Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City

“Yeah, they’ve gotten a lot more expensive,” said Perkus, not without satisfaction. Why shouldn’t the value of such a thing slide upward-why not a hundred thousand, or a million?

Richard quit dancing. “What are you talking about?” he said. “You don’t have the winning bid?” He and Georgina crowded back into their one seat, as if the music had stopped in a game of musical chairs.

“Nope,” said Perkus.

“Can you afford to stay in?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Perkus with a sweet sadness. “I couldn’t afford the eighteen hundred, but it doesn’t matter. I won’t win.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Richard Abneg furiously. Spittle from his lips arced onto the computer screen. “Make a bid, Perkus. I’ll pay you back when you nail it.”

“Sure, sure,” said Perkus. His own fever was expended, now that he’d guided us into the chaldron’s embrace. He was the mellow proprietor of tantalizing glimpses, we the sideshow customers, looking for a slot for our nickels, frantic to widen the peepshow’s aperture. “There’s no hurry, the action’s all in the last minute or so, you’ll see.”

“Bid, bid,” grunted Richard, almost jostling Georgina off his lap.

“Sure, pick a number, how much do you want to see them pay?” said Perkus. “There’s a certain pleasure in driving the bids up.”

“I want us to win,” said Richard.

“Of course you do,” said Perkus delicately. “I used to feel the same way.” We’d all leaned in, seeking reconnection with what now seemed such a dire commodity, feeling breathless at what could be taken away from us, a thing we hadn’t even known to want a few minutes before. Chaldrons circulated in a zero-sum system, and those not winners were certainly losers. How could we have been so naïve? It was as if for a sweet instant we’d forgotten death existed, and Perkus had had to break the news.

“What do you mean, ‘used to’?”

“I’ve come to see that it’s enough to put on the music, smoke some Ice, and, you know, bid on them. Just that feeling is enough. It gets me through, knowing that it’s out there. Increasingly, I think that’s what they’re for . It’s like an indirect thing, who knows if it would even work if you had it right in front of you.”

“Screw that,” said Richard. “I want one in my house.”

“You don’t have a house anymore,” I pointed out.

“Perhaps Richard means my house,” said Georgina, teasingly.

“Okay, let’s give it a shot,” said Perkus equably, his fingers on the keys. Now he was our arbiter of the reasonable. “How much do we want to go in for? I’m warning you, coming in this early we’re probably just forcing the price up for the eventual winner-even if it’s somehow us. But you’ll chip in if we nail it, right?” He appeared to find our eagerness somehow funny. His temper recalled, of all things, Strabo Blandiana’s bedside manner with his needles.

“Go in hard, stick it to them, make them think twice,” said Richard. “Five grand. We’ll pay.”

“Go ahead, Perkus,” I heard myself say. “Do it, please.” Meanwhile the chaldron just went on shining its strange light on our absurd lusts, egging us on and shaming us all at once.

“It’s a good investment,” said Richard, in his crude way reading my mind exactly. “That thing’s obviously worth ten times that much. If it’s trading like this on eBay, for fuck’s sake, imagine what it would bring if it were handled right . It should be for sale at Sotheby’s.”

Georgina Hawkmanaji gripped Richard’s arm. “You wouldn’t dare speak of reselling it.”

“No, no, I’m just saying we should blow these small-time operators out of the fucking soup. Bid already, Perkus.”

“I am.” He entered the five thousand as a reserve bid, to be allocated in hundred-dollar jumps, so when he checked the bid list his on-screen name-Brando12-now appeared at the top, bearing the current leading offer of thirty-one hundred. Someone else lurking as we were must have already offered a reserve to the tune of three thousand. We all four breathed at a different rate, breathed at all for the first time really, since learning the ghostly ceramic was destined for some other hands than ours.

Only Richard wasn’t satisfied. “Why doesn’t it say five grand?”

“We don’t want to pay more than we have to,” I said, thinking it needed explaining.

“To hell with that. I want them to feel who they’re up against!” As if to confirm that our rivals were simultaneously more pathetic and more expert than ourselves, the bidders we’d topped were named Chaldronlover6 and Crazy4Chaldrons. That they seemed to have no other life confirmed that we deserved the chaldron more, yet this was no consolation, for not to have a chaldron was to have no life at all.

“Spoken like a representative of the Arnheim administration,” said Perkus. “Maybe you should have the other bidders all arrested. Then you can seize the chaldron as evidence.”

“No,” said Richard, with a husky note of urgency, even terror, in his voice, as if Perkus’s taunts outlined some real prospect, one within Richard’s scope. “This isn’t for… them. This is for us.”

“Yes, for us,” said Georgina, almost singing the words. Her tone, balm to Richard’s fury, was at the same time beseeching, a prayer or invocation over the battle we’d entered.

“We’ll keep the chaldron at my place,” I said, thinking ahead. “Seeing as how I live sort of at the midpoint of our various apartments. We can build some kind of special display case-”

“Perhaps this marvelous pottery ought to spend time in each of our homes,” said Georgina.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to treat it like a child in a divorce,” said Perkus.

“We need four,” said Richard.

“We don’t even have one yet,” said Perkus.

We spoke wildly, one eye on the clock ticking down on-screen, feeling invisible enemies crawling nearer to our prize with each silent digital heartbeat. Maybe the music and Ice were wearing off, maybe we weren’t entirely worthy, maybe we weren’t remotely worthy, anyway somehow the chaldron seemed to recede before us, no less potent but more distant, as if preparing us for goodbyes. The chaldron wasn’t to blame, we’d hardly hold it against that pale magnanimous container, but it seemed to wish to ease us toward an inevitable farewell, toward heartbreak. We were going to have to try to pretend we were content to be just friends. Perkus refreshed the page. The current bid was at five thousand and fifty. Perkus checked the history-the bidder was Crazy4Chaldrons. The auction closed in four minutes.

“Who are these fucking fucks?” said Richard.

“Tax-paying citizens like yourself,” said Perkus impartially.

“You don’t know for a fact that I pay taxes,” said Richard. “Raise on them, hurry up.”

“Five thousand, one hundred?” I suggested.

“Fifty-dollar increments is Tinkertoy stuff,” said Richard. “That’s how I know we’re going to kick the ass of these clowns. Make it fifty-five hundred.”

“Neither of these two is going to win it,” Perkus predicted, even as he entered the new bid. “One of the really big players will be coming in any second now.”

Perkus entered the bid, and we stared as his computer reconstructed the page with agonizing slowness. By the time it resolved an image our offer was irrelevant, had already been surpassed. The present sum was six thousand. Then, six thousand and fifty, Crazy4Chaldrons pitting against Chaldronlover6, ourselves an afterthought, fans in the upper deck bellowing inaudibly at the on-field action.