I Can Get It for You Wholesale

by Jerome Weidman

  She went out of the room to put the dresses away, and I went to the gas range. Nothing was on the fire.

  “Nothing cooking yet, Ma?” I asked when she came back into the room. “I’m starved.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, glancing at the clock. “You won’t die from hunger. It’s not even seven yet. So we’ll eat a little later to-night, so what’ll be?”

  “Nothing,” I said with a laugh. “I was just hungry, that’s all.”

  “So all right,” she said. “Come on, you’ll help me.”

  I rolled up my sleeves and she tied an apron around me.

  “Boy,” I said, “if some of those buyers could see me now!”

  “So what do you think would be? Such a terrible thing it isn’t.”

  “Who said it’s terrible? I even like it, for crying out loud.”

  “Yeah, you like it. Well, for being such a big liar,” she said, “here, you can peel the potatoes.”

  We worked in silence for almost a half hour, but it wasn’t as much fun as I’d expected it to be. After a while my thumb began to hurt from pushing the back of the knife across the potatoes. And I was getting hungrier by the minute. But I didn’t say anything. She seemed happy and contented, smiling to herself as she worked, and once in a while at me. But she didn’t work fast and I didn’t want to rush her. She looked at the clock two or three times, and by the time the blintzes were almost ready, she began to look a little worried.

  Promptly at eight the doorbell rang, and her face cleared. Even before she answered it, I understood why she had been stalling the meal, and I knew who it was. And I decided, in those few seconds between the ringing of the bell and the sound of voices out in the foyer, that I wasn’t going to make a scene, either. Because it didn’t matter any more. The old magic no longer worked. I wasn’t worried. I knew I could handle myself.

  Mother led me into the kitchen, smiling.

  “Look who I invited to supper, Heshie.”

  “Hello, Ruthie,” I said, taking her hand, and smiling. “Mom didn’t tell me you were coming. If I’d known, I’d’ve kept my coat on.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, smiling back. “You don’t have to stand on ceremony for me, Harry.”

  I let the smile on my face freeze into a slightly sarcastic grin. Then, slowly, I lit a cigarette, holding her eyes with mine through my cupped hands and the faint haze of smoke and flame from the match. She dropped her eyes and blushed. I wiped the grin off as I turned toward Mother to drop the match into the sink.

  “Come on, Ruthie,” Mother said, putting her arm around her. “Come and take your things off.”

  While they were out of the room I got an idea. I knew that unless I did something, this thing would drag on forever. Since mother, apparently, didn’t believe me when I said no, the trick was to scare the pants off her candidate. Knocking her off would have done the trick, but since, for reasons that I still couldn’t figure out completely, that had been a flop, there had to be another answer. And I thought at that moment that I had it.

  “You know, Ma,” I said when they came back into the room, “if we don’t get something to eat pretty soon, not only will I starve, but the whole damn evening’ll be killed, too.”

  “A guarantee that you won’t starve,” she said, “I can give you. And for the other, tell me, you got something better to do to-night than to sit here at home with us?”

  “That’s not the idea, Ma. Maybe Ruthie and I want to go out some place, or something like that? When are we going to go, eleven o’clock?”

  Mother’s face brightened at once.

  “Oh,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me you and Ruthie had a date?”

  “Did you ask me?” I said, winking broadly at Ruthie.

  She blushed and said, “Oh, Harry, I don’t know if we should leave your mother all alone like this—?”

  Mother pushed her into a chair playfully.

  “Don’t be a dope,” she said. “An old woman like me, I got something better to do than to sit listening to the radio—you saw the new radio, Ruthie, that Heshie bought me?—and read the Forward?”

  “Well, you could start dishing out blintzes,” I said. “That would be better than reading the Forward.”

  “We’ll see how hungry you are when the food is on the table,” she said, and began to serve.

  Mother did most of the talking during the meal, and Ruthie did most of the listening. I had plenty of time to observe her. This time it was curiosity. After to-night I’d probably never see her again. So I thought I might just as well try to see if I could figure her out. Because while I knew, now, that I was safe from whatever it was about her that had made me forget temporarily what my eyesight and my intelligence told me, still, I had to admit, she was an unknown quantity. It was one thing to get wise to the fact that a soft face and a gentle smile were making a sucker out of you. It was another thing to look beneath the skin and the smile to figure out why you knew they weren’t fake.

  And looking at her as she smiled and nodded at Mother, I had it. Aside from that warmth and gentleness that drew you, there was nothing. She had no more personality than Babushkin, maybe less. At least he stood out in your mind as a dope. But when you thought of Ruthie Rivkin you thought of a gentle, warm smile. You didn’t think of a person. She was a lump of meat with an attractive cover.

  Coming to that conclusion made me feel a little better about what I was going to do. And it made it easier to face the job. But it was worth spending one lousy evening to get rid of her for good and all.

  “You sure there’s nothing I can get you, Ma?” I said as we stood in the doorway, ready to leave.

  “Positive,” she said. “Only remember, Heshie, don’t forget the address here where you live.”

