A Certain Age (37 page)

"Quayle's. I'm hoping to go to Sotheby's or Christie's next."

"I see. And your current situation—has that been your predicament for some time?"

"Yeah. You might put it that way."

"I see. Perhaps it is not my place to tell you—" Milton looked over his shoulder as the elevator door opened. "Mrs. Arthur! Good day. I have a package for you which just arrived. Would you like me to have it sent up to your apartment?"

"No, thank you, Milton," said Mrs. Arthur. "I'll pick it up when I return."

"Very good. Have a nice day, Mrs. Arthur." He held open the front door.

"What were you about to tell me, Milton?" Florence said.

"I don't want you to be offended, but I think you should be informed."

"So, shoot."

"I believe the co-op board is scheduling a meeting to discuss your eviction. Were you aware of that?"

"No ... on what grounds?"

"It may very well be that you have neglected to pay your maintenance. No doubt you have forgotten. I simply thought it was my duty to keep you informed so that you were not caught off guard, so to speak. In addition, several residents have been registering complaints about late-night activity."

". . . Thanks. I appreciate it." She was unable to think of anything to say and stepped through the open elevator door.

There were no openings at Sotheby's, though she was welcome to drop off her resume in the personnel department. She knew a woman at Christie's who said she didn't think there were any positions but offered to ask around and mention that Florence was looking for a job.

A guy she knew who worked at Doyle's turned out to have left six months before. No job openings at the present time—they were not even taking resumes on file.

Suddenly she remembered Marisa Nagy, who worked at that fancy art gallery. As far as Marisa knew, the only job openings were as front-desk receptionist, for which Florence was overquali-fied, and she certainly wouldn't want a job with such a low salary and no future; as secretary to the eighty-year-old Mr. Berryfox, the founder's grandson, but Florence was no secretary, with her limited typing skills and so forth, and this was an executive secretarial position (though secretly, Marisa confided, it also entailed having to play nurse); and as Marisa's own assistant. "I've just been promoted to department head!"

"Congratulations!" Her mouth had become dry, her tongue a snail stranded on blistering rock.

"I'd love you to come to work for me."

"It's something I'd have to consider. Let me get back to you."

There was no way she would go to work as an assistant. How degrading that Marisa, who was younger than she, would think even for a second that she would demean herself to do such a thing.

In the Help Wanted ads there was nothing. She decided to take a nap and got back into bed.

II

The phone was ringing.
Every morning seemed to begin with this jangle from sleep. "Good morning! Did I wake you?"

"Um . . ." It took her a moment to realize it was Max. "No, no. I was awake."

"So, darling, you've made the papers again today. Another blind item, but I think it's kind of exciting." He was playing dumb, as if he hadn't planted it.

"Max!" She was awake all at once. "You put something in the paper about me?"

"Never!"

"Was it something terrible?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. I can't say it was very nice. But you know what Andy always used to say, dear: it's the inches that count." Who did he think he was? It was like an imitation of some long-deceased society queen of the 1940s, or perhaps Max had modeled himself on an old movie actress
portraying
a New York dowager of the 1890s. She tried to think of whom he sounded like. Perhaps Margaret Dumont in those old Marx Brothers films. She badly needed a cup of coffee. "I've got to go," Max said. "I'm at the airport and just wanted to check in before I left! I'm off to Copenhagen to cover the royal family's garage sale."

"Wait a minute, Max—what did the item say?"

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that—mostly the same as what you were telling me the other night in the cab."

"Max, you fed the item to the paper, didn't you? How could

you?"

"I was only trying to help clarify the story. It was for your sake. You shouldn't complain—I stopped Jimmy from writing that you smoke crack. You're the one who owes
me
a favor."

She was momentarily perplexed. ". . . But you were the only one who knew I smoked it."

"Oh, I heard it before that night. Believe me, word gets around. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Got to run, they're announcing my flight! I'll call you when I get back."

At least she was important enough to warrant a mention in the gossip column. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail, threw on a white sweatshirt and a pair of black leggings and her jogging shoes. She hated leggings, so out of style, but they were convenient. She didn't need anything, but she stuck fifty dollars—all her cash—into a tiny pocketbook and went out. In this neighborhood the nearest place to buy a paper was two blocks away. The cover story was about body parts found in the trunk of a pop star's limousine. Florence opened to the gossip page even before she had thrown her change into the dish. She stood out on the sidewalk trying to see which item was supposed to be about her. At

first she didn't think there was anything. An aging movie star and her daughter had both had breast implants at the same time. A fantastically wealthy businessman was in an institution for an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Diners at a chic restaurant had all gotten food-poisoning.

"August is a slow month in the gossip world," the item began. "So we bring the following dregs from society with our apologies . . .
WHICH
blond home-wrecker has of late . . ."

It was so hateful, so horrible and ugly, so strongly directed against her, that her eyes filled with tears. She couldn't even finish reading it. She threw the paper in a trash container, looking over her shoulder as if someone might be observing her.

She bought the
Times
and went into the coffee shop. No job offerings listed at auction houses, though there were ads for forthcoming sales at Tepper and at Dixon, both of which she had forgotten to call. There were listings for upcoming auctions being held by someone named Quince Rector Co. & ASM Auctions Inc. This company seemed to specialize in everything—a sale in Brooklyn of a wholesale clothing distributor; a sale of sixty bank-repossessed cars in Amityville, Long Island, including a Hyundai Elantra, a Dodge Neon, a Pontiac Grand Am, a Chevy Lumina, a Honda Civic and a Mercury Cougar; the auctioning of the contents of a large number of unpaid storage units at a facility in New Jersey; and an estate sale listing "Mahogany Hepplewhite Dining Set w/6 Chairs, oil paintings, chests, writing desk, jewelry, quantity bric/brac, figurines, silverplate, antique violins,
Many New Items Still In Boxes.
" That one was happening this afternoon down on lower Broadway. So many different kinds of stuff, all being auctioned by the same company: it had to be a complete load of junk, worse even than what was offered by the lowest Manhattan-based auction house.

