Craphound Part 4

c.r.a.phound waved his bidding card, and I jumped as if I'd been stung.

"I got twenty from the s.p.a.ce cowboy, I got twenty, sir will you say thirty?"

I waved my card.

"That's thirty to you sir."

"Forty," c.r.a.phound said.

"Fifty," I said even before the auctioneer could point back to me. An old pro, he settled back and let us do the work.

"One hundred," c.r.a.phound said.

"One fifty," I said.

The room was perfectly silent. I thought about my overextended MasterCard, and wondered if Scott/Billy would give me a loan.

"Two hundred," c.r.a.phound said.

Fine, I thought. Pay two hundred for those. I can get a set on Queen Street for thirty bucks.

The auctioneer turned to me. "The bidding stands at two. Will you say two-ten, sir?"

I shook my head. The auctioneer paused a long moment, letting me sweat over the decision to bow out.

"I have two -- do I have any other bids from the floor? Any other bids? Sold, $200, to number 57." An attendant brought c.r.a.phound the gla.s.ses. He took them and tucked them under his seat.

I was fuming when we left. c.r.a.phound was at my elbow. I wanted to punch him -- I'd never punched anyone in my life, but I wanted to punch him.

We entered the cool night air and I sucked in several lungfuls before lighting a cigarette.

"Jerry," c.r.a.phound said.

I stopped, but didn't look at him. I watched the taxis pull in and out of the garage next door instead.

"Jerry, my friend," c.r.a.phound said.

"_What_?" I said, loud enough to startle myself. Scott, beside me, jerked as well.

"We're going. I wanted to say goodbye, and to give you some things that I won't be taking with me."

"What?" I said again, Scott just a beat behind me.

"My people -- we're going. It has been decided. We've gotten what we came for."

Without another word, he set off towards his van. We followed along behind, sh.e.l.l-shocked.

c.r.a.phound's exoskeleton executed another macro and slid the panel-door aside, revealing the cowboy trunk.

"I wanted to give you this. I will keep the gla.s.ses."

"I don't understand," I said.

"You're all leaving?" Scott asked, with a note of urgency.

"It has been decided. We'll go over the next twenty-four hours."

"But _why_?" Scott said, sounding almost petulant.

"It's not something that I can easily explain. As you must know, the things we gave you were trinkets to us -- almost worthless. We traded them for something that was almost worthless to you -- a fair trade, you'll agree -- but it's time to move on."

c.r.a.phound handed me the cowboy trunk. Holding it, I smelled the lubricant from his exoskeleton and the smell of the attic it had been mummified in before making its way into his hands. I felt like I almost understood.

"This is for me," I said slowly, and c.r.a.phound nodded encouragingly. "This is for me, and you're keeping the gla.s.ses. And I'll look at this and feel. . ."

"You understand," c.r.a.phound said, looking somehow relieved.

And I _did_. I understood that an alien wearing a cowboy hat and sixguns and giving them away was a poem and a story, and a thirtyish bachelor trying to spend half a month's rent on four gla.s.ses so that he could remember his Grandma's kitchen was a story and a poem, and that the disused fairground outside Calgary was a story and a poem, too.

"You're c.r.a.phounds!" I said. "All of you!"

c.r.a.phound smiled so I could see his gums and I put down the cowboy trunk and clapped my hands.

Scott recovered from his shock by spending the night at his office, crunching numbers talking on the phone, and generally getting while the getting was good.

He had an edge -- no one else knew that they were going.

He went pro later that week, opened a chi-chi boutique on Queen Street, and hired me on as chief picker and factum factotum.

Scott was not Billy the Kid. Just another Bay Street shyster with a cowboy jones. From the way they come down and spend, there must be a million of them.

Our draw in the window is a beautiful mannequin I found, straight out of the Fifties, a little boy we call The Beaver. He dresses in chaps and a Sheriff's badge and sixguns and a miniature Stetson and cowboy boots with worn spurs, and rests one foot on a beautiful miniature steamer trunk whose leather is worked with cowboy motifs.

He's not for sale at any price.