How to Sell: A Novel

by Clancy Martin

  She abruptly covered her face with her hands. Like one of those three monkeys. She turned around and walked out of the apartment. I caught her at the bottom of the stairs.

  “No,” she said. “I did not see you. I do not know who you are. I am leaving. I am not who you think you called for.”

  “I didn’t say anything. You have not even let me stop to say anything to you. Stop. Stop walking.”

  Then she turned around. She was over thirty now and I saw that she was one of those women who, when the bones of the face finally matured, found the powerful beauty that had almost already been there in their teens and twenties, but not quite.

  I grabbed her shoulder. Then I got both arms around her and I held her. She smelled the same as she used to. But I could feel her sinews and the darker hollows in her muscles. My face was in her neck and her hair. She stiffened. Then she touched the back of my head. But it was too gentle, like your mother would touch your head if you were sick, or like when you were little and she was leaving the house and you didn’t want her to go.

  “Bobby,” she said, and pulled away.

  “Where did you get my number?” she said. “How did you get my number?”

  “From Sylvia,” I said. “From that woman Sylvia.” I almost added, From Jim. But I did not want to say his name right then.

  She closed her eyes. She kept them closed. I watched her.

  “Can you come upstairs?” I said. She opened her eyes, then. “Not to have sex. I didn’t mean that. Can’t we just talk?” Why did you say that, Bobby? Why did you say anything about sex?

  She took one of my hands and held it in hers. It was hard, then, not to start crying.

  “Lisa,” I said.

  “Your face is different now,” she said while we were making love. It was the only further thing she said to me that night.

  Some nights later, when we met again, but not at my apartment, at a hotel, after we had sex I said, stupidly, “Don’t take this the wrong way. But why did you become a prostitute?” I didn’t want to say how lonely it made me feel.

  In fact I should have just said it, because the question did not bother her. She laughed. It wasn’t a defensive laugh. It was an honest laugh.

  “Bobby,” she said. “You are still so sweet. You will always be young for your age.”

  “I don’t understand. Why do you say that?” Already Lisa felt more like my girlfriend, again, than some hooker. I couldn’t tell her that, of course.

  “You sell jewelry for a living, Bobby. I was in that business once, too, remember? With what I do now, I sleep well at night. I don’t have any complaints about my line of work. I like the way I look in the mirror.”

  I had no idea what she meant.

  We were playing backgammon outside the coffee shop behind the store. Jim was beating me. I was down four hundred dollars. Sometimes as much as three thousand dollars went between us in those backgammon games. But we only cashed in the debt if one of us needed the money urgently. Otherwise we just let the bets flow back and forth from one game to the next. Usually he carried me, and not the other way around.

  I had rolled double 3s and was trying out different moves in my head, watching the board, when Jim said, “Oh-oh.” I looked up and saw his face. He looked like he might laugh, but in that way he laughed when he felt sorry for you. I turned to look behind me and there were Wendy and Claire. Claire was dragging her feet like she wanted her mother to pick her up. She had a stuffed lamb I had bought her at Neiman’s in her free arm. Ever since her first birthday she had always carried a stuffed animal with her wherever she went. I could see Wendy was angry about something.

  “You guys are working hard, I see,” Wendy said.

  “Hi, Wendy,” Jim said.

  “Daddy, I want something to drink,” Claire said. I took her into my lap.

  “I wasn’t trying to interrupt your workday,” Wendy said. “But I need some money. They are putting in that underground water filter today and I can’t pay for it. You said we were going to pay for it in cash.”

  Jim gave me a look. Sometimes I would need a little more cash than he was ready to divide up. This water filter business had been one of those times. I’d agreed to it when I had the Polack at my desk and was in a hurry to get Wendy off the phone. I would have told Wendy yes to many things with the Polack sitting across from me listening to our conversation with the malevolence on her face that she wore only when I was talking to my wife.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have that cash right now, Wendy.”

