Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(39)
Though his big blue eyes are shrinking, he’s convinced of it; or is that that his face is growing? Whatever the cause, the ratio between his eyes and his face is changing, as is that between his shoulders and his belly. He can still do the blue-eyed thing; it still works, most of the time; though not of course with men. Men are better at telling when other men are bullshitting. The trick with women is to stare at their mouths. One of the tricks.
He and Gwyneth don’t have kids, so the wait in the divorce queue shouldn’t be too long. Once they’ve gone through the formalities, Sam will be at loose ends, yet again. He’ll be wandering the world like a snail, house on his back, which is possibly how he feels most comfortable. He’ll whistle a merry tune. He’ll ramble. He’ll smell like himself again.
Gwyneth’s car starts without a problem. She cuts the engine, stares cow-like out her window at him, a smug witness to his frozen-fingered manoeuvres with the jumper cables, hoping perhaps that he’ll electrocute himself. No such luck: he signals to her to switch on, and juice flows from her car to his, and he’s mobile again. Strained smiles are exchanged. He eases onto the icy street, gives her a wave. But she’s already turned away.
His parking spot behind the building is unoccupied for once. The store is west on Queen, just where the advancing wave of grooviness hits the barren shore of down-at-heels. On one side, trendy coffee purveyors and boutique nighteries; on the other, pawnshops and cheap dress stores, their merchandise yellowing on cracked mannequins. Metrazzle, proclaims the lettering on his sign. In the display window is a teak dining room set from the ’50s, complemented with a stereo in blond wood. Vinyl is back: some kid with rich parents is going to find that cabinet irresistible.
Metrazzle isn’t open yet. Sam jingles his way in through the multiple locks. His partner is already there, in the back, engaged in his usual occupation, which is furniture forgery. No: furniture enhancement. Ned is his name, or the one he goes by; distressing is his game, or one of them. He’s the Botox doctor of wood, except that he makes it looks older rather than younger. The air is flecked with fine sawdust, and reeks of stain.
Sam heaves his duffle bag into a vintage steel Eames chair. “Bitch out there,” he says. Ned looks up from his hammer and chisel; he’s adding a few faux cracks.
“More on the way,” he says. “It’s dumping on Chicago right now. They shut the airport.”
“When’s it due here?” says Sam.
“Later,” says Ned. Tap tap, goes his chisel.
“Guess it’s the climate change,” says Sam. That’s what people say, the way they used to say, We’ve angered God. And like that, not a f*cking thing anyone can do about it, so why even mention it? Party while it lasts. Party if you can. Not that he feels much like partying today. What Gwyneth has done to him is sinking in, sinking down. There’s a cold spot right in the middle of him somewhere. “Fucking snow, I’ve had enough of it,” he says.
Tap tap tap. Pause. “Wife kick you out?”
“I left,” says Sam, as indifferently as he can manage. “Been working up to it.”
“Matter of time,” says Ned. “Bound to happen.”
Sam appreciates Ned’s seamless acceptance of what he must suspect is a fairly major alteration of the truth. “Yeah,” he says. “Sad. She’s taking it hard. But she’ll be okay. It’s not like she’s out on the street, she’s hardly starving.”
“Right, right,” says Ned. He has so many tattoos up his forearms he looks upholstered. He never says much, having done time and concluded, rightly, that a zipped lip attracts no stilettos. He likes this job and is grateful for it, which is good for Sam because he won’t jeopardize it by asking questions. On the other hand, he stores incoming information like a data miner and disgorges it accurately when required.
Sam extracts from him the news that a client dropped by late yesterday, no one Ned has seen before, guy in an expensive leather jacket. He’d examined all the desks. Funny he was out in the snowstorm, but some guys like the challenge. Nobody else in the store, which was no surprise. The handsome reproduction Directoire was the guy’s object of interest: he asked for a price, said he’d think about it. Wanted a reserve of two days, put down a deposit of a hundred dollars. Cash not credit. In the sealed envelope beside the register. Name’s inside it.
Ned goes back to his chiselling. Sam strolls over to the counter, casually opens the envelope. In with the cash – in twenties – there’s slip of paper, which he extracts. There’s nothing written on it but an address and a number. He’s not fooling Ned, but they operate on a principle of maximum deniability: just assume everything’s bugged, is Sam’s motto. He looks at the pencilled number, which is 56, files it in his brain, scrunches the paper, sticks it in a pocket. First toilet he encounters, down it will go.
“Guess I’ll hit the auction,” he says. “See what I can pick up.”
“Good luck with it,” says Ned.
The auction is a storage-unit auction. Sam attends two or three of these a week, as many folks in the antiques business do – making the rounds of the storage emporia that ring the city and the neighbouring towns, located in this strip-mall wasteland or that. Sam’s on an email list-serv that automatically mails him all upcoming auctions in the province, tagged by postal code. He attends only the ones within reach: nothing farther away than a two-hour drive. Any longer and the returns wouldn’t justify the investment, or not on average. Though fortunes have been made by lucky bidders: who knows when a genuine old master may turn up, obscured by dust and varnish, or a boxful of love letters by a dead celebrity to his secret mistress, or a stash of paste jewels that turn out to be genuine? There’s been a recent vogue for reality shows that claim to catch people at the moment when they open up the space, then Bingo!, some spectacular life-changing find, with Ohs and Ahs all round.