Object No. 98 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Stacey Levine, has ended. Original price: $4. Final price: $10.50.]

I’m not a collector, but really a purloiner, and there’s only a brief backstory to these novelties.

When my second wife died, I sought companionship. So I installed a soda machine in my bedroom — it would be a conversation piece and might make me more attractive to the ladies. I disabled the cash acceptor. I started going for walks to the little square in downtown Orange, and I thought: Why is no one talking to me? Yet soon I was helping a lady cross the street with her grocery bags. She was en route to a cousin’s wedding, she said, and I could come along with her. The grocery bags were full of almonds and snacks sweeter than that.

She was a Somali Jew. Her cousin came from a family of plumbers, and the relatives were working that day at the community center where the wedding was held. The kitchen sink had flooded the main hall. All kinds of guests streamed in, African and white. Grandmothers with shoeboxes of homemade cookies. Middle-aged men in sports shirts and a singer whose entourage of laughing musicians trailed behind her.

The woman who had invited me scarcely glanced at me, though for a few minutes in the press of the crowd, she held my hand. That action made my own hand feel dry. I was about to tell her so, but she ran off with her sisters or other women.

I assisted the three plumbers and another workman as they installed a sump pump in the floor near a storage room door. I thought they should put the sump pump inside the storage room — but no, that idea made them upset. Nearby, a crew of hippie-caterers in sandals began setting up a drinks table. We got the sump pump installed and were testing the alarm when the bride, groom, and minister walked onto the sump pump cover — they liked validating the workers’ labor in this way. We all stood back to see if the pump could handle the weight of three people.

It could. The ceremony began on the sump pump and I slagged to the back of the room. I paced. I had a great pain to mitigate. I saw the bookends in an unwrapped box on the counter and thought, “What a stupid gift to bring to a wedding. Who would do that?” Then I stole the bookends. What a coward I am.

Later I considered the bookends might have been a present destined for another event, and that someone merely set them on the counter temporarily.

I asked the lady to visit me the next day. So I hid the bookends under my couch. She stood on my doorstep. I told her right away: “I am strong as an ox.” She said: “Fine — I like people from foreign lands, because they are less polite and I seek umbrage in that.” I asked her what she was talking about, but the conversation moved to other things.

Object No. 97 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by (Six-Word Story Contest winner) Rob Agredo, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $27.]

“You lose,” she puffed.

True.

Again.

Object No. 93 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Kate Bernheimer, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $104.50.]

A long time ago, I was very poor and often traded my body for cigarettes, Chelada, or food (in order of preference). I had two children — both daughters — and together we lived in a motel on the coast. It was a knotty-pine kitchenette cabin, and came furnished with a teapot, a few chipped flowered plates, some utensils, and bedding. The cabin overlooked a paved parking lot and beyond it, the beach. If a man came to visit, I sent my youngest girl out to find driftwood and starfish and shells. (Her sister was in kindergarten, so always gone in the morning.) There was no market for these trinkets among tourists; but they were precious to my little girls, truly their only possessions. We washed them and kept them along the edge of the porch rail and inside, on the white windowsills, which otherwise were very empty, apart from a pink horse my youngest had found in the woods. That pink horse! How she loved it. Once when she had gone a very long way to gather her treasures — all the way under a natural tunnel inside the cliffs, which led to a narrow beach that would trap you and kill you if you were stuck there during high tide — an old woman with pink hair approached her and sang her a song. My daughter told me about this old woman, but I didn’t believe her. Later that week, my girl brought home a sea urchin, closed. She said that when the sea urchin opened, the old woman would return and that she had promised then to bring us good luck. I got an empty jar from the cupboard — it had once been full of beach plum jelly but had been long gathering dust. We walked down to the edge of the ocean and filled it with water. Back in the cabin, we placed the closed sea urchin carefully into the water, where it sank and stayed closed. The next morning my littlest girl didn’t wake up and the sea urchin had bloomed. It was on her grave that my other daughter placed the pink horse. Then she too was taken — by the high tide — the very same week. She’d gone into the magic tunnel. Now I do nothing but drink Chelada all day, haunted by pink. Pink urchins, pink cigarettes. Pink horse, pink horse, pink horse on the grave — if ever the pink horse flies into the sky, your daughters will come back to life. The pink-haired old woman sang that to me once when I passed out in the sand. For now, there you stand in the dark of the wood — beautiful, all-powerful, and silent. Pink horse, you are everything, and everything is everlasting in you.

