Act of God (4 page)

Nancy observed remarkable discipline, bidding only on a crystal wine decanter from Austria and dropping out when Jeffers got a thirty-dollar wave from an older woman a few rows in front of us. The decanter eventually went to the older woman for forty-five.

I tugged on Nancy’s sleeve and whispered, “Probably not dishwasher-safe, anyway.”

“I don’t have a dishwasher.”

“There’s one coming up in Lot Two-twenty-seven.”

She smiled in spite of herself, and I took the hand that wasn’t holding her bidder card and rested it against my thigh.

After another fifteen minutes, I noticed that some things went for practically nothing and seemed to be great bargains. On other lots, though, there were some people in the room who jumped into the bidding for a while, usually to start it or in the middle, then routinely dropped. I asked Nancy about them.

“Maybe dealers, who know how much they can get retail and don’t want to tie up more than X percent of that to buy it here. Maybe also just friends of the auctioneer, shilling.”

“Is that legal?”

“I don’t know. I’m not here professionally.”

Just then the mahogany bureau came up, and at least three other people around us leaned forward. Nancy let go of my hand so both of hers would be free.

Jeffers asked for and received a starting bid of fifty from the older woman who’d gotten Nancy’s decanter. I saw a determined look come into both of the wide-spaced blue eyes, which I thought was a bad sign. Then a middle-aged Hispanic man put in a bid of sixty, which the auctioneer recognized just before Nancy raised her card for seventy. They played leapfrog up to one-fifty, by which time two of the dealers (or shills) had jumped in and out, leaving the field to Nancy and the decanter woman.

They slugged it out for another hundred, the older woman turning around awkwardly in her chair to see who the stubborn competition was. I caught her attention and gave my best “what’re you going to do?” shrug, hoping that might persuade the woman to drop out before she broke the bank. She gave me back the same look Nancy had, which I thought was a very bad sign.

All told, the bad signs topped out at three hundred even, Nancy winning. Kind of.

I said, “Nice job.”

“It’s worth twice that, maybe more.”

“I believe you.”

Driving north, she said, “I told you it would fit.”

Another couple had to help us get the bureau off the ground in the parking lot, but it did slide into the back with about half an inch to spare on each side. Nancy stuffed the margins with a blanket I didn’t remember her keeping back there and tied the hatchback down with a couple of bungee cords I knew I’d never seen before.

I’d already told her I thought it weighed as many pounds as it had cost her dollars to buy the thing. “How come the desire for new furniture now?”

She glanced away from the road just long enough to gauge something. “All the stuff I have is from when my mom was alive. I’ll still hold on to most of it, but there’s a time to pull away from the old, and I decided that this was it.”

“As long as the pulling away doesn’t include me.”

Her right hand left the stick shift and squeezed my left forearm. “Not likely.”

“So, I told you about my embarrassing youth, how about you telling me something.”

“I wasn’t allowed to be an altar boy.”

“Something else then.”

Another glance, followed by a worried look that seemed only half feigned. “I don’t have any embarrassing stories.”

“Everyone has some, Nance. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody.”

“You’ll laugh.”

“I promise I won’t.”

A deep breath, and the determined look came back. “When I was in high school, I …”

No need to push her.

A third glance. “I played the clarinet in the marching band.”

I didn’t laugh. I also didn’t say, “What, somebody else already have dibs on the accordion?” but I was thinking it. “Were you any good?”

An edge in her voice. “Not very.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Not much.”

“Because you weren’t good at it?”

“No, because …” Nancy seemed to realize how sharply she’d spoken and toned down. “No, because I really wanted to play the saxophone, but the music director thought the sax was a ‘boy’s instrument,’ so I couldn’t.”

I thought back over the evening so far. “That also why you didn’t find the altar boy story funny?”

“Because I wasn’t eligible to be one?”

“Yes.”

“Probably.” Another glance, but this one full of warmth and heart. “God, could it be that I’ve fallen for a man who actually gets it without having to be beaten over the head with it?”

“Probably. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have fallen for me, right?”

“I retract the last implied compliment.”

