Holding out a mottled palm for payment.

Everyone smiling. Like there was some private joke and Bob was the butt. A cold, soupy feeling filled his stomach.

“Cash, sir,” said Pete.

Bob dug into his pocket.

Later, out in the parking lot, loading the bags and the half bike into his truck, he caught the Asian guy before he got in his Beemer.

“You do this a lot?”

“Me?” Guy smiled pleasantly. “First time, actually. I’m an anesthesiologist, have to be at Marina Mercy by six, thought it might help wake me up. And it kind of did.”

“What got you bidding on fourteen fifty-five?”

Guy looked surprised by the question. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Back home by seven, flies buzzing around the yucca plants that fronted his apartment building, a cruel sun fizzing through his dusty windows, Bob unloaded the garbage bags onto the floor of his grubby little living room.

Figuring he’d catch some sleep before the first Bloody Mary of the day, then go through his haul, then call the tree farm in Saugus.

He collapsed in his bed, still wearing dusty auction clothes. Closed his eyes.

Thought about Kathy. His fine. What his brothers said behind his back.

Got up and fetched a kitchen knife and sliced through the first garbage bag.

Inside were game boxes-Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk. But cracked and messed up, missing everything except the boards.

Great.

The second bag-the heavier one-held crumpled-up newspapers. Period. Why would someone pay to store shit like this?

With a real bad stomachache coming on, Bob got down on the floor and pawed through weeks of L.A. Times. Nothing antique, no historic headlines, just newsprint and those stupid ad inserts that fell all over the place.