Object No. 82 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Josh Kramer, has ended. Original price: 25 cents. Final price: $76. This story is the first in a three-part series produced in collaboration with The Center for Cartoon Studies. ]

Object No. 81 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Bruno Maddox, has ended. Original price: $3. Final price: $19.50.]

Did she love me? Nah. Did I love her? Yeah. So I got her this wooden map of Thailand with four hooks sticking out. Figured she could use it to hang items on — you know, in her future life. Whether or not she chose to let me be a part of that.

I wrapped it up best I could. Frank’s cologne came in some green tissue paper which I tried using first, but the hooks and the peninsula kept poking through, or seeming like they were about to, so I went back to the shop and bought a little girl’s raincoat with a white fur hood. Back in the room I stood on the coat and tore the hood off to make a pouch for the map. It looked good, and I felt a tingle of hope and fear. Because my love was real.

Our flight was at seven, checkout was noon. Frank and Headcase were having pints at the roulette table in the lobby and I said I was going quickly say goodbye to Sick Mick at the hospital. “Tell him he’s a woman,” Headcase told me, looking at the wheel and fingering his chips. “Since when is alcohol a poison?”

Her mum let me in and shooed me to the back. The door was open and she was on the bed reading a magazine very intently.

“I love you,” I said, when we were sitting on the bed together.

“Yes,” she said. “I love you.”

I shook my head. “No,” I explained. “Love…” I pointed to my chest and mimed lines going from my heart to her face. “I love you.”

She watched closely. Her long hair brushed her crossed legs as she nodded. “I love you.”

Down the corridor, a door slammed. I told her I’d got her something.

The lads still give me guff about it. “I know what you’re thinking,” Sick Mick’ll say if I daydream in the cafeteria, and that’ll set the others off, which I like because it makes me remember her.

But it’s not what they think. You see, she didn’t know what it was. I had to explain that this was her country, and that there were others, and about the world, and I left her there staring at it. And while I do often think of her, when I wake up, or coming back hammered after being out with the lads, it’s not sexual in nature. Well, it feels sexual, but what I see is her at a podium, dressed like Margaret Thatcher, addressing the International Union of Nations or something, jabbing the wooden map I gave her at all the sheikhs and toffs and monocled kings, shouting the words to the sad, sad song she sang that first night in the bar at karaoke. She sang it in Thai, that night, but the English words were behind her on a screen:

Leaves are falling on my heart.
Why did you set fire to our love?

Object No. 73 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Christopher Sorrentino, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $38.]

My parka (Coat, Cold Weather, Men’s, Field, OG-107) hangs from a hook whose shape is in the likeness of Pickwick, of Dickens’ classic and eponymous book. The hook is mounted on the back of my door. Above the olive-drab parka, I can see Pickwick gesturing expansively. This is kind of a funny coincidence because just earlier today I was standing outside the home of Stanfield Mooney, in my accustomed spot, hoping to get a chance to talk to him about my ideas and see if he might be able to put me in touch with his agent, a simple but apparently impossible request, when I noticed that a box of books had been placed on the sidewalk just before the wrought-iron fence there. In the box was a copy of The Pickwick Papers. Yehudi, I said to myself, now there is a sign if you’ve ever received a sign. I opened the book. Sure enough: Ex Libris Stanfield Mooney. No interlinear comments or significant underlining, though.

I took Stanfield Mooney’s personal reading copy of this timeless classic back to my room and made a Survivor Sandwich. This is slices of apple between which you put cheese, or meat, or what have you. It provides stamina, fiber, and internal purity. While eating I gazed at the photos of Stanfield Mooney that I’d pinned to the cracked plaster of the walls enclosing my small and shabby one-room crash. Mooney with Mailer. Mooney with Vonnegut. Mooney accepting the National Book Award. Mooney disappearing into a limousine during his intense but brief affair with the beautiful Lauren Holly (what role did he play in bringing about the end of her bright career?). A somewhat Pickwickian figure himself, come to think of it. It’s very interesting that Mooney is here, there, and everywhere but never seems to have a moment to talk to me about The Underwater Mosaic, a novel idea which I’ve been told by Bernard Gerthner himself, the Bernard Gerthner, would probably make a very appealing motion picture idea. It’s all about ideas, and I have them. I am simply without the necessary connections to say, Let’s make this happen!

When I finished my sandwich, after the prescribed two Nutter Butters, I searched in Stanfield Mooney’s personal reading copy for clues. I don’t like to read much, so I didn’t find anything. Gun magazines, sure. Magazines with full-color photos of women blowing up balloons in their underwear, definitely. Books, though, are a problem, especially since the Bernard Gerthner himself assured me that it was all about ideas, which I have galore of. Then I stared at the brass effigy of Pickwick, leering and gesturing above the slump of my empty parka, bringing myself into a mild trance state. Do you like paperback word-search puzzle books? Playing 33 rpm records at 45 rpm? Me too. Messages abound. “Kill.” “Lock and load.” “Let’s do lunch.” “Does not meet our needs at the present time.”

