Owls Well That Ends Well Part 3

"They're all pirates," I grumbled. "I still don't get it."

"Well, you wouldn't," Rob said.

"No," I said. "I've lost the ability to look at Edwina's clutter in a detached fashion, as a mere collection of inanimate objects-annoying, perhaps a little sad, but essentially benign. I've started to see it as a hostile force occupying the house-a force against which I've been doing battle for weeks."

"Battle?" Rob echoed.

"And while I've evicted the Army of Clutter from the house, and even banished some of it entirely to the dump or the local antique stores, most of its forces are now encamped on our lawn," I went on, waving my hand at the yard sale area. "In fact, they've gotten reinforcements from other households and are even now plotting revenge. Planning sieges and ambushes, and beaming hostility at us so strongly that I'm surprised you can't see a visible, tangible haze floating up and drifting malignantly toward the house."

"Wow," Rob said. "I want some of what you're on."

So much for explaining how I felt to my family.

At eight-thirty my mother showed up, dressed as a flapper, with a candy cigarette in a foot-long antique holder. She looked impossibly elegant, and I fought off one of my occasional moments of resentment that I'd inherited her height, but not her blonde hair or slender model's build.

She also looked calm and rested, and I wondered if it had been a good idea, camping out here in the house so she and Dad could stay at the Cave. Then I reminded myself that it had been my suggestion. The cramped, cluttered Cave had been giving me claustrophobia for weeks.

"h.e.l.lo, dear," she said, pecking me on the cheek. "Sorry I'm so late. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Actually, there is," I said.

Mother looked startled. No doubt she'd been making one of those obligatory social offers that one is supposed to decline with polite a.s.surances that everything is under control. After more than thirty-five years, she should know I have no social graces.

"We're not opening the sale until nine," I said. "People have been ringing the doorbell since before six, badgering us to let them in early. Can you do something about them?"

"Of course, dear," Mother purred. She drew herself up, adding a full inch to her height, and headed toward the front door with her sternest face on. I wasn't sure if it was the chance to play Miss Manners and boss people around or the fact that the would-be early birds were trying to get into the sale ahead of her, but she threw herself into her a.s.signed task with enthusiasm. Ten minutes later, when I had a moment to glance out one of the side windows, I saw that she'd chivvied the arriving crowds into a neat line leading up to the gate of the yard sale area, and was lecturing Gordon-you-thief on the rudeness of cutting in line.

Hundreds of people, and at least half of them in costume. Although many of the costumes consisted solely of masks bought from Rob, who'd set up a table by the driveway, right beneath one of the posters announcing the costume discount. He didn't have a lot of variety-in fact, apart from Groucho, he only had Richard Nixon and Dracula. I suspected he'd bought the masks in bulk and was selling them at a steep markup. At least he wasn't charging immediate family, but still, I wasn't sure I liked the new entrepreneur Rob who'd emerged since his computer-game company had become successful. I'd actually begun to miss the old f.e.c.kless Rob who couldn't be bothered with boring practical details like money.

Someone should talk to Rob, I thought, with a sigh. Preferably someone other than me. I'd recently overheard two aunts praising my willingness to tackle the unpleasant, thankless jobs that no one else would, and realized that no matter how happy it made my aunts, this wasn't entirely a positive character trait. Neither was being considered the most efficient and organized person in the family. And when you combined the two, you got things like this giant yard sale. Maybe when the yard sale was over, I would work on expanding my vocabulary to include the word "no."

I'd worry about that later. After the yard sale. For the moment, I made a mental note to keep an especially sharp eye on the several women in hoop skirts that seemed like a shoplifter's dream.

At nine sharp, Rob, Dad, and Michael ceremonially led the dogs away and we opened the gates.

Gordon-you-thief was among the first half dozen to enter-even Mother couldn't work miracles.

I stood inside the gate, trying to make sure no one got knocked down and trampled, and nodding greetings to anyone I recognized-which included most of the local antique and junk dealers. But unfamiliar faces outnumbered the familiar ones. I wondered how many were ordinary customers, lured from all over the adjacent dozen counties by our 30-FAMILY YARD SALE ads, and how many were antiques dealers and pickers.

