Old John had his snake coiled over his shoulders. It knew to keep its head away from the invisible flame of the torch. It was moving, though, looking around with its neck and head, as it liked to do while he worked.
“When are you going to go to college, Bobby?” He said it without turning his head. I was startled. I almost stood up. Then I tried to make it look as though I were only inspecting a tool on Larry’s bench. But Old John hadn’t noticed. He was focused on his work. “When are you going to start making a real life for yourself? ”
“I’m a businessman, Old John,” I said. “This is my life. This is the life I want.”
“Bobby, you are my friend. You are also my boss. But let’s be frank, you aren’t a businessman. You know it and I know it. Maybe everybody doesn’t know it. Not for me to say. But you won’t be able to hide it forever.”
That hurt my feelings. It was something the Polack would say.
“I’m the best salesman in this store, Old John,” I said. “For that matter, people say I’m the best salesman in the whole metroplex. Even Granddad says so.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t a salesman. That’s the chief problem, I’d say. I’ve never seen one better. But a salesman is the opposite of a businessman, Bobby. A businessman cares about the practical details of life. A salesman is an artist. He can’t tie his own shoelaces. He lives on tomorrow. He’s a cloud-and-sky guy, a rainbow man. He can’t hold money. He can’t make a goddamn dollar out of four quarters and a can of glue, if you want to hear the truth of it. That’s you, Bobby.”
I thought there was something I ought to reply. Because I was his employer.
“You can’t snap your fingers and become American, Bobby. It has to come naturally. You didn’t even watch the right commercials growing up.”
I rubbed my hands together and looked down at my legs. Then I plucked up the creases in my pants. I was wearing my dark gray Zegna, my favorite winter suit.
“If you want the truth, you should just grab that girlfriend of yours and go. If I were your father, that’s what I would tell you to do. Pack up everything you love and get on the road.”
It was getting late, so these phrases imprinted on me. My father had told me a similar thing once, and Granddad and Kizakov had both dropped hints.
He couldn’t mean the same girlfriend I meant. But that didn’t matter.
The snake turned and looked deeply at me then. It seemed to freeze, and curl its dimpled lips.
The security gate to Lisa’s apartment complex stayed open for a few minutes after a car went through. That is, it stayed open behind a car coming out. For the cars coming in, the gate was prompt and effective. So I waited to one side until a car left the complex and then swung around it—the driver honked the horn, but we weren’t even close to hitting each other—and made it through the gate. The gate scraped the back corner of the car as I came in. I was irritated at myself because I had just picked up the repaired car from the paint-and-body shop a few days before. If I had to scrape the car I should have scraped the rental.
I knew she was home. I had been watching the apartment from a place where she couldn’t see me. I saw a man drive up, walk up the stairs, and then leave again less than an hour later. He was in a new black Porsche. It still had the dealer tags on it. He was older than me but handsome and in a good suit. A client. I didn’t get a very good look at him. But I could tell by the way he walked that he was a doctor. In my business we can spot doctors immediately.
I was surprised and angry that she worked out of her home. She is even breaking the hooker rules, I thought.
Maybe she had more than one apartment.
After another hour had passed I decided she was probably done for the evening. It was quarter after eleven. That was too early. Maybe it was a lag time.
I knew she was still in there. It wasn’t like she had a back door. But she wasn’t answering the phone.
I went up the stairs and rang her bell. I knocked on the door. I yelled through it. Nothing.
I stayed out there until two or three in the morning. I figured she had to come out eventually. I could stay all night if I had to. At one point a car pulled up and another man got out, a different man than the last one. He started up the stairs, with his keys in his hand, jingling, and then lifted his eyes when he was almost at the top and saw me sitting there against her door. He stopped. Then he turned around, jogged down the stairs two at a time, got back in his car, and drove off.
Do you know where Lisa is?” I asked her.
“No,” she said.
“You’re lying, Sylvia,” I said.
“You do not call me a liar. No.”
“She wanted me to call her, Sylvia. She told me to call. Her phone isn’t working. She didn’t leave a number.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, really.”
“Then I guess she’ll call back.”
Sylvia was not someone you could reason with. But I did not have any way to threaten her.
“What if she’s in trouble? What if she needs money?”
“She’s fine. She doesn’t need your money.”
“So you know where she is? You know how to get in touch with her?”
“I have to go, Bobby,” Sylvia said.
“No. No, don’t go,” I said. “When’s the last time you talked to her?”
“When’s the last time you talked to her?” Sylvia asked me.
I didn’t want to say.
“I don’t think she wants to talk to you, Bobby,” she said. “Go home to your wife, Bobby.”
“Please help me, Sylvia,” I said.
“Why don’t you ask your brother,” she said, and hung up.
I told him everything. I had wanted to be strong but then I gave up. Just tell him the truth, Bobby, I allowed myself. It was a great relief. He was my big brother. I needed his help.
But he didn’t talk about Lisa. He only talked about the baby.