I like to think that one day someone will be waiting, rain or shine, outside my own stately home, where among the elegant furnishings and appurtenances I will have scattered some of the “lesser things” from my “salad days,” such as the Mr. Pickwick coat hook. That?, I’ll chuckle. Oh, there’s a real story behind it. Then I’ll smile and gently shake my snifter. Perhaps there’ll be a Mrs. Pickwick hook for Lauren, when she starts answering my letters already. They’ll find a box of books and thrill to see Ex Libris Yehudi Mirandez when they check out the endpapers. I’ll slap my name right over Mooney’s.

Object No. 60 of 100

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Stephen Elliott, has ended. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $4.24.]

I bought these Hawaiian utensils, a wooden spoon and fork, while living in Alaska in the mid-eighties with my first wife. We were living outside the Eskimo village Wales on the western edge of the state, three miles outside of Tin City Air Force Station. The Air Force station was the location of a long-range radar for air surveillance. It was originally built in the 1950s but Reagan gave it a serious upgrade during his successful bid to destabilize the Russians. From the top of a snowdrift you could see boats pulling into ports larger than many football stadiums, carrying steel arms more than a mile in length.

We didn’t think that was any of our concern, though in retrospect it was the most important thing. It was a cold place and a cold time. The wind would whip off the Bering Straight at more than a 100mph and one day in the middle of winter, counting the wind chill, the anemometer read 160 below zero.

I could say we were there to teach English and Christianity to savages, but that wouldn’t get very far towards the truth. And I don’t have the time, or the bandwidth to get into those stories. We got these utensils from the “village younger,” which is what they call the first son of the “village elder,” believe it or not. How the utensils migrated their way from those warm pacific islands to the furthest outpost of civilization is beyond my knowing. And when the military men showed up in their snowcats and my wife climbed on the back of one of their vehicles, that was beyond my knowing, too. At least then.

I will say, I’ve made great use of these little souvenirs. Good for making salad or stirring hot liquids.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Tom Bartlett, has ended. Original price: $4. Final price: $15.50.]

From June 1996 to February 1999 I worked as a manager at a well-known electronic supply retailer in a mostly vacant strip mall on the outskirts of a medium-sized metropolitan area located in the southeastern United States. I don’t say this to brag but simply because it is a fact like the inevitability of death or the importance of placing a plastic weather boot on exposed coax cable to prevent moisture seepage.

During that time I lived in a 900-square-foot two-bedroom apartment overlooking a popular name-brand eatery famous for its spicy boneless chicken with the assistant manager for the same well-known electronic supply retailer who, for the purposes of this description, I will refer to as AMFTSWKESR. AMFTSWKESR and I spent our days fielding inquiries from a continuous procession of would-be technology users who wondered either a) why a 3.5mm plug could not be inserted into a 2.5mm jack or b) if the computer came with the Internet already on it or if that cost extra.

To these conundrums we would respond, “You make a point” or “That is a question.” Deeming their points “interesting” or their questions “good” seemed to us a violation of certain ideals which, while not expressly stated, were understood to be sacrosanct. In the evenings AMFTSWKESR and I would perform a cursory inventory, place the large bills in the downstairs safe, and drive my fuel-efficient two-door to the aforementioned popular name-brand eatery where we would order spicy boneless chicken and act out our favorite customer encounters from that day. Then we would return to our apartment, plug in the item pictured above, and stare at it transfixed until one or both of us passed out on the thrift-store couch, our nametags still affixed to our wrinkled knit shirts.

In November of 1998 AMFTSWKESR moved to the midwestern United States to be close to a curly haired woman he met in a chat room for people with a shared interest in a commercially unsuccessful science fiction film from the 1980s. The pictured item belonged to AMFTSWKESR, but he left it behind because he thought I might get more use out of it, a gesture intended to indicate that our roughly two-and-a-half-year friendship had been equally meaningful to him. Or that is what I took it to indicate.

Minus AMFTSWKESR’s presence at this particular branch of the well-known electronic supply retailer the position became unbearable and I tendered my resignation shortly thereafter. In the intervening decade I have held a series of nearly identical jobs and lived in a number of nearly identical apartments and yet it all feels like a pathetic foreign replica of that short-lived period, an assertion which is either a) a reminder that the days you’re living now may be as close to halcyon as you’ll ever come or b) a testament to my inexplicable fondness for a seemingly unremarkable and long-since-ended chapter of my admittedly non-noteworthy existence.

