Howard Luxenberg

Tag Sale

“BRIGHT AND EARLY, BOYCHICK.” The implication is that he will get up before me for the joint tag sale we’ve planned for tomorrow. He is Hyman. A guy in his late fifties, maybe early sixties. Not quite old enough to be my father, though he likes to act the part. My neighbor, Hyman Slotnick. A piece of work.
    I’m not looking forward to it. The tag sale. It’s hot now—still—though it’s evening. It was hot all day. It’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow. And humid. We’re looking forward to a jungle of a day with stale, sticky air. Miami at its worst. Our quiet cul-de-sac will be filled with lowlifes. I will have to put up with their haggling and the sob stories they’ll tell in support of their haggling, and with Hy. And the sticky heat too. Hy will relish it all, of course.
    Our cul-de-sac is four large homes, done in the hacienda style, with orange tile roofs and stucco walls. Fake balconies, suggested by wrought iron grillwork, reach halfway up each window. There are tall palm trees at regular intervals in front of the homes. These always look unnatural to me, with their rigid symmetry. Hyman’s house is next to ours.
    Hy has backed his Lincoln out of the garage to wash it. He’s wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and cutoff jeans. And slippers. The part of his back I can see is covered with curly, black hair. He’s a big guy, a bear. He has curly, black hair on his knuckles too. Like I said, a piece of work.
    “Pull your car over, boychick. We’ll wash it.”
    “No thanks.” I wave Hy off. I categorically refuse all of Hy’s offers. He’s always making me offers I can refuse:
    “Boychick, let’s go to Hialeah.”
    “Boychick, let’s take our cars out on 1-95 and open ’em up.”
    “Boychick, let’s go down to South Beach and look at the feygellahs.” You get the picture. Oh, and my favorite:
    “Boychick, let’s go to Wolfie’s for some lime Jell-O.” Translucent green cubes in a thick sundae glass. Hy’s favorite dessert.
    Now here’s the thing. Hy is rich. He made his money in the diaper business. “Boychick, I turn shit into gold.” He says it without irony, all the time, like he has just minted the expression. Hearing him say it you don’t think of the metaphor but of him sitting in some dark room, like Rumpelstiltskin, literally making the transformation.
    Here’s another thing: Hy’s wife. Allison is young and gorgeous. Okay, he’s rich, it happens. But she’s a professor at the U of M. He looks like a Neanderthal. She’s chairperson of the anthropology department. Figure that out.
    Anyway, here’s how they met. He took her class. Never been to college, but he gets it in his head to take a class at the university. “Hey boychick, want to take a class with me?” I was so surprised, I almost forgot to decline. I didn’t even ask what class. Next time I see him, he says, “Boychick, you should have taken that class. That professor, she’s a looker.” He sticks out in class like some bear wandering among the flamingos. She notices him. Actually she notices him because of an ugly scene. He asks a question. Some kid sniggers. Actually several kids snigger, but one kid sniggers louder than the rest.
    “What’s so funny?”
    “You man, you’re unbelievable.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Marty.”
    “Marty what?”
    “Marty Helfstein.”
    Hy says, “Marty Helfstein, Coral Gables, right?” The kid nods, wonders, where is this going? “I was your diaper man.” Everybody gets set for them to drop the hostility. See, there’s a connection.
    Marty says, “What?” What is this geezer talking about?
    Hy says, “I was your diaper man. Your mom used my diaper service. She was so worried about you. She would always ask me, ‘It’s so little. Are all the boys’ things that little?” There is an uneasy incomprehension on Marty’s face. “So Marty, how did that little dick of yours turn out?”
    Well maybe it goes on a little longer between them. Who knows? Hy always stops the story with him having the last word. Anyway, the professor catches him at the end of class, wants to talk to him. “Boychick, the rest is history.” Like his charm is so obvious that he has only to get face-to-face with this beautiful, intelligent woman for her to fall in love with him. But that’s what happened. “Our first date, we went to see Othello. That’s what did it.” He had to divorce his first wife; that was loud and ugly.
    I go into my house, to escape Hy and the heat. I ask Janice if she wants to help out with the sale. I say, “It’ll be fun” to the sound of Janice knocking around in the kitchen. Janice doesn’t say anything; she just comes into the foyer and pantomimes a guy jerking off, a couple of pumps aimed at her crotch. I taught her that gesture. Janice can be pretty funny if you’re not the one it’s aimed at.
