The Girls of Cincinnati

by Jack Engelhard

  It was the end of the day and the others had already left except for Mona who had seen this coming.

  She was trying to outstay Sonja.

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I said to Sonja.

  But Sonja didn’t move. Only her skirt did, upwards.

  “Well,” said Mona, “guess I’d better be moving along and make dinner. Got three starving sons.”

  Her fourth son, of course, was in the Marines. Mona came in each day with the same smile and the same dress, one of those dresses full of flowers – but always freshly washed and pressed. Her husband was on Railroad disability. He’d choked on some food while on the job, had to be rushed to the hospital where they had to cut open his throat. Even then she came in smiling and cheerful and now it was odd how she talked about having four sons, when in fact she only had two still at home. What she meant (unintentionally) was her husband.

  “But before I go,” she said, “can I have a word with you Eli?”

  Out in the hallway she said, “I know what’s going on.”

  “So do I, Mona. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t let her get started on you. She’s like syrup.”

  Back at my desk I asked Sonja what I could do for her, it was time to close up shop. She asked if I had seen the latest Woody Allen movie. I said I thought Woody Allen was vastly overrated and that that was the trouble with this country, people were either vastly overrated or vastly underrated.

  “I guess you consider yourself among the latter,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. It was a general observation.”

  “But you are underrated. I know you have talent. They tell me you’re really an actor.”

  “Yeah, like everybody else.”

  “You really don’t belong here, do you?”

  “Yes I do. Where we are is where we belong.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I sighed an actor’s sigh and said, “Well, time to go home.”

  “Have you ever read Oscar Wilde?”

  “I guess.”

  “What about The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “You know, how people aren’t the same inside as they appear on the outside? Outside he was beautiful. Inside he was a monster. Like that picture showed him to be. Remember?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Doesn’t that fascinate you?” she said.

  “Not really.”

  “I mean how people, even beautiful people, really are inside. Some people need a picture to show them the truth.”

  “What are you getting at here, Sonja?”

  “Nothing. Except that some people you know may not be as beautiful as you think. Maybe you need a picture.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Not right now.”

  I faked a yawn. “Time to go home.”

  She sprung it like a loaded pistol. “Can I go home with you?”

  I said no.

  “Why not?”

  I explained that I lived in Mount Adams, which might not be her style. My apartment was a dump.

  “I don’t care. I want to see how you live.”

  “Some other time.”

  “You’re afraid of me.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “Mona. She’s talking against me. I know what she’s been saying to you.”

  “Really, I have to go.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  I shrugged. I’ve got to stop shrugging.

  * * *

  She said my place wasn’t so bad, like I needed this review. She checked out the kitchen and the kitchen table that I never used; so much easier to eat over the counter. She eyed the box spring and mattress in the living room, which served as my bed and my bedroom. This wouldn’t get that far, that was a promise. I owed it to myself to pass up at least one triumph.

  She boiled us tea. She said: “I guess I’m just one of those girls trying to get your mind off Stephanie. Seems nobody can replace her in your heart, but boy how they try!”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said lazily.

  “You know, of course, that all the girls are crazy for you.”

  “It’s a living,” I said, quoting Clark Gable.

  “Was Stephanie that good in bed?”

  “I never took her to bed.”

  That sent her laughing, a strange, deep, husky, masculine, unholy laugh.

  “You mean all a girl has to do is NOT go to bed with you?”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Wait till I pass that word around.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “Well I think the only way you can really get to know another person is to go to bed with them.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s the only way to get to know me.”

  “Come on, Sonja. I’m taking you home.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes I am.”

  “Naked?”

  Off came her sweater, skirt, bra, panties and indeed she was naked. Another naked woman. She slipped under the covers as if she belonged there and that I resented most of all, the proprietorship of her actions. I lit up a cigarette. Then I got up and walked out, out of the house. If she wanted my bed she could have it but without me in it, but she was right behind me, still naked but now screaming to the high heavens, here in the open street, hysterical.

  Now Cincinnati is a most conservative town, meaning relatively upright and uptight, the Queen City in many respects, utterly GERMAN it its adherence to propriety – but this is Mount Adams where I live, a section of town the rest of the dowdy population tolerates as the accepted (Bohemian) delinquent in the family. Mount Adams was our Greenwich Village, except for the yuppies who had begun taking over.

  So this woman running naked and screaming down the street drew only this rebuke: “Keep it down, please.”

  Even, “Fuck you, please.”

  I finally wrestled her back in and got her dressed. She grew calm. Maybe too calm.

  Even when she was hysterical she was in control.

  “You’re too good for me? Is that it?” she said.

  “I’m just not in the mood.”

  “You’d be in the mood with Stephanie, wouldn’t you?”

  “Please keep Stephanie out of this.”

  “I’m afraid that’s too late.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t bring up her name. She’s nothing to you.”