Some may wonder why I would offer this corded totem for sale to the general public or why I would find it necessary to dwell on my personal work history rather than more pertinent information as to the item’s current condition and functionality. They may, for instance, ask: What is it? To which I must reply: That is a question.

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Sean Howe, has ended. Original price: 25 cents. Final price: $20.51.]

It’s difficult work, wooing Donna. For one thing, the rhythms of my courtship are constantly interrupted by the lustful swarm of others, many of whom clumsily flirt with her. I’m impressed with the way she puts up with their transparent designs. She smiles, returns their jokes, and fleeces them of their tip money. Then she pivots, floats to me, and tells me about her dreams. Sometimes we discuss literature. I’ve been trying to get her to read Eliot’s Romola, but she says “it’s too intellectual for me.” She doesn’t give herself enough credit.

The hardest part is how to keep myself occupied while she’s busy. I’ve found that it’s best to set myself up at the end of the bar; it curves around, which provides me with a view of potential interlopers. Sometimes I can see, out of the corner of my vision, Donna glancing my way. Maybe it’s just to see how I’m doing with my drink, or maybe she’s stealing a look at my face. But I fix my eyes on the top shelf of liquor, looking busy. Sometimes I can feel my face vibrate, and my heart beat faster. Like when you lie to someone and try to look them in the eye.

She was smiling at me Thursday night, when I followed her to the stairs and I realized she was already drunk. She dropped the bottle opener through the slats, so we just smoked and listened to the rain. When I said goodnight I tried to find the balance between slurred speech and an overly enunciated farewell. I don’t want to give away my feelings until the time is right.

[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Luc Sante, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $17.79.]

Only now do I feel free to tell my part in the theft of the famed Light of the East diamond from the home of Roscoe and Mindy Furgarden in Beverly Hills in the summer of 1979. The 517-carat colorless gem, one of the world’s largest, had disappeared and reappeared many times in its tangled history. Its latest reemergence, among the effects of the Marquis of Glendale, had occasioned a crowded and contentious Sotheby’s auction that was won, to the dismay of all, by an anonymous telephone bid placed on behalf of the Furgardens.

The identity of the winner was sufficiently well concealed that the Furgardens felt no hurry to stow the diamond in a vault. Mindy needed to spend time staring at it, in her boudoir, where the illuminated five-part dressing mirror enhanced and multiplied its splendors. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut, though, and happened to tell her very best friend, Sheila Showpony, all about it on the terrace of Sheila’s Elizabethan cottage in the Hollywood Hills, right when my friend Craig was crouched nearby, cleaning out the pool filter.

Craig wasted no time organizing a crew of four to heist the rock. Sully was driver and lookout, Rat the lock specialist, and Craig and I were set to penetrate the boudoir. We frankly had no idea how to go about fencing the thing, but it was too rich a score to pass up. We learned that the Furgardens would be attending a charity polo match on the evening of June 18th, leaving the house in the care of their housekeeper, Mildred Swing, who was known to suffer from narcolepsy, and a retired cop named McDrain who acted as majordomo and security guard. McDrain’s weakness was the dog track, so we faked a hot tip on the sixth race to get him out of the house.

As we pulled into the driveway, the night was clear and we felt confident. Rat eased open the rear service entrance and we were in. We tiptoed up the stairs and found Mildred watching The Rockford Files in her room, her eyelids drooping. We easily found the master suite; within, the second door we tried led to Mindy’s boudoir. And there on the vanity lay the biggest diamond any of us had ever seen, lying casually on a chamois cloth like a naked movie star sprawled on a satin sheet.

Then the lights went out. We never found out what happened — had we cut an electric-eye beam? But we went into action mode. I wrapped the stone in its cloth, secreted it in a pocket of my jumpsuit, and we ran, bent low, down the carpeted hall and the carpeted stairs. We jumped into the car and made straight for our safehouse on the outskirts of Burbank, listening for sirens.

We yanked all the shades down and turned on a single light. I pulled the package out of my pocket. With slow, dramatic gestures I unwrapped it, only to discover… a Sanka ashtray. It was about the same size. In the dark I must have — I didn’t want to think about it. The others left me bleeding in an alley with the ashtray jammed into my mouth. I hung on to it for years as a bitter reminder, but eventually I drove to the nearest Goodwill box and shoved it in. And the stone? It disappeared that night and was never seen again.