“Is your mother there? Is your mother making you say that?”
Wendy’s mother had liked me for the first several months. It was not difficult to arrange. I flattered her, dressed cleanly, and smiled often. “You have such nice teeth, Bobby,” she told me. “I just can’t believe you never had braces.” But then, a month or two before this conversation, she had found some pornographic letters I had written Wendy—it wasn’t my idea, she insisted on them, it was a job I had to do in order to have regular sex with her—and, like I say, her mother had found the letters, which in itself might not have been disastrous, but one of the letters was about a mother-daughter-boyfriend thing, and since then she could not tolerate me.
“No. I am in my bedroom. You need to go. It will be good for us,” she said. She made that yawning noise she always made when she was lying.
“You are yawning,” I said.
“I am yawning because I am tired,” she said.
“No, you are yawning because you really don’t want me to go,” I said. “Because you are lying when you say you want me to go.”
She yawned again.
“You are right. I don’t want you to go. But I think it is really important that you go.”
“I’m going,” I said. “To go, I mean.” Now I had her where I wanted her.
“Good,” she said. “I’m glad it’s decided. I’m proud of you. But now I have to go. I have to go to the grocery store with my mother.”
“What? You are doing what?”
“I slipped when I said that,” she said. “I didn’t mean to say that last part. I am staying home.”
“Stay on the phone, then,” I said.
“I have to go, Bobby. I have to do my homework. I am turning off my phone so I can do my homework. Otherwise you’ll never hang up the phone. You’ll just keep calling back and you won’t let me work. I love you but I have to get off the phone now.”
“I love you, too,” I said. “I’m sorry,” I said. But I knew she had hung up as soon as she told me she loved me. She always hung up before I could. That was how I preferred it.
My mother was out of the house, walking our dog with my stepfather. That was part of their regular routine. I waited until they had been gone ten minutes or so, to be sure they would not duck back in for something they had forgotten. An old plastic bag for the dog poop, for example. Then I called my dad.
“The hell with that, son!” he said. “Don’t be silly! You aren’t supposed to be a jewelry salesman. Let your big brother hold down that end of the fort. That’s not the right situation for you. If you’re ready to leave the nest and move to the States, come live with your old man.”
My father had never asked me to live with him before. He had often insisted that I could if I wanted to, but he had never requested it.
“Come on, Robby!” I loved it when my father would use that name for me. “The real South! Sunshine and oranges! You don’t want to waste your time in Texas with all those cowboys and rednecks. I’ve got grapefruits growing on the tree in the backyard! I eat them for breakfast.”
“Florida?” I grinned and blinked back the tears.
The next day, during another of my mother’s dog walks, I called Wendy. When I told her that I had changed my mind about Texas and now I was going to move to the States to live with my father she agreed to see me again. Because it was my father, I think, and not my brother. That made the plan sound real.
“Take me out on a date,” she said. I was making a plate of microwave nachos while we talked. “I want to see you before you leave. You weren’t going to leave without saying goodbye.”
At the end of the date she said she didn’t want to go home yet. “Let’s drive out to the field,” she said. I knew what that meant.
We suffered the sex on an oily blanket in the back of my borrowed tow truck.
“This is your goodbye present,” she said. “Your so-long fuck.”
Why does she have to use the expression so-long? I thought.
“This is too much work,” I told her after several minutes. “You are never going to come. Maybe if we move to the grass.”
I had my legs wrapped around the armature of the towing apparatus for leverage.
“No, I am close, don’t stop now,” she said.
“My jaw hurts,” I said.
“I’ll make it worth your while. Don’t stop. You’re next,” she said. “There. But softer. Right there.”
The tow truck came from an old job of mine, the Shell station on Sixth Street, which was down the street from the Safeway where Jim had first taught me to steal Du Maurier cigarettes. My friend still worked at the Shell station, and because I got him the job he would often allow me to borrow the tow truck for a few hours in the evening after Erik Jensen, the white-headed Danish owner, left.
After Wendy came and the two or three minutes of my sex were over, we wiped up and rested on each other. That was frequently the only part of our sex that was thoroughly happy for me.
“Can I have your jacket? It’s getting cold out here.”
A few years ago her parents had moved to a new development on the north end of the city and we were parked out at the end of it in a long pasture where new houses would eventually be. Beyond there were pine trees. We could see the sun going down behind the mountains. All the mosquitoes were dead from the cold and it was nice to be in the field with the last bits of sun on the sparkly white tips of the mountains. I gave her my jacket. I was grateful that she had asked for it. I was in a short-sleeved T-shirt and the hairs on my arms rose with the wind.
“It smells like it’s going to snow,” I said.
“I’m excited for you about your dad. I wasn’t surprised but I was excited.”
“I was surprised,” I said. “You can come down too. We can lie on the beach together.”
“Do they have a beach in Palm Springs? I thought that was in the desert.”
“No, he’s back in Florida. He’s got a new church there.” At this time my father was a kind of minister or guru.
“He moves all the time,” she said. “That must be great. I wish I lived in California and Arizona and Florida.”
“I know. Me, too. I mean, I guess I will be.”
