Heights and more

Doug rented a hammer-drill to get through the cinder block wall in his space. It chewed up the bits. The first was soon snapped in half. We were putting shelves up for his "smalls". I worked on my space. Things had moved. Not many. Nothing I had spent hundreds of dollars on. Those things stay. Stay and accrue disdain. Them are "lookin' at antiques". Not fer usin'. A General Fireproofing desk that I stripped to bare metal was sold. It had a black rubber top. I thought I would replace it. Making sense of it, you could see where the typewriter had been sat, and the lamp. Everything left a sort of imprint in the rubber. The metal polished up nicely. Satiny. The rubber I just wiped. And wiped again and again, fistfulls of papertowels black. The desk had languished for a couple of weeks, priced at 245, even discounted to 200. Doug made me double it which might have raised it in the estimation of those who buy these things. Between helping with his shelves, I climbed an extension ladder fifteen feet up to rehang my Lictenstein poster. The thing about heights is that I hate them- heights, low heights, high heights, all heights. My knees shook. I was pushpinning myself off the ladder. It was just a poster, the cause of my accident.. my fatal accident... just a poster.
I remember looking in Josh's face and assuring him that I wanted nothing more than to hang his 9 foot by five foot mural above my space. A mural photograph of Ali and Holmes fighting that Josh had found at a Garage Sale. It is 9 feet long and mounted on rubber. Instead it covers the entire North wall. The burl walnut Chippendale chest curtseys on its cabriole legs across from ali and Holmes.
Doug and I breathe the cinder block dust. It covers our faces and clothes. Doug is a creature of habit. He will not eat all day. He carries a liter bottle of Grapefruit flavored Soda with him and he smokes but he won't eat between his potato bread egg sandwich in teh morning and a big plate of pasta or "helped' rice at night. We leave as they shut the lights off at the mall. He wants to order pizza. When we began the ritual of ordering pizza for Doug's stay overs it seemed extravagant. We end up in the Brooklyn Cafe in our torn t-shirts and pants covered in dust. We order $35 steaks. "This is the most expensive dinner I have ever had in my life," Doug says. Doug says in wonderment.
"Wondermous", he'll say as he imitates his old employer, the ludicrously bitchy Townsend Henry. Wondermous are the steaks. Melty. I am allotted three extra spears of asparagus. She keeps her potatoes, the waitress. Keeps them for those who want them. It doesn't matter. I might have gone to my last underwear party. Wait. I've never been to an underwear party. Well, some lives are like that. All clothed.

Auction was actually welcome after a break for Labor Day. We had a healthy turnout, anything passably useable bid beyond my means of acquiring it. I ended up with a box of polyester dresses. One was from Lanvin which sounded worthwhile. It is patterned in large dots and squares and austere flora each colored as a painful rebuke to the one closest to it. There are three of these outfits. One glows like barium showing the purple paisleys swimming in a purple sea. The lot was three dollars.
One dealer, an unsmiling type, nearly universally liked for her ability to convey a sardonic wit in a normally cynical and resigned manner of shopping, told me that she had had a pattern of antique glass named after her. She had discovered it like a botanist in the dense growths of the glass industry. She examines the hobnails, the flora and feet of each production saucer or the like.
"If you discover a pattern that has no name but just a production number, (you could contact some particular authority on that glass company's wares, and) they might just name it after you."
The neglected style of glass which she found will be the "Pamela" in future retrospectives of the company's production.
One wily, elderly dealer, a chic and stylish woman who achieved a name and a sort of following in her years of shopkeeping, ever present with her white pageboy and Corbusier glasses, her Nehru jackets or striped French sailor tops, doddered into the silent bid area. The stuff is beneath her. She smiles at it indulgently. She pays for what she wants. She is perpetually a front row auction-goer-her big poodle in the aisle. Crystal, gold, she buys the extravagant, the effulgent chandeliers. But there she was in the boxes of chewed papers, and scuffed plastics. Just enjoying the scenery. Moving in her tentative, ancient way. The bidding was called over... the clientele herded away. She remained. She was humming, looking at the lots fondly. She waited. Down she went on her knees. Three minutes after the bidding had ended... the proprietor of "Apogee" knelt down by a grubby air-compressor and wrote her bid on the next available line. The man who had legitiately won the lot stood above her.
"That ain't gonna fly," he said in an indulgent way, all things considered.
"What.... is this yours?"
"Yeah. I'm glad I stayed."
"Did you stay to watch me?"
"Yeah. You can't do that...."
"Hm. I hope it doesn't work anyway."
She tottered away.
Will and I shop Tuesday and Wednesday. We spend as though we have money. I buy a six foot fiberglass elephant. He is wearing overalls, with countrified patches on them, big shoes and a baseball cap. He is holding an unfurled scroll. I have never not liked that anyone, ever, anywhere has had blond hair. I have a weakness for blonds. Blondness is next to godliness. It looks awful on the elephant. Is it supposed to make him look juvenile? He is already burdened with a short trunk. A sadly underestimated trunk, like a disappointing penis. I wonder if it can be painted grey, the blond hair. We put the elephant, which though huge is fiberglass, in the back of Will's truck. It fills it. It is the size of a Bob's Big Boy. Shoney's in Ark. We also buy the rest of the Knoll tables. There are twelve in all. We have to control the market, whether we can use them or not... they can't show up anywhere while ours are out there.
They are in my driveway now with five chairs, the gull-wing oven and a map rack. the Aerostar has danish dining chairs and a Japanesy cabinet. The dresses are spread over the furniture in my living room. The bar is disassembled on the front porch. There is a pair of wool pants and a cap from a box lot on a chair there and a an acrylic rug I used to drag a shelving unit on.
The wondermousness.....