“A king’s ransom,” Chip-tooth said and proceeded to laugh with such force that he started to cough. His body shook with the violence of it. I thought the big guy might keel over right in front of me.
“Seriously,” I said when he finally recovered. “How much?”
He scratched his sizable gut with one hand. With the other he rubbed his chin in thought. For a moment, he looked as if he was mulling it over sincerely, but I was sure he already had a set price in mind.
“Well,” he said, drawing his words out, “seeing as how it’s got a little damage to it, I suppose I could let it all go for two hundred dollars.”
I stifled a knee-jerk urge to laugh in his face.
Two hundred dollars? He was insulting my mad phat antiquing skills! To anyone but the guy I was going to return it to, the console was worthless because of the stickers all over it. I cursed myself for blowing my poker face. I also cursed Chip-tooth for his greed.
“Three dollars,” I counter offered, totally deadpan.
“Don’t waste my time, son,” Chip-tooth fired back.
“Three dollars,” I repeated with even more conviction.
Chip-tooth sighed and shook his head.
“Listen, son,” he said, poking one of his pudgy fingers at my chest. “That console is a gen-u-ine piece of history—of rock and roll history, in fact. I purchased it at great expense from none other than Yoko Ono herself. She and John Lennon bought it in seventy-five and they used it until the day he got shot right here in New York City. That makes it worth two hundred dollars and not a dime less.”
He was so full of shit that I felt real anger building inside me, but I simply kept calm and looked him straight in the eye.
“First of all,” I said, pushing his finger away from my chest, “even if this console had ever been within forty miles of John Lennon, you’re still as full of shit as the Hudson River. Lennon died in 1980. That gaming console didn’t release until later in the year, after his death. Now I’m gonna give you twenty dollars for this, tops, and you’re going to take it. You know why? Because I know my shit.”