Going Once, Going Twice

The esteemed Hollywood filmmaker Allen Apollo Jakobsen died from a heart attack on a blue April morning. He was hardly fifty-nine. The obituary printed in The Atlantic highlighted his record for the highest harvest of Oscars and Golden Globes any director had ever made. The Huffington Post editorialized how Jakobsen had changed the face of cinema more than any other individual in the modern century. Vogue regaled the legend of a troubled Jewish kid who ran away from home to chase the stars. The New York Times’ obituary was not really an obituary at all, but a lukewarm applause, followed by the much more lucrative headline: Hollywood Legend’s Death Surfaces Over $15 Million in Gambling Debts.

None of the obituaries mentioned Moira.

None of the obituaries mentioned that beyond the box office records, Allen had also made thirty-two years of a faithful marriage, a feat that was all but unheard of among his ranks of shimmering, misunderstood Hollywood elites.

None of the obituaries mentioned her insecurities, as to whether their marriage had really been faithful after all, as she sat in the back row of the Los Angeles Bonhams Auction Hall.

Maybe Allen was also just shimmering and misunderstood, she thought. Maybe I never knew him. Maybe nobody did.

The auctioneer finished reading the one in the Atlantic, and set it down on the pulpit. “We offer our condolences to Allen’s friends, family and associates,” he added.

Their condolences were not condoling.

“Without further ado, we will proceed to Lot Number One. Jakobsen’s first Academy Award, the Oscar for Best Screenplay awarded in 1983 for Pictures of A Trampled Rose. We will start the bidding at ten thousand.”

Tickers cropped up from the rows of heads in front of her. Eleven thousand. Twelve, thirteen. They climbed to seventeen. “Can I get eighteen?” He could. He could get nineteen. “Twenty-one thousand?”

The air was blank.

“How about twenty?”

A blonde woman sitting just in front of Moira floated her ticker.

“Thank you. Twenty thousand and five hundred?”

Nothing.

The woman seemed young to be bidding at an auction like this. She couldn’t be older than thirty—although among this crowd you could really never tell. Moira couldn’t see her face, but she was all platinum curls and a perfect tan and a blue evening gown ruched gracefully around paved curves. She was the kind of woman that had always made Moira nervous.

Even now. Even now, when Allen was gone, her stomach twisted just looking at her.

“Twenty thousand dollars for the 1983 Oscar going once,” the auctioneer sounded.

Moira really did not want her to be the one to take the Oscar.

“Going twice.”

But no one else spoke for it.

“Sold, for twenty thousand to the lady in blue. Thank you Madam.” There was a dribble of golf claps through the audience.

Moira felt the blood flush to her face. Twenty thousand. Oscars commonly sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions. All the appraisers told her that Allen’s surely would.

Maybe the gambling debts have dampened his legacy that much, Moira thought. The world was not going to forget his movies, but they were not going to forget this either.

Or maybe they were holding out for the real prize. Moira’s eyes crawled the auction tables at the head of the room, filled with his fleets of Oscars and Golden Globes and odd possessions that might prove collectible to the right someone. On a corner of white tablecloth, rested a little black book.

“Jakobsen’s Black Book” was an urban legend. The book first appeared on the media’s radar when Allen wouldn’t tell a copywriter what was in it, and the copywriter told People about the conversation. Fans caught onto how much the book was in photos with him—his hand, his back pocket, bulging from inside his suit coat. Allen evaded all questions about it. It turned into a rabbit trail of conspiracy theories on Reddit, and a running gag on the Stephen Colbert show. Allen was a regular, and every interview began with Stephen asking, “So what’s in the book?”—“Not telling”—and then they’d hop right into whatever topic, while the audience roared. Rumor said it was the Illuminati manifesto, or more commonly, a movie idea in embryo. The book was always with the man, and no one knew what was in it nor could get him to tell them.

Not even Moira. She had only touched the thing a handful of times. It was a regular Moleskine diary—a smooth black leather cover, barely taller than her hand. It had appeared while they were first dating, over three decades ago. She hadn’t noticed it until he didn’t want her to. They were taking a stroll at sunset, when he dropped it on the edge of a boardwalk. Moira stooped to pick it up before it slipped into the water, and Allen ripped it from her hands, like her fingers might singe the cover. He wouldn’t tell her why. A few months later, Allen would come out to her about his clinical obsessive compulsive disorder; it was the one thing Moira was sure she knew that the rest of the world didn’t. He had scores of anxious idiosyncrasies. Accept the way he sees the world, and love him—that became her mantra for their marriage. But all of his other compulsions he explained to her—“I can’t touch the kitchen sponge because it is filled with microbial invisibilia, and invisible consciousness makes me feel unsafe,”—the like. She never understood them, but he always wanted her to, and she loved him for that.

