Every other garage-saler on this street is selling faded felt Christmas ornaments. Dated costume jewelry. Mismatched silverware, ugly promotional mugs, dusty golf clubs, and novels by Pearl S. Buck.

I've got the good stuff. Or so the customers tell me. They pull up to the curb in their battered Buicks and dented Dodges and swarm the folding tables I've set up in the driveway. They rifle through the milk crates and cardboard boxes and kneel down on the blankets I've laid on the grass to display non-breakable stuff. 

"I can't believe you're selling this," they say. Or, "It looks like you never even took this out of the box."

Everyone tries to bargain, hard, even though I've priced everything so rock-bottom low that within two hours I hope to close up shop. Still, I spot a woman, my age, furtively slipping a set of wine-glass charms into her purse. 

Shoplifting at a garage sale.  It doesn't get any more pathetic than that—unless you're the one watching your wedding presents get carted away after you said I do but he didn't. 

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Rita Ciresi's most recent book is SECOND WIFE, a collection of stories. She teaches at the University of South Florida, in Tampa.

This pair is a Finalist for the 2019 Mythic Picnic Prize in Fiction.

Detail of art on main page courtesy of Godino.

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