The Eighth Commandment Read Free

Madam Dodat took offense.”
    “Oh-ho,” I said. “Like that, was it?”
    “Just like that.”
    “Well, Felicia has nothing to fear from me.”
    “She would,” he said, “if god had any sense.”
    “That’s the nicest compliment I’ve had in years,” I told him, and we smiled at each other, knowing we’d be friends.
    Grandby & Sons dated from 1883—and so did most of the furnishings. We may have been installed in an elegant townhouse on Madison Avenue, just south of 82nd Street, but the place looked like a recently opened time capsule: velvet drapes, Tiffany lamps, Victorian love seats covered with moiré, and ornate clocks, chinoiserie, and mind-boggling objets d’art that had been purchased outright as part of estates and had never been sold.
    Another office joke was that everything in Grandby’s was for sale except the loo. Not true, of course. But I admit the surroundings were somewhat discombobulating. All that old stuff. It was like working in a very small Antwerp museum.
    But I loved Grandby & Sons, and my career went swimmingly. I learned a lot about my new profession, didn’t make any horrible mistakes, and was able to contribute my share to the bottom line by bringing to auction a number of coin collections from old customers of Enoch Wottle.
    Although nowhere near as large and splendid as Sotheby’s or Christie’s, Grandby’s really was a pleasant place to labor, especially for Hobart Juliana and me in our locked office. We were very small specialists, since most of Grandby’s sales were paintings, sculpture, drawings, silver, prints, jewelry, antique weapons and armor—things of that sort. Coins and stamps came pretty far down on the list; there was no great pressure on us to show big profits.
    So we were pretty much left with our tongs, loupes, magnifying glasses, and high-intensity lamps. A casual observer, admitted to our sanctum, would have thought us a couple of loonies: Hobie studying a scrap of gummed paper, and me examining a tiny chunk of bruised metal. Both of us exchanging muttered comments:
    “Look at that watermark!”
    “It’s been clipped; what a shame.”
    “Unperforated; that’s a blessing.”
    “Roman copy.”
    “They will use hinges.”
    “Silver hemidrachm of the Achaean League. Very nice.”
    Occasionally we would get so excited with a “find” that Hobie would summon me over to his worktable to take a look at an expertly forged signature of Herman Melville, or I’d call him to my side to admire the exquisite minting of a tetradrachm that dated from 420 B.C. and showed an eagle with wings spread, and a crab on the reverse.
    I suppose we were a pair of very young antiquarians. All I know is that we shared an enthusiasm for the past, and liked each other. That helped to make our work pleasurable. Sometimes we went out to dinner together—but not often. Hobie’s live-in lover was insanely jealous and suspected him of harboring heterosexual tendencies. He didn’t.
    Hobie was a slight, fair-haired lad with a wispy manner and a droll sense of humor. He dressed beautifully, and gave me some very good advice on clothes I might wear to minimize my beanstalkiness. I reckoned he and I got along so well together because the world considered us both bizarre creatures. For different reasons, of course. We had a kinship of discrimination—but our friendship was real.
    I had been at Grandby & Sons for a little more than two years when one morning—late April, rainy and gusty: a portent!—I was summoned by Felicia Dodat. She was wearing a particularly oppressive perfume, flowery and sweet, and her office smelled like a greenhouse.
    Following Hobie’s advice, I had kept my relationship with dear Felicia on a cool, professional basis. We were warily cordial with each other, and if she was occasionally snappish, I laid that to the pressures of her job. She never joked about my formidable height, but she had a way of looking at me—her eyes starting at my feet, then slowly