Роберт Батлер - Fair Warning

"Of course," I said.

~

When this fifth work day was done, for the fifth time he walked me to the door and thanked me, rather formally, for all that I was doing. Tonight I stopped and looked into his eyes when he said this. "I've enjoyed your company," I said.

"And I've enjoyed yours," he said.

That's all I wanted to say. I turned to go.

"Amy," he said.

I turned back and my instinct said this was the time he would take me into his arms. My instinct was wrong. Was this another trend for the forty-year-old woman? Horny, discriminating, and utterly without sexual intuition? He simply said, "I'll see you down."

We went out the door together and along the hall and I pushed the down button on the elevator and a spark of static electricity bit at my fingertip. That was it, I thought. I've now discharged into the electrical system of the building elevators whatever that was I was feeling a few moments ago.

The doors opened. We stepped in. The doors closed. We were alone, and maybe the elevators did suck up the charge that was between us, because we descended one floor of the ten we had to go and Trevor reached out and flipped the red switch on the panel and the elevator bounced to a stop and a bell began ringing and he took me in his arms and I leaped up and hooked my legs around him as we kissed. He pressed me against the wall and he did not make a sound.

~

The next day I leaned into the tinted window of Arthur Gray's limo and faced the rush of trees and light standards and, eventually, industrial parks, along the Long Island Expressway. I never had understood what men saw in lovemaking in a standing position. Though Trevor had been strong enough, certainly, to hold me up without my constantly feeling like I would slip off him. He was silent, but he did not cry out, "Oh Mama," which would have been much worse, under the circumstances. We'd not had a proper date. We'd never even gone out for a meal. But that sounded like my mama talking. I was well fucked and unusually meditative.

When we were on Highway 27, out among the potato fields and vegetable stands and runs of quaint shops and approaching East Hampton, Arthur finally roused me from going nowhere in my head. He said, "Amy, there's one more item that I want you to put on your list. Okay?"

"Okay."

"It's the special request I mentioned on your machine." Arthur was shuffling his feet and talking all around something and he'd finally gotten me interested, even suspicious.

"What are you talking about, Arthur?"

"A dinner with you."

"With me?"

"At Fellini's. In SoHo. They've already donated the meal, with wine. Dinner for two with the most beautiful auctioneer in New York."

I was silent. This was really troubling for a reason I couldn't quite define.

"Come on," he said. "Think of the whales."

"This is for whales? I thought it was for a disease."

"Whales get diseases, too. The point is that your mystique, which is considerable, is Nichols and Gray's mystique, as well. Give somebody a dandy candlelit dinner. For us. Okay?"

There was no good reason to say no. I liked whales. I liked Arthur. I liked Nichols and Gray. But there was suddenly a great whale of a fear breaching inside me and falling back with a big splash: I was going to have to sell myself.

I looked out the window and across a field I saw a cow, standing alone, wondering where the hell she was.

~

We were set up in a four-pole tent on the grounds of an estate with the sound of the ocean crashing just outside. I stood on a platform behind a lectern loaned by the local Episcopal Church and I looked out at many of my regulars and some comparably affluent strangers and they were in their boaters and chinos and late spring silks and I looked at all their faces once, twice, and John Paul Gibbons was on the right side in the second row and he winked at me. This was becoming a discomforting motif. And suddenly I figured I knew whose request it was that I be auctioned off.

I began. To an ancient little lady I did not know-I presumed she was a permanent Hamptons resident-I sold the services of Puff Daddy to hip-hop her answering-machine message. I had an order bid in my book for $150 but I squeezed $600 from the old lady, invoking the great, thinking beings-of-the-deep in their hour of need. I'd gotten a cello lesson with Yo-Yo Ma up to $1,600-having ferreted out two sets of parents, each with a child they'd browbeaten into learning the cello-when Trevor appeared at the back of the tent. He lifted his chin at me, as if he were tasting his coffee.

We'd never spoken of this event during the week we'd just spent together. I didn't expect him. I felt something strong suddenly roil up within me, but I wasn't sure what. I focused on the next bid. "It's against the couple down in front. How about seventeen? Seventeen hundred? What if your child meets their child in a school music competition?"

They hesitated.

"Whose butt will get whipped?" I cried.

They bid seventeen hundred. But I felt it was over. The other couple was hiding behind the heads in front of them. I scanned the audience a last time. Trevor was circling over to my left. "Fair warning," I called.

There were no more bids and I sold Yo-Yo Ma for $1,700 as Trevor found a seat. Oddly, I still didn't know how I felt about his being here. I threw myself into the lots on Arthur's list and I was good, I was very good. The whales were no doubt somewhere off the coast leaping for joy. And then I reached Lot 19.

"The next lot…" I began, and I felt my throat seizing up. I felt Trevor's dark eyes on me, without even looking in his direction. I was breathless against the wall of the elevator and all I could hear was the bell and the pop of Trevor's breath as he moved and my mind had begun to wander a little bit and he was right about how he smelled whenever he visited his mother's apartment, he smelled of lilacs-no, not of lilacs, of lilac sachet -and my head thumped against the wall and I said "Oops" but he did not hear and I thought about her pillows and though I was glad I was not in her bed, I figured I'd accept those dozen pillows on the floor of the elevator so I could lie down in a soft place for this.

"The next lot…" I repeated, and I pushed on. "Number nineteen. Dinner for two at Fellini's in SoHo, with wine and your auctioneer."

There was a smattering of delighted oohs and chuckles.

I almost started the bidding at a measly $50. But this impulse did not come from my auctioneer self, I instantly realized. There was a shrinking inside me that I did not like and so I started the bid for what I thought to be an exorbitant amount. I'd simply go unclaimed. "Who'll open the bid for four hundred dollars?" I said.

I saw John Paul's head snap a little, but before I could congratulate myself, in my peripheral vision I could see a paddle leap up without pause. I looked. It was Trevor.

Suddenly there was something I had to know.

I said, "I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, let me stop right here for a moment. Before we begin, I need some more information on this lot."

There was a ripple of laughter through the tent and I stepped away from the lectern. Arthur was standing off to my right and I stepped down from the platform and I approached him.

He must have read something in my face. He blanched and whispered, "What is it? You're doing a smashing job."

"Who asked to put me up for bid?"

"Sorry, my dear," he said. "That's a bit of a secret."

"You always start sounding British when you know you're in trouble. And you are. Give it up."

He tried to wink and shrug and say nothing.

"Arthur," I said as calmly as I could. "I don't want to grab you by the throat and throw you to the ground in front of all these good clients. Tell me who."

This was convincing. "Trevor Martin," he said.