    She says, “I put the stuff I want to get rid of in shopping bags. On the table for now. Is The Baby-Sitter going to help?” The Baby-sitter is Janice’s name for Allison.
    “How many bags?”
    “Five. I’m having lunch with your mother, so I don’t have to have her for dinner. You’ve got the better deal, even with Hy thrown in.”
    Janice doesn’t like my mother, for the usual daughter-in-law reasons, but she hates Hy because he dumped his first wife. Hy’s first wife, she was a piece of work too, a female version of Hy. A talker. A screamer, really.
    I go into the kitchen to see what Janice has put in the bags. She asks again, “Is The Baby-sitter going to help?” Allison is The Baby-sitter because she looks about sixteen and wears her long, blonde hair in a ponytail.
    “Who cares?” This is stupid on my part. We both care.
    “I wish you didn’t care. But you do. So I do.”
    “I don’t think she’s going to help. Why should she? I wish I wasn’t working the sale.”
    “She’s not your type, you know.”
    “Who is my type?”
    “Not her. I am. I’m your type. But sometimes you’re such a putz you forget it.” Janice leaves the foyer and then comes back. “If she works the sale, I’m going to have to blow off your mother to keep an eye on you.”
    “Tell me, while you’re at it, what does she see in him?”
    “What do any of us see in any of you? I’ll tell you what she sees in Hy: his flatout adoration of her. You should try it some time. None of this ‘I love you only as much as you love me’ shit. He’s a fool for her.”
    “Are you attracted to Hy?” I know the answer, but I like to hear Janice go off on Hy.
    “Are you kidding? But I can see why Allison is. He brought flowers to her in class, like she was a prima ballerina.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “You didn’t know that. She told me. She was embarrassed, or she pretended to be when she told me. She loved it. So this is how Hy operates: he doesn’t worry about ‘Does she like him?’ He wants something, he goes after it. He says to himself, ‘What do I have to do, how much, how long, to make this woman love me?’ Doesn’t doubt for a minute that eventually she’ll fall for him. Can you see how confident this is? Can you see how Allison might fall for him? Can you see how that might be attractive to a woman who chooses to live among primitive cultures, so her discomfort with her own culture won’t show? You think it’s great she’s an anthropologist; I’m telling you it’s a cover for her own insecurity. Good night.”
    I go up to bed late; Janice is already asleep.

I GET UP EARLY, early for a Saturday, but when I look out, Hy is already setting up. I shower quickly and skip breakfast.
    “Boychick, have a donut.”
    I watch what I eat. I haven’t eaten a jelly donut since I was a kid.
    “You want some coffee? Go in and have Allison pour you a cup. Have a donut.”
    I would like to have Allison pour me a cup of coffee. We’ll see about the donut.
    I’m glad that I showered, but my skin is already damp from the brief conversation with Hy. We are out of our fucking minds to be having a tag sale today. We should just call the Salvation Army and have them haul this shit away.
    I go up to Hy’s door and knock. Hy yells, “Go on in, it’s open.” I’m not comfortable just walking in on his wife. That’s why I knocked in the first place.
    Allison opens the door before I have to explain this to Hy. She’s got a towel wrapped around her head, and she smells pleasantly of soap.
    “Give boychick some coffee,” Hy yells at Allison.
    When we’re inside I ask her, “Are you going to help with the tag sale? It’ll be like fieldwork for you.” I always make a point of acknowledging Allison’s professorial credentials. Allison seems not to have understood the reference. Then she says, “How do you take your coffee?”
    “Black. Thank you.”
    Allison pours me some coffee and then offers me some cream and sugar. “Black,” I remind her.
    Then she says, “No. I’m not going to work the tag sale.” I am always looking at Allison for some clue that she understands the irony of her marriage to Hyman. She either doesn’t get it or refuses to share it with me.
    I would like to stay in the cool house with Allison, but I’ve run out of conversation. I don’t have much to say in the morning. I take the coffee outside. The heat hits me like a curtain. Hy hands me a jelly donut. I start eating; I don’t even think about it.
