Rich people like the Eatons can BUY miracles.
“You’re taking it well, Eli. Or are you taking it too well? I can’t tell with you.”
“I’m fine. Sonja, of course. Right?”
“Yup.”
“What happens to Sonja?”
“You want revenge?”
“Aha.”
“Right now Sonja’s not your worry. Stephanie’s been trying to take her own life.”
“I refuse to believe that,” I said.
“Her whole face. Her whole body. She was knifed up and down.”
“Have you seen her?”
“No. This is all from her mother.”
“How long until I can see her?”
Maishe shot me a startled look. He asked if I’d been listening to him.
“Never.”
“Who’s to stop me?”
“You’ll never get in that house.”
“SOMEDAY Stephanie’s got to step out.”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Look, Stephanie’s a dream. Keep her that way.”
“You know I’ll get to see her, one way or another.”
“Then you’ll be destroying her dream, too, about you. This may be small comfort at a time like this, but you’re the last person Stephanie wants to see. Because she’s in love with you. That’s what her mother told me. You’ll never see her again, Eli. Get that through your head. There is no more Stephanie.”
Chapter 31
We were having a Going Out of Business Sale. Fat Jack proudly announced it to me when I walked in, after I saw the signs outside – Everything Must Go. I was surprised. I had thought business was good, even though business was always bad. Fat Jack was in a terrific mood.
“We’re closing shop?”
“What makes you say that?”
I pointed to the signs.
“Oh that! That’s our latest advertising campaign.”
“You mean we’re not going out of business?”
“Why should we go out of business?”
“My mistake.”
This was like the time we had a fire sale, except that there had been no fire. When the Ohio River flooded we always had a Flood Sale. The Ohio River was miles away. Harry Himself had gained GENIUS status within the retail community when we had tried to trademark the word SALE, so that nobody else in America and perhaps the world could use the word without breaking the law, or paying him royalties, and even though the attempt failed, the legend continued.
I told Fat Jack I wouldn’t use that pitch upstairs as it would be unethical and he gave no static.
But he added: “You’re no salesman.”
“Thank you.”
He wanted the latest on Stephanie.
I said she was in California.
“So you lost her again,” he said and I said yes, I lost her again.
The best way to forget about her, he suggested, was to hire a bunch of new girls.
“Fresh blood,” he said. “Fresh pussy.”
That wasn’t such a bad idea all of a sudden.
I interviewed a beautiful blonde named Donna Mylstrom, from Clifton Heights – incredibly beautiful. Put movie stars to shame. Her resume said she had finished high school and had one year of college. I had never heard of the college, but she was going back after she saved some money to train for something paralegal, or para something. She had a body that refused to quit. I gave her the voice test, which she flunked. She had no voice. She whispered and had absolutely no oomph. She’d never get a lead.
I hired her.
First day on the job she walked over to my desk all flustered. She was hemorrhaging. She was so embarrassed. She protested when I offered to drive her to the hospital. On the way there, to the Jewish Hospital, she said the bleeding had probably stopped, so I drove her home. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said when I dropped her off. “You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman,” she said.
“No I don’t,” I said.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she said.
A week later I had her over to my apartment in Mount Adams and she was terrific in bed, although I kept worrying about a repeat of her problems. You really didn’t want them bleeding all over your lily white dick unless you were going to marry them and even then it wasn’t much fun and only proved what Maishe had always said, that women were more than just tits and ass, unfortunately; they bled, they had headaches, they got into moods. That’s why you went from one to another. Soon as one started to bleed, you moved on. Anyway, Donna Mylstrom had taken care of her problem just in time and was really terrific, really sensational, really superlative in bed. She didn’t do much. She just spread her legs, which was quite enough. She was so gorgeous. I loved her nipples. She was so gorgeous that I thought this could be a lasting thing – weeks! She came over every night and it developed into something of a routine. We walked in, threw our clothes off and went right to work. No lights out. No music. No talk. I just drove straight into her and worked her until she screamed.
Then I drove her home. I had no complaints. She did.
“You never talk,” she said.
I shrugged.
“You never talk to me,” she said.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
I was giving her my body. What more was there to give? She was so beautiful.
I tried talking to her but every topic was a topic I had already covered with Stephanie. I told Donna that it might be best if she found a guy who talked. I didn’t do talk. Talking was extra. She said it was all right the way it was. I didn’t have to talk but I persuaded her I wasn’t right for her, so she quit the job and was gone.
Every night after work I drove over to Stephanie’s house in Hyde Park and parked down the bottom of her drive. I knew where her room was and thought of climbing up. I stayed parked down there for about an hour, then drove off. I drove there this night and a cop was there in the drive. He asked me what business I had. Checked my driver’s license. Told me to leave and never come back. I was back the next night and the cop was still there, so I left.
I hired a few more girls, four of them. Two of them were named Sue. I took them both to bed, at different times. One was married, the other had a boyfriend. I learned that these things didn’t matter. The other two were named Carol and Barbara and I took them to bed, too. They all complained that I didn’t talk. Barbara, or maybe it was Carol, complained that I didn’t kiss.
