Three Heartbeats

Lot 47. Jade horse, Tang dynasty.

“Forty thousand.”

She watches the room breathe.

The pause before “going once” isn’t fixed. Can’t be.
Each object demands its own interval.

This horse: she gives it three heartbeats.

The woman in black hasn’t finished her internal math.
The phone bidder from Hong Kong needs time to confer.

“Forty-five.”

The Chanel woman’s hand. Too quick. She wants it.
Dangerous in this room.

“Fifty.”

Hong Kong, immediate. No conference. They were waiting.

Now the real dance.

She slows everything.

“Fifty thousand…”

The suspension. Not silence. Active waiting.

She reads—
Chanel’s fingers on her catalog, still calculating.
The dealer in row three, perfectly still, his pencil hovers.
Hong Kong’s line: breathing but no voices.

She stretches the moment.
This is where fortunes turn, where desire shows its limit.

“Going once…”

The interval here: exactly long enough for regret to bloom.
For the mind to flash forward to tomorrow’s emptiness.

Chanel shifts. “Fifty-five.”

Too late. The rhythm’s off-beat.
Sounds like fear, not confidence.

“Sixty.”

Hong Kong, inevitable as tide.

She knows it’s over. The room knows.
But the ritual demands its proper time.

“Sixty thousand going once…”

Two beats.

“Going twice…”

The final suspension.

Here she’s killed deals with haste, birthed bidding wars with patience.

Chanel’s hand hovers. Calculating not money now but marriage.
The explanation at home.

“Sold.”

The gavel finds its mark. Time resumes normal speed.

Later, alone in her office, she remembers her first months.

How she rushed, afraid of silence.

Twenty years learning that the space between words
holds more weight than the words themselves.

Now she knows—

The pause is the price.