Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “And of course we’re always giving away free samples of our products. Sampling, as it’s called, has always been a big part of this business. Every day, we give away cartons and cartons of free samples to our friends and would-be friends. Everybody loves to get something that’s free—I don’t care how rich the person is. Even if it’s a free bunch of parsley in the supermarket, the shopper will take it whether she needs parsley or not! My grandfather used to say, ‘If it’s free, take two.’ In fact, it was the whole practice of sampling that made me come up with the free-gift-for-purchase idea. Yes, I was the first manufacturer to do that. For every purchase of a Miray product, the customer gets one—or two or three or four—free samples of some of our other products. It’s an incentive for the purchaser, and also for the salesperson because it gives her an extra selling tool. We’ll be doing that with the new fragrance: every woman who buys a bottle of the perfume will get a free sample of the men’s cologne for her husband, lover, or whatever. Vice versa for the men who buy the cologne.

  “Of course when I first took over the company in ’sixty-two, after my father’s … accident … there was no money anywhere. The creditors were hounding us, and there was even talk of Chapter Eleven. During his few years as head of the company, my father had made what, in retrospect, turned out to be some unwise business decisions. It was up to me to try to reposition our products in the marketplace, to reposition the whole Miray name. There was no money for special gifts or dinners for buyers or pearl chokers for salesladies. There was not even enough money to pay the salaries for a sales force. I had to go out to the stores myself, trying to sweet-talk the buyers into stocking us. I walked up and down the aisles myself, with my little tray of free samples, passing them out. I even became an unpaid saleslady, standing at a counter, helping customers apply their makeup, suggesting lipstick and eye shadow shades, giving little beauty tips on this and that, hoping they’d end up buying something.

  “Of course, being a woman presented special problems. Most retail-store cosmetics buyers are men, and naturally, I encountered situations where a buyer would offer to stock my goodies in return for something else, if you know what I mean. This required a certain diplomacy and tact. I had to be nice to these guys, but I couldn’t—even if I’d been willing to take them up on their suggestions—run the risk of getting the reputation that the Miray girl was an easy lay. I had to be gentle, but firm. I developed little techniques. Instead of crying, ‘Unhand me, sir!’ I’d smile and say, ‘Oh, guess what! I’ve got a beautiful new eye shadow that I know your wife or girlfriend would just love to try!’ And I’d unhand him by dropping a free sample in his hand. It worked, for the most part, though there were a few stores that I listed in my date book as ‘Problem Areas.’ I think, in the long run, that most retailers learned to like and respect me for my attitude. Of course, the biggest compliment from these guys was, ‘You’re all business, aren’t you? You think like a man!’

  “We also do a lot of cooperative advertising. It’s another way we’re nice to our friends the retailers. There’s nothing really new about this, except that we were the first cosmetics company to do it. If a store is running a full-page ad for evening wear, for instance, we’ll suggest that they feature one of our lipstick shades as an accompaniment to the dress—and we pay for part of their ad. I think it helps our customers to think of Miray products in terms of fashion, and of course the stores are delighted to have us share their ad costs.…”

  Mrs. Hanna appears at the office door carrying a large arrangement of snowdrop anemones. “These just arrived from Max Schling,” she says. “Shall I put them on your coffee table?”

  “What beautiful flowers!” Mimi exclaims. “Who sent them, Mrs. Hanna?”

  “There’s no name on the card. All it says is ‘Remembering little white stars.’ Do you want me to call the shop and ask them?”

  Mimi frowns. “No, never mind. Just set them over there.”

  She sits for several minutes, her face expressionless, staring at the pale clusters of flowers rising from their green cleft leaves, saying nothing.

  “They might be from your grandmother,” I suggested after a while, to break the silence.

  “No. I know who they’re from. Why would my grandmother send me flowers?”

  “She’s genuinely sorry about the way she treated your mother the other night. I spent some time with her this morning. She asked me to tell you how bad she feels.”