    Hy has already carried a few things out to the front. His forehead glistens. His black, curly hair, what’s left of it, lies pasted to his scalp. It looks faintly Roman. Jelly from my donut squeezes out onto the driveway. I start looking for a place to throw it away. A wave of irritation passes through me. A fucking jelly donut.
    I put my coffee cup down on Hy’s table and start to carry my own stuff out to the front. It’s 8:30; it’s already ninety-five degrees out. Two trips and I’m soaking wet.
    “Hy,” I say, “why are we doing this?”
    “Boychick, we’ll make it fun. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll make a bet—who sells the most”
    I don’t want to make it fun. I don’t say anything to encourage Hy.
    I don’t need to. He’s warming to his own idea. “Here’s the bet. Winner keeps all the money from the sale. Yours and mine. Loser has to run around the cul-de-sac with no clothes on.”
    The thought of Hy running around the cul-de-sac naked almost makes me lose my jelly donut. I say, “Hy, if you’ll stay out here and sell my stuff, you can keep the money.” Hy frowns. He’s always disappointed in my lack of playfulness.
    He says, “Forget about running around with no clothes. I forgot how shy you are.” He means modest. I’m not shy. Besides, he got the idea from me. We were trading war stories. I sometimes do that, spend a few minutes trading stories with Hy when I decline one of his offers. I told him this story:
    “The software company I work for flies us down to Half Moon Bay, Jamaica, for a weeklong sales meeting. We scuba, we golf, we pretend to do a little work. We drink. Anyway, on one particular day we’re playing volleyball on the beach. It’s all sales reps, so it’s real competitive. Volleyball, and we’re going to play for world domination. Losing team has to go into the water and take their bathing suits off, hold them over their heads. We play hard. We argue childishly over out-of-bounds calls. We lose. We run into the water until it’s over our waists. We face the beach, take off our trunks, hold them over our heads, semaphores of defeat. Now one of the reps on our team is a woman. She’s game. She splashes into the water with the rest of us. She takes off her bikini bottom and holds it over her head. Shouts of approval. Then ‘Margo, take off your top.’ This is a gray area.”
    I paused in my story. I saw Hy liked this story, even though he wasn’t telling it. “So she takes off her top?” Hy asked. I could tell he wanted her to. I smiled. I waited a beat, then I went on.
    “People on both teams are screaming at her: ‘Margo, if you don’t take off your top, you’ll never play volleyball in this town again.’” Hy is getting ready to interrupt again, but I cut him off- “Here’s what she does: she turns her back to the beach, and then she takes off her top. Holds it over her head. Wild cheers from the beach and water.”
    I made up the last part. Margo doesn’t take off her top, not really. It just makes the story better if she does.
    Hy nodded approvingly. Then he told me about the diaper business:
    “The local paper prints birth announcements, right, boychick? I wait a few days, and then I call: ‘Can I bring a gift by? No obligation.’ I stop by the next day. I got gifts. Something for the baby, something for the mother. I never wear a suit. Who comes to your door in a suit? The FBI, Jehovah’s Witnesses, politicians, that’s who. I go in. I refuse coffee if it’s offered—otherwise I’d be pissing at every stop—I present the gifts. I ask to see the baby. Then I shock ’em: I drape my shoulder with a Pamper, glossy side out, and I make like I’m gonna place their baby against that nasty plastic surface. This is the key, boychick: make them hurt, then make them better, the fundamental rule of salesmanship. The mother, she’s about to plotz. She grows eyes as big as saucers and runs looking for a burp cloth. I catch myself, make a joke of my goof—imagine burping a baby against a Pamper—and I materialize a cloth diaper like a magician. Everybody’s happy now: the baby, the mother. The baby goes instantly mellow. I tell ’em, ‘Don’t throw out your disposables. You’ll always need a few for trips and situations where real diapers aren’t practical. Now, everybody’s scared of diaper pins, right? We don’t use pins.’ Out comes my patented diaper tape with pictures of pink-and-blue headed safety pins printed on it. ‘As easy as a disposable. Better for the baby. Better for the ecology.’ Then I change the baby.
    “Occasionally, I get a gusher. A male who sends up a fountain from his little changing table. Guaranteed maximum sale. Seventy-two diapers a week.”