She was quiet then and ran her hand across my stomach. I flinched because I did not want to have sex again. But she did not notice and she continued to stroke my stomach. Then she put her hand under my T-shirt. Her hand was hot and gluey.
“When he was still in real estate he used to live in this house right next to John Lennon,” I said. “Once we were out on the balcony, Jim and I had a balcony right off of our bedroom, and I remember there were mirrors on the closet doors. We were out there and my dad was smoking his pipe and he pointed to the other balcony, the next house over, and he said, ‘Do you boys know who the Beatles are?’ I didn’t know but I said that I did. And my dad said, ‘That fellow over there is the one who started the band. That’s John Lennon. He’s a famous musician, boys. He’s my next-door neighbor. Let that be a lesson to you, boys. You can be anything you want to be. He was just some poor kid in the streets of Liverpool and now he is famous and lives right next door to your old man.’”
“That’s a good story,” Wendy said.
“I know it sounds made up. But you can ask my dad. When you come to visit.”
“I’d like to meet him. You should invite me.”
Wendy was beautiful but I was not sure my dad would think so. He would think she was a bit thick in the ass.
“That is a good idea,” I said. “Maybe he could even pick up your ticket. He does that kind of thing. He is making a lot of money these days.”
She had her hand in my underwear now. She was patient and she knew what she was doing. She applied her intelligence rigorously to sex, unlike most people.
“I’ll give you a present if you ask him,” she said.
“I’ll ask him,” I said. “I will sure try. He would like you.”
She laughed. “I am sure I will like him,” s
he said.
I knew she would, of course. Every woman did. That was another reason not to invite her. Because of the comparison, I mean.
A few days later, on the weekend, my dad called back. “Son, it’s not right for you to move to the States. Not now. This is an important time for you. Listen to what your mother is telling you. This is a time to finish high school and take care of your responsibilities. Your mother’s right, for once in her life. I don’t like it any better than you do, son.”
I silently listened to the betrayal develop. He was a parent and so was expert at it. The deception was comfortable for me, too. I did not mind having him to blame.
“The truth is I talked to the boys about all this last night.”
That one made me take the phone away from my ear for a second to look at it. I knew he would pull that kind of thing when it did not really matter. But I did not expect it on something as important as this.
“The boys” were astral beings my father soul-traveled to while the rest of us were sleeping. He relied on their advice for many of his decisions. He would also take counsel from a woman named Priscilla, who was not precisely an astral being but lived on a parallel plane. My father’s deep confidence in the existence and wisdom of these otherworldly advisers had convinced me, when I was younger, that they were real. By this time I wouldn’t say I believed in them, but maybe I didn’t disbelieve, either. My beliefs on the matter were troubled.
“The boys have been keeping an eye on you for me. And they all agree. You need to stay in Calgary right now. The States is a dangerous place for you for the next few years, son. It was a unanimous vote. I fought like a tiger for you to come down with me. But when the big boys upstairs all have the same idea, you shut up and listen.”
I did not want to say even one word to him or hear his responses.
“You’re being dramatic, son,” my father said. “Talk to me.”
At the airport the snow melted in the parking lot and Wendy stood with her hand on the open car door.
“Aren’t you coming in?” I said. “Will you walk me to the gate, at least?” I hated to sound like that but I had no choice. I couldn’t say goodbye to her yet.
“Aren’t you cold?” she said. I wore shorts and a T-shirt because I was going to Dallas. I had a backpack and a book she had given me to say goodbye. In the cover she had written, “Friends forever.”
I tore the cover off once I was on the plane and stuck it in the pouch on the back of the seat. I was angry and tearful. The old woman seated next to me inspected me with skepticism.
“That’s not a trash bin,” she said. “Is this your first flight? Are you afraid of flying? I don’t want there to be any accidents.”
“No,” I said.
“Are you going to get sick?” she asked me. “Use the vomit bag if you are going to get sick. Maybe I should change seats. You look like someone who throws up on airplanes. I don’t like that. I am older than you are.”
It was sunrise. From the windows in the airport we could see the runways and the fields beyond, and beyond them the dark line of the mountains. The snow was more shiny than usual. I had only hoped that Wendy would stop me so that I might turn around and stay with her. But she called my bluff. On the jet bridge I had paused. I turned, and as I turned I saw the look of fear on her face. She was afraid that I would come back.
On the other end, over Dallas–Fort Worth, we sat in a stack. I could see our fellow planes circling above and below us with their faint red wing lights against the clouds and gray sky like some kid had pushed all of the buttons in an elevator. The captain explained that a freak ice storm had struck Dallas and coated the runways and the wings of the aircraft on the ground. I knew the cold weather was only my luck following us. Planes could not land or leave. The stewardesses distributed free drinks and even I had a glass of champagne. The old woman sitting next to me was drunk. She complained when I unpacked the two pieces of fried chicken Wendy’s mother had wrapped in tinfoil for my lunch. That’s how eager Wendy’s mother was to get rid of me.
“It’s your favorite,” Wendy said when she gave it to me in the car. “She wants you to know she isn’t mad at you. She thinks you’re doing the grown-up thing.”