  “Then why hasn’t she called me to say so?”

  “I think she’s a little afraid to.”

  “Ha! Her? Afraid? Oh, this has gone on for so long between her and my mother—for years and years, since before I was born. Old resentments, ancient grudges, hard feelings that have never changed, bitterness—wounds that will never heal. I’ve grown so used to it I hardly pay any attention to it anymore. Tell Granny to call me if she’s got anything to say to me. I’m certainly not going to call her. But if she calls, I’ll talk to her—though I can assure you that talking to her won’t change anything. It won’t change anything at all.”

  “What’s at the root of it, do you think?”

  “It’s all so complicated. I don’t even understand all of it myself. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, how we help our friends the retailers. Well, we always mention their stores in our advertising, for one thing. We help them with special in-store promotions. We provide them with special display materials, which they’re free to use or not, but which many of the stores do use. We provide our own specially trained salespeople for demonstrations, makeup lessons. We make it clear to them that we’re always available whenever they might need a helping hand.…”

  “I know it’s none of my business,” I said, because it really wasn’t, even though I had somehow been drawn into it by the old lady at the Carlyle, whose sense of dread had been either real or feigned or imagined, and who had pulled me into some sort of family web of disagreement about which, at the time, I had no knowledge, asking me to be a messenger and an intermediary between herself and her granddaughter. “But I really think your grandmother is frightened of something she thinks is about to happen to her. All I know for sure is that it involves Edwee and Nonie. I think she’s asking you for a helping hand right now.”

  “Sometimes I think that my grandmother has ice water running in her veins. If she does, she got it as the result of a transfusion from my grandfather, who was the coldest fish you ever saw. I mean, it wasn’t just what she said that was so completely off the wall—about my mother having killed a man, referring to my father’s tragic … accident. He was—”

  “He was a suicide,” I said, as gently as I could.

  She hesitated then. “My mother and I disagree on that,” she said. “My mother has always felt that it was suicide, and that was what the coroner concluded in his report. That was the way it was reported in the press. But no note was found. And I’ve always preferred to think—to hope, I guess—that it was an accident, that he was cleaning his gun, perhaps, and it accidentally went off. Then again, it could have been—”

  “Foul play?”

  “Yes! My grandfather had many enemies. I suppose we’ll never know for sure what happened. But, in my opinion, my father was systematically destroyed by his parents, from the time he was a little boy. In the company, they gave him titles, but no responsibilities. They gave him jobs, but nothing to do. They refused to listen to any of his ideas. They killed his spirit.”

  “Your grandmother feels that your uncle Leo had a lot to do with this.”

  “I never knew Leo, who was my great-uncle, by the way, and not my uncle. That may be true—a case of Grandpa battling with Leo, and my poor father caught in the crossfire in the middle? It may have been something like that.”

  “Your grandmother says it was all detailed in your grandfather’s diaries.”

  “You see? You see how she likes to stir things up, talking about diaries? I never heard of any diaries. Wouldn’t my father have mentioned it if there were diaries? Edwee an
d Nonie never heard of any diaries. But that’s how Granny likes to keep things stirred up. Her remark at my dinner table was not only deliberately cruel, and horribly insensitive, it was mischievous! My God, my mother is just back from the Betty Ford Center, trying to start a whole new life. I talk to my mother every single day, trying to keep her spirits up, her determination up. What Mother needs now is not another kick in the teeth from her mother-in-law, but the support of every member of this family! Now that Granny wants something from me, she regrets her mischief! See how she uses people? She uses you to get to me by talking about these damned fictitious diaries! More mischief!”

  “I got the impression that the diaries were a form of private communication between your grandfather and grandmother, in which he told her everything that was important in his life, things he didn’t like to talk about, so he wrote them down.”