“All we do is go straight to bed,” complained Carol, or Barbara. Or maybe it was Sue.
Marie, Fat Jack’s old standby, was next. She offered to cook me dinner. She cried while I drove her to my apartment. She cried while she cooked us dinner. She cried while we ate. She cried while we made love. She cried after we made love. I put on the ballgame and watched the game.
She asked why I didn’t wonder why she was crying. Wasn’t I going to ask?
“In a minute.”
The Reds had runners on first and third.
When they failed to score I said, “Why have you been crying?”
She explained that she had become Fat Jack’s mistress only to please me.
“That doesn’t say much for me,” I said. “I’d never ask a woman to do something like that.”
“I was afraid I’d lose my job. I support my mother, you know.”
“I’d never fire you over something like that.”
“Maybe not you. But what about Fat Jack?”
“He’d never EVER do that, either.”
“You don’t know men,” she said.
“You don’t know Fat Jack,” I said.
She cried.
She said I had forgotten what lovemaking was for, that I made love like other people drank or took drugs.
For the diversion.
I hired two girls named Kathy and I liked one better than the other, Kathy Ann Sanger was the one I liked, and I decided to love her. I decided to TALK to her and take her places. But I couldn’t take her to Fountain Square. All of
downtown Cincinnati belonged to Stephanie. The ball park was out, since I had twice taken Stephanie to ballgames. Kathy Ann wanted to go to the Covington Landing on the river, but that was out, of course, since that also belonged to Stephanie. Forget Sugar n’ Spice. Forget Joe’s Bar or Maxy’s.
So we ended up in my apartment every night and even the walls laughed when she said: “You never talk. We never go anywhere.”
* * *
Maishe said, “Let’s go to New York.”
I shrugged.
“There’s nothing here anymore, Eli. Cincinnati’s finished for you.”
“There’s Sonja. I’m not finished with her.”
“You want revenge?”
“Justice.”
“What world do YOU live in?”
Even Stephanie, Maishe explained, wasn’t seeking justice. She wasn’t pressing charges.
“Of course not,” I said. “She’d have to appear in court and obviously, after what was done to her…”
“She doesn’t want to appear anywhere,” Maishe agreed.
Chapter 32
The summer was coming to an end but it kept getting hotter. Even September wouldn’t let go. Ben, over at Ben’s News and Smoke Shop, said it was the ozone. Soon it would be summer all year round. He asked me if I had read Philip Wylie, who had explained it all, and also, by the way, had explained all about Momism, the philosophy that blamed all the world’s troubles on over-protective mothers. That made Ben laugh. Only Mencken made sense, and a good cigar. He was retiring anyway, so it didn’t matter that in a couple of months or weeks the wrecking crews were coming. He was only worried about Hank, his partner, who was in the hospital with a heart attack, maybe over losing the business, maybe not; he had a bad heart.
“A shame,” Ben said about Lou Emmett. “He had started buying cigars again.”
Ben had been packing up, ready for them to come move him out. He had much valuable stuff here. Souvenirs, mementos that went back to World War Two. Once upon a time this had been the hub, the crossroads.
“Wait a minute,” he said.
He went to the back and returned with a baseball, and a well-worn baseball it was.
Ben said, “Remember the ‘50s?”
“Sure.”
“Those Reds of the ‘50s, they never won a World Series,” Ben said. “They were before the Big Red Machine. Not a Bench, Perez or Rose in the bunch…not even an Eric Davis to bring it up closer. None of that glamour. Our boys were named Smoky Burgess, Ed Bailey, Ray Jablonski, Johnny Temple, Roy McMillan, and of course Ted Kluszewski, Gus Bell and Wally Post. Big Klu, Bell and Post, brother could they hit. Hit those 222 homers that year, 1955 I believe it was, those balls popping out of Crosley Field left and right. Klu was the lefty. Post was the righty. Tied the league record. Klu hit those clean line drives, like hanging rope, remember? Wally Post hit missiles. You had kids waiting outside the left field fence to catch him when he socked one. He once hit one over a building that was some four hundred feet away. They had no pitching, that’s why they couldn’t win. Big Klu made all the headlines, and deservedly so. One great year after another. He was up there with Mays, Snider, Banks, 40 homers that year, drove in more than 100 runs. But Wally Post, he was part Indian, I believe. He had those high cheekbones. A silent type of individual. Kept to himself. One great year, but what a year!
“To me, that’s the greatest achievement of all. The rest of them were blessed. They had natural ability. To me that’s no big deal. But to eke out one great year from minimum gifts, now that’s something. That’s all you can ask of a man, or a woman, to give you that one great year, don’t you think? That was Wally Post. I’ll never forget him. He came in here once, you know.”
Ben began to reflect, lost himself in reverie. Now I never disbelieved him when he told people so-and-so had been here, and I never believed him, either. It was part of the atmosphere of Ben’s News and Smoke Shop, that kind of talk. It was part of Ben. Made no difference to me if Wally Post had been here or not. Ben was here and that was enough.
