Soft Drink and the Distribution of Soft Drink
‘Becker?
‘Becker?
‘Becker?
‘Becker!
‘Becker!’
Becker heard his name, heard the voice of Terri, heard the coin tapping like a blindman on the window of his motel room, felt his sleep decamping. He opened his eyes, and yes, saw Terri peering through the window into the darkened room. Sweating, he was left, high, wide and awake by his fleeing afternoon sleep.
‘Becker, it’s me, Terri.’
‘Now what the hell!’ he cried, irritably. Becker, in his undershorts, lumbered up and went to the window.
‘Let me in.’
‘Terri, now listen, what is this?’
They faced each other through the glass. Terri tapped at it with the coin. Becker opened the window. Terri swung a leg over the sill and entered, jeans, Women’s Liberation tee shirt, barefoot.
‘Didn’t you hear me knocking on the door?’
‘No, I was asleep.’ He had heard the knocking but had chosen to sleep.
‘Knocked for ages.’
‘Yes, all right, I did hear but I chose not to answer.’
‘American directness. Why are you sleeping at this time of the day?’
‘Terri, what are you doing here?’
She went to the dressing table and examined his toiletries, his aftershave. She tossed them one by one into the wastepaper bin.
‘Why are you sleeping in the afternoon?’
As if he didn’t have sufficient headache and ulcer with the seminar itself.
‘Terri, what are you doing here?’ he demanded picking up the toiletries from the wastepaper bin.
‘I came down to listen to the pollution.’
Becker sat down tiredly, reaching for his Old Crow under the bed and took a swig, rinsed his mouth, and spat into the garden.
‘I really came to see you.’
Why him? He took another swig and swallowed.
‘Do you usually drink so heavily?’ she said, condemnatorily. ‘John Barleycorn must die.’
‘I’m not drinking heavily, I am simply bringing myself around. Care for a drink?’ He proffered the bottle without overmuch grace.
‘No – I’m off alcohol.’
He poured himself a slug and added ice from the polyurethane cooler.
‘I really came to see you because you haven’t been in the office and things were so hung up between us when you came to my place. And that telephone call! I want to know you!’
‘Look at my personnel record, and further more I’m working – not socialising.’
Terri sat on the bed, rolled on to her back and reclined.
‘Be my guest,’ Becker said grumpily, head hanging towards his knees.
‘I’m attracted to you – madly – isn’t that typical? You’re madly attracted to someone and everything fouls up every time you try to express it.’ She was cheerfully resigned.
‘Now looky – you have lately come from a psychiatric clinic – you have this drug thing – you’re all screwed up – you admit that yourself – you could hardly, really, seriously say you’re ready for a … ah … straight … normal … association – and furthermore Coca-Cola don’t like their executives fraternising with female staff and furthermore you scare me – you scare the very hell out of me, and furthermore I want no complications. No complications.’
‘I think you’re fighting yourself. Furthermore I’m just a casual typist not permanently working for Coca-Cola – and furthermore you find me physically attractive but you’re resisting it.’
He had to admit it.
‘Well, take me.’
‘Now, Terri …’
He closed his eyes. ‘Terri, please go away.’
‘Is that what you really want? I’ll forget I’m in Women’s Liberation – just go ahead and use me, take me.’
Becker gave his thirsty soul a drink of Old Crow.
‘Go on – fuck me. Then I’ll go away if you want.’
She scored highly on audacity.
He wavered. He was not a man over strongly disciplined by moral restraint. He was not Baptist. He was, he considered, inclined to lust. Inclined – it was more a capsize than an inclination. It would be his downfall. He would rob him of his slice of the cake. Sam wouldn’t suffer from lust. Sam had will. Sam was married, though he’d heard it said that lust couldn’t be contained, that it always overflowed its container. There was something generous about lust. Lord Rochester. The rot had started with his reading Rochester. That weirdo English teacher back in Atlanta had done it. The inclination and capsize had started there. That had been the end of the Baptist.
She was unzipping her jeans.
‘I knew you were attracted to me – I could tell. Usually, I’m all shy, twitching with it, but with you I knew.’
