Walter Falls

by Gillis, Steven;

  “You don’t owe me an explanation, Tod.”

  “I have a check for the bail.”

  “Don’t worry. That isn’t why I’m here,” I hoped to sound as earnest as I had with Gee on the phone, and when Tod said, “Still, I should have discussed things with you first,” I insisted, “What you and Gee do is your business. It wouldn’t have mattered if you told me. Even if I objected, Gee hardly needs my permission for the things she does.”

  “As a courtesy.”

  “Would that have made you feel better?” a hint of anger found its way into my tone, and determined to compose myself, I leaned forward and said, “Let’s change the subject, shall we?”

  I felt Liddi’s stare and wondered if she already suspected me of delivering up a Trojan horse, but refusing to be thrown off, I said to Tod, “I’ve been meaning to speak with you anyway, and as you were still up and I was anxious to put the events of today behind us, I thought I’d stop by and tell you that I’ve been reviewing your idea for Old Soles.”

  “Really?” again Tod sounded surprised.

  “I’ve done some initial research and feel with one or two modifications the venture just might work.”

  “My idea?”

  “Are you still interested?”

  “But I thought you said there were too many risks?” he reached toward the bottle of wine. I declined what he poured for me, the aftereffect of the whiskey and the absence of food making my head and stomach unreliable. Liddi lit a clove cigarette and dropped the match into a red plastic bowl. “There are risks, of course, in any deal,” I answered. “And I won’t lie, in many ways the investment is too large for you, but there’s promise.”

  “You think it’s possible?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I can afford it?”

  “There are ways.”

  “Then I’m interested,” he had on a pair of reading glasses, wire-rimmed with rounded lenses, which lent a certain counterbalance to his otherwise narrow face.

  “Good,” I shifted around on the couch, angled more toward Tod and away from Liddi. “Now then, I’ve already spoken with distributors and several shoe manufacturers. I’ve also checked out potential sites at local malls. If we can purchase a good block of shoes for say six dollars a pair which you, in turn, retail at between twenty-five and fifty dollars, even with your overhead and interest on your loans, you stand to make a nice profit.”

  “My loans?” the first hesitation—predictable—entered Tod’s voice. I ignored as much for the moment and went on. “I’m afraid Porter and Evans isn’t prepared to represent you officially as a client, which means I won’t be partnering you with any of the other accounts I manage, but I can put you in touch with some friends of mine at institutions I believe you’ll approve of and I’ll help you get the loans you need. Unofficially, I’ll assist you any way I can.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” he took another moment to consider what I just told him, weighing the reality of my proposal, and staring at me, I could see in his eyes further signs of doubt. (More proof of Tod’s pretention, I thought, for how quick he was to discuss business in the abstract and how fast he fell into a panic when the time came to risk his own cash.) “Of course,” I said, prodding him on, asserting my position of command over the figures and facts, “if you don’t want to pull the trigger.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  “I understand. You’re worried about the money. How are you to cover the expense, and wasn’t I the one who preached to you about not getting in over your head?”

  “It does seem a bit much for me to take on.”

  “Then don’t. Do the deal or not, any way you like, that’s your choice. If you’re unsure, we can always keep reinvesting your stocks. In a few years, you’ll probably have earned ten, maybe twelve thousand dollars, but that really isn’t what you’re looking for, now is it? In terms of investing your profits back into the community, you need more.”

  “I would like more, yes.”

  “The thing of it is, making real money requires risk. I’ve encouraged you to play it safe until now because the deals you’ve presented me with were too speculative. As your friend,” I said, “I discouraged you. But you remained persistent, and now I agree, if you want to make some serious cash, you have to consider taking the plunge.”

  Tod ran a hand back through his hair. He adjusted his glasses and stared over at me, ponderous and still unsure yet otherwise unsuspecting. “It’s true. It is what I want,” he said. “And I’ve been thinking lately about a project I’d like to fund. Do you remember the first night we met?”

  “At the Dunlaps’ party.”

  “We debated Jack Gorne’s purchasing Wintmore Towers and the closing of Melstar Clinic.”

