“That’s the one. Yes sir. Forty-nine ninety-five. A brand-new Rolex men’s President, solid eighteen-karat gold, lifetime warranty.”
You spend the rest of your career trying to recapture that innocence. Sinlessness and candor like that is a fierce advantage. But you can’t fake it.
“So your old man was a boxer,” he said, rolling the head of the watch through his fingers. “He must have had a few pounds on you,” he said, and laughed. “Well, you going to save me any money on this watch, son? What’s the best price? You ask the boss-man what his best price is for cash money. If you can save me a little money I think I’ll take this one home.”
I left the watch in his hands. I didn’t do it because it was the right thing to do, though it was, but because I was afraid to ask for it back. I ran into the back-of-the-house and went to the safe room to find the link box, which was a clear plastic fishing tackle box, with a white label on the side that read ROLEX, that was kept full of men’s and ladies’ stainless-steel and stainless-and-gold jubilee and oyster links and eighteen-karat white and yellow gold links for the Presidents, and even some diamond pave or bezel set links for the diamond Presidents, and pulled out five President links, made sure they were all the same size and all had screws, grabbed a screwdriver off of the Watchman’s desk, and hurried back onto the sales floor before an authentic salesperson could approach him and steal the sale. He was standing there admiring the watch on his wrist in a case mirror that he had found. Next time bring the customer a mirror. Especially a black customer, I knew. The more you serve them the better.
Later I found out that this, too, was false. In fact just the opposite is the case. But it takes years to learn how to sell.
“What did the man say? You work him over for me? You give him the old one-two? The combination?”
I knew we had four thousand and fifty dollars in the men’s Presidents we were running for forty-nine ninety-five. These watches were truly loss leaders for us. To bring in the big fish.
“He said forty-seven hundred,” I told him. I knew Jim would cut them down to forty-five fifty, sometimes, to close a deal. “For cash.”
“That’s no sales tax, then,” he said. “For cash. That’s forty-seven tax, title, and license. Out the door.”
“Yes sir. Forty-seven hundred out the door.”
“Sold. You going to fix this so she fits me? I’ll just wear her out. This thing come with a box? I can put my old Seiko in there. See what my wife thinks about that,” he said, and laughed again.
“Hell, that’s not a bad way to start your Monday morning, is it, son? What did you say your name was?” He was counting hundred-dollar bills onto the counter. My Windex bottle and my roll of paper towels were still sitting there on the glass. “I bet there’s a fine commission for you on this. I sure hope so. You look awful young to be selling jewelry, come to think of it. You old enough to be out of high school? Course there ain’t no shame in working for a living. I never finished high school myself. And look at me now. Work hard and you’ll be wearing one of these yourself someday, son.”
“Yes sir,” I said. “I hope so, sir,” I said. I finished installing the links and handed him the watch. I counted the money. There was forty-seven hundred dollars. I tucked it into the outside pocket of my jacket.
“Now I’m going to need an appraisal for this watch. You can’t wear a watch like this uninsured. Write me up a receipt, young man. There you go, write down all the details. Lifetime warranty, you said. Put it down in black and white. I’m gonna keep that piece of paper in a safe place. Safety deposit box. With that insurance appraisal.”
He shook the watch down to the end of his wrist, before the wrist joint. It fit. It was snug but it had just a bit of slide. You should be able to slip the end of your pinkie finger between the bracelet and the base of the wrist.
“Put that box in a bag for me, would you, son? Stick that old Seiko in there. Worn that watch for twenty years. My son will get it now. How’s that look? Now that’s a bit of sunshine. Look at that light up.” He laughed again, that large laugh of the older southern black man. It made you happier to hear it. “That there’s the real deal. What will this appraise for? Eight, nine grand?”
“Eleven thousand eight hundred,” I explained. “That’s brand-new retail list price. If you had to walk into Waltham’s today and buy a new one out of their case, that is what you would pay. So that’s what we appraise them for. Retail replacement value.”
“All right, well you get that in the mail to me tomorrow. It’s been a pleasure. A real pleasure. You’ll see me again. Yes sir. You’re my jeweler now. You got a card? Hell, you haven’t even told me your name.”
“Bobby Clark, sir,” I said. I shook his hand. I had not wanted to do that because my palms were wet with sweat. “I’ll put a card in the appraisal, sir.” I did not have cards yet. After he left I went along the line of watch cases and made sure all the cases were locked. I went into the diamond room and sat there for a minute in the red leather chair that was fashioned out of white and black bulls’ horns, just like the table the brass numbers sat on. Besides newspapers on my paper route growing up, which didn’t really count, and credit card applications I had sold at Sears for a few afternoons before they found out none of my applications were going through, that men’s President was my first time, my first sale.
In the back-of-the-house Jim was waiting for me. He was in the hallway next to the customers’ bathroom, what we called the executive bathroom. It had Frette hand towels and the expensive toilet paper. There was another bathroom in the back that we were all supposed to use. But the saleswomen tended to use this front bathroom on the sly, and it was the one I used, too, because if I had to I could pretend I was only replacing the toilet paper or cleaning the mirror. I always had my Windex with me. It was a safer place to do a line.