  “She’s everything to me, and yes, I know how you hate it when I use her name. I defile her name, don’t I?”

  Entirely correct.

  “Well listen to this. Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie…”

  I felt like punching her in the mouth.

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “Coward.”

  When I dropped her off, she said, “We’re not finished, you and me.”

  “Good night.”

  “Sweet dreams,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Keep dreaming of Stephanie. While you can.”

  When I got back home I sprayed Lysol all over my bed but some odors just don’t go away.

  * * *

  She said she didn’t know what got into her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  We were in the hallway outside the boiler room and she was crying and it seemed sincere; it sure was vehement, tears and everything; more than ready for her close-up. “Please forgive me,” she kept saying. “Please. I didn’t mean a word I said. I don’t know what got into me. Please don’t fire me. Please. I have no money. I really, really, really need this job.”

  I had already made up my mind to fire her, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the same as getting rid of her, which was what I was really, really, really after. Getting people out of your life wasn’t as simple as getting them in. All I asked from most people was hello and goodbye. Who needed that stuff in between?

  “Just let m
e get back to my desk. I’ll be a good girl. I’ll never bother you again. One more chance.”

  I nodded.

  I’ve got to stop nodding.

  * * *

  Denise, one of my best girls, and spunky as a pup, said: “Eli, are you aware that you talk to yourself?”

  Mona laughed.

  “You do,” said Denise. “Don’t he?”

  “Yes you do,” said Mona in between making her calls.

  I had been sitting at my desk half asleep. I had just finished reading the paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, which always depressed me, not the Enquirer, but finishing it, as reading the paper was something to do, something to hide in, and once it was done, once you were finished reading about other people’s troubles, you had to face your own.

  I said, “I do not talk to myself.”

  “Yes you do,” said Denise in the kind of mock agitation familiar down home. “You pace and you talk to yourself.”

  “What do I say?”

  “You say, nobody cares.”

  “No that’s not what I say. I say, I don’t care.”

  “No. That’s not what you say. Ain’t that right, Mona?”

  “Keep me out of this.”

  All that may be true after all, about how I talk to myself and keep saying nobody cares. Faith, in people, in God, is a skill I’ve never mastered. I know how to curse but don’t know how to pray. From birth to death, it’s all random. If there is a plan, I wish someone would hurry up and tell me what it is. This sure can’t be it. Why even our doctors of divinity tell us that we’re cursed from birth, so what salvation can we count on except a decent paycheck?

  Denise had just gotten married to a guy who did phone soliciting for a company that sold recliners on Vine Street, a sleazy operation known as Seats Galore. The guy who ran the place, Stone Kiley, was a shady character who also pitched siding and other useless furnishings from the same boiler room. Mona’s mother-in-law worked for him. Before her marriage, Denise and I carried on for a good three months, before I found out that she was jail bait. She made me swear to keep the secret, and of course I would, since she had an even bigger secret on me – more than once I had transported her home, across state lines, into Newport, Kentucky, and how many years was that worth!

  The sad thing was that Denise had an overturned something or other in her vagina, so she could never have regular intercourse. But I was happy that she had found herself a husband and that they were working something out to get themselves some children. There was so much to learn about women. They were so much more complicated than the rest of us. They all had their own stories, so many of them sad. In fact I never met a woman with a happy story to tell. Once you got to know them.

  Everybody’s got a story.

  Chapter 10

  Old Lou was coming up the stairs, slowly, each step another obstacle.

  “How is everybody?”

  “Fine, Lou,” said Mona.

  He smiled at the crew. Not a single one of the girls smiled back. They never did.

  I once gave them a lecture on that, about being kind. Lou never chose old age and illness. You could be next.

  “What the hell happened to manners?” I said. “Everybody’s so damned surly all of a sudden!”

  Which seemed to be especially true of the young, and the old. Frankly, I could understand old people getting mean-spirited, they had lived a life and had had to do battle, but it didn’t make sense seeing young people getting so hard-nosed. Even some of the girls who came in here barely out of high school showed signs of bitterness and it made you wonder if they were reacting from abuses of the past or – or whether they were wisely and genetically anticipating the road ahead. Anyway, that helped for a while, that sermon I gave about Lou, and Lou started getting good receptions, but to keep it going I’d have to be Jesus Christ once every month on account of the turnover in this place.

  “Anything happening?” Lou said, sitting down at my desk.

  I shrugged.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  “I’m not tired,” I said.

  “You look hot.”

  “I’m not hot.”

  “Well it is hot,” Lou said.

  “It’s always hot.”

  Lou had pasted a smile on his face, an actual certifiable smile, a first since the stroke. But it was the smile of a man keeping a secret – but not for long.