“Tell her she can’t have it. It’s your baby, too. Tell her she has to get an abortion. How far along is she? I can talk to Watkins for you. Watkins does them all the time. Only for friends, of course. It can be totally private, like a regular doctor’s appointment at his office. He would probably even do it on trade. His girlfriend wants a Cartier tank.”
“I can’t very well tell her it’s my baby, too, and use that premise to argue her into having an abortion. Plus she won’t return my calls.”
“Don’t argue with her. Sell her. You are a salesman, for crying out loud.”
“She won’t talk to me, Jim. I don’t even know where she is. You don’t know, do you? Do you know where she is, Jim?”
“Good. That’s better. Problem solved. In the worst-case scenario it’s a paternity suit. That wouldn’t be the end of the world. Plenty of dads have paternity-suit babies. Hell, that one ob-gyn client of mine has five or six paternity-suit kids. He even hangs out with some of them. I’m astonished I don’t have one myself.”
I cut us both a line. I made his twice as fat as mine. I didn’t want the cocaine. But I wanted to keep him talking. I handed him the mirror.
“Anyway, it’s not a baby,” Jim said. He sniffed the cocaine up. “Stop calling it a baby. It’s one of those things at this stage. A dot of cells. What’s its name? A bathysphere.”
“A blastocyst.”
“Whatever. The way I see it you need an argument for not having an abortion, not the other way around. I never get these idiots who think you should have a right to life. A right not to live is what we need. Don’t bring me there unless you really have no choice! If you’re gonna do this thing I hope you’ve got everything arranged! The way it’s supposed to be! That’s what I would have said to Mom and Dad if I could have. Why did you do this to me! That’s what I feel like most of the time. Here, have another drink. Let me fill you up. Drink up, Robby. You can use it.”
He poured me another glass of wine. He used a new glass. I already had a first glass half empty there next to it. It was a bottle fr
om a case of Pomerol he was giving me for Christmas. He said, “I hate to spoil the surprise, but under the circumstances.” I was glad he did, because I hadn’t bought him anything yet, and hadn’t even thought about it. It didn’t seem like a year we would buy each other gifts. But we bought presents for each other every year.
Dad had once told me that two babies were easier than one. That made me happy because, after all, I had been his second baby. Of course, my two babies couldn’t really be in the same house. I did not think I would ever have custody of my other baby. But that was another reason for wanting this one. A baby to live with me in my home. To dress in the morning and bathe at night. We could even name the baby Robby, maybe. That name works for a boy or a girl.
“Anyway, what makes you think this blasto—this blasto—what makes you think this baby is yours? I mean, considering. It doesn’t seem statistically likely.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s mine. Who else’s could it be?”
My question was supposed to be rhetorical, but I didn’t like the way it came out. Nevertheless, I was sure it was the fact of the matter. That the baby was my baby, I mean. Our baby.
“Listen. Maybe there’s something I better tell you. Maybe there’s something you need to know, Bobby.”
He sniffed the other line, my line. He looked up at me with his cheeks and his chin bright red from the cocaine. It was cut with something hard that made your nose hurt.
“Let me tell you the story,” he said.
I took a swallow of my wine. It was too late for confessions now. Even I could see that.
“No, Jim.”
I don’t believe I had ever said those words before.
•
It was after midnight when Lisa came to the store and knocked on the glass. Her eyes were circular. They looked like they might roll out of her head. She was chewing gum. Those are not cocaine signals but crank signals.
I had turned off the CLARK’S PRECIOUS JEWELS sign before she came but the yellow overhead lights were on in the parking lot. She must have parked on the other side, because my car was all alone out there. I said, “Hi.” I didn’t know what to say. When I called her on the number Jim finally gave me she said, “How did you get this number?” I said, “Lisa. Please. I have to see you,” and she said, “Fine. Tonight. At the store.”
So I said, “Welcome to the store.”
I didn’t know what to do, either. I didn’t know where to put my hands. So I showed her around. I took her to the back.
She said, “Where do you want to do it? Here in the back?”
I said, “I don’t know. I don’t care, Lisa. That’s a weird thing to say. Why do you say that?”
That’s the crank talking, I told myself.
Suddenly I felt shy. Shy like you are with prostitutes the first few times. Like masturbating in front of your lover.
This was the first time she had ever reminded me of a prostitute. Like a hooker, I mean.
We walked through the safe room and into my office.
She picked up the tweezers off my desk. “Nice desk,” she said, and patted it with her hand. I realized, How strange, that she’s never been in the store before.
I started to tell her the story we always told about the desks. We had bought them from a friend of ours who was one of the top guys in the Russian underworld diamond cartel. They were stolen. It was a good story. They were too big for the offices. They were three hundred years old. They matched. They were from the old Fabergé offices in St. Petersburg. But I stopped myself before I started the story.
She abruptly walked back into the back-of-the-house. That made me upset. I didn’t need her roaming around. Our hidden cameras were back there and they were on a twenty-four-hour tape. They never turned off. They could keep an eye on her. Because I could not very well tell her not to go back there.
She walked into the wrapping room, where the fridge was. I tried not to follow her too closely. She spun the wrapping paper on the big rolls in the wrapping room. I took a beer from the refrigerator.