  “I remember.”

  “I’d like very much to purchase a building on the east side of town and lease the property back to the city in order to see Melstar reopened.”

  “Well,” I let my voice go high as if I was entirely supportive of this most ludicrous new idea and, tipping my head back, said, “There are certainly plenty of vacant buildings on the east side. All the more reason to try and earn some money through Old Soles. In fact, if you’re serious about Melstar, there’s a friend of mine I think you should meet. Jim Catrell. You may have heard of him. Jim knows all the ins and outs of doing deals with the city and I’m sure he’d love to take you to dinner and answer every one of your questions about getting a property for Melstar. I’ll give him a call and let you know tomorrow. I wouldn’t mention Old Soles just yet. Jim’s a businessman, after all, and a bit ruthless. He might steal the whole project from us. Concentrate on the clinic and how to get things started. Now then, about Old Soles.”

  Liddi stood up unexpectedly. The space between her chair and the lowboy was less than eighteen inches, and she could have easily reached over and placed her wine glass down without leaving her seat. Instead she rose with her glass in hand, and after bending forward, turned and positioned herself in front of me, close enough so that our knees almost touched, angled so that I, but not Tod, could see her face. All of this lasted a matter of seconds and yet I took from her stare a measure of caution. “And what do you get out of all this, Walter?” she asked while sitting down again. “What is it you want?”

  “I want to see Tod do well,” I answered at once. “I want my wife to be happy. I want her pleased with me for helping out. That’s it. That’s all I’m after.” I set my gaze against my accuser with particular firmness and continued. “As for money, if you’re wondering about that as well, the answer is I won’t make a dime off Old Soles.”

  “And you won’t lose a dime either if the store fails,” Liddi continued letting me know with just her eyes that she regarded my words as meaningless, that everything we had to say to one another was already exposed. I looked back at Tod. “Nothing is for certain in business, it’s true. All the best projects are easily shattered with the slightest error, but that’s why I’m here, to help make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “Que nous sommes tous dans un etat d’equilibre affreusement instable, qu’un rien pourrait rompre,” Liddi spoke at me, quoting no doubt from one of the obscure female writers she was studying in her graduate program. “And if you’re not careful, Walter?”

  WALTER FALLS

  “But I am by nature. You can count on it. Now then,” I directed my comment again to Tod, pulling at the front of my shirt as the room we were in seemed unbearably hot, “I can help you with the banks. I can put all the initial pieces together. In terms of what I’ve already done, the research and lining up of loans, the contacting of the mall and shoe manufacturers, the bargains I’ve hammered out and the assistance I’ll provide in the future, I’ve already saved you thousands of dollars before you invest a dime. The decision’s yours, Tod.”

  “I’m quite grateful.”

  “I understand.”

  “And appreciative.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I am interested, Walter.”r />
  “Excellent,” I let him know I took this as a commitment.

  “I’m a bit overwhelmed is all,” Tod qualified his response. “There’s still a lot we have to discuss.”

  “Certainly there is. Of course,” I got up then, my back to Liddi and facing Tod’s chair. “It’s late. Why don’t you sleep on it. We can talk tomorrow. If you don’t feel comfortable, that’s fine. That’ll be the end of it.” I forgot about leaving my car on campus, and should have agreed when Tod offered me a ride, but I turned him down. For the first half mile, walking up Fetzer and out toward the main road, the torridness I experienced earlier was offset by the afterglow still pumping through me. I was relieved to have gotten things rolling, pleased with myself for not giving ground, accepting the Gospel according to Gorne in order to do what had to be done. After ten minutes however, the strength in my stride began to fail, the sweat across my neck producing an ache while a stiffness entered my knees and a heaviness filled my head and chest. I brought my hands up to my face in order to wipe at my eyes, while on Marshall Boulevard a hot wind swirled and pushed at me from behind, sending me awkwardly forward. I stumbled once and almost fell, my legs threatening to abandon me as I wound up exhausted and drenched by the time I reached my car.

  CHAPTER 9

  Love is a fever, who can deny?