    Who in their right mind would make a bet with a guy like this? But here’s Hy, his hairy paw extended to me: “So, boychick, we got a bet?” I slap my hands to get rid of some of the powdered sugar. We shake. We have a bet.
    I admit it gives me some pleasure to see the light in Hy’s eyes. I’m always declining his offers, and I know this disappoints him. I always envy Hy, that his feelings come to him so undiluted. His hand is moist. When I get my hand back, there’s a caulking of powdered sugar in the creases.
    I don’t like to lose. So I try to become indifferent to the heat. Hy is a good sport. Even though we are competitors now, he instructs Allison to bring us both iced tea at regular intervals. I would prefer beer, but Hy doesn’t drink. Go figure.
    The day, as I said, is sultry. The first car pulls up at 8:45. “No early birds,” I call out. But Hy grins and says, “Step right up.”
    Hy’s wearing a short apron, like concessionaires wear at the ball games, with Jewish War Veterans in white on its blue background. He has on his half glasses, which make him look grandfatherly. Allison brings him an iced tea and asks me if I want one. I do.
    By noon the good stuff is all gone. But we observe the folkways of poker: we don’t count our money since the game isn’t over.
    A couple in a light utility truck drives up. He’s tall and ponytailed. She’s thin, her face all angles under black hair. They want a coffeemaker. Hy disappears into his house and returns with a fairly new one.
    He offers up the coffeemaker. The remnants of the morning coffee are still in it. “Twenty bucks. It cost me seventy new.”
    The woman whispers to her partner. Then, “I’ll give you ten.” Then Hy does his number. “Eighteen. If you buy it, and you think you made a bad deal, you can always resell it for twenty, which is what we both know it’s worth. But if I take it back into the house, you’ll have to buy one new and pay fifty for one that’s not half as good. Or you can drive around until you find one that probably doesn’t work for ten bucks. You know this one is good because you can still smell the coffee.”
    The couple confers. “Twelve.”
    Hy starts to take it back into the house.
    “Fifteen,” the angular woman calls after him.
    Hy stops but doesn’t turn. “Fifteen.” She shouts it this time.
    Hy shrugs his back at them, but then he turns and brings them the coffeemaker.
    When the transaction is concluded, and they’ve left, I say to Hy, “I thought the bet was just for the stuff for the tag sale.” I should have known better. Hy shoots me a look back that’s full of mischief. Of course, with Hy, there are no rules. In the heat of the competition, he might run into my house, sell my things, the son of a bitch.
    I start with the marginal stuff. Stuff we still use but hope to replace. A five-year-old toaster oven, still in good shape: ten dollars.
    “You got any dishes?” A kid needing a shave in an orange University of Miami T-shirt. “I got dishes, boychick.” “I’ve got dishes.” I can’t believe I’m saying this. I run into the house for my dishes. They aren’t new. Ten years old. But they have served us well enough. It takes me two trips to carry them out: dinner plates, dessert plates, bowls. I tell the kid thirty dollars.
    He stares, uncomprehendingly. Of course he’s never bought dishes in his life. He has no idea if I’m screwing him or not.
    “They cost two hundred dollars new.”
    “Twenty-five?” It’s a question.
    I nod, take the money. Hy gives me a thumbs-up sign. Then he goes inside and comes back with a handmade sign: “If You Don’t See What You Want, Ask!!!”
    I make my own sign: “Estate Sale. Everything Must Go!”
    I begin to suspect that Hy has put something in the iced tea. Or maybe in the jelly donut. The heat, it has to be over one hundred degrees. I feel like I’m in a spacesuit, something that muffles everything and creates its own climate. I no longer feel uncomfortable, just strange, buried deep within myself. I remove my sunglasses, put them on top of my head. The day is gleaming; everything seems to be made of chrome. Our cul-de-sac is on fire with this chrome light. I sell the stuff that’s easy to carry out first. Small appliances: electric can opener, coffeemaker, Mixmaster, popcorn popper, waffle iron, electric toothbrush, cordless phone, clock radio, coffee grinder. I’m barely aware of Hy. The cul-de-sac starts to fill up with people and cars. I suddenly have an overwhelming need to know the time. I look at my watch—my first thought is to sell it—it’s after three.
    Lew saunters over. Lew lives on the other side of Hy.