  “How much cash is it?” Jim was reaching in his pocket.

  “No, don’t worry about it, Jim,” I said. I didn’t want him to hear the number.

  “It’s thirty-five hundred,” Wendy said.

  “Thirty-five hundred dollars? For a water filter?”

  “It’s like an underground water filter,” Wendy told Jim. “You never have to buy filtered water again. You even bathe in filtered water. I don’t want to wash Claire in that water with all of that stuff they pump into it. Chemicals and detergents. That’s not healthy. You should have seen our water when he tested it. It was really disgusting. It was frightening.”

  “Daddy. Thirsty.” Claire squirmed in my lap. I started dancing her lamb on the table to distract her. With luck the lamb might bump the backgammon board.

  “Bobby, why did Emily have your sunglasses on?”

  “What? Who?”

  Emily was the Polack’s real name, but no one ever said it.

  “That Polish saleswoman. Emily, Bobby. Who works in your store. I think you have met her.”

  “I better get back to the store, Bobby.” Jim stood and folded up the backgammon board. “I’ll see you back there. Don’t you have an appointment at three? Isn’t Morgan supposed to be in today?”

  “Margaret,” I said. “Margaret is coming in at three.”

  “Thirsty, Daddy! Thirsty, thirsty.” She started to sing it.

  “You do know who the Polack is, right? Are you willing to grant that much? She was wearing your sunglasses. Why would she be wearing your sunglasses?”

  Why is she wearing sunglasses at all? I wondered. She is supposed to be picking sapphires for the Stein job.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. How should I know what sunglasses she’s wearing? They’re not my sunglasses. They must be her sunglasses. They must be different sunglasses. You must be mistaken, Wendy. My sunglasses are in my car.”

  “That’s true. She was driving your car, Bobby. She was driving away with the top down and your sunglasses on when I pulled in. Did you think she was wearing them in the store? Does she wear your sunglasses in the store while she works? She must be pretty attached to those sunglasses. Is there something you want to tell me, Bobby? I guess she is telling me. I think the Polack is trying to tell me already.”

  “Wendy, I don’t know what you are trying to say, but I am going to get Claire something to drink. I don’t want to fight right now. Seriously. I don’t have time for this.”

  “Good, that’s helpful. Walk away. Go on, now, and think of some lie to tell me.”

  “Come on, honey.” I lifted Claire into my arms and carried her into the coffee shop. “What do you want? Milk? They have milk. Do you want apple juice?”

  “Cookie, Daddy! That cookie! Pink cookie!”

  After closing, the Polack told me the story herself.

  “She pulls up in the car. So, she sees me. She is your wife, not mine! I did not know she was there. What am I hiding?”

  Uh-huh, I thought. It was all just ordinary bad luck.

  When I was with Lisa, later that evening, the suspicion occurred to me that the Polack and Wendy were collaborating in a plot to make me kill myself. Why they might want this I could not have said for certain. There was no life insurance money. It was all signed away to our investors in the buyout agreements. So just to get back at me, I supposed.

  I watched Lisa across the table. She was sipping a blue margarita. This
woman is a whole woman, I thought. She is who she appears to be. But those two. It was like they were the same woman, divided into two evil halves. You are getting drunk, Bobby, I thought. But there really was something to it. They understood and considered things I could not even speak if I knew them. They could see years into the future.

  “Excuse me, Lisa,” I said. She smiled at me. What a nice woman she is, I thought. She thinks about my pleasure, my state of being. She wants me to be happy.

  I went to the bathroom and inspected myself, with kindness, in the mirror. I placed my palms on the red marble counter and sucked in my cheeks. That helped. I look a bit like Jesus, I thought, in a hound’s-tooth pale yellow Armani suit. Or like John Lennon, but with slicked-back hair.

  There was a room at the Mansion on Turtle Creek that would become our regular room. But I think this was the first time we went to the Mansion together. It was a Friday night.