The book he could not talk about though. Could not or would not. If she was in a room with it without him, he would come check that it was safe when he thought she wasn’t looking, and then turn down the stove or grab a hoodie even though it was eighty degrees. They didn’t talk about it. They weren’t a couple who talked about things. Allen didn’t know how to be vulnerable, and they expressed their relationship in actions, not words.

Their whole marriage, they had only had one real argument. Moira had moved the book while picking up the house. Allen came home and panicked when he couldn’t find it. He accused her of hiding it so that she could read it later. For the first time, Moira demanded an explanation. Crying, he screamed at her, “There are just things that are important to me and I have to know they’re safe. I don’t know how to tell you about them.”

That was a decade ago. Moira heard the exact shape of the words in her head as golf claps dribbled around her. After decades, he still didn’t love her enough. There were still pieces of him he didn’t give her, and now he never would.

The book had been out of her mind when she came across it in his nightstand after his death. He wasn’t there to stop her from opening it.

She didn’t though. She placed it with the Oscars and Globes for the auction hall to pick up. Moira had suggested doing an auction to her lawyer as a way to cover the debts. But she didn’t actually need the money. Allen had left her a net worth of over $600 million. She could sell the villas in Bordeaux and Barcelona and be fine.

Moira watched the blonde compete for the final Globe. Why did she want it so badly? Had she known him?

Moira, that is irrational, she told herself. You have no evidence of that. She didn’t. She truly did not.

She had already been afraid he was hiding something before the debts came to light; it didn’t help that they did. She watched the woman adjust her curls over shoulder as she sat back down. It was a sleeveless dress, and it was a very nice shoulder. Tears tugged on the edge of her throat as she won the last Globe. It looks tacky, she thought. All of them have always looked tacky. If she couldn’t have the confidence that Allen loved her, she didn’t want anything of his at all.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the auctioneer, “with great anticipation we have arrived at the final lot: Jakobsen’s Black Book.” Dregs of chatter suddenly vanished. “We will start the bidding at fifty thousand.”

Higher than any of the Oscars sold for.

Nearly every ticker popped up within fractures of a second. The auctioneer signaled the one that was probably first. “Fifty thousand, thank you, may I get fifty-five?” Most of them stayed up. In near silence, the room exploded. Moira watched the blonde’s back perk as her ticker competed for air. The blonde really wanted it. Sixty thousand, sixty-five, seventy, the auctioneer was just calling out figures now. Moira’s chest thudded. The bidders began to taper off around five hundred thousand. At one million, only ten tickers remained. Moira hated the feeling of her heart. Two million, three. She hated the way it went on beating as if it were alive. Six million, six-point-five; the blonde’s ticker was still in the air. Suddenly Moira didn’t know what she wanted.

“Ten million?” The air went blank suddenly. Then the blonde raised her ticker.

Moira was suddenly sure that she was it.

“Ten million going once.”

Maybe Allen had never loved her.

“Ten million going twice.”

Maybe he had loved the blonde woman.

“Sold, for ten million to the lady in blue. Thank you Madam.”

It was gone. The book was gone. Did that mean she could breathe now?

The auction concluded. The crowd shuffled from their seats to the door. Moira thought the woman was on her way to the door, when she twisted upstream the crowd to the auctioneer’s pulpit. She said a word to him. He nodded, and handed her the book.

Moira stood from her chair to watch her face. She watched her hands as they opened the cover.

She watched her face fall. The blonde stood there a moment, reading. Moira couldn’t decide whether her expression was sadness or anger.

The blonde looked up, scanning the crowd. Her eyes locked with Moira’s. The stare felt like a stab in her chest. She made her way back through the crowd. Moira’s heartbeat was on stilts.

“Are you Moira Jakobsen?” she asked. Her voice was warmer than Moira had pictured it.

“I am... Can I help you?”

“I think—” Her eyes cast to the book wrapped in her hands. “I think this belongs to you.”

“What do you mean? You just bought it.”

“I know—I’m here on behalf of a studio. I was banking on it being a story. You probably think we’re stupid, just believing what everyone else did. When you knew all along. Honestly… I can’t believe you sold this. Anyway, you can have it. We don’t want it.” She extended it to Moira.

“But, the money—”

“Oh, you can keep it of course. It’s not your fault we guessed wrong.” Moira took the little black book, and the blonde was gone.

The cover felt hallowed in her hands. With trepidation, she opened it.

The first page said her name.

Moira ran her thumb through the pages. They were all his beautiful Edwardian script in smudged ink. Each page was a small block of it. Poems, she realized. She stopped at one near the front.

July 11th, 1990

The boardwalk was worn soft

From the swing of the sea

I was worn soft by your gaze

and weak by not knowing

If you loved me.

You saved me from an edge.

I ripped myself from your hands,

because I can’t tell you what it feels like

To brush your skin

As I did.

The sun was slipping.

It was going once,

It was going twice,

I am still young and you fill me with fire and ice

not knowing how to say

I love you.

-A.