I was asked to value the ball. I said twenty dollars, for the ball and for what's on the insides, check the papers. People wrote that down like it was the end of it. It was the beginning. Here's the rest.

Lot. One ball of oil, used to be on the beach, not on it now. Nomina Li went and looked. Nowhere. I believe her, she's thorough. She's no bluffer. I'm the bluffer. So I'm appraising something I haven't seen. That happens. The great ones, most of the time you never get in the room with them. You look at the papers.

Provenance. This is what the ball was there for, the way it tells it. I believe it too. It didn't do any of it.

Gasoline at ninety-three cents. It was standing there. Nobody asked it anything. That's good provenance. You don't make up a thing like that.

Almacs, at the end. It got driven there — in a car, it says, by somebody — in the fall of 1995 when they were selling off the stores, and it saw the frozen dinners go for a dime apiece. It remembers the Swanson. The tray with the little walls. The square for the dessert. This is the best thing in the file. The chain is gone, you can check. The sale happened, you can check. And the ball can tell you about the tray, and you can't tell anybody about that tray unless you were looking at it.

The movie theater, walking in late, you don't know where your friends are sitting, so you go row by row with your head up. It says this with a noise at the end that I'm not going to do. That one's worth less. Everybody has that one.

The price of a chicken dinner with all the fixings. It was there. It didn't pay.

It also says prices are everywhere, they're just those tickers you see, they tell you what things cost. Well, yes. I didn't put a number on that one.

That's the file. Comes to twenty dollars.

Condition. I can't tell you. How do you appraise a thing like this? You gaze at it. That's it, that's the method. Here there's nothing to gaze at. So I gazed at the papers, and I gazed at the spot on the beach where it isn't. Nice spot. The fine schmecklers will look for juicy. First thing they ask me: is the surface juicy? I have to tell them I don't know.

Valuation. Twenty dollars. People ask me how I get there. You got a ball. Put some oil on it, put some insides in it, and presto. Twenty dollars. The insides is where the money is, check the papers. The ball itself I can't show you, it's not here, so I'm not charging you for it. That's a bargain.

Note. Ball Street hasn't noticed. Borg Oil is worried the mothership hasn't called in a long time. The Peach sent the ball to clean the beach, and the beach is clean, or anyway the ball isn't on it, so I count that as done.

What else can I tell you. Twenty dollars. Check the papers.