no shades. All of them — and there were a lot — were arranged on a long table. A few lampshades lay on the ground behind it. A small bird sat on top of one; it took off quickly toward the top of the barn when people approached. “Light switches work? Can we get some of those Dairy Queen swirled ice cream lookin’, energy-savin’ lightbulbs to come out of the King’s head like snakes do you think?” Cowboy asked.
“I’m going to sit down,” she said to Raleigh. He’d been watching the man who was infatuated with his own voice. He nodded. She took a chair five rows back from the podium, trying to ignore the man in the wheelchair, but the flag kept drawing her attention. She closed her eyes and tried to remember the beach, Cassiopeia, the stars, how really black the sky could be. Her one little thing with T. G., after which Zelda arrived and acted really pissed off about something. Who knew what. That they were sitting in the sand holding hands, just the two of them? Big deal. When she opened her eyes, the guy with the tattoos was pulling out a chair on the opposite side of the aisle, though the girl he’d been with never did join him. Jocelyn stared, more or less because she didn’t know where else to look. The image of the rifle that curved because of the way his muscle bulged was sort of riveting. BLT kept rising up on her toes, trying to wave her over. Jocelyn just wanted the auction to be over. In school, she wanted class to be over. On the beach, she wanted to be back in her room. In her room, she wanted to be in her house — her mother’s house. What was that going to be like, sharing space — sharing her mother — with the drug addict?
She slid back farther in the chair, her butt already numb from the metal. As she shifted her weight, she looked over her shoulder and saw her. Ms. Nementhal was several rows back, talking to a pretty woman. She saw her in profile, but Ms. Nementhal didn’t realize she’d been seen. She was busily conversing. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and, with the same hand, slid her arm around the woman’s shoulder. The woman looked at her with a little wry smile, her mouth lipsticked red. It was one of those mouths that seemed to have been delicately placed on someone’s face, like a flower tucked into a lapel. Jocelyn felt a jolt. A real jolt, like what it must feel like to be hit by lightning. That was an exaggeration. It was a tingle, and a simultaneous numbness — so that her butt wasn’t the only thing without feeling. She got it. She absolutely got it. But what were they doing at this stupid auction in the middle of nowhere? How could it be? What could she do to make sure Ms. Nementhal didn’t see her, since she was supposed to be writing her stupid fucking essay? Well, but wasn’t Ms. Nementhal supposed to be preparing for the next day’s class?
People seated around her immediately turned toward the fenced-off area as the lights suddenly dimmed and the Elvis lamps started flashing. Somehow, the bulbs were turning on and off in unison, the retarded cowboy singing another song and flipping a light switch, or using a remote, or whatever he held that made them flash. He was gyrating and singing “Jailhouse Rock.” It was a pretty good imitation. It really was. Her uncle stood there, clapping his hands above his head.
She patted the seat next to her when Bettina appeared at her side. It wasn’t likely, but maybe, maybe she could get out without Ms. Nementhal seeing her. Was she going to say anything about that to her aunt? No, she wasn’t. In a few minutes Raleigh came and sat next to them, stepping over their legs to get to the third seat. Bettina was chattering away, obsessed with her parlor set. “Is it like something you’ve seen before?” Jocelyn said, just to be polite and to have something to say. “What do you think I’ve been saying to you the last five minutes? Do you listen at all? It’s Victorian. It’s almost the exact duplicate of the one my grandparents had when I was much younger than you, if it had rose-colored velvet instead of green!”
The auctioneer took the stand, two younger men with their arms dangling at their sides, wearing overalls, flanking him. He greeted the man in the wheelchair by name, though Jocelyn couldn’t hear what he said. The yellow-gloved hand went into the air to make a gesture somewhere between hello and dismissal. After saying something to the auctioneer, the man started coughing. One of the auctioneer’s assistants looked at him nervously. The coughing went on for quite some time. Then the auctioneer introduced himself: “The auctioneer who needs no introduction! The warm-up act for Mr. Elvis Presley!” He started to speak into the microphone, a maddening, jammed-up sequence of words that crashed like bumper cars, after which everything sorted itself into some kind of sense again, and after the fact you could understand most of what he’d said. He held the microphone like a Popsicle that had started to melt. The words tumbled over each other, the sounds dipping and rising. He joked that people were there for “the head of Elvis,” but that he was going to offer sacrifices galore before they got to “the main body of the auction.” He stood behind a rickety podium. The men at his sides stared straight ahead over the crowd, shoulders back, feet a certain distance apart, hands clasped behind them like soldiers at ease. One of the things Jocelyn remembered about her father was that he’d shown her the positions soldiers took: attention, at ease. She’d liked to stand beside him and copy whatever he was doing. Now, she thought that was an unfortunate thing about men: they were always posturing when they were young, and if they went into the Army, they taught them not only postures but attitude. Like guys needed more attitude.