Pushover

by Orrie Hitt

  “You don’t have to. I understand.”

  “No. Not that. Not about us. Something else. A little favor I want you to do for me.”

  She shut off the machine. Her eyes were passive.

  “Anything, Danny.”

  “All right. Now, you know about the girl I’m going to marry, this Sandy Adams. I love her, Madeline. I love her very much.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “She thinks I’m a writer,” I said. “She thinks I’m writing this book. I didn’t do it deliberately, believe me. It’s been the same every place we’ve gone. You know that. It makes it easier to sell the ads, if they think they’re doing business with the writer. They tell you things, give you hints on what to put in the book and, whether you use any of them or not, it gives them a sense of participating. Do you know what I’m driving at?”

  “I guess so.”

  “The same thing happened here. I came into the town and I met her. She was in charge of the deal so I guess I must have given her the same impression. I didn’t have to, I’m sure, but I did. And now that it’s been made it’s too late to change it. I don’t want to change it, do you understand?”

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  I got out a cigarette but I didn’t light it.

  “She may come up here, any time. I don’t know if. she will or she won’t, but she just might. If she does, I want you to say that you’re my secretary, that you’re just hired to do the typing. Will you do that?”

  She said she would and I felt better. For three hundred bucks I’d purchased some peace of mind.

  “I’ll work hard on the manuscript,” Madeline told me, picking at the fingernails of one hand. “I’m going home to Amsterdam as soon as it’s finished.”

  I had the checkbook spread out on another table and I hardly heard what she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

  I started writing the checks. Some I hated to make out. There was one for the Hudson Coal Company. They’d been tough! The old man in there, the one with the hound-dog face, had kept bitching about the churches all the time. Five thousand dollars’ salary his minister got, he’d said. Why, back years ago, a minister was willing to preach for nothing. He’d kept it up all the time he’d been making out the petty cash slip from the cash drawer. And that building-and-loan bunch, they’d have taken a page if I’d been selling the ads that way. If I ever went back into this book business that’s the way I’d sell the ads, too — a quarter of a page, a half page or a full page. No more of this penny-a-pound stuff.

  “What’s so funny?” Madeline wanted to know.

  I’d been laughing.

  “Hell, I just thought of a good joke.”

  I had. Me, back in the fund-raising business. That was a riot. In a little while I’d be so deep in funds that I never would have to worry about a buck for the rest of my life.

  Sandy came in around four and showed me a letter she had worked up for the refunds. I read it over.

  “All right?”

  “Fine.”

  “We can have them mimeographed.”

  “I don’t know why not.”

  She said for me to keep at my work, that she didn’t want to interrupt, and I introduced her to Madeline.

  “I didn’t know you had a secretary,” she said.

  “Oh. Well, I didn’t. Not until just now.” I motioned toward the cluttered top of Madeline’s table. “I got snowed under, that’s all.”

  Sandy laughed.

  “I can believe it.”

  Madeline might as well have been part of the furniture for all the attention Sandy paid to her.

  “Dress for dinner tonight,” she told me on her way out. “We’re invited to the Wilsons and I want you to look pretty.”

  “I don’t think I know them.”

  “He’s a doctor.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’re inviting a group from the Church Council. I want you to talk to them about the book — the sales part of it and how they should go about it.”

  “Okay.”

  I kept going until five on the checks. Madeline asked me what I was doing and I told her.

  “Painful,” she observed. “Giving money back.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Al would go on another bender if he knew it.”

  I should worry about Al, I thought. He was in the past and the past was forgotten.

  “We’ll have to get some more pictures for the book,” I said. “With no ads in it, it’s going to run short.”

  “I’ll help you look, if you want.”

  “The hell with it. You pick out what you think is good.”

  We weren’t supposed to take pictures from the historical room but who can see what’s in an envelope? Besides, I could always return them after the book had been run.

  Madeline hunted through some of the junk and came up with a handful of treasures.

  “These all right?”

  I didn’t look at them.

  “Swell!”

  “I’m all finished with the first draft,” she said. “And I’ll do the rest of it in the apartment. Want to help me move?”

  We took everything out, except the air conditioner, and carried the stuff down to her car. She said there was a fellow who lived in the building who’d carry up the typewriter for her.

  “I’ll give you the finished copy to read,” she said.

  I laughed.

  “You read it,” I said. I’d never read one of those things before and I wasn’t going to start in now. “You check it over and when you’re finished, bundle it up and send it to Harrison.”

  She got in behind the wheel.

  “Whatever you say, Danny.”

  “And put a foreword in it,” I said. “Something classy. Just say that the publishers gratefully acknowledge the wonderful assistance given them by Miss Sandy Adams. You know. The old bull. Put it on thick but make it nice.”

  “All right, Danny.”

  She started the car and drove off. I wondered how long it would take her to whip the thing into shape. A week? Ten days? It didn’t matter. From here on out the road was wide and straight.

