McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (50 page)

 
          
 
"Unless the very important man falls out
of love with her," Jean said. "In that case she'll really need you.
You can really come to the rescue."

 
          
 
She looked at me for a minute, a little
disgusted. I think she was mostly disgusted with herself for letting the
conversation continue for so long.

 
          
 
"I don't think she'll need me
again," I said. "They've bought a six-million-dollar horse farm
already."

 
          
 
Jean stood up. "Six million, huh?"
she said.

 
          
 
I nodded.

 
          
 
"Well, so what?" she said. "I
had a guy that rich once. Jimmy could buy a horse farm if he wanted to.
Catching a rich guy is not an impossible feat."

 
          
 
"You don't have to compete with
her," I said. "That's over."

 
          
 
"Just until she needs rescuing,"
Jean said. "That gives her an edge, in my book. I certainly don't intend
to get in a position where I need rescuing by the likes of you. And if I do I
won't tell you."

 
          
 
"I'm going to come back and show you the
boots I got," I said.
"Sometime when you've got
shoes on."

 
          
 
Jean looked over her shoulder, but didn't say
anything. She didn't seem to be softening much. She went in, and the lights in
the downstairs went off, one by one. Then the light over the stairs went off.
But the light in her bedroom was still on when I drove away.

 
          
 
I didn't even consider sleeping. I was far too
frustrated. Generally women soften, no matter how badly you've treated them, if
they see you more or less mean well and that it was mere human frailty that
made you treat them badly.

 
          
 
But Jean had been adamant. Not totally
hostile, just adamant. There was a chance, but it was going to take work.

 
          
 
I knew if I checked into a motel I wouldn't
sleep. I was on a kind of driving high, and my thoughts were spinning. When
your thoughts are spinning it's horrible to
he
in bed.

 
          
 
So I hit the Beltway and headed for
Baltimore
. It's a deeply decayed city, but the very
fact that it was decayed made it perfect for the mood I was in. Many people in
Baltimore
are so far gone into urban neurosis that
they make no distinction between night and day. They drag themselves around at
all hours of the night, doing odd things and looking depressed.

 
          
 
The reason I decided on Baltimore was because
I knew an antique collector there named Benny the Ghost, a name he acquired
because of the habit he has of materializing out of nowhere at country auctions
only a few seconds before the best lot is being sold. You never see Benny until
just after he has bought something you wanted, and then, almost at once, he
melts away. Very few people have ever spoken to him, including auctioneers
whose sales he has frequented for years. Benny the Ghost keeps his own council.

 
          
 
I was one of the privileged few who actually
knew Benny, whose real last name was Higgins. The way I got to know him was by
outbidding him for an Isnik dish. It was a wonderful dish; God knows what it
was doing in
Pennsylvania
, where the auction was held.

 
          
 
Benny has money and usually gets whatever it
is he wants at auctions—his reputation takes the competitive spirit right out
of most bidders. It's not that he has obvious auction macho—he looks like a
men's room attendant in a second-rate hotel—but he does persist. However, I
really wanted the Isnik dish, so I ignored him and kept bidding.

 
          
 
I think Benny was startled—he's not used to
being strongly challenged—and I got the dish for $950. It was an extraordinary
dish, and while I was paying for it Benny came over and stood looking at me
sorrowfully. Like many Baltimoreans, he looked like he had a headache, a
toothache, and sinus trouble. He did not look happy, and seemed stunned by the
fact that he had lost the dish.

 
          
 
"That dish was the only thing I came
for," he said to me, looking like a dog
who
has
just been unjustly kicked. "I drove sixty miles."

 
          
 
"Benny, you should have kept
bidding," I said.

 
          
 
"But the next bid would have been a
thousand dollars," he said. "Isnik dishes don't cost a thousand
dollars."

 
          
 
"This one did, nearly," I said.

 
          
 
"It's very reckless," he said.
"Paying that much for an Isnik dish."

 
          
 
"It's beautiful though, isn't it?" I
said.

 
          
 
Benny just looked gloomy. He had a long heavy
face that could hold a lot of gloom, too. He didn't want to admit that the dish
was beautiful, since if he did his regret over losing it would just deepen. His
regret was already pretty deep.

 
          
 
"I wonder if I have anything you'd like
to trade for it," he said. The words obviously cost him an effort. I was
intrigued. No one I knew had ever heard Benny the Ghost offer to trade for
anything. No dealer that I knew had even the faintest idea of what the nature
or
scope of his collections were
. He bought almost
exclusively at auction, almost never from dealers. But his territory was wide.
He mostly hit country auctions in the Baltimore-Washington-Philadelphia area,
but he had been known to strike as far north as
New Hampshire
, and as far south as
Florence
,
South Carolina
.

 
          
 
No one knew when or where he might appear, but
everyone knew what his habits were, the principal one being that he only bid on
a single item at each auction—almost always the best item, although many an
auctioneer hadn't realized he was selling his best item until Benny had bought
it.

 
          
 
"Sure, we might trade," I said.
"What sort of things do you have?"

 
          
 
"Well, I just have odds and ends,"
Benny said. "I’ve never traded anything. But I hate to lose that
dish."

 
          
 
"It's for sale," I assured him.
"I didn't buy it to keep. I'll trade if you have something I like
better."

 
          
 
"It's hard to say," Benny said.
"I just have odds and ends."