  “Why did you call Sylvia? That’s what I want to know. I don’t really see you as one of these prostitute guys. I mean, I know you’re married and all. But why not just go to a bar and get a regular girl?”

  “You are my regular girl.” We had been together for a month now and she let me say things like that to her. Probably she was only being patient with me. But she said it first. About a regular girl, I mean.

  The summer was turning around, I felt. It could be a good summer yet.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “That’s how it seems to women. Because they can have sex whenever they want to. But for men it’s not that way.”

  I could not see Lisa’s expression because the light was behind her and her hair made a tent around her face. She bent over to kiss me and I could smell my bad breath in her hair. She whispered something to me. She straightened back up.

  “It is because you are married. If you weren’t married you would never have called me at all. That’s kind of funny, isn’t it? That we meet again because you are married?”

  I couldn’t tell if she was playing or if she was searching for something.

  “That’s not true. It’s not just being married. I have a girlfriend.”

  “I know about your girlfriend. That Polack girl. What a waste.”

  “You have a boyfriend, too.”

  The blond with the bangs and the cigarettes was not a pimp. He was her boyfriend. Sometimes he still brought her to my apartment in his truck. But then I would drop her off at home. She did not like to drive herself.

  “I have a real boyfriend who loves me. You just have me and a wife you cheat on and a weird eastern European girlfriend who has turned into some kind of mystery criminal. Not to mention that she was always a slut, even back in the Fort Worth Deluxe days. And I don’t use that word. But I know.”

  “I’m not cheating on my wife. I moved out.”

  “It’s still cheating, Bobby. Plus, whatever you say, you’re cheating on that so-called girlfriend. With me.”

  “She’s not exactly my girlfriend. She’s a salesperson.”

  “That’s nice. I bet she would love to hear you say that. That’s a nice way to talk about her. Do you love her?”

  That was a funny question to ask me. I couldn’t tell how she meant it. But it seemed like a promising sign.

  “She can be pretty nice. You might be surprised. She sure is a lot happier than Wendy is.”

  “Real nice, Bobby. The Polack. I don’t understand you at all. I mean, I suppose maybe I do but I almost wish I didn’t. She doesn’t know about me, does she?”

  “No one knows.”

  “Oh, I bet she does. That’s what’s really sad. She knows.”

  “No, she doesn’t. You don’t know her about this kind of thing. I’m telling you, she’s dangerous. She’s jealous, too. She would kill us both.”

  “You don’t know anything, Bobby. You are just like a damn little kid. Why do you want all these mommies, Bobby? Wouldn’t you be better off with just one mommy?”

  Now she was being cruel, and I couldn’t see why.

  “Could we talk about something else?”

  “We’ve got all night.”

  “Could we talk about something happy?”

  “I’m happy. You should be happy, too. But you don’t know anything. You can’t even get a real girl. You had to call Sylvia.”

  That was something I had been thinking about. Since she brought it up. Since she was the one wanting to talk about these things. Just say it, Bobby, I thought. But as I spoke I couldn’t quite ask her what I wanted to ask her.

  “Sylvia,” I said. “You know Jim gave me Sylvia’s number.” That was pretty close, I thought. Close enough.

  “Jim, as in your brother, Jim?” She looked away from me. “No, I didn’t know that. Why? I don’t want to see Jim.” She kissed me again, on my neck, and then rolled off of me. “Here, you want a fresh drink? I’ll get us both one,” she said.

  While she was getting the bottle from the minibar she said, “You didn’t give him my number, did you? Did you tell him about us?”

  “No. Of course not. That’s not what I was saying. He gave me Sylvia’s number. That’s all I was saying. He and Sylvia know each other. He doesn’t know about you at all.” That sounded odd. “I mean, I didn’t know if you wanted me to tell him. I want to tell him about you. About us, I mean. About you and me. And that you are happy and everything. You know, I think he’d be glad to know. Like old friends and everything. Plus he cares about you. And me, too. He would be happy for us.” Shut up, Bobby.