  On the way to the motel I stopped and got a bunch of envelopes in a drug store. I could address them by hand and have them all ready to mail when the letters were mimeographed.

  It was a shock to see Al’s car parked in front of the motel.

  “Waiting for you,” he said.

  I told him that was pretty obvious.

  “Happened to remember that I ran off with some of your money, Danny. I sure didn’t mean to.”

  “Keep it.”

  “But — ”

  “I said, keep it, didn’t I?”

  He got out of the car.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I can use it.”

  “So long,” I told him and turned away.

  “Danny?”

  “What?”

  He came up to me.

  “You’re really kicking this off, huh? Letting the business go?”

  “I’m staying here in Port Jessup,” I said. “I’m getting married.”

  “Any objection if I pick it up from here on out? I know the business pretty well and I think I could make a dollar at it.”

  “Have fun.”

  “Thanks, Danny!”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Maybe Madeline’ll be interested.”

  “I don’t know. Ask her.”

  “Thanks,” he said again. “Thanks a lot!”

  The poor slob got into his car and drove off. He was welcome to the grief and the bastards and the uncertainty of it. He could write books on every community from coast to coast and I wouldn’t louse it up for him.

  I was as generous as all hell.

  And happy.

  It’s a winning combination.

  13

  IF I’D had my way about it, I’d have printed the History Of Port Jessup — ”An Authentic Account Of The Birth And Growth Of Our Community” — and I’
d have buried the books in a sandpile. But not Sandy. It was a charitable thing and it had to go over with a loud smash.

  We jumped in with all four feet.

  As soon as the checks were in the mail we sat around drinking rum cokes and talking over publicity angles.

  “The radio station’ll give us free time,” I told her. “You can be sure of that.”

  “I don’t care if we have to pay for it.”

  “Why pay for it when it’s free-for-nothing?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. We can work up something and give it to them.”

  “Okay.”

  “And we can use almost the same sort of material for the newspapers.”

  “Their stuff has to be a little different. One’s talking and the other’s reading.”

  She had a typewriter, a Remington portable, and she set it up out on a lawn table. The maid said she couldn’t find the paper and I had to go in and get that.

  “You type,” I told her when I got back. “I’ll think.”

  She was a fairly good typist and, strangely enough, I was able to remember most of the releases we’d used in other localities. I’d studied all of them, because they’d meant sales, and I had a good idea which ones would pull and which ones wouldn’t.

  “Not so fast,” she told me several times, laughing. “I can’t keep up with you.”

  We finished the radio commercials, eleven of them, that afternoon.

  That night we went to another dinner, something like the one the Wilsons had given. There were three ministers present and half a dozen old bags who were tied up with the aid societies.

  “It’s certainly a novel way of raising money,” one minister told me. “And worthy. I can see where a program such as this can do a great deal of good. Not only does the money go to a legitimate cause but it helps inform people about the place where they live. Proper information is a wonderful thing.”

  I guessed he had something and I agreed with him. People had responded about the same way everywhere I’d gone. They thought it was great. They talked up a storm, praising the merits of such a venture. And then, after the book was out, when it came time for them to go out and go to work and sell it, they went dead on it. And you had to screw them right and left to come out of it with a dollar.

  “I wonder, Mr. Fulton, if you’d tell us how we can best sell the book.” This was from one of the bags, a sorry-looking drip with her chest hanging almost to her knees. “We’re going to use our share toward buying a new bell, you know.”

  All of this was after the dinner, in the living room. It was the one angle of the book business that I really knew and I gave them a strong pitch on it.

  “You’ll do best if you work by phone,” I told them. “Don’t try selling the books on a newsstand.”

  “That would seem to me to be the most logical way,” one of the ministers said.

  I gave him a tight little smile. You give the average person a tight little smile, the kind you’d give if you just pricked yourself with a needle, and you can say almost anything without being offensive.

  “You won’t get angry at me if I say something?”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Fulton.”

  “Well,” I said, “take collections in your church. You have the plate passed, don’t you? All right, supposing you didn’t do that, that you just had a place near the door in which people could deposit money. Do you think your collections would be as good? Don’t you agree that the best approach for money is the direct and personal one?”

  They all nodded, even Sandy, and I knew that I had their attention. So I gave it to them, all of it, and if they weren’t able to sell books after they left that room they’d never be able to.

  I stressed the point that no one buys anything unless they have a need. The woman who goes shopping on Saturday has a need — she has to eat or get something to wear. And the man who buys a new car, he has a need, too — need to feed his vanity, or what have you?

  “But that doesn’t mean people recognize their needs,” I went on. “That’s why there are salesmen to help them do so. For instance, let’s take this book. Few people are going to be aware of the fact that they need it, that they really want a copy. You have to show them the need. Maybe you do it by pointing out to them that they want to support their church, that funds from the sale will be used for worthwhile purposes. I don’t know. It depends entirely upon the individual doing the selling. You have to find what works best for you and then you have to stick to it. You have to learn how to discover their need and, once you’ve done that, you satisfy it by selling them a book.”