We arrived in front of her house a few minutes later. There were empty spaces up the street, but given the weight of the bureau it seemed more sensible to double-park, which she did. Nancy went inside while I played with the bungee cords and the blanket. She came back with a long face.

“What’s the matter, Nance?”

“Drew Lynch is on the four-to-twelve.”

“Meaning he’s not here to help us with this.”

“He just swung on today. I should have called him, but I knew he’d been working days all week, and—”

I put up a hand. “Not to worry, we can handle it.”

“John, it is awfully—”

“Hey, Nance, it doesn’t weigh more than both of us put together, and besides, why do I do Nautilus if I can’t manage some stevedoring once in a while.”

“I don’t think this is exactly stevedoring.”

“Whatever. We’ll work with you on the upside and me on the down. There’s a carpet runner on the stairs, so we just have to slide it, and we can rest a little on each step and a lot on the landings. Okay?”

“Maybe we should just wait for Drew to get home.”

“And do what in the meantime, stand guard out here over a Civic with a dresser sticking out of its trunk?”

A smile toyed with the corner of her lips. “Hatchback.”

I smiled back. “Hatchback.”

“If you really think we can.”

“I do, but why don’t you take my jacket inside and change into shorts yourself so we can maneuver this thing more comfortably.”

“Good idea.”

She gave me a hug, took another look at the bureau, and trotted to the front door, returning changed with a pair of gloves for each of us.

“This pair should fit you. Drew uses them in the garden.”

We slid the dresser out of the car carefully, no scratches I felt or heard. Carrying it on relatively level ground wasn’t too hard, but I didn’t look forward to heaving it heavenward a step at a time.

We set the thing down so Nancy could prop open the front door, and again inside so she could close it. As she was doing the door, I surveyed the staircase. A lot steeper than I remembered from simply climbing it.

Rocking the bureau, I moved it enough so that Nancy could get on its upstairs side. We lowered the back of the dresser onto the carpet runner. It took a lot of pushing from my downstairs end to move the thing up just one step.

“John, this isn’t going to work.”

“Sure it is. We just have a problem with the friction coefficient of your carpet runner.”

She gave me the sort of withering look lawyers reserve for scientific information.

I said, “Tell you what. Go out and move the car to a legal space, then bring back the blanket.”

Nancy climbed over the bureau and left, returning two minutes later, blanket in hand.

“Okay, now what I want you to do is put the blanket on the next step, and we’ll use it as kind of a flat roller under the thing.”

We tried that. A little easier to move it up the second step.

“Nance?”

“What?”

“Let’s try it with the blanket again, but this time with the bureau on its side.”

“That won’t scratch it?”

“With the blanket, I don’t think so.”

We got the dresser on its side and made better, but still slow, progress as I had to recover the blanket every two steps and toss it back up to Nancy, the strain on my shoulder, back, and legs pretty impressive. We finally covered the rest of the steps to the first landing. Halfway home.

“John?”

“Yes?”

“My arms and legs are pretty tired.”

“Blame it on your desk job.”

We rested for five minutes, then started in again. It was harder after the rest, but we’d gotten only two steps from the top, from Nancy’s landing, when I heard her foot skid and her voice yell my name and her bottom hit the deck. The full weight of the bureau slammed into me, my left shoulder feeling as though someone had drawn a razor blade across guitar strings, my left knee buckling as I managed to stop the slide after only one step lost.

“John, are you all right?”

“My shoulder and knee aren’t great. You?”

“I think I’m just going to have a bruise on my rear end. What should we do?”

“Try to get this the rest of the way up.”

“Can you?”

“I think going up will be easier than sliding back down.”

She heard something in my voice that made her say, “John, thank you for this.”

Using my right shoulder this time, I managed to drive the dresser back up the remaining steps like it was a blocking sled on an inclined football field. At the top, we got it upright, and Nancy maneuvered around the thing to give me another hug.

“That was above and beyond the call of duty, sir.”

“I’ll remember that.”

When Nancy opened the apartment door, her gray-tiger cat scuttled out. Renfield was getting used to his rear legs not working quite right from an operation he’d needed on them, so he could move crablike pretty well. The sight of the bureau at first intimidated him, making him hide under the kitchen table. Then, once we had it against the wall in the bedroom, he couldn’t get enough of it, sniffing and rubbing against the carved legs.