Running away from home and high school to go into the jewelry business with my big brother. That was the mature plan of action. But I took the chicken.
“Are you really going to eat that?” the old woman next to me asked. There was an odor to her enormous mouth. Her lipstick was smeared from drinking and it looked like a live animal might jump out of that red hole and bite me on the cheek.
From all the circling and rising up and down, I finally vomited, twice, but missed her. She rose and tried to join another aisle but people were drunk and impatient. Then she fell and the stewardess insisted she return to her seat.
“I could have broken my leg,” she told me. She pulled up her dress but I would not look at her white calves and knees. “I have osteoporosis. My son is a doctor. This is your fault,” she said. “If I get a bruise.”
She massaged her legs and I leaned my forehead on the plastic window so that I would not vomit again.
At last we landed. The Texans in the airport were bundled in overcoats, boots, and scarves, and they gaped at me in my shorts and T-shirt.
“Hell, that fella there thinks it’s summertime.”
“You been outside, boy? It’s cold enough to knock a maggot off a gutwagon.”
I saw Jim. He waved to me from the baggage carousel. I almost did not recognize him in his blue suit and red tie. The tie had bright orange rhinoceroses on it. Later I would see that Mr. Popper, the owner of the jewelry store, wore the same one.
“I don’t have any bags,” I said. “Just my backpack.”
“Come on, you are going to freeze,” he said. “Here, take my coat.”
We stepped outside and he lit a cigarette.
“You smoke now? No? That’s good. But seriously, you might want to take it up. For the productivity. It’s been proven. Help you stay on your toes. Competition. They have the free market down here. Hey, here’s the car, get in. Christ, these Texans. A little snow and they think it’s the North Pole. We should set up a stand and sell fur coats. We’d be rich in an afternoon.”
It was a white Cadillac limousine. I had never been in a limousine before. The driver was wearing a shiny black cap like in a movie. He held the door open for us.
“Sorry about the limo,” Jim said. His big smile made me want to tell him about Wendy and leaving her and the jet bridge but I could not do that, either.
“This is Lisa. Lisa, my little brother, Robert. Or Bobby, really.”
Seated in one of the white leather seats of the limousine, with her back to the driver so that Jim and I could sit together on the bench, was a woman.
“Hi, Bobby.”
That was nice of her to use my name like that.
I did not know what to say to her. I tried to smile.
“I wanted to get a Rolls but apparently there’s a convention in Dallas. Cosmetic surgeons. They sucked up all the best limos. I guess we better go shopping. I knew you wouldn’t have the clothes for work but I didn’t figure you’d show up in Bermuda shorts.” He laughed. “I’m just kidding. I understand. Ready for a change. I been there. You know that. But you can’t walk into the store in that outfit. And we got to get back. It’s slammed down there. Customers were standing half a mile around the block when I came in to work this morning. With the ice storm and everything. People got the day off work, maybe. At seven o’clock in the morning. But it’s one helluva sale. This Christmas is going to be something. I am really glad you’re here. You’re going to love it. You are in a real country now.”
He showed me a small brown glass bottle about the size of half a thumb with a black plastic top, like something a doctor might use to inspect your eyes.
“Here, take a bump. This way.” He turned the bottle over twice and inhaled sharply into each nostril. “There you go. You’ll like
it. Go ahead, do a couple more. Warm yourself up. That’s probably enough for a start. Oop, slow down. You gotta be careful with that stuff. Here, pass it over, I’ll join you. Lisa? Your turn. I trade it with a fellow for help with his watches. He sells Rolexes in brown-town to all the small-timers. Crap, mostly. Gold nugget bracelets, that kind of thing. He moves some merchandise, though. There it is,” he said. “Hot in here. See those towers? That’s Dallas. Downtown Dallas. We are going to make a quick stop and pick up some watches from Granddad. He’s a good old boy. Half dead from his liver. Keeps a submachine gun on the wall behind his desk. But he’s the best secondhand Swiss watch dealer in the South. Then we’ll go shopping and get you a suit, a pair of alligator shoes. We can still get back to work by three. I have a diamond appointment at three we can’t miss. Here, pass me back that one-hitter. Okay. Your turn. A five-carat radiant. I’ve got it right here. Take a look at this.”
He opened his briefcase and took a small white paper from one of the suede pockets. He unfolded it. Inside the heavy white paper was a slender blue paper, like wax paper, but more delicate, and in the blue paper rested a diamond. It was the size of a nickel.
“Hold out your hand,” he said. He picked it up with his fingers and dropped it in my palm.
“That’s thirty thousand dollars you’re holding. Thirty thousand dollars our cost. If I sell it today it’s a two-thousand-dollar commission. Not bad, eh? One day’s work, two grand. On top of my regular salary.”
“That’s your brother,” Lisa said. “It’s not like that for everyone at the store.”
I inspected the innocuous glassy stone. My palms were sweating and the water and oil coated the diamond.
“Hey, give me back that bottle, would you, Lisa? Here, Bobby.” I didn’t know where to put the diamond while I sniffed the cocaine. “Go ahead and hit it one more time. No, get them both. Both nostrils. Pinch the other one as you do it.”
How to Sell: A Novel Page 2