  You’d have thought I was giving a college lecture, the way I ran on and on. But they lapped it up, including Sandy. I wanted her to like it. I wanted to impress her. She looked so pretty sitting there, smiling at me, and I had so little to offer her.

  “I’m proud of you, Danny!” she breathed, driving home. “Awfully proud!”

  “I guess I talked too much.”

  “No, you didn’t. It was — superb.”

  The moon was out; the ground and the highway stretched white beneath it.

  “You’ll sell a lot of cars, Danny. And you’ll love every minute of it.”

  “I know I will.”

  The more I thought about it, the better I liked that garage deal. From what I had been able to learn they had a manager who was pretty good and the rest of the crew, with the possibility of that one jerky salesman, was first rate. There’d be no pressure from outside or otherwise and I could take my time learning the racket from nuts and bolts to bills.

  “That lawyer of yours is all right,” I said. “He really is.”

  “He’s smart.”

  “Yeah.”

  Usually, we said good night in the car or on the porch, but by the time I got through kissing her we’d gone so far that we couldn’t turn back.

  “I’ll go on in,” she whispered, her mouth against my face. “And don’t make any noise coming up the stairs. The last time it sounded like you were running to a fire.”

  “Not me,” I grinned. “I was on my way to start one.”

  I waited about five minutes and then I followed her into the house. She’d already changed and she was coming down to meet me. The black negligee covered her body in long flowing folds. It was very low in front and when she stopped on the steps to kiss me, leaning forward, one breast came into view.

  “I’m a wanton,” she said huskily.

  “No. You’re fine and beautiful.”

  “And you do love me?”

  I guess I hadn’t been telling her that enough.

  “I love you very much.”

  She came against me, clinging.

  “You could prove it,” she said.

  I picked her up in my arms and carried her upstairs. I stumbled once, because she was kissing me so hard, and we almost went down.

  “Careful,” she said. “Or we’ll make a scandal.”

  I took her into a bedroom and closed the door.

  “But this isn’t my room, Danny.”

  “Be my guest.”

  She was laughing as I laid her down on the bed.

  “I don’t know why,” she confided, “but I feel shameless.”

  “You don’t have to. We’ll be married very soon.”

  It struck me then, suddenly, that she was mine, all mine, and that I never again had to worry about losing her. Maybe I wasn’t a writer and perhaps I was a skunk of sorts, but with a girl like Sandy it wouldn’t matter at all. She knew what she wanted and when she got it she wouldn’t let go.

  “I love you,” I told her again.

  “And I love you.”

  We kept saying that to each other and kissing, holding the beauty of it off as long as we could. It came slowly, with deliberate impact, driving us both wild with the wanting. And when it happened it was the most wonderful moment of life, a moment of insane beauty and heavenly desire.

  • • •

  The next morning we rose early, before the m
aid or the gardener, and we had breakfast out on the terrace.

  “Oh, it’s a tremendous morning!” she breathed. Her breasts were swollen and pointed beneath the gray sweater. “I feel as though I have been dead all my life and this is the resurrection.”

  “Maybe I should start looking around for some old friends.”

  The maid — at least, I call her the maid — did most of the cooking, but Sandy was able to swing a mean breakfast. Eggs, over light; bacon fixed just right, crisp; and some kind of foreign bread toast that wouldn’t let you stop eating it.

  “More coffee, Danny?”

  “Let’s have it out on the lawn.”

  We carried the pot and the cups out there and got down to work on the newspaper stories. She helped until eleven when she said she had to go downtown.

  She drove off in her Plymouth and I walked around the house, killing time. The gardener, a middle-aged man with a hump on his shoulders, was watering the back lawn.

  “Damnest thing I ever heard of,” he complained. “All I do is sprinkle water on the grass.”

  “You get paid for it.”

  “Sure,” he said. “And I get sick of it, too.”

  I left him and went inside the house. The maid had closed all the doors and windows and the air-conditioner was thumping along. Why the hell had we been sitting out there in that hot sun and missing all this comfort?”

  The maid was in the living room diving under chairs and things with a vacuum cleaner.

  “Morning, Mr. Fulton.”

  “Hi, Mary.”

  She cut the switch on the cleaner and the noise stopped.

  “Mind if I ask you something, Mr. Fulton?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Is it true what I hear? That you and Miss Adams are getting married?”

  “The end of July.”

  She nodded, hesitating.

  “Something on your mind, Mary?”

  “Only — well, I was thinking that you might be able to talk to her about this.” She pushed the vacuum cleaner back and forth. “It’s a big house, Mr. Fulton, it is. And once a week would be enough to clean it. But I have to do every room every day. It’s too much for one person, Mr. Fulton. You can see that for yourself.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I told her.