“I thought Jim owns it. Jim owns it.”
“What are you talking about? We both own it. Is this some bullshit Sylvia told you? We own it together.”
“But Jim started it. Sorry,” she said, and laughed. “I mean, I’m sorry but it’s true.”
I did not have anything to say. She stumbled and caught herself on the desk. When she looked up at me her mouth curled like she wanted to bite me.
“You coward. You fucking coward.”
Don’t disagree with her, Bobby. She’s drunk, and worse. Let her say whatever she wants you to say. None of this matters.
“And Sylvia knows more than you think.”
“About the store, I mean. That’s all I was saying, Lisa. I wasn’t trying to say anything big. Can we just—” Don’t tell her to calm down, Bobby, you know what that will do. “Sylvia doesn’t know about the store.”
“I don’t know,” she said. She laughed. “It’s none of your business.” She laughed harder. “I like this office,” she said, and went back into Jim’s office. “This office is comfortable,” she said. She sat in his chair and crossed her legs. She put her empty drink down on the desk. “Another drink, please,” she said.
“We are not having sex in this office,” I said.
“I think I should say where we’re having sex. I’m the whore. It’s my rules.”
“Let’s go to my apartment. You were right,” I said. “Put your shirt back on, Lisa.”
“No. We’re doing it right here,” she said. “Right here where you promised. Right here in this chair. But first I want another drink.” She laughed again. I tried to laugh along with her. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing here, Bobby?”
Right, I wanted to say. That’s the question.
“I want to fuck you and then I want you to pay me for it,” she said. “That is how this is supposed to work. Works. That’s how I work, Bobby.”
“I know what kind of work you do, Lisa. You don’t have to remind me.” Cool it, Bobby. That is not helping. Slow down.
“Are you going to fuck me or not? I need some money. I need some fucking money, Bobby. Will you listen to what somebody is saying for once in your life? Get it? Give me some fucking money.”
“Lisa, if you need some money I’ll give you some money. Why didn’t you just say you needed some money?”
“Oh that’s real nice. Thanks a lot.”
She was rubbing her hands on her hips, quickly, over and over. She had lost some weight and she looked like she might rub her jeans right down her legs. Suddenly she grabbed her T-shirt off Jim’s desk and pulled it over her head. That was something. It was inside out, but I wasn’t saying anything.
“I’m not your fucking charity case, Bobby.”
I gave her three thousand dollars, which was what we had in the cash box, and she left in a hurry. I knew I shouldn’t have let her drive but I couldn’t imagine trying to put her in my car. We both had plenty of practice driving drunk. The crank would help her see. If Jim asked me any questions I would be pleased to tell him the truth.
The winter morning was very cold and the parking lot was still dark. I pulled in, running late, looking for Lisa’s car, hoping, maybe, that she had slept in it. Slept in it but not frozen to death.
When I came in Sosa was sitting at my desk, with his jacket off and his elbows jutting out. I worried that there might be some evidence on my desk from the night before. But we hadn’t done anything. In the end we hadn’t even done any drugs.
He was gaining weight in his arms, I noticed. I sat down and ignored him for a minute while I looked through my messages. I had a stack of them, pink papers like playing cards, spilled all over my desk pad.
“Boss, I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said. Bad news, I thought. He had not called me boss in months. “I’ve found another job.”
“It’s nearly Christmas, Sosa,” I said. “You cannot quit at Christmas.”
“It’s not my fault. I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “It’s with Waltham’s. A real Rolex dealer.”
Even my employees do it to me now, I thought. Real Rolexes. As opposed to the other kind? I was past explaining this to people.
“Can you tell Jim for me? I’m afraid to.”
“Give us the season, Sosa. Start on the twenty-seventh. That’s not too much to ask.”
“I want to, boss. I would love to. But it was the only way they would hire me. If I start immediately. They need me for Christmas is the thing. They have to make money, too. Plus it’s when I’ll make my best commissions. I owe it to them. Since they offered me the job, after all. I mean, ethically speaking. Fair is fair.”