  “Don’t worry, Ma,” I said. “I’m coming home to-night. And if you’re a good girl, I’ll stay home all day to-morrow, too. What do you think of that?”

  “Hoo-hah!” she said, shaking her head. “You sure you feel all right?”

  “Of course I feel all right.”

  I pinched her cheek.

  “Have a nice time,” she said.

  I was glad that wasn’t an order.

  “We will,” I said.

  “Good night, Mrs. Bogen,” Ruthie said.

  “Good night, Ruthalle,” Mother said, touching her arm for a few seconds.

  In the street Ruthie said, “Maybe we shouldn’t have left your mother alone like that.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “She likes it.”

  We walked toward 180th Street and turned right, going toward the subway.

  “Where would you like to go?” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t care,” she said slowly. “Any place you want to go.”

  Some day she’d actually prod that brain of hers into a suggestion, and I’d drop dead from the shock.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” I said. “I haven’t been to Coney Island for a long time, now. What do you say we take the subway out there and give the place a whirl?”

  She looked startled, but didn’t say anything. I grinned to myself.

  “That okay with you?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Let’s go, then,” I said.

  I took her arm to help her cross the gutter, and then released it. At the foot of the subway station I bought two papers and we climbed the stairs.

  “You want one of these?” I said, offering her one of the papers when we were settled in our seats.

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  I shrugged and turned to my paper. All the way downtown I read. Once or twice I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting quietly, staring straight ahead of her, her eyes unblinking. Good, I said to myself. Maybe she was getting wise, finally.

  At Forty-Second Street we got out and changed to the B.M.T. I offered the paper to her again, but she shook her head slightly and smiled. I guess I should have got her a picture book. I folded the paper and put it under the seat. Th
en I opened the second paper and read that clear out to Stillwell Avenue.

  “Well,” I said, “here we are. Any particular thing you want to do first?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Suppose we get over to the boardwalk, then,” I said.

  We crossed Surf Avenue, went past the concessions, and climbed the incline to the boardwalk. It was a comfortably cool night, with a light, steady wind blowing in from the ocean. The boardwalk was crowded, but not badly. We edged into the stream of people moving up the boardwalk slowly, and walked along, listening to the barkers roaring their spiels into microphones that sent them out so loud that they didn’t make sense.

  Aside from the job I had to do, I was glad I’d come. There was something about the craziness of the place that got me.

  “How about a drink of something?” I said.

  “All right,” she said.

  We stood in front of a stand and drank root beer. A custard-making machine caught my eye. I bought two cones and gave her one.

  “The idea is to suck it around the sides, near the cracker,” I said, “so it shouldn’t run over on your hands and clothes.”

  She laughed a little.

  “I’m afraid I won’t—” she began.

  “Oops,” I said, grabbing it out of her hand quickly. “Watch it. You almost had it all over your dress, there.”

  She took out a handkerchief and brushed away a small spot that had landed on her hem.

  “Weren’t you ever out to Coney Island before?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “What?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I was born in the Bronx.”

  “Oh, well, that accounts for it,” I said.

  Hell, that could account for anything.

  “Me,” I said, “I was born on the East Side. Coney Island? This used to be heaven to me.”

  “I guess that’s why I don’t know how to eat custard,” she said with a laugh.

  Look at her! She learned how to talk!

  “Here’s how,” I said, holding the cone far out toward her. “I’ll hold it and you lick at it till you had enough. All right?”

  She nodded quickly and leaned forward to peck at the mound of loose ice cream that kept melting and running down the sides.

  “Enough?” I said.

  “Enough,” she said, wiping her mouth delicately with her handkerchief.

  I threw the rest of the cone away and took her arm.

  “Let’s go.”

  We walked for a few minutes until a shooting gallery struck my eye.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Here’s where we’re stopping for a while.”

  I paid for two clips and leaned my elbow on the counter. I’d pumped out a dozen shots before I noticed that she hadn’t touched her gun.

  “Say, aren’t you shooting?”

  She laughed and showed the white teeth that always looked so startlingly hard between her full lips.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how, Harry,” she said.

  “C’mere,” I said, taking her arm and pulling her toward me. “You hold the gun like this, and rest your elbow here.”

  I got behind her and put one arm around her left side, to help her support the gun, and my other arm around her right side, to help her with the trigger.

  “Now you look through this little dingus here, this V. That’s right. Till you see that little raised point, that little dot at the end of the gun—that’s it—till you see that dot right smack in the center of the notch in the V. Get it?”

  She nodded, her eyes squinting and her lips parted.

  “Then you hold it that way, the raised dot in the middle of the V, and point it, without letting that dot get out of the

  V, at anything you want to hit. How about that bell there? No, take something easy. Take one of those ducks, the white ones. That’s it. Now you keep that dot in the middle of the V pointed right at that duck and then you pull the trigger—like this.”

  The slight recoil of the gun threw her back against me, gently, and her cheek brushed mine. I didn’t want to believe it, but right then I wouldn’t have taken the short end of any bet, no matter what the odds, that I wasn’t blushing!

  “Now try it yourself,” I said.