  She had been watching me from where she was kneeling at the minibar but now she looked away from me. I couldn’t tell why. Maybe it was that she believed I was lying and did not want to humiliate me by letting me see it in her face. I wasn’t lying, though. That was the frustrating part.

  “But maybe I shouldn’t tell him. I don’t know what you would think. You might not like him now.”

  “Maybe you think he wouldn’t like me anymore,” she said. She was turned away from me and the way her hair hung on her naked back, between those shoulder blades that belonged on an antelope, made me want to reach out and grab it with both hands. She was putting ice in the glasses. “It sounds like that is what you are saying. But do you really know him in that way? He might look at all this differently than you do. Do you really know what you’re talking about, Bobby?”

  “No, what I’m saying is you wouldn’t like him now.” I had to dig myself out and I would do it at Jim’s expense, if necessary. I thought I was hurting her feelings. “He would definitely still like you.”

  She lit a cigarette. She came back to the bed.

  “Here’s your drink, baby,” she said.

  I took the cold glass of ice and vodka. I wanted to go to the bathroom to pee, but I didn’t want to leave her alone to think. Also I was still a bit shy to urinate around her, and I couldn’t close the bathroom door in the middle of this conversation.

  “I hope you are not trying to trick me into something,” she said.

  “I said I don’t want you to meet him, Lisa.”

  “That’s what you said. I believe you. But this is how it starts with you two. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen you two in action. It always starts with something. Something like this.”

  “What starts?”

  “What do you think, Bobby? Nothing good, I’ll tell you that much. Nothing that will make any of the three of us happier.”

  The three of us? But this time it is only about the two of us, I wanted to say.

  I drank my vodka. Leave it alone, Bobby, I told myself. I tried to think of a joke to tell her. Something to get us on a new track.

  “Let’s not talk about Jim,” I said. “I’m sorry I brought him up. That was one of your rules, right? No talking about Jim.”

  I couldn’t help myself.

  “Okay, that’s it,” she said. She started tickling me. “It sounds to me like you want to wrestle. You wanna wrestle?” she said. “I bet I can whip you. Let’s wrestle.” She took an ice cube out of her
drink and put it in her teeth. She rubbed it on my chest. “You better watch out now,” she said, with the ice cube in her fingers. “I can do some real damage with this thing.”

  When I woke up, in the morning, she was still there, where I didn’t know if she would be. Outside my window I could see the shadows from the sun, not quite risen yet. There were birds out there, too, waking up, bouncing the branches just past the window. I didn’t have a hangover. My first appointment wasn’t until one. What a good day, I thought.

  That same morning, a few hours later, the Polack came into my office and said, “A girl will speak with you.”

  The Polack was wearing one of my favorite thin silk shirts. The red one. She bought them for herself in one of those giant Chinese warehouses over on Harry Hines, where we sometimes bought cheap gold chain if we needed it in a hurry and didn’t want to pay for Italian. They were only ten or twenty bucks apiece but they looked like they came right off a mannequin at Barneys. She knew I always wanted to fuck her when she wore one of those shirts. You could see all of the details of her body beneath it. I had told her so many times, and we had even had sex in the bathroom at the store while she was wearing it. I asked her to keep it on.

  I understood who the girl was by the way the Polack said the words. I looked up from my work on my desk in fear. I knew I would see Lisa on the showroom floor. There were three or four customers out there, wandering the showcases. My salesmen were sitting on their asses as usual. But no Lisa. Dear God, that’s one I owe you for, I thought. I knocked on the wood of my desk.

  “She’s waiting,” the Polack said. “This girl. She is on the phone.”

  “A girl? A woman or a girl?”

  “Yes, as I explain. A girl. She is on that line.” She jabbed at the blinking light of the phone at my desk as though she were poking its eye out. I was afraid she was going to ask me to put her on speakerphone.

  “Okay, Polack,” I said. “Thank you.” I shuffled the pink message notes on my desk until she left.