•
She’s having a party. She wants you to come. Don’t ask me why.”
“She asked you to tell me that she wants me to come to her party,” I said. “She doesn’t want to ask me herself.”
“I don’t know. She just said to tell you she was having a party and she said you could come if you want.”
“That I could come if I want,” I said. “Not that she wants me to come.”
“I didn’t have a fucking tape recorder with me, Bobby,” Sylvia said. “I don’t know. The facts are she is having a party and you are invited.”
There had been snow. I drove carefully because these Texans did not know how to drive in the weather. But I was in a hurry. I did a few bumps from the bottle. I did not even want the coke. But it was best if I did some. I wanted to be charming and robust. Convincing. Also I wanted to be able to drink a lot, securely, if I needed to.
When I got to the party her apartment was empty. Someone had lied to me or I had the date wrong, or I had assumed it was at her apartment but it was at a restaurant or a hotel, and Sylvia had told me and I had not heard her or she had forgotten to tell me, or she had failed to tell me deliberately. Sylvia. With her crabs. I never liked her.
I saw there were open bottles around the apartment like from a party.
Then I heard a noise. It came from the hallway.
In the bathroom on the floor was her boyfriend. He had an arm resting on the bowl of the toilet. Or rather he was sitting next to the toilet and using it to prop himself up. He had his elbow oddly over the top of the bowl. He had a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap on. In his other hand he had a wad of bills. He looked up.
“Here,” he said. “This belongs to you.”
He threw the money at me. But it fluttered up into the air, like tossed tissue paper or moths, and drifted down around us.
“Are you hurt?” I said. “Should I call an ambulance? Where’s Lisa?”
He had blood on his sleeves and the front of his shirt. But his hands were clean.
“She’s downstairs,” he said.
He was drunk.
“Downstairs. Waiting on you.” He laughed. “Them Indians,” he said. “Fucking cowboys and Indians.”
When I went downstairs I saw blood on the graveled steps. I had not noticed it coming up. He must have been drunk and fallen down the iced stairs. And climbed back up again. Or maybe they had carried him up and that was what cleared out the party. The two of them had a fight. Over drugs, and therefore the money in his hands. He was her connection, too, and she was always owing him money.
Lisa was not in the parking lot and her car was not there, so I supposed she had left. I checked around back. Then I saw her. She was folded into the Dumpster like she had been climbing into it and then, when she got to her middle, her hips, became discouraged and decided to lie there, bent over in half. I pulled her out. She did not look dead to me. I knew I should perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her but the bottom parts of her face were not available. Her right eye, no, not her right eye, her left eye was out of its socket. Under her hair I could see a large part of her bruised brain. I tried to fold her arms around my shoulders. To lift her up, to carry her. But the whole thing was limp and heavy. We fell, and then we were sitting on the concrete and she was in my lap. Across my legs. I managed to rest her face on myself, by my chin
and the knot of my tie. “She is pregnant,” I said. You better hurry. Come on, Lisa, let’s get going. Time to go, now. Up. She was always quick about getting ready. She was considerate that way. She was even quick in the bathroom. I was sitting there like that with my back against the cold metal of the blue and yellow Dumpster and my suited legs out in front of me when the prowlers arrived.
To look out on that sales floor of ours, customers like a sea, my salespeople’s heads bobbing among them, credit cards in the air, wrapped packages, Wayne Newton’s Christmas album on the CD player, a row of ten clients, fifteen clients, more, standing to see me, lined up outside my office door, one always at my desk, one leaves and as he opens the door the next rushes in, all men, all with their wallets in their hands, their wives’ presents already waiting like children in toy boats in my safe, beaming, steamed and shining, the preprinted receipts sitting beneath the little silk boxes. Seventeen thousand, twenty thousand, forty-five thousand, seventy thousand. Due. Receivable.
With that many people in the store I often looked up and saw Lisa among them. You know how that works, when you look up and you see someone you know, because the environment is familiar and you might expect them, there.
