by Randy Nargi
Laying in bed, nude and cold, Dick pictured 5:45 AM. There. The alarm was set. He squinted and changed his mind, resetting the alarm for 6:00 AM. He needed his beauty sleep.
30. In the Moment
Three hours after Dick had fallen to sleep, Angela Cocci was doing some exercise of her own, a combination of yoga and Pilates that she called “yo-lates.” And, unlike more traditional practices of the ancient art, in Angela’s version it was perfectly acceptable to have a glass of wine or three while you were working out. After all, this was a relaxation ritual to get her ready for the garage sale tomorrow. There was a ton of buzz online about this particular sale in East Bogwood. It was going to be a good one. But definitely very competitive.
Angela took another sip of wine and remembered how stressed she used to get at garage sales—before she got into yo-lates. But now, with the right preparation, she’d be more focused and “in the moment” at the sale. Part of that preparation was consciously visualizing an object of desire. In Angela’s case, the object of desire was a 6’ x 12’ white shag rug from 1973 that would look perfect in her den.
She stretched and flopped over on her belly. Then Angela raised herself up on her knees and crawled her hands out as far forward as she could—arching her back. This was the Hello Kitty Pose. It was like the more common Stretching Cat Pose, but a little cuter. A lot of stretching involved letting go, and so did success at garage sales. “You don’t find what you want,” Angela told herself. “What you want…finds you.”
After several more poses and a cool down period (which involved another glass of wine), Angela moved to the bathroom, where she lit several dozen marjoram-scented candles and went to work on her hair and face purification ritual—a ritual which centered around a blue algae mud mask and a bottle of vintage Ivory Snow detergent for her hair. She knew deep down that clean, bouncy hair often made the difference between true harmony and utter failure.
Cocoa sneezed at the scent of the candles and left his mistress to her preparations. Within a few minutes, the dog was pretending to be asleep in the living room (the farthest he could get from the bathroom and Angela). Luckily for him, Angela didn’t notice the slight. She was either in a deep meditative state on her bed—or sound asleep.
31. Sale Day
Early Saturday morning, the Fenwick house was mostly still and dark—except for the kitchen, where Doris cracked eggs into a sizzling frying pan. Vicky Bell and her crew were due to be there in 45 minutes, and Doris wanted to make sure Xavier and Clayton had a good breakfast before all the activity began. Xavier, especially, could be very cranky if his blood sugar got too low.
Drawn by the smell of his mom’s cooking, Xavier made his way into the kitchen—still yawning.
“Morning dear. Sunny side up?” Doris asked.
“Yeah.” Xavier yawned again. “Where’s the paper?”
“I think your father has it.”
“Okay. I’m getting dressed.”
“Hurry. Breakfast is almost ready.”
Unbeknownst to the Fenwicks, cars were already pulling into their street and blocking neighbors’ driveways. One of the first cars to arrive was Angela’s Subaru. Because it was going to be a warm day, Angela reluctantly left Cocoa home, but she plucked a stray bit of his fur from the back seat and sniffed it for good luck. She then walked up the Fenwick’s driveway to stake out her place in line. Luckily, she was one of the first people there.
As Angela made her way up the long driveway, a rented Chrysler 300 pulled in behind her Subaru. A well-dressed, handsome man in his early 50s emerged. His name was Rob Vanderhof and he was an architect from Minneapolis—in town researching mid-century modern suburban architecture.
Several other cars arrived and the line up the driveway began to get longer. BJ and Helen’s Forester pulled in eight cars behind Angela’s. BJ was pissed off. “I wanted to listen to the traffic report on the radio—but you and that damn music of yours!”
Helen was equally upset. “I need to listen to music to get in the right mood for a sale. You know that—”
“All I know is that we’re not first in line!” BJ cut her off, but then softened. Just a little. “Forget it—time to focus.” They hurried toward the house.
