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loud sports jacket. “There will be no reserve on any lot number unless it is so indicated in your program. Please be sure to read the other rules listed in the program before you bid by raising in your right hand the card with your number on it.”
    There didn’t seem to be a sequence to the things brought out. It took me ten minutes of reading the program to realize that items in a given category, say bone china, were sprinkled throughout. I guessed that was to encourage each component of the crowd to arrive early and stay late, the more to see specific treasures to spark their impulse.
    Nancy observed remarkable discipline, bidding only on a crystal wine decanter from Austria and dropping out when Jeffers got a thirty-dollar wave from an older woman a few rows in front of us. The decanter eventually went to the older woman for forty-five.
    I tugged on Nancy’s sleeve and whispered, “Probably not dishwasher-safe, anyway.”
    “I don’t have a dishwasher.”
    “There’s one coming up in Lot Two-twenty-seven.”
    She smiled in spite of herself, and I took the hand that wasn’t holding her bidder card and rested it against my thigh.
    After another fifteen minutes, I noticed that some things went for practically nothing and seemed to be great bargains. On other lots, though, there were some people in the room who jumped into the bidding for a while, usually to start it or in the middle, then routinely dropped. I asked Nancy about them.
    “Maybe dealers, who know how much they can get retail and don’t want to tie up more than X percent of that to buy it here. Maybe also just friends of the auctioneer, shilling.”
    “Is that legal?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not here professionally.”
    Just then the mahogany bureau came up, and at least three other people around us leaned forward. Nancy let go of my hand so both of hers would be free.
    Jeffers asked for and received a starting bid of fifty from the older woman who’d gotten Nancy’s decanter. I saw a determined look come into both of the wide-spaced blue eyes, which I thought was a bad sign. Then a middle-aged Hispanic man put in a bid of sixty, which the auctioneer recognized just before Nancy raised her card for seventy. They played leapfrog up to one-fifty, by which time two of the dealers (or shills) had jumped in and out, leaving the field to Nancy and the decanter woman.
    They slugged it out for another hundred, the older woman turning around awkwardly in her chair to see who the stubborn competition was. I caught her attention and gave my best “what’re you going to do?” shrug, hoping that might persuade the woman to drop out before she broke the bank. She gave me back the same look Nancy had, which I thought was a very bad sign.
    All told, the bad signs topped out at three hundred even, Nancy winning. Kind of.
    I said, “Nice job.”
    “It’s worth twice that, maybe more.”
    “I believe you.”
    Driving north, she said, “I told you it would fit.”
    Another couple had to help us get the bureau off the ground in the parking lot, but it did slide into the back with about half an inch to spare on each side. Nancy stuffed the margins with a blanket I didn’t remember her keeping back there and tied the hatchback down with a couple of bungee cords I knew I’d never seen before.
    I’d already told her I thought it weighed as many pounds as it had cost her dollars to buy the thing. “How come the desire for new furniture now?”
    She glanced away from the road just long enough to gauge something. “All the stuff I have is from when my mom was alive. I’ll still hold on to most of it, but there’s a time to pull away from the old, and I decided that this was it.”
    “As long as the pulling away doesn’t include me.”
    Her right hand left the stick shift and squeezed my left forearm. “Not likely.”
    “So, I told you about my embarrassing youth, how about you telling me something.”
    “I wasn’t allowed to be an altar