There was a position at an art gallery, but the specialty requested was an Art Nouveau background. Besides, at age thirty-two—almost thirty-three—she didn't want to start all over again as a front-desk art gallery girl. Plenty of jobs for graphic designers. Realtors. Salespeople for plumbing companies. Assistant edi-

tors in publishing. She finished her coffee and left the paper on the table.

Maybe a good walk would clear her head. She didn't feel like jogging—she was already jarred enough—but she knew she would feel worse if she didn't get some exercise. She set off, passing the fancy shops on Madison Avenue—the handmade-cowboy-boot store, with each pair in ostrich or alligator; the children's clothing shop in which each little outfit, every little dress, cost more than an entire week's salary for the child's nanny; the store selling antique pens—she saw none of this. It seemed that if she walked quickly enough, blindly enough, she might not have to think: she could outpace the miserable jumble inside her head.

The pedestrians wove in and out of one another, in a delicate unspoken kind of ballet where each city resident had been trained to come as close to someone else as possible without ever touching. They scuttled across the street after the light had changed, like crabs dancing between the cars.

But she did not observe the streets' delicate dance. Before she knew it, three or four hours had passed. She had worked up a nice sweat and was pleased that so much time had gone by without thinking, without seeing. Somehow she had ended up on Broadway, though she must have zigzagged back and forth, and was well below Canal Street.

It was right near where that auction was being held by Quince Somebody-or-other, and she decided to stop in. Maybe all this had been fated by God, her blind, blank walk leading her straight to the site of a fantastic job. Quince Whatever could turn out to be very distinguished, from a wealthy background, but a bit vague. He might fall in love with her, hire her, be unable to live without her. She would remake the company, turning it into something even classier than Christie's or Spink's.

The storefront in which the sale was being held turned out to be full of more junk than she could ever have imagined. There were school desks stacked in heaps, bent metal filing cabinets, open cartons containing hundreds of bottles of nail polish and perfume samples. Shelves stacked with Asian export ware—a few Ming blue-and-white ginger jars with mismatched lids, modern Imari, Satsuma, incense burners, umbrella stands. A jadeite horse, four feet high, crudely constructed and attempting to reproduce an antique. Stacks of rugs, wool but with garish colors. Three Indian motorcycles, possibly dating from the forties. A carousel horse with a broken leg. The mounted head of a tiger, made of plastic and fake fur. An opium bed. Stacks of dirty plates, mismatched, some from restaurants, and some rather fine Belleek tea sets. Nothing in the room made sense. The stuff was the detritus of a society without culture or values; everything was covered with soot and dust, a kind of
horror vacui
substituting for quality. Boxes of black-and-white photos of long-forgotten movie stars, cartons of rubber chickens. Framed paintings on velvet—flowers, ill-conceived landscapes—lined the walls. Nearly everything an imitation of something of great beauty. And the few authentic bits were broken and chipped.

She wandered around the room. Two rather sinister-looking Asian men were loading things—or unloading them, she didn't quite know which—but they ignored her. A pair of eyes blinked at her from behind a peeling shoji screen and she let out a startled yelp. Whatever was perched there resembled a giant toad, massive and thick-lipped, tongue collecting crumbs from a pink-frosted cupcake. "Are you—" she said. "Excuse me, do you work here?"

"Can I help you?" The toad seemed amused. "The auction begins at three. The preview doesn't officially start until one. But you're welcome to look around now."

She glanced at her watch. "It's nearly one o'clock now. Actually, I was wondering—I wanted to apply for a job. Are you—Mr. Quince?"

"Mr. Quince! I like that." The remains of the cupcake, furry

with coconut, were stuffed into the toad's maw like a particularly plump, tasty fly. "I'm Quince Rector, yes. And you are—"

"I'm Florence Collins. I used to be at Quayle's, in Estate Jewelry, but over the summer there were cutbacks—"

"What is it that you were looking for with me?"

"Well, I'm not sure exactly. I thought, since I was in the neighborhood—"

"I see. Hmmm. Let me think." There was a pause. "No, I really don't need anybody."

"Could I—I don't have it with me today—but I could drop off my resume. Even something temporary, just to—"

"Wait a minute. I do have something. It probably has nothing to do with what you're looking for, however."

"Anything, really, would be great, just to tide me—"

"I had a young woman working for me until recently. Of course, you realize I get a great many dealers, coming to the various sales, and since I can never be quite certain how many dealers and individuals turn up for any auction, I need someone here just to . . . keep the bids above minimum value. In other words, by law I have to have at least two bids to make a sale. Now, if Joe Schmoe, say, bids my minimum bid and no one else bids, I can't sell it to him. Let's say I open the bid at a hundred dollars, Joe bids, but no one else increases it. Your job would be to bid—a hundred fifty, say, or whatever I've announced the increments to be—and we hope that will get Joe to bid two hundred."

She had never heard of this in the auction world. It seemed completely fictitious. "But if he doesn't . . . I've just bought something I don't want?"

"No, no. In that case, there's no sale. I can't afford to let this stuff go for under wholesale. I keep this place as a wholesale shop, open to the trade, so if I don't sell it at an auction, I either sell it wholesale or put it up at auction again."

She was puzzled. "And don't people—if they come back— catch on when they see the same merchandise being auctioned again:

"If anyone asks, I simply say I had more than one to begin with and I had the other taken out of the warehouse. If you want to try it out, this afternoon, I'm guessing the auction usually lasts about two, two and a half hours, and I can give you fifty dollars. We'll see how it goes."