No matter. Amateurs or professionals, they could come from Timbuktu if they liked, as long as they all left with their arms full of stuff. And they all seemed intent on doing so. By the end of the first hour I could see major traffic congestion up and down the aisles, as the people in bulky costumes encountered the even larger numbers of people dragging boxes or baskets of stuff along with them.

At the far end of the fenced-in area we'd placed a dozen ramshackle card tables and several of Mother's relatives had set up a concession stand. Cousin Bernie and Cousin Horace-the latter in the well-worn gorilla suit that his new girlfriend didn't often let him wear to parties these days-were already lighting fires in half a dozen grills and checking their supplies of hamburger patties and hot dogs, while Aunt Millicent and Cousin Emily set out plates of sandwiches and cookies and bowls of fruit and salad. We didn't want anything as mundane as hunger to make people check out early. Cadres of Grouchos and Draculas were already lining up for chow. We'd even arranged to rent two portable toilets, which were tucked discreetly behind the shrubbery in another corner of the yard sale area.

So far, not a lot of people were checking out at all. That's where things would get sticky. Most of the sellers had organized an elaborate, color-coded system of price stickers so customers could go through a single checkout at the exit. We'd be weeks coming up with an accurate tally of everyone's sales, and even then half the sellers would still think they'd been shorted. The sellers who collected money themselves were supposed to issue receipts that their customers could show at checkout, but I already knew they'd forget, and I'd spend way too much time straightening out the resulting problems. And the ballerina and the white rabbit who were currently serving as cashiers were proving unfortunate choices. Harvey seemed terrified of the cash register, and Pavlova of the customers. It was going to be a long day.

"What's wrong?" Michael asked, when he returned from his dog delivery mission.

"Oh, dear," I said. "Do I look as if something is wrong? I thought I had on my welcoming hostess face."

"I'm harder to fool than most of these people," he said. "I know you too well."

"I'm just wondering who in the world will buy all this stuff?"

"Are you worrying about the quality of the stuff, or just the sheer quant.i.ty?"

"Both," I said. "Take that, for example."

I pointed at a lamp shade on a nearby table.

"Ick," he said.

"Ick" summed it up pretty well. The lamp shade was huge-three feet tall, and equally wide at the base, though the sides curved in as they went upward and then flared out again, making it look like an inverted Art Nouveau birdbath. Its dominant colors were orange and purple, though at least a dozen other hues appeared here and there in the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. And as for the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, I had nothing against lace, fringe, braid, bows, beads, ta.s.sels, appliques, rosettes, silk flowers, rhinestones, prisms, or embroidery, but I thought inflicting all of them on one defenseless shade was unforgivable.

"I can see why someone would want to get rid of it," I said.

"I'd have dumped it ages ago," Michael said, after glancing behind him to make sure the seller was truly out of earshot.

"Who in the world was so devoid of taste that they'd make such a thing?" I exclaimed. "And more to the point, who will ever buy it?"

Michael shrugged.

"Beats me," he said. "But odds are someone will buy it, and if not, we've got the truck from the charity coming Monday morning, and then the Dumpster from the trash company in the afternoon. One way or another, it'll all be gone by Monday night."

"And good riddance," I said. "Meanwhile, why is Mrs. Fenniman shaking her fist at Cousin Dolores?"

"d.a.m.n," he said. "I thought I'd calmed them down. Apparently Dolores is selling a spectacularly ugly vase Mrs. Fenniman gave her as a wedding present. Mrs. Fenniman is peeved."

"Dolores dumped the groom a good five years ago," I said. "If you ask me, she's allowed to unload the baggage that came with him. Should I go and explain that to Mrs. Fenniman?"

"Strangely enough, that's almost exactly what your mother said just now when I asked her to mediate," Michael said. "Ah, there she is."

As usual in our family, Mother's arrival shut down hostilities instantly, as both combatants scrambled to avoid her wrath.

"Thank G.o.d for Mother sometimes," I said. "Though whenever I find myself saying that, I always wonder if I should take my own temperature. And what is Everett doing with his boom lift, anyway?"

