Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(40)

That’s never happened to Sam. Still, there’s something exciting about winning an auction, gaining the key to the locked unit, opening the door. Expecting treasures, since whatever junk is inside must have been treasures once or the people wouldn’t have bothered to store them.

“Should be back by four,” says Sam. He always tells Ned his ETA: it’s part of that little plot-thread he can’t help spinning. He said he’d be back by four. No, he didn’t seem upset about anything. Though maybe he was anxious. Asked me about some strange guy who’d been in the store. Leather jacket. Interested in desks.

“Text me when to send the van,” says Ned.

“Let’s hope there’s something worth sending it for,” says Sam. The units have to be cleared out within twenty-four hours, you can’t just leave crap there if you don’t want it: you win it, you own it. The storage guys don’t crave the expense of carting your freshly bought trash to the dump.

The story Sam and Ned wordlessly agree on is that Sam is angling for some decent furniture for Ned to enhance. And he is angling for that, because why not? Sam hopes he may score more in the furniture vein than the assortment of scraps he came back with last time: a busted guitar, a folding bridge table with only three legs, a giant stuffed teddy bear from a fun-fair rifle range, a wooden crokinole game. The game was the only thing with any value: some people collect ancient games.

“Drive safe,” says Ned. He texted me to send the van. That was at 2:36, I know ’cause I looked at the clock, the art deco one right over there, see? Keeps perfect time. Then, I dunno, he just vanished.

Did he have any enemies?

I just work here.

Though he did say … yeah, told me there’d been a fight with his wife. That would be Gwyneth. Don’t know her that well myself. At breakfast, walked out on her. You could see it coming. Cramped his style, never gave him enough space. Yeah, jealous, possessive, he told me that. She thought the sun shone out his ass, couldn’t get enough of him. Would she, did she ever … Violent? Naw, he never said that. Except for the time she threw a wine bottle at him, empty one. But sometimes they just snap, women like that. Lose it. Go nuts.

He entertains himself with the discovery of his own body. Naked or clothed? Inside or out? Knife or gun? Alone?



The car starts this time, which Sam takes as a good omen. He zigzags down towards the Gardiner, which maybe won’t have fallen down yet – no, it hasn’t, maybe there’s a God – then heads west. The address in the envelope was that of a storage emporium in Mississauga, not too far away. The traffic is putrid. What is it about winter that causes people to drive as if their hands are feet?

He gets to the site early, parks the car, goes to the main office, registers. Everything just as usual. Now he’ll have to hang around till the auction starts. He hates these blocks of dead space-time. He checks his phone for messages. This and that, this and that. And Gwyneth, texting: Meet tomorrow? Let’s get this finalized. He doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t delete. Let her wait. He’d like to nip outside for a smoke, but he resists the temptation, having officially quit five months ago for the fourth time.

A couple more folks trickle in, hardly a crowd. Low attendance is good, it thins out the competition, keeps the bids decent. Too cold for the tourists: there’s no atmosphere of summer antiquing, no glamorous TV reality-show buzz. Just a bunch of middle-range impatient bundled-up people standing around with their hands in their pockets or looking at their watches or phones.

Couple of other dealers now, ones he knows: he nods at them, they nod back. He’s done business with both of them: stuff he’s won that didn’t fit his niche but did fit theirs. He doesn’t do much Victorian: it’s too big for condos. Or much wartime, too bulbous and maroon. He likes the pieces with cleaner lines. Lighter. Less ponderous.

The auctioneer bustles in five minutes’ late with a takeout coffee and a bag of doughnut holes, casts an annoyed look at the scant turnout, and turns on his handheld mic – which he hardly needs, it’s not a football game, but most likely it makes him feel important. There are seven storage units on the block today, seven don’t-care no-show owners. Sam bids on five, wins four, lets the fifth one go because it’s more plausible that way. The one he really wants is the second, number 56 – that was the number in the envelope, that’s where the secret cargo will have been stashed – but he always tries for a cluster of units.

After the event proper is over he settles up with the auctioneer, who hands him the keys to the four spaces. “Stuff has to be out in twenty-four hours,” the man says. “Sweep it clean, those are the rules.” Sam nods; he knows the rules, but there’s no point in saying that. Guy’s an *, in training for a prison guard or a politician or some other self-proclaimed dictator job. A non-* might offer Sam a doughnut hole – surely the guy isn’t going to eat the whole bag, he could benefit from some weight loss – but that philanthropic act does not take place.

Sam walks across to the nearby mall, collar up against the rising wind, scarf over his chin, gets himself a Timmy’s double-double and his own sack of doughnut holes – chocolate-glazed – and walks back to inspect his unit purchases at leisure. He likes to wait until the other bidders have cleared off: he doesn’t want people looking over his shoulder. He’ll leave number 56 till the last; everyone else will have gone by then.