About 20 miles away, Ed LaSalle was trying to avoid the highway and take the back roads from his house in Renton up to Bogwood. He made a quick right at a red light, but then had to brake suddenly as a school bus pulled out in front of him. Jesus Christ! What the hell is a school bus doing on the road on a Saturday?!
He got a late start this morning. Katie wanted him to feed baby Ben—which normally he didn’t mind helping with, but not on Saturdays. Not on his big g-sale days. Ed quickly changed lanes and accelerated past the bus. He reached for his coffee and discovered that instead of his travel mug, there was a baby bottle in the cup-holder. Ben’s baby bottle. Shit.
Back at the Fenwick house, Clayton relaxed on the john with the newspaper. He still hated the cheap crap ink the Journal was using these days, but he was enjoying an article on fern cultivation in the gardening section of today’s paper. As he flipped the page, Clayton caught a glimpse of a strange bearded man peering through the bathroom window, trying to get an early peek at their items for sale.
“Son of a bitch!” Clayton flung the paper at the window. “Get the hell out of here, you bastards!” Where the hell was that garage sale lady? She had promised them an orderly sale, but now look what was happening.
32. The Line
At 8:30 AM on the dot Vicky Bell pushed her way through the loose line of shoppers crowding the Fenwick’s driveway. Her team was already here, but Vicky had to stop for a four-pack of Red Bull on her way over. Still, she was exactly on time—neither early nor late—just the way she liked it.
“Excuse me! Pardon!” Vicky pushed through the knot of shoppers.
“Are you giving out numbers?” someone called.
“Where’s the list?” someone else asked.
Vicky climbed up on the porch and clapped her hands loudly to catch everyone’s attention. “No list today. No numbers. Doors open at nine, and we’ll be letting folks in at that time. No exceptions!” She vanished into the house.
BJ nudged Helen and spoke in a low voice. “Bell’s here herself. That means there’s some good stuff in there.”
But Helen wasn’t paying attention; she was gazing distractedly in Angela's direction. Angela, who was several places in front of Helen, turned and met Helen’s gaze with a smile. The two women waved at each other, as BJ glared. Then Angela returned to her conversation with Rob, the architect who was standing beside her.
“No this definitely is a Linden ranch.” He nodded at the Fenwick’s house. “You can always tell a Linden by the way he juxtaposes an Asian style roof with the strong verticals of those picture windows.”
Angela smiled at him, seemingly fascinated with Rob’s dissertation. In truth she was thinking to herself how he kind of looked like Dr. Smith on Lost in Space. But younger and a bit more chiseled.
“The ironic thing is,” Rob continued. “This kind of exploration of the vernacular forms to rehumanize the man-made built-up environment is totally lost on most of the people who live around here.”
Angela laughed and contemplated asking him if he owned a robot.
33. Running Late
Back in West Seattle, Dick Nickerson raced out the door of his bungalow, toting his backpack and reading lamp. He squeezed into his Mini Cooper and accelerated off toward the highway.
The whole morning was a catastrophe.
For the first time in years, his internal alarm clock failed to wake him up. He couldn’t understand it. How could that happen? Maybe it was the leg cramp he had in the middle of the night—but whatever it was, he was screwed.
The sale was going to start in twenty minutes and he still had a forty five minute drive ahead of him—longer if the traffic was bad.
As an experienced garage saler, Dick knew that all the good stuff got snapped up within
the first fifteen or twenty minutes of a sale. That’s just the way it was. Professionals knew what was valuable and they moved quickly. Often the pros would come in teams, which would make them even more formidable. Everyday Joes and Jills didn’t stand a chance.
Neither did someone like him. If he was late, that is.
Dick downshifted and zoomed toward the freeway on-ramp.
34. 15 Minutes…and Counting
8:45 AM. Clayton looked out his living room picture window at the throng of people lined up in his driveway. He turned to Vicky. “Why don’t you just let them in? There must be a hundred people out there!”