•
Jim leaned in my office door.
“Bobby, it’s time to lock up.”
“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll close it down.”
I didn’t lift my eyes to see how he might be looking at me. I didn’t want to see his expression.
When he left I watched him walk out the door. Then I stood and looked around at my office. On the wall next to my desk was a picture of our father. Beside it was a framed-and-glass-protected carpet we bought in Tibet, from a man with no fingers: a carpet covered with semiprecious and several precious jewels, depicting a white elephant with a ruby-crowned prince on her back. I remembered when Dad’s picture was resting there, on the floor, where I was going to hang it. That was when we expanded the store, opened the new side, and put in our own private offices. I made sure the offices were separated only by a sliding pocket door. In the picture my dad is fifteen and crouching in the blocks before a sprint. His hair is brushed back, waxed, and he wears a loose-fitting sweat suit, blue or dark green (it is a black-and-white picture). The sleeves are pushed up the wrists. You can almost see the word SHATTUCK, his military school, printed across his chest, and the school logo beneath it. The number 5-something, his number, is on one arm. He had that same school logo tattooed in green ink on his left forearm. Sometimes a tan arm, sometimes white, on a white sheet.
The look in his eye, ready to sprint. Those eyes, triangular at the corners, eyebrows peaked over them, light shading half his face, a small frown for the camera, handsome, but soft in his chin.
Customers would ask me, “Why do you have a picture of your brother on the wall?” Or they said, “I did not know Jim was a runner.” The two of them are that much alike. Then they might say, “How much is that carpet? Is that for sale? That is really a beautiful rug. Is that real gold? Are those real rubies and sapphires?”
“Yes, it’s all real,” I would tell them.
I sat back down at my desk and looked at that photo of our father. This was not Jim’s fault, I knew.
But if it was Jim’s fault it was my fault, too.
I used to tell Lisa, sometimes, like if we were at Chuy’s on McKinney, where they have one of those black-and-white photo booths, “Why don’t we take our picture?” I knew better than to write her letters or manufacture documents of any kind but I thought I would like one strip of pictures and I worried that I knew why she did not want one. There was always a place you could secrete something like that and I was starting to feel like we might not have to be in secrecy all that much longer, and then we might want an image of this hidden time. But she would always say, “What’s wrong with your memory? Isn’t it nicer to remember it? That way you have to remember it.” I had no response to that. Well, I had one now, naturally.
When Jim had come to get me at the police station he had put his arm around my shoulders and said, “I’m sorry, Robby.” I had looked at him because of the tone in his voice. For a moment I had thought he sounded relieved.
But I had seen in his face that no, he was as lost as I was.
There are two cops waiting for you at your desk,” Jim said.
Granddad and I were walking in the door from the cold and everyone else was putting out the cases. He wanted to talk business, he had said on the phone, but he didn’t want Jim joining us.
We had breakfast together across the street. How’s your old man? I kept expecting him to say, to introduce a line of questioning. You know a father’s advice can be helpful at a time like this. But he was only asking for simple, specific stories about big deals I had made, about who was selling best among the sales staff, and other ordinary details of the season. He wasn’t even talking about the bank balances, or what we would have left over after we squared up with our vendors, like he should have been.
Am I being coherent? I asked myself as I replied to him. Can he understand what I am saying?
I see now that it was essential for him to hide what he must, of course, have known about my situation. In order to help me he had to communicate indirectly.
“Cops, Grandson?” Granddad said to Jim. “What the hell are you fellas up to over here?”
He wasn’t dismayed. He seemed unconcerned about everything. It was like he had the Christmas spirit. That didn’t happen to those of us in the business, though. He must have been faking it.
“It’s nothing, Granddad,” Jim said. “It’s just the Lisa thing.”
Just the Lisa thing.
