Let's go For Broke

by Mary Lasswell

  The sound of a car brought the ladies running.

  “Turn on the electric current.” A young man hopped out of the truck. “You people need a sign or house number or mailbox…something out there to let people know the address. I thought I’d never find it.”

  “Too bad we didn’t bring N. Carnation’s exotic mailbox.” Miss Tinkham smiled.

  “We got a tin breadbox I don’t never use,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “It’s one o’ them fancy ones ’sposed to hold just one loaf o’ bread. We could use that, if we nailed it to a post or somethin’.”

  Miss Tinkham snapped her fingers and went to bring the paints:

  “RTE. 7. BOX 7. FIVE POINTS ASSOCIATES. I’ll print that in red and black. Anyone should be able to find us after that!”

  The man from the Light and Power company said: “All set. Some of those bulbs must be forty or fifty years old, but they still burn.”

  “Not like now,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “They don’t last two weeks. Let’s hook up the radio.” Miss Tinkham brought it in and soon tuneful Mexican music filled the room.

  “I never seen anybody sew on their fingers fast as N. Carnation,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. The little woman had the new blouse well underway. “I’ll do the skirt for her, ’cause it don’t get but one seam and a waistband. First I’ll see if Mrs. Feeley needs any help.”

  Miss Tinkham finished her paperwork and came back to the kitchen just as N. Carnation’s new outfit was nearing completion. Mrs. Feeley came in covered with streaks of dirt and sweat on her face.

  “Make a list, will you?” she asked Miss Tinkham. “When we go back to the Ark, we gotta bring them garden hose. Waterin’ with a bucket sure gets old.”

  N. Carnation had the scissors and was busy cutting out something from bits of newspaper. Miss Tinkham saw that she was making various types of flower petals.

  “Those are patterns,” she said. “She should have thin cardboard or heavy paper.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen returned with a thin cardboard dress box and N. Carnation smiled her thanks. She went out and brought in some of the dyed feathers. They had dried out much lighter and were shaded toward the quill end. The ladies paid strict attention as N. Carnation placed the feathers one on top of the other until the pile she held between her finger and thumb was about half an inch thick. Then she placed one of the patterns on them and trimmed around it. The feathers, once they dried, were satiny. She placed them carefully in a small circle with a tight ball of curved feathers in the middle. Then she made wide circles around the bunch and tied the stems with thread. She handed it to Miss Tinkham shyly: “Una camelia.”

  “Damn if it don’t look just like Pink Perfection.” Mrs. Feeley was impressed.

  Then N. Carnation went for some more feathers and made a perfect blue morning-glory with a white throat. She cut round short petals and made a dahlia, then a yellow pansy.

  “The Mexican Indians were the greatest of all artists in feather work,” Miss Tinkham explained. “They and the Hawaiians. They knew these things hundreds of years ago. I wonder why she didn’t make them at home, instead of trying to raise real flowers? I must ask Jesse the next time we see him.”

  N. Carnation went on speedily forming easily recognizable flowers in tasteful colors.

  “Clavel.” She smiled, holding up a pale pink carnation with sharply saw-toothed petals.

  “Carnation!” Mrs. Feeley shouted and poked her in the ribs. “You! N. Carnation. Cummer see yammy you!”

  “Carnación,” Miss Tinkham improvised. “Clavel, en español. Carnación inglés. Sabe?”

  “Qué bonito.” N. Carnation smiled.

  Miss Tinkham’s eyes gleamed: “Don’t look now, but I do believe we are in business. Those blasted snowballs have been giving me nightmares ever since I discovered them, but I think we’ll be rid of them at last.” Her friends were used to Miss Tinkham’s non sequiturs as her mind leapt like the chamois. “First of all, we must make a sample. Por favor, N. Carnation, cinco estos.” She held up the delicate yellow pansy, along with five fingers. She was strictly a suspenders-and-belt man, not trusting her microscopic Spanish. N. Carnation understood and started cutting two big petals for the top, three little ones for the bottom.

  “D S means ten,” Mrs. Feeley volunteered, holding up ten fingers.

  “Why don’t we all learn, while we’re helpin’ make flowers?” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “She can tell us in Mess-kin an’ we’ll tell her in American.”