I pointed up, where one of the portable toilets had been lifted forty feet in the air on the platform of the boom lift. Everett, one of Mother's more enterprising cousins, had brought the boom lift over two weeks ago to help with our roof repairs. It was a multiperson model, with a six-foot wide metal platform on the end of a forty-foot extension arm. The arm so dwarfed the tractor base below that I kept expecting the whole contraption to topple over. So far even Mother's family hadn't achieved that in any of the boom lift's previous outings, though several had broken limbs by slipping through the railings and falling off the platform. At least whoever had put the portable toilet on the platform seemed to have loaded it securely.

"I heard him threatening to play a joke on your Uncle Floyd," Michael said.

Just then, the portable toilet's door slammed open and a portly man, still fumbling with his fly, stepped out, looked down, and abandoned his pants to clutch the rail of the boom lift.

"I think Everett picked up the wrong toilet," I said. "That's not Uncle Floyd."

"No, it's Dr. Gruber," Michael said. "Chairman of the Music Department. I'd better go rescue him."

Michael took off running. Uncle Floyd emerged from the other toilet and joined the crowd gawking up at the airborne professor.

"Good heavens," exclaimed a voice behind me, in an English accent.

"Morning, Giles," I said, turning to greet him. Giles Rathbone was one of Michael's closest friends on the Caerphilly College faculty, not to mention a member of his tenure committee.

And he wasn't wearing a costume. I liked Giles.

"I had no idea yard sales were so ... lively," he said, staring up at the boom lift with visible alarm.

"This isn't your typical yard sale," I said.

"Or that so many people would be out this early," he added, looking around as if the crowd unnerved him as much as Dr. Gruber's plight.

I had to smile. Giles's tall form, loosely draped, as always, in tweed and corduroy, was hunched protectively and his eyes behind the thick gla.s.ses blinked and watered as if unused to this much brightness. Seeing Giles out-of-doors always reminded me of the scene at the beginning of The Wind in the Willows where Mole emerges into the sunlight.

"A bit overwhelming," I said, and Giles nodded in agreement. He looked half ready to bolt back to his car. I suppressed a sigh of exasperation. How had Michael ever befriended such a recluse? I'd spent the first six months I'd known Giles convincing him that it was okay to call me Meg rather than Miss Langslow. Though come to think of it, perhaps I'd only gotten him to drop the Miss. I couldn't remember if he'd ever actually called me Meg.

Friends had warned me that it could be hard work, getting your significant other's male friends to accept you, but I hadn't expected the process to be quite so much like coaxing a small nocturnal animal out of its hole.

Though that reminded me: I had bait today. I fished around in my pocket until I found a small slip of paper I'd stuck there.

"Here," I said, handing it to Giles. "I jotted down a map of which tables are selling books."

"Ah, thanks," he said. "I'm sure I'll find that helpful." I hoped so. Sooner or later, I was sure, I could break through Giles's reserve and turn polite acceptance into real friendship.

"It's only fair," I said. "You were an enormous help dealing with Edwina's library. Without you, we'd have put a lot of valuable books out for the yard sale."

Giles nodded absently and turned his attention to the map. Well, so much for bonding with Giles today.

I heard a small commotion to my right, and turned to see Gordon-you-thief, attempting to drag two oversized boxes through the crowd.

"Hey, Guiles," Gordon called. It took me a second to realize that he was talking to Giles, and misp.r.o.nouncing his name, with a hard "G" rather than a soft one.

"I think he's calling you," I said to Giles, in an undertone.

"Maybe if I ignore him he'll go away," Giles said, through clenched teeth.

"No such luck," I said. "He's headed this way."

"Hey, Guiles," Gordon repeated, coming up to stand in front of Giles with his back toward me. "Glad I ran into you."

"h.e.l.lo, Gordon," Giles said, edging back slightly.

"You're still collecting R. Austin Freeman, right?" Gordon said, taking a half step to close up the distance between them.

"What's that?" I asked.