For years bathrooms were sanctuaries for me. In time I learned that the best ones are not private bathrooms at all, because in these someone can destroy the solitude by knocking on the door. Then you are on their schedule. The one you want is not a big, alienating public toilet, the ones in an airport, but a smallish-sized restroom with three or four stalls, where you can take one next to the wall and sit there as long as you please. Your boss, your wife, the police, they are all far away from that toilet and that space. It is like being on an airplane, but happier, because you are alone.
The hallway to the executive bathroom was also a confidential space insulated from the rest of the store. The steps to Mr. Popper’s office led to this hallway. The walls were papered in a green-and-silver-chevroned fabric, there was a row of porcelain-framed mirrors on one side, and it was dimly lit by a row of five small, round, pink glass chandeliers that Jim said Sheila had bought on an island off the coast of Venice. The hallway was not an easy way to get from the front to the back so you were supposed to stay out of it. But there was no official rule. I liked it because it was private and there were no cameras, I liked how my skin looked in the pink light and those old thick lead glass mirrors, and I liked those chandeliers that had flowers around the hidden bulbs. I often found Jim pausing there, too. Like me, he liked to use the executive bathroom. He was allowed to, though, because he was a manager.
“Did you sell that watch? Did you sell that President? That was the display. You didn’t sell the display, did you?”
I took the stack of hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and handed it to him.
“I got forty-seven for it. Forty-seven is all right, right? He asked for a better price for cash. I didn’t charge him sales tax.”
“That was the display, Bobby. That was the last men’s Prez in the store. We were taking orders off that watch. We don’t have another one. We can only take orders on Presidents at that price. Did you write him a receipt? You have to charge sales tax if you write him a receipt.”
“No, I didn’t write him a receipt.” Sometimes you know to lie simply by the way a person asks you a question. It is a defensive reflex, like runnin
g.
The store’s copy of the handwritten receipt I had given my customer was in my breast pocket. I could just tear it up and flush it down the toilet.
“You didn’t write him a receipt? Okay, that’s good. Okay. Let’s go tell Sheila you sold the floor model. At least you got cash. At least it’s not a charge. She’s going to shit. But it’s all right, it’s just Sheila. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good sale. You didn’t know. What were you doing out there? Why didn’t you come get me? You did the right thing. You sold the watch. Nobody can say you didn’t do the right thing. You made the sale. Good man. Hell, we shouldn’t have the damn thing out there if it’s not for sale. How could you know any better? It could have happened to anybody. Who would have guessed you would have sold the damn thing? You didn’t even come to me for a price. That’s the instinct. That’s the Clark blood.”
I wanted to hug him. I didn’t, of course.
“It’s funny,” he said. “Remind me to tell you the story about how the Polack sold her first big watch. I was there. I was a customer, actually. It was back in my vacuum cleaner days. But I helped her sell it. It was a Patek Philippe, not a President, but it was like this deal of yours. She needed an assist, though. She couldn’t swing it on her own. Nobody else in this store could have sold that watch the way you just did. Nobody except me and Mr. Popper, anyway. Hell, I don’t even know if I would have had those kind of balls, Bobby.”
This was more or less the same pitch he gave Sheila in the bookkeeper’s office. He was just rehearsing it for himself. She started to yell and then Jim showed her all the cash provided by my customer. She settled down. That was why he told her the story before he showed her the money. Because he knew once she saw green her volume would lower.
Nevertheless Sheila explained that I had broken company policy and cost the store money. None of this made sense to me at the time, but the thing was, with Christmas still three and a half months away, we were already not selling Rolex watches, we were only selling Rolex orders. We took the money and promised the watch, that was it, you got a piece of paper in the mail saying that your watch would arrive as soon as possible. In fact, I learned years later, we never even intended to order any more Rolexes. Or maybe we intended to but never did.
In the middle of Sheila’s speech Mr. Popper entered the office and she stopped.
“Did I hear right?” he asked. He barely let a smile come through. I tried to look at the pink and purple raccoons on his tie, so I wouldn’t smile too big myself. I didn’t want to seem proud.
“Did I hear what I think I heard? News around here is one of these Clark brothers sold himself a men’s President first thing. Before he even ate his scrambled eggs for breakfast. Now which one of you done it? Not this little one?”
He patted me on the shoulder. Then he took two one-hundred-dollar bills off the pile of cash from my Rolex sale on the bookkeeper’s desk and folded them in half and tucked them in the breast pocket of my jacket, in with the receipt.
“Hell, Sheila, sounds to me like we got another genuine twenty-four karat Clark here. Jim, why is this fella still stocking the box room? When were you planning on putting him on the floor? When he beats you on the boards? Looks like he’s gonna sell whether you put him there or not!”
He took a stick of ChapStick from his pocket and rubbed it quickly around the inside of each nostril. He had delicate skin and his lips and nostrils chapped in the dry Fort Worth air. As strange and disorienting as this habit of his was, the first time you saw him do it, because he was Mr. Popper you wanted to line your own nose with ChapStick, or maybe to carry a stick of ChapStick with you so that you could quickly do it for him when you saw him reaching in his pocket.