Doris touched his arm. “It’s not nine yet, dear.”
“Mr. Fenwick, it’s all about order,” said Vicky. “We must, above all, have an orderly sale.”
Toward the end of the Fenwick’s street, Ed’s Taurus screeched to a halt behind a parked mini-van. He had made good time to Bogwood, but judging by the number of cars parked so far away from the sale, he was in trouble. This called for some drastic measures. On top of everything, his phone wouldn’t stop ringing. It was Katie calling. He debated whether or not to just let it go to voicemail, but decided to pick it up to cut off future calls interrupting him at the sale.
“Sorry for leaving suddenly. I’m on my way in to work now,” he told her. Katie wanted details, but Ed didn’t have time for an elaborate story. “I don’t know… I just got a text from Doug that there’s some emergency. I think a server went down. I’ve got to run… No, I didn’t see the bottle… Bye.”
He hung up and clicked off the phone’s ringer. Then Ed dug in the glove compartment for something he developed exactly for situations like this.
Toward the front of the line, Angela and Rob (“Dr. Smith”) were actually hitting it off.
“Yeah, one of my clients is obsessed with wicker,” Rob said.
“For the longest time, I didn’t know the difference between wicker and rattan,” Angela pushed his arm playfully. “I still get them confused!”
They both laughed.
Farther back in the line BJ consulted a small spiral notebook which served as a ‘wish list’ for their store. Anything on the list had top priority. “What are the chances that we’ll find a harvest gold fondue set in there?” she asked Helen.
Helen didn’t reply right away. She was gazing distractedly at the other shoppers.
“Hello?” BJ frowned at her.
“Sorry… what?”
“Harvest gold fondue set. It’s on the list. Okay?”
“Got it.”
“Steiner says he’ll pay anything for a teak lattice bench, but I don’t trust him,” said BJ.
“Well, he screwed us on that blue chair…”
BJ checked her watch. It was 8:52 AM Pacific Time, and 5:52 PM in Sweden. Game time. She pulled a portable short wave radio out of her bag and fired it up. “Sorry, hun—game’s on,” she said to Helen.
“They’re going to open up in a few minutes,” Helen said. Now it was her turn to be pissed off.
“I know,” BJ put an old transistor radio earphone into one ear. “I’ll shut it off the second the doors open.”
Helen sighed loudly and turned away from BJ. Her and her damn games. She looked over at Angela talking to that man and wondered what they were talking about.
The answer was remodeling. Rob was telling Angela about a project he just finished in Los Angeles. “So they came in and asked us if we would take out the rear wall. Remember, this is a Wentworth Case Study House. I think it was Case Study 84. Or 85.”
Angela nodded. “Uh huh.”
“So guess why they wanted to take out the glass wall.”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“No idea.” Angela smiled. The truth was she hated guessing games. That’s why she was a professional researcher.
Rob continued with his story. “They wanted to put in a doggie door. Can you believe it? A doggie door. Turns out that they were these wacko dog people—wanting to put a doggie door into a Wentworth.”
Angela blanched. Obviously Dr. Smith wasn’t an animal person.
He kept rambling on. “They had three or four dogs that they referred to as their ‘children.’ Even dressed them up like kids—”
She had enough. “Excuse me. Could you hold my place?”
Before he could answer, Angela stormed away to say hello to Helen, the nice lady from Moddities.
“Well, this must be a good sale if you’re here,” she told Helen.
“I don't know about that…” Helen smiled at Angela. “We’ll have to see once we get in. Are you looking for something special?”
“Me? No, not really… how about you?”
“Oh, there are a few things we need for the shop.” Helen nodded toward BJ who was engrossed in her game broadcast.
At that moment, Vicky Bell emerged from the front door, clapped her hands, and called for attention. “Good morning, everybody and welcome to another Bell Estate Sale. In about five minutes we’ll be opening the doors and letting folks in. We’ll start with the first twenty people in line…”
The crowd murmured with excitement. Angela waved at Helen as she headed back to her place in line. “This is exciting. See you in there!”