    “Look, boychick, it’s the Medicine Man.” Lew owns a local chain of drugstores. He’s a tall, trim man, a shape well suited to cut through the thick south Florida air. He has on tennis whites, a visor, shades.
    “You guys moving?”
    I detect irony in the question, but Hy takes it literally. “No no no, just having a little tag sale.” Hy winks at me; our bet is our secret, our bond.
    I ask,“Lew, did you bring your wallet?”
    There’s a slight hesitation to Lew’s smile. He’s trying to figure it out.
    Hy says, “Join the fun, Lew. Sweat a little. Buy something.”
    Lew looks as if he might. Buy something, not sweat. Lew looks immune to the heat that has Hy and me sweating like pigs.
    “How much for the kayak?” Hy has a kayak.
    “I only used it once. I bought it for Allison. She never got the hang of it.”
    Three lies in a row. Hy bought it for himself. He practically lived in it for a week, and then he abandoned it for his next enthusiasm. Allison could make it fly through the water.
    “How much?”
    “Lew, for you, one hundred bucks.”
    “How much for somebody else?” Lew isn’t taking any chances.
    “It cost five hundred dollars new.” This may have been true, but I doubt it.
    Lew objects. “It’s plastic.”
    “Space-age plastic. No-maintenance plastic. Won’t-rot-or-mildew plastic. Lightweight plastic.”
    Lew takes out his wallet. He looks inside and frowns. “I’ve got twenty-three dollars.” Then he brightens, like he just had a great idea. “Will you take twenty-three dollars?”
    Hy can’t believe it. “Lew, you live next door. Go inside and get seventy-seven dollars more.”
    Lew asks, “Do you take credit cards?”
    “It’s a fucking tag sale, Lew, not Neiman Marcus.”
    “It’s plastic,” Lew says again, hoping maybe this time it isn’t. “I wish it were wood. A nice wooden kayak.”
    Hy asks, “You want some ice tea, Lew?”
    “I’d really like a wooden kayak. Is the paddle wood?”
    The paddle is plastic too.
    “Lew, when I come to your store and get my prescription filled, do I get a nice wooden pillbox? Because I would really like a nice wooden pillbox. No. I get little plastic bottles with little plastic tops I can’t open. It’s plastic, Lew. Go into your house and get the rest of the money.”
    “It’s hot out here.” Lew says this to me. Like he just figured that out. “If I go back inside I don’t think I’ll come back out. Too damn hot. How can you guys stand it?” Then to Hy. “Is that kayak still plastic? Have you got a wooden model?”
    Lew goes back into his house. It finally dawns on Hy that Lew isn’t going to buy his kayak, that he’s just been yanking his chain. “Boychick, do you believe that momzer?”
    I tell Hy that it looks like our tea service is leaving. Allison is locking the door. Then she gets into her Miata—his birthday present to her, Hy has let me know—and pulls out of the driveway without waving. Her license plate says “Save the Manatees.”
    “Boychick, she’s pissed.”
    Hy seems puzzled. I know Allison’s reaction is mild compared to what my own wife’s will be. I think about offering Hy fifty bucks for the kayak. Then I can sell it to Lew for a hundred, who will buy it from me just to get a rise out of Hy.
    “Hy, I’ll give you fifty bucks for the kayak. More if you can turn it into wood.”
    Hy looks like a bear that has been cornered by dogs. About to explode, but choosing a direction to explode into. But he keeps his cool. “Seventy-five.”
    I tell him, “Not a penny over fifty.” I know how badly Hy wants to sell that kayak—needs to sell it—now that he’s been jerked around by Lew.
    Hy frowns. “Okay, boychick. But throw in your wife’s exercise trampoline.”
    We have a deal. I don’t have the heart to go resell the kayak to Lew. Not right at that moment. I ask Hy, “When is this over?”
    “What?”
    “The tag sale.”
    “How about midnight?” He’s serious. “We could go later.” Then he brightens. “Or when everything is sold.”
    Hy doesn’t wait for my reply. He goes to the front door, finds it locked, goes around to the back. He comes back with silverware, which he begins polishing with an old diaper.
    I go in and get our silverware. Stainless, really. More modern looking, I mean more contemporary, than Hy’s. Hy’s is heavy, thick-handled stuff, with an ornate design. New Orleans whorehouse silverware.