  Miss Tinkham was back with three or four snowballs, the paints, brush and glue her friends had bought that morning. She took the feather flowers and pinned them against the styrafoam balls, overlapping the petals a little. The effect was lovely. Then she got a paring knife and poked a hole in the ball, covered the flower stems with glue and placed them in the slits. N. Carnation watched closely and approvingly, especially when Miss Tinkham opened the bottle of black paint and painted the little “whiskers” on the throats of the pansies.

  “Eso!” N. Carnation was delighted with the realistic effect of the little stripes.

  “Now you got a flower ball, what you gonna do with it?” Mrs. Feeley asked.

  “There is a box of Chinese silk tassels and cords in the consignment, obviously bell pulls,” Miss Tinkham said. “I thought they would be a total loss, but not now!” Mrs. Rasmussen looked at Mrs. Feeley silently. Miss Tinkham was soon back with a huge pasteboard box. She dumped the contents upside down on the kitchen floor.

  “This one, I think.” She selected a long, bronze-colored silk tassel with an elaborate knot of cord above it. “Mustn’t be wasteful.” She smiled and cut off most of the doubled cord that the tassel hung by. The tassel she tied to the hook in the bottom of the flower ball. Then she tied the other length of cord to the hook in the top of the ball. The over-all length was about thirty inches. Her friends were entranced.

  “You can hang it up anywhere,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Sure be pretty for folks in hospitals to look at.”

  “An’ them flowers ain’t gonna wither,” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “With a small outlay of cash, I think we have something outstanding,” Miss Tinkham said. “The flower ball should have one or two bits of glass from those Japanese windchimes hanging by the tassel. I think we have just given birth to Patio Chimes!”

  “They’re sure gorgiss,” Mrs. Feeley said. “I could look at it by the hour.”

  “The possibilities are endless, all the color combinations! Since they are honestly artificial, frankly fake, I have no objection even to spraying a little glitter paint on some of the edges or centers. If we run out of the fine hand-made silk tassels, which we will very shortly, we can use bunches of ribbon streamers in various gay colors. Your brain child, N. Carnation! Para Usted. Hang it up in your room.”

  N. Carnation’s cup was running over and it showed around the lower lashes.

  “C’mon!” Mrs. Feeley grabbed the ball and went to hang it in the little woman’s room from the convenient old gas fixture that hung from the ceiling.

  Mrs. Rasmussen motioned to her to put on her new dress.

  “A bañarme primero,” N. Carnation said and picked up her towel and cake of soap. Her friends waited in the kitchen, sitting around the table.

  “They’ll sell like hot cakes,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Just think o’ the different kinds an’ colors.”

  “We’ve simply got to make Ben Hur Grossman sell us the consignment for an outright price,” Miss Tinkham said. “We could never separate his part in those snowballs, when it was N. Carnation’s idea to make the flowers so ingeniously out of nothing at all. We must find him and make him sell, even if we pay him out on time. From here on, I can see that all of us will have to work at the flowermaking. We will take Mrs. Rasmussen’s suggestion of learning Spanish while teaching N. Carnation English. Once we have customers for the feather flowers, they will be pre-sold, as the jargon goes, to buy Mrs. Feeley’s real flowers.”

  “Take a few months for them to git big enough to do no
thin’ with,” Mrs. Feeley agreed. “The glass house’d be a fine place to make our factory. Ain’t they gonna be bewruful hangin’ from that there glass dome with them colors o’ glass shinin’ down on em?”

  “Don’t get too attached to them!” Miss Tinkham laughed. “You won’t want to part with them at any price.”

  N. Carnation came in, shyly proud of her sweet new outfit. She looked ten years younger.

  “Flower by name, and flower by nature.” Miss Tinkham smiled. “Muy bonita.”

  “Much-oh serve-aces, much-oh bonita,” Mrs. Feeley laughed and went for the beer.

  By Friday noon the conservatory was a bower of color and movement. The ladies hung the flower balls up while N. Carnation went to work for Boss Lady at the turkey-packing plant. She came home about eleven and brought a big stack of hot tortillas. Her eyes shone when she saw the display. Flower balls swayed from every available hook and bracket. The original brackets for hanging baskets came in beautifully.