“Good luck!” Helen called after her.
BJ took off her earphone and frowned at Helen. “What’d she want?”
“Just saying hello. She’s a good customer.”
“Uh huh.” BJ put away her radio and started rolling her shoulders to limber up. “Okay, I have a good feeling about this one. Remember. I go left, you go right—”
“I know.”
“Grab everything you can. We’ll sort it out later.”
“I know, I know.” God, BJ was treating her like this was her first sale.
But BJ wouldn’t let up. “You know, you know,” she mimicked. “I don’t want a repeat of what happened in Kitslow.”
Helen just shook her head in silent fury. Bee-yotch!
As he approached the Fenwick’s driveway, Ed clutched his secret weapon in one hand. It was an asthma inhaler. He wasn’t proud of what he was about to do, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
Ed pushed his way through the line, announcing “Excuse me. Coming through. My son needs his asthma medicine!”
The crowd parted to let what they thought was a worried father through. Ed continued to play it up. “Coming, sport. Hang on! Daddy’s almost there—” But before Ed could get to the front of the line, a strong hand grabbed his shirt and yanked him off his feet.
“Not so fast, bucko,” BJ growled at Ed. “You tried that a few weeks ago.” She looked like she was about to tear him apart.
“What are you talking about?” he asked feebly.
Too late. She lifted him up and tossed him into the bushes—at the exact moment when Vicky Bell opened the doors to the sale. The crowd surged forward, but Vicky and several of her beefier helpers controlled the door—only allowing twenty people in. Including Ed LaSalle, who recovered enough to scramble out of the bushes and back into the line—well behind BJ.
35. Let the Games Begin!
“One through twenty only, please!” Vicky shouted as the shoppers pushed through the door. “No running!”
As they cleared the entrance, some of the shoppers (including Angela, Rob, and Helen) rushed in the direction of the living room, while the others (including BJ and Ed) instinctively headed toward the garage.
One side of the living room was filled with folding tables upon which smaller items were displayed. The other side of the room held mostly furniture and larger items.
Helen decided to look through the furniture first, because furniture generally provided better profits. She spied a distinctive glass-topped coffee table. I wonder if that’s a real Yorilla. Morita Yorilla was a noted furniture designer of the 1960s and 1970s whose curved wood and glass furniture commanded high prices.
A few steps away, Rob the architect fixed his eyes on t
he same table. And right behind him was Angela, who thought the little coffee table looked adorable.
So at exactly the same time, three hands grabbed for the tag on the coffee table. Rob must have been a fraction of a second quicker, because he was the one who snatched the tag first. And, according to garage sale law, he who is in possession of the tag has first dibs on buying an item. Rob smiled smugly at Angela and Helen as he tucked the tag into his shirt pocket as if to say, “Sorry, suckers.”
On the other side of the living room, two young hipsters paw through a box of Clayton’s old neckties from the 1960s.
“Oh my god, this is so Mad Men,” the taller hipster says, holding up a prized tie.
“You hate ties!” his friend chides.
“Not this one.”
“They cut off your circulation. Give it to me!”
Across from them, two hands converged on a carved wooden elephant knick-knack. Angela and Helen nearly smacked into each other, struggling to get the elephant. Helen got there first, but once she saw it was Angela going after the elephant, she surrendered the knick-knack. “You go ahead,” she smiled.
“Really?”
“Sure. I have a bunch like that already.”
Angela beamed at her. “Thank you. He’s so cute!” She held the elephant up to the light.
“She,” Helen said.
“Huh?”
“The elephant. It’s a she.”
“Oh…”
36. Somewhere in Bogwood
Somewhere in Bogwood, Dick Nickerson was driving around—completely lost.
“Crapola!” He didn’t have a GPS. He didn’t have an iPhone. How the hell was he supposed to find this place?