  I crawled into bed sometime after three and spent several minutes lying there staring at my wife. Gee tended to sleep curled away from me, but tonight in my absence she had turned toward my side. I saw her face clearly, my eyes having adjusted well to the dark, and unable to resist, leaned over and kissed her. I had no expectation but was disheartened nonetheless when, in her sleep, she brushed at her cheek and rolled off.

  The ache in my bones still lingered from my walk and as a consequence, when I finally slept, I wound up having strange dreams. I saw the two large muskellunge strolling, not swimming, down a crowded avenue, one in a bright red dress and the other sporting a bowler. I saw my father decked out in an old-fashioned bank teller’s uniform with a visor and elastic bands pushing up his sleeves, handing money to people from between the bars of his jail cell. I pictured my mother floating past the musk, saw Tod and Gee rowing a boat on waters so calm the surface seemed a sheet of glass, and Jack Gorne in a coal-grey suit and tie, a flower in his lapel that looked like a lily, toasting me as I sat in my underwear at a rear table in Talster’s Bar.

  Jack’s image stayed with me and I soon had a dream about a man I thought was he—though I couldn’t quite make out his face—driving his car outside the city, parking far up a dirt road, and marching into the woods late in the night. The moon and stars did not quite reach the path where he was walking, their glow suspended in the branches of the trees like strips of torn silver tinsel. A light rain was falling, and instead of comfortable boots, Gore-tex pants, and a hooded windbreaker, the man in my dream had on thin leather shoes, a nicely tailored pair of slacks, silk tie and white dress shirt, all very expensive and utterly out of place in the woods.

  A large black dog trotted beside the man, a thick rope drawn around its neck, a makeshift muzzle strapped over its nose and jaw. The path through the trees was narrow, unused for some time, disappearing altogether a half mile into the woods where a railroad car sat inside a partial clearing. (Years ago, Anthracite Corporation transported coal through the woods outside of Renton, but the building of the highway made the route obsolete, and in the process of dismantling the tracks, I suppose—for purposes of my dream—it was possible for an old boxcar to have been left behind.) The man and dog strode on together in a curious sort of syncopation. Soon other dogs could be heard barking, weak, imploring howls that echoed and cut through the dark.

  In the clearing, the man let out the rope, released the muzzle, and gave the black dog more of a lead. He retrieved a ladder from behind a tree and propped it up to the front of the boxcar. The walls of the container were a good twelve feet high, the top opened and exposed to the rain. The man removed the rope from around the dog’s neck, replaced his hold by wrapping a harness underneath the animal’s belly. A series of pulleys with additional ropes rigged and set were attached to the top of the railroad car, allowing the man to hoist the dog with little trouble. Once he had the dog lifted, he ascended the ladder, raised her over the wall, and lowered her inside.

  The rope was pulled back out and the man shined his flashlight down into the box. The remains of two dead dogs, scattered and torn apart by the others, lay within, while the surviving members—four in total including the newest dog—shied from the light. The man observed his handiwork before climbing back down the ladder and listening for any sort of commotion. Although the newest animal was stronger than the others, the events of the evening were stil1 too confusing for her and only later, as days passed and the last remaining scrap of bone was gone, would the stronger dog realize the full extent of her predicament and by instinct turn and attack.

  The man walked from the woods under branches slightly bowed by the rain. He laughed to himself, understanding the function of his deed and how in a world as perfectly formed as ours—where half our days were spent in darkness and half in light—a person had to train himself to manage all forms of being. The rain fell harder by the time he reached his car and wiping his palms, he turned and shouted back toward the box, “Eat the bones, you mutts!” He drove home then, entered his apartment by way of the service elevator, changed his clothes, dried his hair, had a meal, and went to sleep.

  I woke in the morning to the sound of our alarm clock radio and a voice I didn’t recognize singing moodily of days gone by.