“You just listen to your big brother,” he told me. “When you’re ready, he’ll let you sell. Sheila here is right. We got protocols for a reason. You just do like Jim here does and you’ll be all right. Hell, that’s something, though. Doesn’t even have a set of showcase keys and he’s already sold his first President.”
Jim had green eyes, green eyes like our father’s, eyes as green as a bird’s. His shoulders were broad and he had been California’s number one gymnast when in high school living with Dad. Before then he had attended Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minnesota, where our dad had sent him when he was first getting into serious trouble back in Calgary. “It’s where Marlon Brando went to school, son,” our dad had told Jim. At Shattuck Jim met the fellows who helped him to become a drug smuggler and a dealer. That was when he became a salesman, he said. When he realized he had a talent.
He enjoyed the same ease with women our father had, but because he lacked our dad’s energy he did not have sex with nearly so many of them. He could talk, though. He lied less than our father did. He was reasonable.
He did not know how to dress. He did not say hurtful things to other people.
He was my big brother but for me when I was a kid and a teenager he was like someone else’s big brother, one I had read about in a book.
When I knew him better, from hotel rooms, three-day Ecstasy-and-cocaine-fed drunks, shared rooms in whorehouses, and overnight international flights, I learned that he would whimper in his sleep. By then, of course, I understood what he might have to fear.
In the cold early mornings before opening, the store was quiet. First thing as we walked to the back we turned on the heat. It was off during the day, even in the coldest months of winter, because of all the bodies. When we entered we could often see our breath. The best part about Jim having a key was that we usually got in before the other employees arrived. Then it was just the two of us, we had the whole store to ourselves. The white leather of the showcase interiors and the display stands, the risers and the stair-step displays for the rings and the bracelet rolls, looked like the vacant interiors of many shiny-clean, rich, and glamorous apartments.
Lisa and I were putting out the showcases together. She liked to do the wedding rings while I did the men’s jewelry in the case next to her.
“I don’t believe you won’t read your mother’s letters. That’s awful. Your own mother. She is probably crying when she writes those letters. You can probably smell her tears on those letters.”
Not reading my mother’s letters was revenge because Wendy was not calling. She could blame that on the cost of long-distance. But she would not write me letters, either. I wrote Wendy a letter every day at first. Then as we got busier at work I wrote two or three a week. I would lie in bed when we got home in the evening, at eight or nine, smoke a joint, and write her part of a letter or a letter.
Later that day Lisa brought it up again.
“You should try reading one,” Lisa said. “Just pick any letter she sent you. Open it and read a few sentences. You never know, she might surprise you.”
We were having lunch together at a Mexican restaurant we liked over on Third and Main, just a few blocks from the store. Jim was not with us.
“You’re saving them for a reason,” she said. “When was the last time you read one?”
We were on our second margarita and had ordered only a guacamole and a plate of blue corn tortilla nachos.
•
I was anxious about the hour we had been away but she was placid. “It’s so busy they will never notice,” she said.
“Can we talk about something else besides my mother?” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
There was something about her neck and her collarbone that made you really want to have sex with Lisa. In addition to her many other sexy qualities, I mean. But even if she let me, which I knew she wouldn’t, that would be cheating. On Jim and Wendy both. Not that I could ever ask her, even if she would have let me. Jim was married but Lisa was his girlfriend nevertheless. Having sex with your brother’s girlfriend was worse than cheating on your own girlfriend.
I had strong opinions on this whole cheating business because of what our father did to our mother. I asked him once how he could have cheated on Mom. I could alw
ays ask him any question. He used to say, “Hey, son, want to take a drive?” Or, “Are you in the mood for a cold drink?” Then we would get in the car and drive around and talk.
“She told you I hit her?”
“Didn’t you?” Jim had told me, but I wasn’t going to let Dad know that.
“That was a difficult time, son. It was when I was drinking. I’m surprised she told you that. That is disappointing.”
“I still don’t see how you could cheat on her like that, Dad.”
“It’s complicated, son. Sometimes one person’s sex drive doesn’t match the other’s. Your mother is what is technically called frigid. That’s not an insult, it is a scientific term. It is not her fault. It’s your grandmother. That bitch. She never held her when she was growing up. That’s why you boys have had the problems you have had. She never held you. She couldn’t even hug you when you hurt yourself. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know how. In your case, Bobby, she weaned you too soon. It was on an airplane. Because she was embarrassed of her own body. Sad.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good excuse, Dad. I could never do that.”
“I hope that’s true, son. You might look at it differently later. Try not to be too hard on your old man.”
“I don’t think so, Dad,” I had said. “I don’t think there’s more than one way to look at it.”
Lisa said, “I understand.” She ate another bite of the nachos. I tried not to watch the way she placed the chip into her mouth. I could see her lips and her tongue and her white teeth. I was afraid that if she saw me watching she would understand what I was thinking.
How to Sell: A Novel Page 4