  “Maybe so! He was that devious. All men are devious, aren’t they? Why are men so much more devious than women? Women can be mischievous, yes, but men are devious. Oh, damn, damn, damn!” Suddenly, with the pointed toe of her shoe, she kicked sharply at her office wastebasket, tipping it over and half-spilling its contents across her carpet, and I realized that she was weeping. I could not believe that I was seeing this normally poised and self-collected woman crying, and I groped in my pocket to see whether I had remembered to insert a handkerchief, but I had not. “Oh, damn!” she sobbed, and then, “Want some flowers? Take those damn flowers out of here!”

  In his cluttered office on Sutton Square, Edwee Myerson is on the telephone. “This is Mr. Edwin Myerson calling from the Miray Corporation,” he says to the woman he has finally tracked down.

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Myerson,” the woman says. “I suppose you’ve heard by now that he’s agreed to go with the scar bit. He’s not happy about it, but he’s agreed to go along.”

  “The scar bit,” Edwee says, having no idea what this woman is talking about, but willing to play along. “Of course,” he says. “I understand.”

  “I’ll spare you the few choice words he had to say about Miss Myerson,” she says. “But don’t worry. He’s still in the ball game with Miray.”

  “Good,” Edwee says. “And I have some news for him that may make your client a little happier.”

  “About how you’re going to handle the scar bit? Good. He could use some cheering up.”

  “But I seem to have misplaced the chap’s telephone number.”

  “Hang on. I’ll get it for you,” the woman says.

  11

  The year was 1957, and Mimi was eighteen, and she was sitting on a bench by the frozen pond in Central Park, lacing her skates. “Damn!” she muttered as one of her laces broke.

  “Here,” the pink-cheeked young man sitting next to her said, reaching into the pocket of his red parka. “I always carry an extra pair. Be my guest.” And he handed her a new pair of laces.

  She had hesitated. “Thank you,” she said. “But I can just tie a knot.”

  “Knots look dumb,” he said. “You don’t want to look dumb, do you?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then gimme your right skate,” he said briskly. “I’ll start working on that one, and you can start with the other one.”

  “Really, I—”

  He snapped his fingers. “Stop talking and gimme your skate. It’s not like taking candy from a stranger, you know. I bet you’re the kind of girl who was told never to take candy from a stranger. A pair of shoelaces isn’t candy, for Chrissake.” Accepting her skate, he said, “You know, a guy could make a fortune selling shoelaces singly, instead of in pairs. Ever think of that? Nobody ever breaks more than one lace at a time. What are the odds against breaking both laces at once? That’s all business is, knowing the odds. Guy could make a fortune from an idea like that.” He had gone busily to work removing the broken lace and inserting the new one.

  When he had finished, and both her relaced skates were on, he stood up. “Buy you an ice cream cone?” he said. “Hell, maybe that is like taking candy from a stranger, but I’m not the Black Dahlia Killer, as maybe you can tell.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He winked at her. “It’s not who I am that matters,” he said. “It’s who I’m going to be. And you know who I’m going to be? The richest guy in New York, is all. Think I’m kidding? I’m not even out of Columbia Biz School, and I’ve got a project going: low-income housing in Newark. Government subsidized—not a penny of my own money in it. I’m a genius, is what I am. You’ll find that out when you get to know me better. C’mon, let’s get ice cream.”

  They skated together across the pond, and Mimi thought that this was the most extraordinary young man she had ever met.

  As they stood in line in front of the refreshment stand, he cupped his mittened hands in front of his mouth and blew out misty puffs of breath. He said, “You know? Guy could make a fortune from a place like this. How come they only sell ice cream and soda pop? Who wants cold food on a winter day? Why not hot things? Hot chocolate, hot dogs, hot apple cider, hot bagels, hot pastrami sandwiches. Hot potato salad. Hot cross buns. Hot cole slaw. Hot sauerkraut. Hot tamales. Hot apple pie. Hot chicken soup. Hot buttered popcorn. Hot buttered rum. I’ve seen you around here before.”

  “I come fairly often, yes.”

  “Always alone?”

  “Usually, yes.”

  “No friends?”