  CHAPTER 10

  I spent the next two weeks discussing Old Soles in great detail with Tod. I worked diligently to bring the deal together, made dozens of calls, contacted manufacturers and independent distributors anxious to move their old stock and permit resale if we agreed to purchase a set number of shoes up front. I arranged loans through three of our city’s more progressive institutions at rates Tod could not have gotten without me, inquired at shopping malls about available space, reviewed all incoming and outgoing documents, filed the requisite papers, and advanced the initial costs of registering with the state under the name Old Soles, Inc. Tod convinced two friends to back him in the venture. (Their investment was negligible however, and hardly worth the effort.) As a further show of good faith, I loaned Tod the money necessary to pay off the remaining $30,000 on his mortgage, enabling him to acquire a new loan against the current value of his house and put the cash into Old Soles. I assumed the debt without complaint and accepted it as a cost of doing business.

  Gee learned of my plan to help Tod and very nearly kissed me, settling instead for a touch of my arm which felt light and cool against the ache in my muscles that had not yet left me. We agreed—tacitly—to skip for now the serious conversation she alluded to before on the phone, and in the days that followed conducted ourselves at a cooperative distance.

  Early in June, Tod had dinner with Jim Catrell. “Your friend was very helpful,” he called to inform me the next day. I listened to all the more meaningless details of their evening, impatient to hear some significant bit of information, and was rewarded after several minutes. “Have you heard of Sun Lytes?” Tod asked.

  “They’re an L.E.D. developer,” I said. “They went public last year but their first offering didn’t do much as I recall.”

  “Jim said they’re underfunded but ready to take off.”

  “Are you saying you want me to sell your stock in Affymetrix and buy Sun Lytes?” (We agreed earlier, for purposes of financing Old Soles, not to cash in Tod’s Affymetrix stock unless there was good reason.) “If you want me to buy Sun Lytes, I will,” I tried to move him along.

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “You’re the client, Tod,” I was careful to avoid asking specifically what Jim had said, was ready to interrupt should Tod provide too much information. “I can look into the company and arrange the trade if it appears sound, as long as yo
u give me the green light. Is that what you want?”

  “If it seems good to you, Walter.”

  “You’re telling me to buy the stock Jim recommended?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alright then,” I did as told that same afternoon, selling off Tod’s shares of Affymetrix and purchasing Sun Lytes. I bought no shares for any of my other clients and certainly none for myself.

  Old Soles opened just in time to catch the late summer and back to school rush. In order to stock Tod’s shelves, having contacted all the manufacturers, I approached the same clients I brought together for Happy Meadows and Duroflex Watchbands and convinced them to invest in the purchase of 8,000 pairs of shoes for just under $60,000. “Trust me,” I said. “You’ll turn a tidy profit in less than a month, I guarantee.” I next spoke with Tod and explained how I’d contacted a broker who was in a position to sell us 8,000 pairs of shoes for $90,000. “He won’t sell you any less than that. Still, it’s a fair price. I’ve done business with these people before. Dealing with a broker rather than the companies directly is the way to go. It’s best you let me handle the exchange. If they sense you’re a novice, they may try to jack up the price. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.”

  Initial sales at Tod’s store were brisk. The idea of creating a retail market for last year’s high-tops, cleats, and running shoes proved visionary and went off without a hitch. By mid-August however, a competing store opened in a crosstown mall and sold its shoes for several dollars less. Tod was nonplused. Business fell off at Old Soles almost at once. “I can’t believe it. What’s happening, Walter? How did this store get open so fast?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Competition is a natural consequence of success. You’ll weather this storm just fine.”

  By earning my clients a quick $30,000 profit from the sale of their shoes to Tod, I had their backing to enter into further negotiations with the shoe companies in order to convince them that the sale of last year’s shoes was an untapped market. I laid out a plan for partnering my clients with the manufacturers directly, and after several meetings, the manufacturers agreed to supply us with an unlimited amount of their old stock for a minor charge. The companies, in turn, would maintain a twenty-percent proprietary share in the sale of each shoe, while my clients would cover the day-to-day expense and management of each store, the leasing of the facilities, employees, and so forth. “It’s a perfect arrangement for both sides,” I told the partners. “And best of all, by doing business this way, we don’t have to worry about competition. Technically we’re entering into a franchise agreement with each manufacturer and as such, they can deal with us exclusively under the letter of the law.”