  Miss Tinkham had conveyed the idea to N. Carnation that the flowers for this use should be flat, and she had come up with what looked like blooms of huge fringed tuberous begonias in orange and yellow. She made white marguerites with yellow centers, and gardenias of pure white feathers.

  “But the pale morning-glory balls are the loveliest of all.” Miss Tinkham wiped up the last of her ham gravy from her plate at lunch. “I have just remembered that across from the Ark there is a store that sells parts for artificial flowers, petals, corollas, leaves, stamens, and floral wire of all kinds. When we go in for the appliances, we must get the extras for N. Carnation’s art. Twisted wire to make little tendrils would make the morning-glories perfect.”

  “She’ll lose her mind.” Mrs. Rasmussen smiled. “She ain’t never seen no store like that.”

  “First,” Miss Tinkham said, “we have to have the glass wind chimes. I wonder where we could buy them wholesale? But there’s no time for that now. Second, I have got to find Ben Hur Grossman. There is no way we could divide his share in this deal.”

  “Get Ol’-Timer to drive you,” Mrs. Feeley said, “while we mind the store. She dyed some o’ them feathers pale lavender by mixin’ red an’ blue dye. We’ll be makin’ some different kinda flower this evenin’.” Real or fake, Mrs. Feeley would miss nothing to do with flowers.

  “How much have we in the kitty?” Miss Tinkham asked.

  “‘Bout six dollars, after payin’ the meters an’ stockin’ up.” Mrs. Rasmussen dived into her satchel. “Ain’t this his card…Sunset Trailer Court?”

  “It is indeed!” Miss Tinkham beamed. “There is four dollars left from the five you gave me. I spent one dollar for twenty magazines. If I reach a deal, I’ll pay five down…it isn’t much, but it shows we mean business.” She handed Mrs. Rasmussen four singles and took the five-dollar bill and the card.

  Once the mysteries of the underpass were understood, Miss Tinkham decided as she and Old-Timer whirled along in the truck that Five Points was really not far from the center of things.

  “Don’t we have a good life, Old-Timer?” she inquired rhetorically. “Aren’t you so happy sometimes that you think you could hardly stand it?”

  He tapped out “Shave and a haircut, six bits” on the horn.

  Mr. Grossman reclined in a gaudy plastic-covered long chair by the side of a huge and shiny trailer.

  “Take the chase lounge,” he said. “You unloading the merchandise?”

  “Not one solitary item,” Miss Tinkham was able to answer truthfully. “That’s what I came to see you about. The stuff is nothing but leftovers and in order to sell anything, I’m going to have to practically give it away. The only way I know what kind of mark-up to make is to own it outright. How much will you take for the lot?”

  “The big vases are worth twenty-five apiece.”

  “I don’t deny it, but I’m not sure I can get it,” Miss Tinkham said. “All the rest is pressed glass, tassels, foam snowballs…”

  “Knickknacks, knickknacks, all day I’m dusting knickknacks,” he said. “I’m retired now, thanks God. Nobody in the world could sell those goofy snowballs. I’m too tired to boggan. Last week I got married to a nice little widow.” He threw the butt of a big cigar over his shoulder. “Tell you what: fifty dollars takes the lot.”

  “Fine!” Miss Tinkham cried, opening her bag in a hurry. “We can’t pay it all at once, but I’ll sign a note, on or before. We’ll pay as fast as we get the money.”

  She tore two leaves out of her notebook and wrote out an I O U before Ben Hur could change his mind. He signed a bill of sale, protesting that it was valid even if they never paid a cent over the five-dollar bill.

  “We could have kept everything and never come back at all,” Miss Tinkham said, “if we were that kind of people. Shall you be here for some time?”

  “Right here.” He lit a fresh cigar and waved goodbye.

  “Not a bad sort really,” Miss Tinkham said to Old-Timer. They reached Five Points quickly. Miss Tinkham noticed the sign she had seen the first day, “Fairy Oaks, one mile.”

  “Let us drive down there on a reconnaissance mission,” she said. “Now that we know the owners, and the antiques are ours to sell, we must keep track of them as they are potential customers. What a tremendous profit there is in the antique racket! That man made a profit even on the fifty dollars we promised to pay. They buy the stuff for practically nothing.”

