I started going to estate sales with my girlfriend last summer. She's an artist who uses a lot of found items like old books, fruit cans and photographs to construct these amazing creations. She was getting popular, and had to buy as much stuff as she could for as little money as possible, and the cheapest prices for all the best stuff was at Estate Sales. I started tagging along, only because I wanted to be with her as much as possible, and as she was a busy artist I had to grab what time I could. After a while, I would help her look for particular things she needed. It got to be a lot of fun, but in a spooky, taboo way. You see, estates sales usually occur in the houses of folks who have passed away. The idea is the surviving family takes whatever they want, and everything else in the house, and I mean EVERYTHING, gets sold to who ever shows up on the day of the sale. The result is, you don't just get to see another person's house, you get to go through their drawers and closets. It was the little private things from a person's life that Maddie used for her art, and we got real good at finding them, often in places neither the families or the Estate sales folk had thought to look. And there were a bunch of times when we found a lot more than we had Bargain Hunted for.
Maddie had conned her way in early to this one sale in the wealthy part of town. We arrived Thursday at 7 AM and we were let into a huge three story faux-Tudor style house with a huge front lawn, a pool, a pool house and a garden shed. Benny, the fat guy who ran The estate sale company let Maddie and me in through the front door with a wink, making me wonder what she did to get us in. Maddie was an open minded woman, but only with certain people. She had a great body, with a little bit of a stomach, glasses and a little pug nose that really turned me on. She was short, and knew how to tell a good joke, which turned me on even more. Like I said, she wasn't promiscuous, but she could be a total freak in the sack with the right guy.
To my surprise, she went right through the house and into the back yard and made a beeline toward the tool shed. On the way she told me she needed nuts, bolts, and nails-preferably old and rusty. Artistically weathered items were pricey, and they always looked great in her artworks. The shed was small, about twenty feet by fifteen feet, and had not been kept up, which only made it more beautiful to Maddie. It had been a carriage house, like a garage for horses and buggies. The paint had been peeled away by the elements, and the glass, what little was left had that wavy look to it which was only present in glass made a long time ago. Maddie pushed the creaky door open and I followed her in, closing it behind me.
As my eyes adjusted to the shadowy light inside the shed, I saw Maddie standing stock still. She was looking around the place, and as my eyes joined her I saw we were standing in the middle of treasure trove of antique hardware. The guy who had lived here had been a 1950's style do-it-your-selfer, and his shed was stocked to the gills with anything you might need to fix anything.
"This . . is. . .perfect." Maddie breathed out dramatically, obviously in a bargain hunter's ecstasy. God, she was so cute! She was wearing this one piece dark blue rayon one piece dress from the early seventies that she got at a thrift store, the kind of dress you might see Marsha wearing on the The Brady Bunch. It showed off her ass, which jiggled on every word of the last sentence she said. Then she pivoted on her foot and faced me. The front of her dress had a zipper going all the down in a real cool retro style. Her eyes were boring into me when she said, "It's a little warm in here.", and then she pulled the zipper down slowly about two inches, which revealed some of her fantastic cleavage. I ogled for a second and then she spun around and began to go through the drawers and boxes.
I followed her lead and got to searching, but I stopped early in my gleanings when I found a notebook shoved between some old instruction manuals for machines that no longer exist. It was an old blank accounts ledger, with the year 1954 written on the front. But inside it's canvas and leather cover, instead of lists of debits and credits, was a diary. Well, it was a man's diary, so I guess that makes it a journal. I started reading it while Maddie filled a box with stuff she was going to get. It was, to my astonishment, a sex journal! The guy who lived here apparently was screwing every woman on the block, and he had kept a record of it in the very book I was reading. It was some hot stuff! His writing style wasn't great, but reading about fucking that you know actually happened was hot as hell.
"What'd ya find? I got lots of good stuff." Maddie said brightly.
"Read this." I said handing her the ledger.
"Ooh! Is it a secret diary?" she said, laughing about how we always fantasized about finding such a thing.
"Yes." Her eyes got wide. She took it right away and began to read it.
"Oh my God." she said. I went to the shed door and locked it from the inside. I watched her as she started to read it. She gasped once, and then again. I hoped Maddie would get as into the sordid details as much as I had, and I could see she had. I moved to stand behind her, and put my hands on her hips.