But now he handed me the baseball and sure enough it was autographed, to Ben, by Wally Post.
“Keep it,” he said.
Out of politeness, I declined.
He said he had only kept it around to remind him of the value of one great year, something we all had in us, and at his age, no, he didn’t need it anymore. But maybe I did, he said, so I kept it, because maybe I did. Yes, maybe I did.
I found out something funny about myself. The only thing I looked forward to all day was going to Ben’s. That was about all that got me up in the mornings. That being the case I decided to change my life swiftly and completely, and quit moping around. THERE IS NO MORE STEPHANIE.
I answered an ad for an advertising copywriter, since I had written much of Fat Jack’s copy, not just the boiler room stuff, but stuff that also got into the papers. I’d have to brush up on my objectives, of course. I showed up on one of the top floors of the Carew Tower. I met a receptionist named Mary. Then I met a man named Mr. Snow. He was a short man and powerfully built and wore a crew cut. I had filled out an application form but neither Mary nor Mr. Snow seemed to care too much about that, as much as what kind of water I drank. When I said tap water Mary and Mr. Snow shared a knowing look and a smile.
“That’s poison, you know,” said Mr. Snow.
“Am I in the right place? I’m here about the copywriter’s job.”
“By all means,” said Mr. Snow. “So let me show you a film.”
Which was partly about all the chemicals Americans drank from tap water, and mostly about a new filtering system that got all that out.
Mr. Snow asked me how I felt about the presentation.
“Fine,” I said. “Is that what I’d be advertising?”
“Why yes. That’s the product. Do you think you could sell that product?”
“Of course.”
“To your friends, relatives?”
I didn’t get the connection, until it was explained that I first had to BUY one of these units.
“I thought I’d be writing copy.”
“That, too.”
“What sort of salary are we talking?”
“Salary? No salary. You keep ten percent of all the sales you make.”
“Sales?”
“You’d be selling mostly to friends and relatives, using your home unit as a sample. But you have to BELIEVE in the product. Now, for this unit, your fee is a mere twelve hundred dollars…”
Crooks. They were crooks. They sold WATER! Like Morris Silver selling holes in the ground.
Which didn’t mean that I didn’t keep trying. I went out for interviews several times a week figuring it was time to find a job suitable for Stephanie, when we finally got together again, and I knew we would, at which time I’d be able to tell her that I was no longer LIMITED. Or maybe just telling her that I was off my can would be enough to make her happy.
Chapter 33
Her mother, as usual, answered the phone.
“I wish you would stop this,” she said. “Have you spoken to your friend?”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to Maishe.”
“Then he’s told you.”
“Everything.”
“Then you know this family has suffered a great tragedy.”
“I am part of that family, Mrs. Eaton.”
“Eli, at a time like this we deserve our peace.”
“I simply want to talk to her.”
“I assure you that Stephanie will get the best medical treatment available. Maybe someday…”
“Now. Please.”
“But Stephanie doesn’t want to talk to you, Eli.”
“There must be something…”
“There is NOTHING.”
* * *
Mona was acting strange. I couldn’t figure out what it was. She wasn’t her usual friendly self and wasn’t doing much talking, at least not to me. You get to know your people after a while and you get so you can tell one silence from
another.
I figured she was upset over the dirty work she was now doing, known in the business as upscaling, which went like this: You called a person who had already purchased a medium-priced carpet and you acted ignorant. You said you had her order right in front of you, ready for delivery and installation, but weren’t sure which carpet she had bought, due to an error on the part of the salesman. The order failed to specify. Had she bought the medium-priced carpet, or the more expensive one? The medium-priced, came the answer. Oh, you said. It’s none of my business. I only work here in shipping. But, between you and me, the more expensive brand is quite a deal…resists stains and comes with not a 20, but a 30-year guarantee. So which one should we send out to you, Mrs. Blank?
The risk here was that it could all backfire, the customer might cancel the entire deal, even declining the medium-priced carpet she had already signed for, and that was one reason Mona hated upscaling; the other was that even though Mona could live with the marginal ethics of telephone soliciting, this was a step beyond, a leap from sales, and all the deceptions that involved, into the realm of outright crookedness.
Mona even had trouble verifying, the process by which you tested the strength of a lead by phoning the potential customer and never saying the obvious, which is, are you sure you want to buy? Most people said no, I just said yes to get the damned solicitor off the phone – or, no, I’ve changed my mind, or, no, I never agreed to anything. So what you said was, I’m just calling to check your address, Mrs. Blank, and if Mrs. Blank gave you her address that was a fairly strong lead, and if you said, fine, our representative will be over at the appointed time, and she still agreed, then you had a very strong lead.
But even that Mona considered deceptive, but manageable, to her conscience.
Upscaling was another story.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” I said.
She shrugged.
“What’s the problem, Mona?”
She shrugged again.
“Out with it, Mona.”
“I have news for you,” she said.
I winced. You get so you dread news, even good news. My mom got that way toward the end and I noticed the same thing with many older people who’d been through a lot. They didn’t want to hear news. Even good news.
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