    I have never in my life thought about my silverware. But I feel a sad tug, a kind of constriction in my chest, when I bring ours out. It’s ten years old. It was a wedding gift. I ate with it last night. I have a dim notion I should pass it on to my kids, though of course they won’t want it.
    Miss Lew sticks her head out of Lew’s door. Miss Lew is Lew’s mother. Dyed hair, pedal pushers, rhinestones on every available article of clothing. She was tight with Hy’s first wife, a kind of surrogate mother-daughter thing. Anyway, they used to cry together when Hy took up with Allison. She coached Hy’s wife through the divorce. Miss Lew would come out every morning when Hy left for work and smack his Lincoln with a broom. Whacked his car like she meant it too. The first time, Hy made the mistake of powering down the window. “Feh,” Miss Lew said and spit air at him. After that he ran the gauntlet with his windows up. “Boychick,” Hy said to me at the time, “that’s the only time that yenta has ever used a broom in her life. I’m surprised she knows which end to hold.”
    This is true. Usually it’s Bonita, their Ecuadorian housekeeper, who does the broom handling. My wife says that watching Miss Lew whack Hy’s Lincoln is the reason she gets up in the morning.
    Anyway, it’s Miss Lew, broomless, that’s on her way over now. She has to go by Hy first. She stops, fehs, spits air, and walks on toward me.
    “How much?” She’s tapping the silverware with four fingers. Now the thing is, I don’t want to sell my silverware to Miss Lew. I don’t know why. I can’t even believe she’s out here. She’s diehard Neiman Marcus. Wouldn’t go near a tag sale. Something’s amiss here. I don’t know what to say. “How much did you say?” Miss Lew demands of me. I haven’t said anything.
    “One hundred dollars.” Formal. I’m not sure the word bucks is in Miss Lew’s vocabulary. Bucks is the currency the lower stations use. I don’t know what to expect. Will she haggle?
    Miss Lew pulls a small purse from her pocketbook. She tries a couple of different compartments. Then she pulls out a bill, folded about a hundred times like an accordion. A hundred dollar bill. She unfolds it and smoothes out the wrinkles and hands it to me. I know I should offer to carry the silverware to her house, but the offer dies in my throat. Miss Lew gets me off the hook. “I’ll send Bonita over later to pick it up.”
    I catch Hy’s eye and hold Miss Lew’s hundred dollar bill up like a cue card. Hy eventually gets fifty dollars for his silverware from a Haitian woman who makes him count every piece of it.
    We start clearing out our houses a room at a time. And we settle into, are forced into, a crude auction. There are lots of people now; a small mob fills our cul-de-sac, eager for a bargain. Somehow the word has traveled—this is no ordinary tag sale where all the good stuff is gone by 9:30. So I auction off a room full of furniture, while Hy and a deputized helper hauls a room full of chairs and tables and lamps and rugs out. Then he auctions while I go in and empty out the next room in my house. We are into it now. The heat is irrelevant now. We are beyond it, in some sacred place. The eager faces before me. Hy doing his damnedest. The police with flashers going at the end of the street. The Cuban station playing salsa—we are out of our minds.
    I’m holding a wad of money in my hand now; it won’t fit in my pocket. It’s as fat as an apple, with the suede-like finish of much-handled bills. I can see something bright in the eyes of the people I make change for.
    Hy takes it to the next level. “ ‘Price Is Right!’ ” he yells. “ ‘Price Is Right.’ Closest to original price gets a ten dollar voucher!” He’s establishing value, the sly bastard. The crowd loves it. Everybody shouts a price. Nobody can help themselves. He brings out his pièce de résistance, his big gun, his main attraction: the wide-screen TV The fifty-inch model. Someone yells “nine hundred dollars!” and the crowd boos him. An ignoramus. Everyone knows a big screen TV like that, a fifty-inch model, that’s at least $1,299. Who knows what Hy paid for it? He gives a ten dollar voucher to a plump and pretty Hispanic woman and starts the bidding at two hundred. It climbs quickly to three seventy-five, falters briefly, and then another flurry drives it to four-seventy. To the man in the visor. I think for a moment it’s Lew, the Medicine Man. But it’s not. “Will you take a check?” the visor asks.