I said, “A good thing you had his front claws removed.”

“Yes, but you know how they have to do that.”

“No.”

“They actually chop off the first knuckle of his toes.”

“Hope they won’t have to do that with me.”

“Why?” she said, slipping out of her shorts.

“Because of the grievous injuries I suffered on your staircase.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I mean it, Nance. This may have to go to court.”

“Forget it. The legal fees would eat you alive.”

“I could represent myself.”

A laugh.

I said, “Does that mean that if I represented myself I’d have a fool for a client?”

Nancy undid the buttons on her blouse. “John, anybody who represented you would have a fool for a client.”

“Care to kiss a fool?”

“And then some.” She opened the blouse and reached both arms up and around my neck. When she applied a little pressure on my left side, the shoulder twinged and the knee started to buckle again.

Breaking the kiss, Nancy said, “What’s the matter?”

“My shoulder and my knee can’t seem to take much weight.”

She canted her head. “Does that mean no hanky-panky for the assistant D. A. tonight?”

“That may depend.”

“On what?”

“On how much you remember about playing the clarinet.”

Nancy canted her head the other way. “John Francis Cuddy, I do believe that is the raciest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“The circumstances demand it.”

“So long as you never do.”

“Never.”

She smiled the great smile. “I think … a concerto, then.”

“H
OW’S THE SHOULDER?”

I opened my eyes. Nancy was standing over me, holding Renfield against her blouse, the skirt to a blue suit, pantyhose, and dress shoes already on below it.

“What time … ?”

“Going on eight.”

“You should have gotten me up, Nance.”

“I wanted to be able to use the bathroom first. Besides, after the ‘grievous injuries’ last night, I thought your body could use the healing power of sleep.” She narrowed her eyes. “Seriously, John, how do you feel?”

I rolled my left arm a little on the bed. “Okay, I think.”

“And the knee?”

I flexed it. “No pain.”

Nancy exhaled. “I’m so glad.”

“Of course, I may have a relapse.”

The canted head. “Calling for an encore on the clarinet?”

“It’s rapidly becoming my favorite instrument.”

“We’ll see how frisky you are tonight.”

“Tonight?”

She looked at me, a little strangely. “I thought I’d take you out to dinner, to thank you for all your help. Of course, if you have other plans …”

“I don’t. It’s just—”

“Fine, then,” she said, but a little subdued, then checking her watch with a very upbeat “I’ve got to go. Occupy Renfield till I’m out of here, then help yourself to the fridge.”

Easing the cat onto the bed, Nancy kissed me good-bye, but only on the forehead.

Renfield’s eyes followed her out of the room. As soon as the apartment door closed, he nuzzled my hand, then began licking it, his tongue like sandpaper.

“Hey, Renfield, leave a little skin on that, okay?”

He squinted up at me, purred, and doubled the tempo of his licking.

When his hindquarters got hurt, Nancy took him to the vet’s for the curative operation, but she had to be out of town when it was time to pick him up. When I did, he’d been in bad shape: shaved from the belly downward, groggy from the anesthetic, and hurting from his rearranged legs. I’d stayed up with him that night, and he’d “imprinted” on me, the vet called it. Now it was like he embraced me every time he saw me. I’d never been nuts about cats, but there was something about his attitude that … Jesus, what was wrong with me?

I rubbed Renfield on the head, then snapped my fingers a couple of times at the edge of the bed, the signal he’d learned for getting down. I threw back the sheets, hopped out of bed, and hit the floor. Literally.

My left knee had collapsed under me as soon as I put weight on it.

Renfield scuttled about six feet away from the noise of the impact, then came back cautiously to investigate, making a little moaning sound in his throat. I stayed on the floor, gingerly stretching out the joint. No pain still as I flexed it, and there had been only a brief, searing jolt when the knee buckled. Renfield nuzzled my left leg. I pushed him away, but he kept coming back. I got up using my right leg, very carefully shifting my weight onto the left one. No pain, no apparent weakness, and I found that I could walk fine so long as I kept my weight exactly over my feet.