 
          
 
While I was writing out a check for the dish,
Benny dematerialized. He just vanished. Nobody had seen him leave, but he
definitely wasn't there, and I didn't see him again for over a year. I was at
an estate auction near
Richmond
and I sensed a gloomy presence at my elbow. There stood Benny, wearing
the old khaki shirt and faded green slacks that he wore everywhere.

 
          
 
"Have you still got that Isnik dish?"
he asked.

 
          
 
"I sure do," I said.

 
          
 
In fact I had held on to it solely in the hope
of someday running into Benny the Ghost again.

 
          
 
"I liked that dish," he said
gloomily.

 
          
 
"We can still trade," I said softly.
I know how shy certain eccentrics are around their collections. They approach
the thought of showing them as cautiously as deer approach a waterhole.

 
          
 
"I guess you could come and look,"
Benny said, hopelessly. "I live in
Baltimore
."

 
          
 
He gave me a phone number and two days later I
called it. I was in
Baltimore
at the time.

 
          
 
"I guess you could come and look,"
he said, even more hopelessly. It turned out I was only two blocks from where
he lived, which was in a narrow, five-story building in a decaying block of
North Howard Street.

 
          
 
When I knocked on Benny's door I had no idea
that I was about to walk into one of the greatest hoards in
America
: Hoard was the only word for it. All five
floors of the building were shelved floor to ceiling with green library
shelving, and every shelf on every floor was crammed absolutely full of
antiques.

 
          
 
When the shelving along the walls of the five
floors had been filled, Benny had simply extended rows of shelves at angles out
into the rooms, creating in miniature an effect like that of the tangled
streets of certain old cities like Boston. Shelves wound through the large
rooms with no rhyme or reason, all of them stuffed full of antiques. Piles had
begun to build up in front of the shelves, antiques in almost unimaginable
profusion and variety: everything from crocks to buttons to frakturs to silver,
gold, brass, bronze, pewter, copper, jade, ironware, paintings, porcelain,
tools, stuffed animals, barometers, rifles, carvings, pots, baskets, toys,
lamps, etc.

 
          
 
I have seen some hoards, but never anything to
equal what Benny the Ghost had crammed into the house in
Baltimore
. There may have been twenty or thirty
thousand antiques in it, all of them good. Some were tiny and some were huge—he
had an iron pot you could have cooked a hippopotamus in—but very few were
mediocre.

 
          
 
The only light in the building came from
plumbers' lamps, which hung everywhere, thirty or forty to each floor.

 
          
 
Benny lived in the house, apparently. In time
I toured each of the five floors but saw no evidence of a bed, a TV set, a
couch, or any of the other things that normally go in a home. Doubtless these
things had gone long ago, judged inessential and jettisoned to make room for
more antiques. There was what once had been a kitchen—I could tell that by the
sink in it—but it had no stove and there was not so much as a hot
plate, that
I could see. Benny took his meals out, if indeed
he had not dispensed with the need for meals. The sink was piled with Zuni
pottery and a tiny bathroom on the second floor was almost full of Eskimo bows,
arrows, and harpoons. If a seal had suddenly appeared in the John it would have
been easy to get.

 
          
 
Living as I do in a world of goods, I thought
that I had long since grown jaded to objects in the mass, but Benny the Ghost's
secret hoard taught me better. I had never seen such an exciting gathering of
antiques. Generally hoarders on Benny's scale get one good item out of every
one hundred things they buy, and the good idea items are soon obscured by piles
of junk. Benny's case was just the reverse: Out of every hundred he bought
there was one that was merely good. The rest were exceptional. Many were great,
and five or six on each floor were supreme. He had the greatest star

 
          
 
Kazan I had ever seen, and a George I teapot
that any silver dealer in
America
would have given a quarter of a million
dollars for. It was surrounded by perhaps three hundred other silver teapots,
each worthy of prolonged attention. An even tinier bathroom on the fourth floor
was filled with Kiseru-zutso, the wonderful delicately decorated Japanese pipe
cases.

           
 
The hoard was so staggering that on my first
visit I never got above the first floor—and there were five floors. There were
so many fine things that my eyes couldn't take them in, or distinguish between
them properly.

 
          
 
When I walked in with the Isnik dish Benny was
twitching and looking extremely gloomy. I knew why. He might have twenty
thousand objects, but Benny was a collector, not a dealer or a trader. The
thought of having to part with any one of them made him extremely unhappy.

 
          
 
"Well, I just have odds and ends,"
he said. "I don't know what I could trade."

 
          
 
I immediately put his mind at ease by selling
him the Isnik dish at my cost, plus 10 percent, a very fair price. Isnik crafts
had nearly doubled in value in the year that I had owned the dish, and Benny
knew it.

 
          
 
When he learned that he could have the dish
and not have to give up anything he looked almost happy for a few minutes. His
collection need not be violated. He wandered off" down the long rows of
shelves, dodging the hanging plumbers' lights, and in a minute was back with
the cash, precisely $ 1,045 of it.

 
          
 
"I'll put it on the fifth floor," he
said. "I've got my Isnik things up there."

 
          
 
Then, to my relief, Benny the Ghost gradually
became friendly. In all the years that he had been collecting, I may have been
the first one to see the collection. He had been its sole appreciator all
along, and when he discovered that I knew things about some of his pieces a
tentative opening process began. We spent the whole night on one section of
shelves on the lower floor, while Benny lectured me on the objects in it, most
of them pewter. Once he started talking I was trapped: The knowledge he had
been storing up for his whole life began to pour out.