"R. Austin Freeman's an early-twentieth-century mystery author," Giles said turning to me and, not accidentally, edging farther away from Gordon. "His protagonist was both a lawyer and a doctor-sort of a late-Victorian Quincy. I've been collecting his books for years. My collection's nearly complete, though," he said, turning back to Gordon and stepping away slightly when he realized that Gordon had again closed the gap to what was, for Giles, uncomfortably close quarters.

I couldn't decide whether to laugh or feel sorry for Giles. I'd done this dance with Gordon myself, backing away half a step at a time as he kept inching closer than I found comfortable. At first, I'd a.s.sumed that we just had very different senses of personal s.p.a.ce, but eventually I'd realized that Gordon did it deliberately, to keep people off balance in a negotiation.

Or perhaps just to annoy them. At any rate, once I knew what he was doing, I'd figured out how to stop him. Whenever he tried to crowd me, I'd step even closer and peer down my nose at him. At 5' 10", I was a good five or six inches taller than Gordon, and he didn't like having to crane his neck to see me.

I was tempted to try it on him now, and rescue Giles, but Gordon was already turning away.

"Still, you might want to take a look at what I found on the dollar table over there," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I bet you'll want it when you see it in the shop."

He sauntered off, still smirking.

Giles sighed.

"The maddening thing is, I probably will want whatever he's found," he said. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d has a d.a.m.ned good idea what's in my collection."

"He sold you most of it?" I guessed.

"No, only a few, and those some years ago. As soon as he finds out you're collecting something, the prices start creeping up. More than creeping, really. Skyrocketing. I usually do better elsewhere. But he stops by my office from time to time. That's where I keep my detective fiction collection, you see. And the science fiction and fantasy stuff. To annoy the old fuddy-duddies who look down their noses at genre fiction."

I fought to hide my smile. To look at him, you'd take Giles for a fuddy-duddy himself. I had a hard time imagining that beneath his stodgy tweed beat the heart of a rebel. A pedantic rebel, perhaps, and one who preferred to keep his rebellion subtle enough to avoid offending the administration.

"So while Gordon's in your office, he sneaks a peek at your shelves."

Giles snorted.

"Sneaks a peek! I came back from a cla.s.s one day and found him taking a detailed inventory. Not only which books, but in what condition. So he could be on the lookout for better copies that might tempt me to trade up."

"At sky-high prices," I said. This was a longer and more natural conversation than I could ever remember having with Giles. Perhaps I should bone up on this Freeman person. Or was our shared dislike for Gordon the stronger bond?

Giles nodded.

"The only Freemans I'm missing are a few relatively rare ones. I suspect he's found one of those or perhaps what he thinks is a better copy of one I already have."

"So he'll probably be extracting more money from you soon," I said.

"Not necessarily," Giles said. "Last fall, I made a resolution not to deal with Gordon anymore. I decided it spoils my enjoyment of the books, just knowing they've pa.s.sed through his hands. Haven't been in his shop for over a year now."

"Maybe he hasn't found anything after all, then," I said. "Maybe he's just trying to lure you back into his den of literary temptation."

"Let's hope I have the strength of will to resist, then," Giles said.

"Get thee behind me, Gordon!" I said.

Giles chuckled at my joke, though as usual I couldn't tell if he found it funny or just wanted to be polite. I wondered, suddenly, if I wasn't the only one making an effort to become friends. Perhaps, in spite of thinking me entirely too boisterous and independent, Giles was, in his own stuffy way, making heroic efforts to get to know me. Or perhaps I was just overreacting to his normal British reticence. No way to tell.

"Well, I suppose there's a chance Gordon has overlooked a few books worth owning," he said. "Be seeing you."

I was surprised to see him stop briefly at the table where Dad, still in his great horned owl disguise, was selling off Edwina Sprocket's collection of owl tchotchkes to benefit SPOOR. I hadn't pegged Giles for a birdwatcher or a collector of ceramic owls. But I had to smile when I saw him pick up a pair of owl-shaped bronze bookends and tuck them in the crook of one arm before heading off toward the books.

Just then, a squabble broke out between Scarlett O'Hara and a middle-aged Gypsy, who'd each grabbed one of a pair of bra.s.s andirons, and my day really began going downhill.