He looked at her. She arched her backside and pulled her jeans and pants down – he pulled them from the ankles. She sat up and bending forward pulled off the Women’s Liberation tee shirt. Naked, she was of excellent figure.
He took off his undershorts – ‘let’s get this job done’ – and rolled on to the bed.
For simplicity, directness, and lust, Becker thought, it was hard to beat.
Becker had once, and only once, read an obscene New York newspaper called the National Expose. There was something from that paper which described a girl and a dog. It had stayed in his mind. It went something like this: ‘He was very sensitive like a human being (Becker liked that). We talked to each other. He understood me with his eyes. He’d lick my breasts and then look at me to see if I liked it. Then down on my belly and look up again to see if it was all right. Just like he was human. Then he was at my side licking it. I just reached over … it was already out of its sheath and I began to play with him … just like I would a man and then he started to mount me.’
Out the front of the lecture room the man from the Department of Agriculture who looked like a dog was licking down the belly of the audience, pausing for signs of delight, and then continuing his passionate talk about pollution and its effect on animals.
Becker was thinking what a crazy way to promote soft drink – here Coca-Cola was putting up good money for a bunch of earnest people to feel better because they sat through five talks on pollution. I feel better myself, thought Becker, but not that much better.
Terri was sitting beside him reeking of lust, having bluntly refused to shower. She’d accused him of taking ‘American showers’. She’d mocked him for over-showering, especially after sex.
He’d yelled at her, ‘If you won’t do it for personal hygiene – do it for the cause of air pollution.’ She’d laughed.
If everyone in the village kept their stoop clean, the whole village would be clean, thought Becker, recalling his grandmother.
He didn’t see this seminar as the way he wanted to go about selling Coca-Cola. He liked the direct approach of good, old, honest selling.
Display.
Availability.
A strong single product.
Pollution, it occurred to him, was probably all to do with self-destruction. We’re all in that business. We pollute ourselves, goddam. That semester of existentialism had done him no good. People wanted health but all the time they did unhealthy things. The unhealthy was always a better proposition. Why was that? Terri was unhealthy and uncontrollable. He liked a little control. He liked a lot of control. Terri was, to be precise, a kook. She was a persistent kook. She was, like unhealthy things, a desirable package. She was a plastic bomb.
He preferred control yet so often he was flung into the oily whirlpool. There was a question. Why did he consort with pollution? Why did he skirt the odorous abyss so perilously?
At the conclusion of the session the chairman said, ‘And we’d like to thank Coca-Cola for making this seminar possible.’
It sounded as if had Coca-Cola not existed there would have been no pollution.
And then the chairman invited Becker to come forward on behalf of Coca-Cola.
They expected dollars, not words, to come from his big American mouth. That was all right by him. That was what it was all about.
‘All over the world,’ Becker began, ‘the Coca-Cola company has been pointed at as meaning … ah … nasty America … bad teeth of the children …’ Some laughter. Laughter is the best medicine ‘… up in Asia you get students even burning down the plant … and they cry “American Imperialism”… and so on … all that … I want you just to think for a second what Coca-Cola is … it’s a beverage … a simple goddam soft drink … it’s not a Sherman … a napalm bomb … it’s not a damn political system … goddam, it’s a soft drink.’
Becker pulled himself up. ‘To conclude, my grandmother used to say if everyone in the village kept their stoop clean, the whole village would be clean.’
Clapping.
He was about to return to his seat, having turned smiling to the chairman, when the guy shouted – not shouted, said with oratorial boom – ‘Coca-Cola, sir, pollutes the blood.’
People screwed around in the seats to look at the speaker.
‘Our vegetarian friend,’ the chairman whispered, smiling, and then said to the audience, ‘well, that closes our seminar and I’d like to thank you for your attendance.’
‘Pollution of the blood.’
Becker tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, not the troublemaker, not the audience buzz, not their expectant looks, not anything.
‘Well, that closes this seminar. If there are no further questions, we hope that it has given you food for thought.’
‘I said, sir, pollution of the blood.’
Becker looked at the man.