    “Sure,” says Hy. “Will you take a note promising you the TV when your check clears?”
    The man with the visor thinks about that, then says, “Okay.”

IT’S AFTER SIX, still light, still hot, when Janice returns. She’s frantic. She asks if I’m all right and hugs me, clings to me like something might try to take me away if she let go. “I saw the police and the cars and I thought—God, I don’t know what I thought.” I tell her I’m okay. I tell her the police were there to help with the traffic, that a lot of people showed up for the sale. She gives me a final squeeze but isn’t ready to let go entirely. She holds my hand and leads me into our house. I feel empty, like my insides had been suddenly sucked dry by some invisible creature. Her panic returns, and she hugs me again. “We’ve been robbed. Why didn’t you say so?”
    I shake my head. “I sold it. In the tag sale.”
    “Who are you?” Janice screams. “Who the fuck are you?” She goes upstairs to our bedroom. I follow. She’s crying, not big sobs, but quietly. She opens the closet, seems relieved that her clothes are still there. Grabs an armful in a huge embrace and carries them down to the car. She’s back. She goes into our bathroom, takes some stuff from the medicine chest, and throws it in her purse. She goes for the hair dryer, discovers it’s gone, just shakes her head. She stuffs some bras and panties into her pocketbook; she has to pick them up from the floor. I offer her the money. She looks at it without comprehension. A big, green ball the color of lettuce. She shoves it into her pocketbook on top of her panties. She leaves a lot of stuff; I think she’ll be back.

IT’S AFTER NINE NOW. The house is cool, from the air-conditioning, and pretty much empty, like when we first moved in. I’m sitting on the floor in the kitchen with just the telephone to keep me company. The phone is on the floor too. Its wire is strung across the floor to where I sit with my back against the wall, drinking Coke from a can. The phone actually makes the room look more desolate.
    There’s a knock at the door. I figure it’s Hy. I’m in no mood to get up and answer it. But Hy or whoever knocks again.
    When I open the door, it’s Miss Lew. She’s got my silverware. It’s in the tray, and it’s wrapped up in cellophane or Saran Wrap or something, and it’s got a red bow on it. She hands it to me.
    “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll get you your hundred dollars.”
    Miss Lew shakes her head. “No. It’s a gift. For you and your wife. You have to have something to eat with.”

I DON’T KNOW if moments of great shock bring out some buried, essential part of us. Janice got stuck on “Who are you?” She screamed it over and over. She would have liked to hit me but didn’t trust herself. Or, more likely, didn’t trust me. Didn’t trust that I was sufficiently and familiarly corporeal to take the blow. Maybe she’ll send Miss Lew over with her broom. She’s going to have a full-time job, Miss Lew, scourging our little cul-de-sac.
    I believe Janice will be back. A marriage is more than its accumulated possessions. Of course this is about more than the stuff I sold, I realize that. But there’s momentum. Our marriage has a certain momentum. It will keep going. I expect we’ll sell and move away from Hy and Allison. Okay by me. Janice will miss Miss Lew, though. Not to worry. It’s Miami; there are yentas everywhere.
    Hy won. He was older; he had more stuff. I explained to him that Janice took the money. He said he didn’t care about the money; all he ever wanted was for me to have to run around the cul-de-sac naked. “Boychick, it’ll be good for you. I might do it myself.” What could I do? I didn’t have the money, and he wouldn’t take it anyway. What could I do? A bet’s a bet.
    The floor of the bedroom is covered with the contents of the dressers and armoire. A cable wire pokes out of the wall, like a leash without its dog. It’s cold from the air-conditioning I had cranked up earlier. I could turn it down, but I would have to get up and go downstairs to do it. Instead I build a nest from the clothes lying around me. I choose Janice’s nightgown, fragrant, for my pillow. As I hope to nod off to sleep, I hear a twang from outside. Over and over. It doesn’t stop, so I finally get up to look. It’s Hy, out in the driveway, bouncing on the trampoline. Naked. Bouncing and bouncing, higher and higher.

HOWARD LUXENBERG runs a small software publishing company in Connecticut and studies writing at Wesleyan University in the graduate liberal studies program.

“Tag Sale” appears in our Winter 2002 issue.

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