  Fairy Oaks was extremely fancy, pink brick with lots of antique shutters painted white. Evergreen shrubs seemed to be in lavish bloom until Miss Tinkham walked up to one and touched the flowers. “Plastic!” She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Wired on!” There was the inevitable swimming pool painted blue. In it she saw little islands of white styrafoam anchored to the edge of the pool by white cotton thread. The little islands were covered with fresh gardenias and the heads of the two men emerged, sleek as seals, from the water.

  “We got the idea at Fortín de las Flores in Mexico.” The older one smiled as he dried off his gold ankle bracelet. She noticed that both the partners wore identical nail polish on their toenails.

  “I came over to size up the competition,” she said.

  They showed her the studio and she observed a bed large enough to hold ten such with a fantastic mural painted over the top of it in place of a headboard.

  “Quite a Sportspalast!” she smiled.

  “One of our prize-fighter friends painted it. He’s a regular Picassyioh.”

  “Picasso does very well with one eye,” Miss Tinkham said. “Where is the merchandise?”

  “We just decorate our home and let the customers pick out anything they want duplicated. Like these drapes and the patio arrangement, and stuff.” The owner showed her an old amethyst glass lamp that lowered by means of gilded chains. He pointed out a set of French gilt candelabra with opal glass lilies and gold leaves.

  “They could be wired for electricity with hardly any trouble.”

  “I believe you would.” Miss Tinkham turned on her heel. “Thanks for the tour.”

  “You haven’t sold the vases, have you? Incidentally, our cook would like some more squabs. They were delicious!”

  “When do you want them?” Miss Tinkham asked.

  “This afternoon, if possible. You said you were just down the road a bit.”

  “You know where the Fairy Oaks sign is? When you get there, turn into the driveway. Our mailbox will be up this afternoon. Five Points Associates. How many squabs do you want?”

  “Six and we’ll bring the station wagon.”

  “To carry six squabs?”

  “Don’t be coy! To carry the vases, of course.”

  “Hasta!” Miss Tinkham murmured. She smiled as she climbed into the truck thinking of a dear departed friend whose entire Spanish vocabulary consisted of the word “until,” which she pronounced with a strongly aspirate h instead of leaving it properly silent. It was a useful word, meaning nothing and sounding sinister in its sibilance. Miss Tinkham saved it f
or scatting cats and for people she did not like.

  Six dollars from the squabs would buy a treasure of beautiful flower parts for N. Carnation. Money had no sex, a dollar was worth about thirty cents, and even at that, hard to get and still harder to hold on to.

  “It is really disgusting how little one can do without it!”

  “Company!” Miss Tinkham said to Old-Timer as he drove the truck bumpily past the utilities truck that was parked by the kitchen. “It’s the boys. They didn’t wait till Saturday.”

  Bim, Jesse, and James were seated with Mrs. Feeley, Mrs. Rasmussen, and N. Carnation drinking beer. A freshly opened case of cold bottles stood on the table.

  “How’d you do?” Mrs. Feeley asked when all the boys had shaken hands with Miss Tinkham.

  “He let me have it for fifty dollars.” She handed the receipt to Mrs. Rasmussen.

  “We’re in business for real now.” Mrs. Rasmussen smiled. “Ain’t no tassels left.”

  “Go look in the glass house.” Mrs. Feeley got up eyes twinkling. “They brung us a present. You ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”

  Beer in hand, the group went to the conservatory. There Miss Tinkham looked first at the beautiful display of flower balls, close to a hundred by now. Then her eyes lit on a large object, about twenty feet long, and three feet high, rising to a curve in the middle. It was made of wrought iron and bore in letters eighteen inches high: ENTRANCE TO THE OSTRICH FARM.

  “We saw it in a junk yard,” James explained, “and thought it would make a fine sign for you. Ostrich Farm would be a pretty good trade mark for your enterprises here, if you liked the idea.”

  “It’s marvelous.” Miss Tinkham hugged him. “I do believe it is the original one used at the World’s Fair in St. Louis! Of course I was a small, small child at the time, and may be mistaken.”

  “We’ll put it up for you,” Bim said. “Be simpler than painting the other signs, though we’d list all the things you have for sale an’ essetra on the plywood signs.”