‘Perhaps the gentleman from Coca-Cola would be so kind as to answer me this …’
‘I’m sorry,’ the chairman said, smiling, placating, ‘the seminar is closed.’
‘Pollution of the blood stream, sir.’
‘I’m afraid that closes the seminar,’ the chairman said, trying to give finality to the situation by gathering his papers.
‘Eat only the foods of the earth,’ the vegetarian said.
‘Oh shut up,’ Terri cried from the body of the hall, ‘shut up, you stupid man.’
Becker was surprised and warmed by her support. He was not accustomed to support.
‘Pollution of the blood.’
Unnecessarily the chairman said, ‘Thank you’ again, coloured, and left the rostrum.
Before Becker could move from the rostrum the chairman had scurried away, and the people, deciding there was to be no clash, emptied out.
Becker, in his crumpled white suit, was left standing before the empty lecture hall. They sure knew how to empty a hall.
A great note. A great note to end on. Wait till Sam heard.
Terri came to his side.
‘I was going to punch him,’ she said.
Becker, thumbs in his braces like a country sherrif, hummed ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, to calm himself.
A great note, all right, to end on.
‘Can I come to the party with you?’
‘I can’t guarantee you’ll be at ease,’ Becker told Terri.
‘Coca-Cola people?’
‘No – people I’ve met through business.’
‘Business people?’
‘Business people.’
She sat quietly as they drove back from the seminar.
‘Will they mind me without shoes and in jeans?’
‘No – couldn’t imagine any objection – it’s a casual poolside party.’
‘They’ll be expensively dressed.’
‘Uh uh.’
More quiet.
Becker also remarked to himself that they would also not be heavy with the odour of lust and spent sex.
‘Do you want me to come?’
Becker hesitated. ‘I can state quite straightly that I don’t see you fitting in very well – that doesn’t worry me if it doesn’t worry you.’ In truth it worried all hell out of him.
‘Well, I’ll come then.’
‘As you wish.’
They drove.
‘What’s a soda?’
‘How do you mean – what’s a soda?’
‘You hear Americans in films ordering sodas.’
Becker spoke sadly, softly. ‘Good sodas are a rare and dying commodity – not many around who can throw together a good soda.’
‘What are they?’ she repeated.
‘Firstly, the glass must be chilled – some guys just use the glass direct from the wash and it’s hot – the syrup must be chilled, the water must be chilled … a soda is a very cold drink … it’s designed as a very cold, cold drink … one scoop of cream … just one … not fluid milk or whipped cream … just cream … the ice cream and the syrup are mixed in with a jet of soda and then you fill the glass with soda and mix it with a few sharp squirts, so.’ Becker imitated and gave squirting noises. ‘That’s a soda. Aren’t many guys around who can mix a good soda.’
Talking about sodas made Becker aware that he was a long way from old Atlanta, Georgia, and the action.
Terri considered it for a while and then said, ‘Why do you know so much about sodas?’
‘It’s my business – it’s my business to know about drinks.’
‘Do you know what a “red” is?’
Becker thought, ‘You’ve got me.’
‘It’s the drink the kids are mad about in hotels – when their parents take them to pubs – it’s lemonade and grenadine – and a straw. It looks grownup.’
Becker chuckled. ‘I like that,’ he said. ‘Do you know what grenadine is?’
Terri shook her head.
‘French cordial – made from pomegranate fruit.’
At the party Terri and Becker took their drinks and smiled.
Becker thought Terri, to her credit, was trying. Barefoot, jeans, and Women’s Liberation tee shirt and stinking of sex, she needed to try. However, she didn’t appear as dishabille as he had privately worried she might.
The house bared itself to the sea and cradled a swimming pool.
A white-coated chef cooked silently at a barbecue surrounded by drunk noise.
Becker was then approached by the one overdressed woman at the party who by her overdressed presence threw Terri into relaxed and appropriate contrast.
‘Oh, you’re the American,’ the woman said, a matronly marcasite brooch tied in a knot on her breast. ‘Oh, you’re the American.’
She sat down beside them. ‘I adore American fashions.’