Granddad Windexed the cases to help us out and to flirt with the saleswomen, and I sat down at my desk with the pair of police. Lisa’s boyfriend had explained the case to them in detail. He had bludgeoned her with a baseball bat. I did not know where the bat had come from. Why would she have a baseball bat in her apartment? Had he brought it with him? There were more questions I would never ask.
“He blames it on you, you should know,” they told me. “Not that you did it or anything. But that you made him do it.”
“Fucked up,” the younger cop said.
“Sorry,” the older cop said. “We are professionals. Even if we don’t always act that way. We only need you to confirm the facts he’s given us. We might need you to come downtown.”
“I’m pretty busy,” I said, and gestured with both my hands at the buzzing confusion of my opening store. “It’s Christmas, gentlemen,” I said.
I did not want to take a chance that I might see him. I had shaken that man’s hand, and when Lisa had complained about him I would defend him, often, in the way one man will fraternally defend another, as part of the code of manliness. Once at a bar I had bought him a drink. If I saw him I was afraid of the look we might exchange.
I was afraid, too, that I was too cowardly to want to kill him myself. Even after the murder he kept on seeming like the same old Lisa’s boyfriend to me.
Was I trying to tell myself that Lisa had wanted to be murdered?
“It’s homicide, sir,” the older cop said. “We are doing our best not to make this difficult for you. But if this guy hadn’t confessed you would be the main suspect.”
“Yeah,” the younger one said. “Jeez. Hey, is this Baileys? Do you guys pour your customers Baileys? That’s a good idea. You got any good deals? What’s this pearl bracelet cost? That looks expensive. How expensive is expensive, anyway? In the jewelry business?”
“Gray!” the older cop said. “Please excuse Officer Gray, sir,” he said. “He’s still learning. He’s pretty new.”
“He can have it,” I said. “I buy them by the hundreds.” It was a silver charm bracelet with Christmas trees and a Santa Claus and a reindeer on it that cost us forty bucks. They had rice pearls between the charms that I guess were supposed to look like snow. I ran a promo ad on them for forty-nine dollars as a loss leader. We were going to be stuck with abo
ut five hundred of them after the season was over. You can’t sell Santa Claus bracelets on Valentine’s Day, I thought. Not on Mother’s Day, either. I’d still be selling those fucking bracelets for forty-nine bucks three years from now.
“It’s a gift,” I said. “Take it.”
“No, he really can’t, sir,” the older one said. “Let’s get moving.” He stood and walked out of my office. He left his card on my desk. The younger one lingered behind for a second, winked at me, and stuck the bracelet in his pocket.
“Thanks!” he whispered, and winked again. “Merry Christmas! Sorry about your girlfriend. We’ll be in touch.” He did not leave a card. Granddad opened the door for them.
“You fellows have a safe Christmas season, now,” he said. “Stay warm.
“Fucking pigs,” Granddad added after the door had closed behind them.
I did not hear from them again until after the season was over.
I did not want this specter in my jewelry store. He wasn’t a customer. He wasn’t a salesman or a vendor, either. He was like Santa Claus, he came with a gift, a delivery. Or just the opposite, to take something away. Santa Claus in reverse, Santa Claus inside out, Santa Claus upside down. Like those satanic rituals when they hang Jesus with his head down on the cross. Maybe if Santa Claus accidentally caught sight of himself in a mirror that’s what looked back at him from the reversed world of the reflection. Father Death.
After work I bought a six-pack of beer and drove around. I drank two of the beers and then I gave up driving and headed for my apartment. I couldn’t go home but there was nowhere to go. At my exit I saw a homeless guy with his sign and I handed him the rest of the six-pack. Someone honked at me from behind. I wanted to park right there at the bottom of the ramp and get out of the car and sit with the black bum and drink the beer. To teach them a lesson. But then the car pulled around me, still honking, so I followed it for a while, with my brights on. When they finally lost me I was in north Dallas. I searched for a familiar highway. I thought I might just sleep in my car. But there was no safe place to park. A cop would come and knock on the window and wake me up. I would want a shower in the morning.
How to Sell: A Novel Page 24