  “Did we hit it?” she asked.

  “I—uh—hell,” I said, laughing, “I forgot to look.”

  I picked up the gun and said, “We better try it again, then. And this time, you sight it and pull the trigger. I’ll just help you hold it.”

  I put my arms around her again, steadying the gun, and feeling her warm body against me. Just before she pulled the trigger her body tensed up and the shot went cockeyed.

  “Here,” I said, “you better try it all by yourself. You certainly can’t do any worse than with me helping you.”

  I dropped another quarter on the counter and the man handed me another loaded gun.

  “Now just do as I told you,” I said, “and shoot for the same things I do. I’ll call them out to you.”

  We stood at the counter together for a half hour, side by side, pumping away at swinging targets, bells, candles, moving ducks, clay pipes, until she could actually hit something once out of five or six tries. I waited until she knocked down one of the ducks moving across a small pond in the middle of the gallery, and put my hand on her gun.

  “This is a good place to quit,” I said, “on a hit. My back aches already. How about yours?”

  She stood up and placed both hands far back on her hips and stretched, with a pained smile on her face.

  “Oh, my!” she said. “That hurts.”

  “I know just the thing for that,” I said, winking.

  “Yeah, what?”

  “A hot dog.”

  “For a backache?”

  “Sure,” I said. “The idea is to eat enough of them till you get a bellyache, and then you don’t feel the backache.”

  “Oh, Harry!” she laughed.

  I laughed, too. But I couldn’t help wondering what the hell I was finding so funny in a joke as lousy as that one.

  We had some hot dogs and potato chips and grape juice before she cried quits.

  “Why, this is only the beginning,” I said. “Come on, have some more.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Honest, I’m full.”

  “Well, then,” I said, “you’ll just have to sit and watch me. And take my word for it, Ruthie, it’s no fun watching me eat. You better get something, too.”

  She put her hand to her mouth and shook her head.

  “Oh, I can’t, Harry,” she said. “I couldn’t eat another thing.”

  “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said.

  She began to laugh as I downed a hamburger and an ice cream sandwich on waffles.

  “Goodness,” she said, “what a combination! And it’s not kosher, either, you know, Harry. Ice cream and meat.”

  I pretended to be shocked.

  “You mean it? Gee, that’s terrible. Well, I’ll just have to cut out the ice cream, then.”

  After a few more items, she began to look worried.

  “Harry,” she said, “I really think you ought to stop. You’ll ruin your stomach.”

  “I know it,” I said, “but do I love this junk!”

  “But Harry—”

  “All right,” I said, “no more. Come on.”

  “Where to?”

  “Steeplechase, the funny place, where, if I remember correctly, my dear Ruthie, for a fifty-cent combination ticket, you can ride on fifty—yes, sir, no less than fifty—fifty separate and distinct rides. You can try the—”

  “Oh, Harry, I don’t know if—”

  “What’s the matter, little girl? You aren’t scared, are you?”

  She nodded quickly, looking up at me from under lowered brows.

  “Holy smoke,” I said, and let out a loud laugh. I slapped my thigh and put my arm around her, squeezing her to me gently. “Come on. Now we’re first going to have fun.”


  She held back a little, but I pulled her along, laughing and kidding her.

  The next hour was so fast and giddy I couldn’t keep track of it. We tried everything on the combination tickets, and some we paid to try again. At first she was scared stiff, holding my arm tightly and screaming in a low voice when we hit the turns or the dips. But gradually she got used to it and even went down the biggest drop on the Sky Ride with a happy laugh.

  When we got out on the boardwalk again it was almost midnight. We stood there, catching our breath, and laughing at each other for no good reason.

  “I must look a sight,” she said, trying to straighten her hair.

  “Here’s a mirror,” I said.

  We stood in front of a chewing-gum vending machine and I held her hat and purse while she combed her hair and straightened her dress.

  “My,” she said when she finished. “That feels better.”

  I put my arm through hers and we walked back toward Stillwell Avenue. But this time we were on the outside of the boardwalk, the side near the water, and the crowd, moving at the other side near the concessions, a mere thirty or so feet from us, seemed far enough away to be almost out of sight. We could hear the barkers and the music and the moving people, but the low rolling of the waves on the beach seemed louder.

  “Let’s rest for a few minutes,” I said.

  We sat down on one of the benches that faced the water and I lit a cigarette.

  “Tired?” I said.

  “A little,” she said.

  “We’ll just sit for a while,” I said, “and then we’ll go home. This place isn’t so bad at night. But it’s terrible during the day. At night you can’t see the dirt.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Maybe you want a drink or something?”

  She shook her head.

  “Sure you don’t want anything?”

  “Well—” she said.

  “Well what? Come on. Just say it and I’ll get it for you.”

  “I guess it’s silly in a way,” she said slowly, looking out at the ocean carefully. “But I just thought I’d like to—”

  She stopped.

  “You’d like to what, Ruthie?”

  “When you go out with other girls,” she said, still looking ahead of her carefully, “do you—I mean, Harry, do you take them here, to Coney Island?”