  Of course Old Lou already had a secret. He wasn’t allowed to drive. Declaring him impaired, the city had revoked his license. So how was he supposed to go out on calls without a car? So he drove. Risking jail and who knew what else. But a salesman without a car was like a jockey without a horse. So Lou kept on driving usually upon the roads but sometimes upon the sidewalks.

  I said, “What’s so funny, Lou?”

  “I’m not allowed to smile?”

  “There’s no law.”

  “I’m happy, that’s why I’m smiling.”

  “Well I’m happy that you’re happy, Lou.”

  “I’m not allowed to be happy?”

  “Sure you are.”

  “I’m allowed to be happy, just like the next man. Aren’t you ever happy?”

  “Sometimes I’m happy.”

  “That’s the trouble with people today. Nobody’s happy. Especially young people. You’re a young man.”

  “That’s what people tell me.”

  “Be happy while you’re young.”

  I forgot to mention that Lou was a philosopher.

  “That’s good advice, Lou.”

  Lou’s upper lip was quivering, twisting his pencil-thin mustache into something like a snarl. Another secret about Lou was that he wore a hairpiece, the most open secret in the world, since Fat Jack liked to yank it off his head and toss it around the showroom when business was slow, Lou not complaining since that kind of horseplay certified him as still one-of-the-boys. Though lately, it’s true, he was getting annoyed at being the company’s number one foil. Lately, in fact, Lou was getting annoyed at everything, and who could blame him?

  Like any good salesman, he loved to eat; now, since the stroke, forget steak. Forget sex.

  One reason I refrained from sending him out on the big calls was that it meant getting down on all fours to measure the entire house, two, sometimes three floors, and sometimes, four, including basement, if, say, it were out in Hyde Park, where Stephanie lived and the garages were more elaborate than most homes. Out there they’d carpet the trees if they could. Anyway, in Lou’s condition, that could be murder, sending him out to measure a big house. Really, it could be murder.

  Fat Jack used to tell me that Lou, in his prime, had been one mean son of a bitch. He used to steal other people’s leads.

  But in fact Harry Himself had loved that about Lou – meant he was HUNGRY.

  Show me a HUNGRY salesman, Harry used to say, and I’ll show you a SUCCESS.

  Nobody but nobody could say HUNGRY like Harry Himself. Not even Fat Jack. The trick was to growl the word and Fat Jack was still in the barking stage, as if to prove that he still had a ways to go before he became a replica of Harry Himself. Even more, nobody but nobody could say SUCCESS like Harry Himself. HUNGRY and SUCCESS were words specially minted for Harry Himself.

  “Lunch?” Lou said.

  “No. You know I don’t like to be with people.”

  “We could go to Sister’s Diner.”

  “The businessmen go there.”

  “How about Stan’s Deli?”

  “Yuppies.”

  “Granger’s?”

  “Artsies.”

  “You’re a regular recluse, Eli.”

  “I just don’t like to be with people. I hate crowds anyway.”

  “Don’t you want to be discovered, Eli?”

  “As a boiler room operator?”

  “As an actor. I thought you were an actor.”

  “Well I am. I play a role every day.”

  “So do I,” said Lou. “So does everybody.”

  I told Lo
u if he had something to say he could say it here.

  What was it about people that they needed to eat something in order to talk?

  “I know you have something to tell me.”

  “You know me too well,” he chuckled.

  “We’re pals.”

  He checked left and right for spies. “Guess what I’ve got in my pocket.”

  I gasped. I knew what he had.

  “How did you get it?” I asked.

  “Never mind.”

  “You’ve got to tell me.”

  “I’ve got connections. I still have friends, you know.”

  “This’ll make you enemies.”

  He turned around to block the girls out of sight and showed me the printouts. These papers were a computer read-out of all the people in town and in the suburbs who had just moved in, into new expensive homes. Names, phone numbers, and addresses. A gold mine. Worth – in this business – something like $100,000, maybe more. Just the paper alone. Because these were TOP QUALITY names, every one a sure sale for a house-full of carpet, and expensive carpet.

  Lou leaned over and whispered, “How many people would die for this list?”

  “I can think of one.”

  I wasn’t kidding. I knew the man who had compiled that list, good old Stone Kiley over there at Seats Galore, who also had connections, it was reputed, but of a different kind. He wouldn’t be too happy to discover that someone else had his TOP QUALITY names, without paying through the nose for them, and Old Lou sure didn’t have that kind of money. For months he’d been begging Fat Jack to purchase that list but, or course, Fat Jack refused on the grounds that it was too costly, number one, and that he would never deal with a man such as Stone Kiley, number two.

  Stone Kiley, by the way, once had one of his own boiler room guys beaten up for walking off with a much less valuable list, according to rumor. Anything for a list. Targeting people according to location, religion and profession was the plasma of direct marketing and if you had those select names you parted with them over your dead body. The preacher who said a good name is more precious than gold was talking to all of us, but mostly to the sales department.