‘Are you in the fashion business?’ Becker guessed, finding it difficult to believe from her appearance.
‘I’m about to make a triumphant return from ten years buried in the graveyard of suburban martyrdom.’
She’d said that before, Becker could tell. He observed, on the other side of his brain, a comfort from the pressure of Terri’s non-conformist denim leg against his.
‘I feel that the fashions have turned the full circle and caught me up – it’s back to me – I’m a fashion commentator by profession – these maxis are so feminine, definitely me,’ she said, overloudly for confidence, drinking her brandy crusta.
‘I suppose you’re delightfully uncaring about dress,’ the ex-fashion commentator pelted at Terri, glancing up and down the jeans.
‘I’m turned on by Indian styles,’ Terri said, ever-so-politely.
‘Oh really, how fascinating,’ the woman said, with the emphasis which Becker observed began with unfelt enthusiasm and died immediately to intentional uninterest.
‘And what burning cause does the tee shirt represent?’ the ex-fashion commentator asked, as they were joined by another lady.
Becker knew that Terri would break. Becker knew he had goofed in bringing her. This was no place for kooks. His mistake.
‘Women’s Lib,’ she said. ‘Women’s Liberation.’
Becker wasn’t sure what Women’s Liberation were on about. He remembered something from Time. But he knew this – it was giving the two ladies an instant pain in the gut. He sensed that for a discussion topic it had a dangerous wail about it.
‘Oh, the men haters,’ the second lady said. ‘Why, darling? Why do you hate men?’
‘You were just complaining about housewives in suburbia,’ Terri pointed out to the ex-fashion commentator, ‘and I only hate some men,’ she said to the other with bare politeness, ‘and a lot of women,’ she added, ‘especially those who do the dirt on their sex.’
Oh oh, here we go. Inside himself, Becker whistled a hymn of deliverance, as he watched the personalities take a collision course.
‘Oh, you resent ladies who love their husbands and their families?’ the ex-fashion commentator said.
‘Yes,’ Terri said loudly as they met in collision, ‘I’m a man-hating, bra-burning, lesbian member of the castration brigade. My mind’s between my legs because it suits men to keep me in underpaid mentally unfulfilling jobs, make women have backyard abortions, fuck them without caring if they like it. You women stink and your men stink – from their mother-fucking socks to their short back and sides, from their piss-stained jockstraps to their Apex badges. All power to every woman who’s been put down and fucked over and I’m going to tell every man who does – to go suck his own cock and to every woman who submits – go lie in their own shit.’
It was a speedy speech, similar, Becker imagined, to being thrown through a plate-glass window. He stared deeply down into his empty glass wanting to be huddled there at the bottom. He looked up and thought the two women had lost their face muscles. Then one laughed, a squeezed-out little laugh, and said. ‘Really? Oh there’s Jenny – I must go over.’
The other said, ‘I must go to the little girl’s room,’ and then hearing her expression and guessing that it was probably a Liberation crime, laughed neurotically and left Becker standing with Terri and their empty glasses.
Becker knew one thing. The party was, for them, over.
Close to tears, Terri said, ‘I’m sorry – well, they asked for it. Women’s Liberation is not a big thing for me at all – they asked for it, that’s all. I got it all from Kate Jennings.’
‘It’s been quite a day, quite a day,’ Becker said, more to God than to Terri.
‘I want to go.’
‘Sure.’
‘Hold on.’ Terri went to the lavatory, not, Becker prayed, to continue the encounter. He rocked there for a minute on his own, managing one uncertain chuckle. A bad day for PR. A bad day.
Cockburn came over. ‘Nice to see you Becker. Those outlines are finished. I’ll drop them in on Monday. The figures too.’
‘Fine, fine.’
Terri came back and after pleasantries with Cockburn they left.
‘I wrote, “Women Demand the Right to Control Your Own Bodies” on the wall of their bathroom in texta colour,’ she said. ‘They’ll never get it off.’
Becker reeled as her confession smacked into him.
His social life was already, to say the least, thin. Oh, this country.
‘But Terri, why?’ he groaned.