  “I go to school in Connecticut,” she said. “This is our midwinter break, and most of my friends live in other cities.”

  “Other cities like where?”

  “I have a good friend who lives in Akron,” she said.

  “That’s a hellhole,” he said. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard that Akron’s a hellhole. I’ve heard that if they were going to give the world an enema, Akron’s where they’d put the tube.” He was paying for their ice cream cones now, rather showily, with a hundred-dollar bill, and the cashier, looking pained, was counting out his change, most of it in singles. “No,” he said, “New York’s the only city in the world for me. Remember that you heard it here, Mimi.”

  She gasped. “How did you know my name?” she said.

  He grinned at her. “I’m psychic,” he said. “But there’s a name-tag sewn inside your skate. Your eyes are a wonderful color.”

  She laughed. “My beige eyes,” she said.

  “Silver,” he said. “I’m also into self-improvement. I want to know more about culture, and the finer things in life. If a man’s going to be successful, he needs to be well-rounded. Every week, I try to learn about something new, and before I’m done I want to know at least something about everything there is to know. This week I’ve been learning about silver. The finest English silver is from the George the First period. Did you know that? A lot of people think it’s George the Third, but George the First is finer. You know that James Robinson shop on Fifty-seventh Street? That’s where I learned about George the First silver. And do you know what the finest silver needs? It needs to be polished every single day. That’s what gives it that special creamy luster. That’s what they told me at the James Robinson store. That’s the color of your eyes—the color of old silver that’s been polished every single day. You Jewish?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “I thought so. Not that you look Jewish. You don’t. You’re a sort of blonde, but they’re always blonder, the goyim. I can usually tell. Not always, but usually.”

  “Does it matter if I am?”

  “Not to me, it doesn’t. But it would to my mother.”

  “What does your mother have to do with it?”

  “When I take you home to meet her, it will matter.”

  “Why would you take me home to meet your mother?”

  “Because you’re the girl I’m going to marry.”

  “What?”

  He was skating away from her now, skating effortlessly backward in an easy, splay-legged motion, still grinning at her, licking his ice cream cone, and there w
as a drop of chocolate ice cream glistening on the tip of his nose. “Gotta run now,” he said. “Gotta run over to Jersey and check on my job. See you here tomorrow—same place.”

  “Wait!” she cried. “I don’t even know your name!”

  “Michael Horowitz,” he called back. “See you tomorrow, kiddo,” and then he was gone, a blur of red parka that disappeared among the other skaters.

  But the next afternoon he had not come, and she waited for him at the same bench by the pond, her arms crossed about her middle for warmth. She had been on time, even a little early, for him, and after half an hour she decided he was not going to come. She knew, she thought, everything she ever needed to know about men, and she knew, or thought she knew, everything she needed to know about sex. At school, there was Old Pete, who was a janitor in the gym. Old Pete’s office, if you could call it that, was a mop and broom closet in the gym basement, where he sat much of the day smoking endless cigarettes and reading comic books, and whenever a group of Miss Hall’s girls gathered outside the cellar light that was his headquarters’ only window, Old Pete would usually put on a little show for them, carefully opening his pants, taking out his swollen thing, and swinging it back and forth, pointing it at them, and stroking it as his audience watched wide-eyed. Word that Old Pete was in the middle of one of his performances would spread like wildfire across that lovely, elm-dotted campus, from one ivy-clad dorm to the next: “Old Pete’s putting on his act!” And the girls, in the green plaid skirts and middy blouses that were their uniforms, would hurry down the well-raked gravel walks to the basement window of the gym, always careful to be sure that no faculty member was aware of this surreptitious congregation of well-bred, well-brought-up young ladies. What would the parents of these well-bred, well-brought-up young ladies have thought if they knew that such a thing went on at the fashionable Miss Hall’s School for Girls in Connecticut? Who knew? But that was sex, Mimi knew. “The man sticks his thing in you,” the older girls knowingly explained. “It doesn’t really hurt.”