The Auction Registrar Asked Me To Hum Into A Photograph

I called from the library, where Bernard could not hear me.

“I haven't signed a release,” I told Celine Broussard. “I haven't agreed to sell anything.”

There was a pause, then the sound of a drawer closing.

“Can you come here this afternoon?” she asked. “Bring what you have. Originals if you can.”

I drove across Shreveport with the gray case on the passenger seat. At each light, I rested my hand on it.

River Lantern occupied an old brick building with a loading dock and a front room full of chairs nobody was allowed to sit in.

Celine met me at a plain desk behind the show floor. She was a Black woman of forty-six, with close-cut curls, dark glasses on a chain, and a pencil tucked through her watchband.

She looked at my case.

“That has the right kind of weight,” she said.

“Paper is heavy.”

“So are excuses. I prefer paper.”

She gave me water, then cleared her desk.

I laid out the estate inventory from 1975. Next came the agreement that had let Bernard's business store and display my pipes.

Celine read it once. Then she started again.

“Do you always do that?” I asked.

“Check provenance twice? Yes. The first reading tells me the story. The second tells me where someone wants me to stop looking.”

She placed her finger under a line.

“Sale requires the owner's written consent. That's you.”

“That's me.”

“And this signature acknowledging custody?”

“My husband.”

She examined the attached list of eighty-four pipes.

“The consignor told us the collection was bought outright from your husband's business.”

“His business never bought it from me.”

Celine took copies, marked the time on my written claim, and gave me a receipt for every document she copied. The originals went straight back into my case.

She asked which number I wanted her office to use. I gave her my own cell number. For years, customers had called Bernard even when their questions were about work only I had done. I watched her write my number above his.

“I'm putting the lot on hold for our counsel,” she said. “That stops our sale. It doesn't decide ownership.”

“Where are the pipes?”

“In our contracted storage building. Sealed crates. Nobody gets a release while this is open.”

She turned her screen so I could see the lot photographs.

The sight of the pipes made me grip my knees.

They lay on gray blankets beneath bright lights. Someone had turned their mouths toward the wall.

“Can you identify these from the pictures?” she asked.

“Number seventeen has a crooked solder patch below the mouth. I did that in 1986. My wrist was in a brace.”

She enlarged the image.

There it was. My ugly little moon of solder.

I hummed without thinking.

“Does it answer through the screen?” she asked.

“No. I was remembering the fault.”

“Good. I was about to ask for a raise.”

I laughed. It surprised me enough that I had to wipe my eyes.

We matched six visible pipes to my photographs. Celine marked each match, then asked permission to arrange a full inspection through the lawyers.

“Who owns Alder Landing?” I asked.

She showed me the public company filing.

The name beneath manager was Mireille Dugas.

I knew Mireille. She had helped Bernard choose new curtains for his office. He had called her a friend with good taste.

“Has she been in here?” I asked.

“She signed the consignment. Your husband brought the crates.”

The auction estimate was $210,000 to $230,000.

I read it twice.

Bernard had told me he got enough.

“You should get your own lawyer today,” Celine said. “We represent the auction house. I can keep a bad title out of our room. Your lawyer needs to get your property home.”

She gave me a short list of local offices without telling me which to choose.

Before I left, I asked whether any buyer had already paid.

She went still.

“Why?”

“Bernard said sold. Your letter says for sale.”

Celine wrote that down.

“I'll ask the consignor for the complete chain of sale. And I'll check the earlier inquiry we got about this collection.”

I went home before Bernard returned. I put the case in the locked trunk of my car and kept the key in my pocket.

At supper, he asked where I had been.

“Looking at records.”

“You have too much time.”

I watched him butter his bread.

My phone rang beside my plate.

Celine's voice was careful.

“A man named Elias Reed has given me permission to share his papers with you. He says he already paid a forty-six-thousand-dollar deposit on your collection.”

Bernard stopped moving his knife.