‘Propaganda.’
They were driving when Terri said with a giggle, ‘I also wrote “Becker Sucks Cocks”.’
Bang. His palms wept sweat. ‘Now, come on …’ He turned to her, disbelieving, horror-struck. ‘No?’
She giggled.
He dabbed his sweating brow, wiped his palms.
‘I wrote it on a mirror,’ she said. ‘They’ll be able to rub that off easily.’
‘Oh good,’ Becker said, absolutely horror-struck, ‘oh good, that’s just fine, that’s good, very good, it’ll rub off easily, will it? Oh good, very good.
‘You didn’t really?’ he pleaded.
‘I didn’t think you cared – it was a joke – those people are so crummy.’
As they drove, Becker, to escape his horror, told Terri, in a low homesick voice, about the Dogwood Festival in Atlanta where he dearly wanted to be.
‘We have the usual thing,’ he told her, ‘you can go to the sculpture – they pile in all the First National Bank lobby and they have all the gems and such at the Fulton Bank. Square dancing with the Greater Atlanta Federation of Square Dances – in Lenox Square – the Bottle Club have a show.’
She butted in, ‘I’m sorry about writing that if it’s upset you – you sound so … crestfallen.’ She touched him. ‘They’ll take it as a joke.’
‘Please, let’s not mention it again. And no, they will not take it as a joke.’ Cockburn might, he thought, but the others … Jeez-us!
Becker persevered with the programme of the Dogwood Festival – ‘There’s the jazz – the jazz down in Ruby Red’s warehouse – Dixieland jazz – lovely, oh boy, lovely.’
He mused, he recollected, ‘The Atlanta Dixieland Jazz Society, I was a member, albeit not a very active one.’
She was crying now. She should be crying.
‘Why the crying?’ He placed an awkward arm around her.
‘Why do you do it – why do you mix with those shits, those business shits, and their frightful women?’ she cried.
‘Oh, they’re not so bad,’ he said, ‘just react badly,’ and then he lied, ‘They don’t matter over much to me – just acquaintances.’
‘But you don’t belong there.’
‘Yes I do,’ Becker said, ‘yes I do, I’m their sort,’ or at least he had been.
‘You’re not,’ she shouted, stopping her crying, ‘you’re not, you’re not – you’re different.’
‘No, Terri,’ Becker said, this time surely, or at least trying for certainty, ‘I’m a man of business, a merchant, a pedlar, and I work for Coca-Cola and I like it. I’m in soft drink – soft drink and the distribution of soft drink.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
Terri sat in total silence, crying a sob now and then. Becker gave her his awkward comfort.
A few miles further on she turned to Becker and said, putting her hands on him, ‘Jesus, I like you.’
Becker was touched. It almost compensated for his social destruction back at the party.
‘You kook,’ he said, ‘I like you,’ and gave her his awkward affection.
‘You’re not a business man,’ she said, trying another tone, ‘not really.’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’ll prove it – now, take investment – now, accepting losses is the most important single investment device to ensure safety of capital. It is also the action people know the least about. Too often the investor is prone to say that losses are only paper. He looks at the dividend and capital gains and forgets that some capital losses are inevitable and must always be deducted from gains. Whenever an owner gets a small profit he takes it and when the stocks sustain a paper loss the stock is held in the hope it will come back and eventually, of course, the account is frozen …’
‘Stop it,’ Terri said.
‘Convinced?’
‘Yes, I’m convinced.’
At Terri’s flat they made love and Becker felt a very tender affection for her and her kookiness. At other times he thought of other such things as Carolina and Georgia in the springtime. The cherry blossoms of Charlotte in April, the tall Charlotte banks, higher than any blossoms. The jazz at Ruby Red’s. He also thought of these things: grenadine, chilled sodas, lime fruit, Justerini and Brooks, Denominazione di Origine Conrollata, Wolfschmidts, Lowenbrau, and other things which afterwards he could not recall for listing. He also racked his brain for a way of explaining to his friends and associates the scrawled message, ‘Becker Sucks Cocks’, but was unable to find one.