“Do you want a beer?” I said. “Maybe we should have a drink? I think that’s a good idea.” One or two drinks would not hurt anything or anybody. The baby, I mean.
“Do you have Crown?” she said.
Crown? I thought. Since when did she drink Crown Royal?
“Okay,” I said. “It’s in the other room.”
“I am going to light a pipe,” she said. “Do you want to smoke?”
“Okay,” I said. That was an awful idea. I did not want to know what we would be smoking. But it did not matter.
That could not be good for the baby, though, I wanted to say. Of course, I couldn’t say it. It was crystal we would be smoking, I bet. I did not even know if there was still a baby living in there.
We reserved the hard liquor under the cappuccino machine with the mixer and the nuts and cocktail napkins. I went to the other room and thought, Why isn’t she following me? The safes were closed but there was the mailroom, and the phone sales people always left things out that they were looking at while they were selling them. In a busy jewelry store you never manage to get everything into the safe. Not to mention the cash box. You couldn’t get that cash box open. But she could hide the whole cash box somewhere while I was mixing her drink. I wasn’t worried about the money. It was the explaining. It was easy to know who had been the last in and the last out. If you had a key you had a unique alarm code. There were only three keys. And then Jim would look at the cameras.
It was like she knew the Crown was in the other room.
“Lisa. Are you okay?” I wanted to hear where she was in the store. By her voice I could know if she was doing anything.
“I’m here,” she said.
When I brought her the drink she had taken her shirt and her bra off. She was sitting with her legs open on Jim’s brass elephant we had brought back from one of the Thailand trips. She had the lapis lazuli ball of Jim’s desk globe in her hands. It was about the size of a volleyball and very heavy. It was inlaid with gold, silver, and various semiprecious gems: topaz, citrine, amethyst, that sort of thing. Cheap stuff. He thought those globes would sell like wildfire. I knew they were too expensive.
“Let’s go somewhere,” I said. “Let’s have this drink and go somewhere fun. Are you hungry? We could go to Dallas. It’s been almost a month since we’ve been to Dallas. We could stay in a hotel.”
“Let’s do it here,” she said. She put the globe on Jim’s desk. If it rolls off it will chip, crack, or even break, I thought. “I said we were going to do it in your office.”
I held her drink in my hand. “Here,” I said. I motioned her into my office. “Why don’t we have a drink?” I said.
“Where do you want to do it?” she said. I wondered if she was already drunk. I could not ask her that, either. “What about on your desk?”
“Let’s look,” I said. I put her drink on my desk. “Here’s your drink,” I said. “It’s kind of messy in here.”
“We’ll clear it off. I don’t mind.” She got off the elephant. She walked into my office. She picked up Jim’s stapler before she left his office.
“We’ll clear off anything sharp,” she said. She took her drink. “This is strong,” she said. She swallowed the whole drink quickly.
“I hate all this Christmas crap,” she said. “Why do you guys fuck up this nice store with hanging all this Santa Claus shit?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She was moving things on my desk.
“The mess is kind of organized,” I said.
“I want to do it on your desk. We don’t have to do it on your desk. Could I have another one?” She clicked the stapler. Folded staples fell out of it.
“Diamond scales are funny. I would have to recalibrate my diamond scale. You know how sensitive they are. You can weigh a human hair on a diamond scale.”
“Move the damn scale, Bobby. I want to fuck. Like we used to fuck. Let’s really fuck like we’re fu
cking fucking.”
“That’s what I’m saying. That’s the problem. They are like tropical fish. Like saltwater fish. You know you can’t really move them.”
“What about under the desk? Are you going to make me another drink?”
She might be in a hurry for another drink because she wants another drink, I thought. But she might want me out of the room again. She never took her shirt off like that. But she wasn’t encouraging me to drink.
“You won’t fit under there. Not with my legs.”
“I meant both of us, Bobby. Why are you nervous now? What’s wrong, little Bobby?” Suddenly she was sarcastic. I was afraid of that. “Don’t you want to say it? Just say it, Bobby. Say what I know you want to fucking say.”
Now I suppose I understand what she wanted me to say. I’m pretty sure I do. But I did not know that night. And it might have helped me if I had. At least, I don’t believe I knew.
“Seriously. You are not in a position to be nervous, Bobby.” She gave me an unexpectedly cogent look. “I am the one who should be acting nervous, here.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“You are acting weird.”
“I am the same me. I promise.” I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Nice.” She laughed. “That’s real nice. Good, Bobby, I’m real glad. I’m real happy for you. Fuck it. I give up. Let’s do it, then. Let’s do it right here. But I want another drink.”
Maybe that could help us out of this, I thought. Sex, I mean, not another drink. It couldn’t make this situation any sadder or more dangerous. Worth a try.
Another drink was a good idea, too.
“Maybe in back. Anyone could walk up here.”
“No.” She clicked the stapler some more. “You said. You said in your office.”
“The whole thing is the office. The whole store. It’s all my office. I own the whole thing.”
How to Sell: A Novel Page 23