Upstairs in the boiler room the girls were at their desks working the phones, pitching carpet to the world from a spiel I had written and which had not yet won the Nobel Prize for Literature or for Carpet. Fat Jack had made me read some book that taught POWER words. There were, for instance, no savings, only INCREDIBLE savings.
That was most of my job, updating the spiel, running the place and verifying the leads, which I hardly did anymore, I let Mona do it, most of it, because I was too bashful. I hated talking to strangers and I only had one friend. Actually I was ashamed to still be in the carpet business when some people I knew were already getting published, arguing cases before the Supreme Court, appearing on Broadway. The even more successful ones, like the bankers, industrialists and stockbrokers of my generation, were doing even better; they were already in jail!
Where was I? Running a boiler room.
Fat Jack knew the secret, that I never made calls myself, except to verify once in a while.
He said, “You’re too shy? So put on an act. You’re an actor.” But he never insisted.
Lou was at my desk and he was sweating. The air conditioner never worked properly up here and heat rises, for sure, that was one reason, the other being that Lou liked to sweat. He always carried a big handkerchief and it was always soaked. He was also exhausted from the trek up, three flights, his daily Mount Everest.
What most people took for granted, he, now a handicapped man, had to conquer. That’s how it was for him. He once confided in me the terror of walking down the wide-apart steps of a bus, and a million other things that you never thought about when you were healthy. Think about that, he liked to say. I’d rather not. Be glad you’re healthy, he liked to say. Well, there is this health and there is that health. Nobody’s really all that healthy.
“Sorry about that,” he said, now seated next to me.
“That’s okay, Lou.”
“I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that, in front of everybody.”
“I’ll live.”
“You’re a pal.”
“What are pals for?”
“I didn’t think Fat Jack would make a federal case out of it, you know. But you know Fat Jack.”
“Yeah I know Fat Jack.”
“I’m not complaining about your leads. I know the girls are trying. Anything for me today?”
I turned to Mona. “Anything happening?”
“No,” she said. “Slow, very slow. But we’re getting a lot of callbacks. How you feeling, Lou?”
Lou tightened up. “What do you mean how am I feeling? I’m feeling fine. Just fine.”
“Saww-ry,” she said, growing red hot in the face. Nobody got flustered as easily as Mona, who was only in her late 40s, married, kids, but a virgin in every other way, as matronly a Cincinnatian as could be found, the kind of person, terrific as she was, who made you wonder – how does this person have sex? It’s all so improper and unladylike. But she did have kids, so something happened.
Old Lou was angry. People were always asking him how he felt. “How are YOU feeling, Mona?”
“I’m sorry, Lou. I was just trying to be sociable.”
Mona hastily got back to her dialing. Mona hated conflict, of any kind. True blue Cincinnati. Yes, there were those riots and our cops occasionally make the national headlines (not in a good way) but like Mona, Cincinnati likes to keep to itself and blushes when it gets too much attention. We don’t like fame here in the Midwest. We don’t have Broadway and we don’t do lunch. We like beer, peanuts, baseball and patriotism.
Cleveland, actually, is another planet. It’s amazing that we share the same state and the same language. Our relatives live right across the river or forgot to catch the boat from Deutschland. Plenty of us are still upstanding German/Americans and enough of us are hillbillies. You got a problem with that? We don’t really care what goes on over there in Cleveland or any other place.
We’re tucked nice and cuddly in the middle of this great country, this great world. We figure – you don’t bother us, we don’t bother you. Okay?
“What’s the matter with your people?” Lou asked confidentially.
“What do you mean my people?”
“Well they’re your girls.”
“My girls? What do you mean my girls?”
“Never mind.”
“She was only being polite.”
“I don’t need people feeling sorry for me.”
“She only asked how you were feeling, Lou.”
“Well I know what she means by that.”
“She asks me that, too. She asks everybody. Everybody asks everybody. It’s another way of saying hello.”
“Not for me.”
Lou was having a bad day. There had been many of those since the stroke.
I liked Lou, but just now I wasn’t in the mood for him and frankly, as of late, I wasn’t in the mood for anybody.
The phone rang and of course it was Fat Jack, Fat Jack doing Stephanie Eaton.
“Oh, Eli, I love you so much.”
“Not funny,” I said.
“Oh, Eli, I’ve thought about you every day, even out in California. The guys out there can’t compare to you.”
“Fat Jack, I’m hanging up.”
Back to his regular voice, Fat Jack said, “Don’t you wish?”
“Okay, I wish.”
“She’ll be here any minute, for real. Will you get it right this time or are you still a loser?”
I hung up and got back to Lou.
“I’ll let you know as soon as we come up with a lead for you,” I said, hoping he’d take the hint.
Lou was a sensitive guy for a salesman.
“I’d appreciate that,” he said. And then he whispered, “You know, Eli, I haven’t had a sale in six weeks.”
“It’s been that long?”
“Yes.”
“But I’ve been giving you leads.”
“The good ones? Aren’t you giving them to the Big Three?”
“That’s not true.”
Maybe it was true, to a degree. Some leads were so good, like say out in Hyde Park, that it would be a waste to give them to Old Lou, who simply didn’t have it anymore, so you gave him the marginal ones just to keep him busy. Just to keep him thinking he was still alive and ticking. Fat Jack considered him already dead. Fat Jack was a very subtle guy and when he saw Lou coming, shuffling along as he did, he’d say, “Here comes our cripple.” Or, “Dead salesman walking.” As I said, Fat Jack was a very subtle person and he’d be on my back if he caught me wasting good leads on Old Lou, though once in a while I sneaked one through, and sure enough, nine times out of ten, Lou would return with excuses.
(Lou? I always figured that he’d been delivered to me by Arthur Miller.)
I had suggested to Fat Jack that we send a CLOSER to accompany Lou on his appointed rounds, somebody to finish off a sale – there were people like the Big Three who specialized in that, it was an extraordinary skill – and Fat Jack said, “YOU propose it to him,” meaning that Lou would have a fit at the insinuation that he wasn’t salesman enough to close deals on his own anymore.
“Far be it from me to make accusations,” Lou said. “It just seems when they go out on a call for you, ends up in a sale.”
“It’s all luck, Lou.”
“Me – sometimes the people aren’t even home. Like that time in Amberly Village, and you call that verifying?”
“She was a new girl, who got us that lead. I fired her.”
Do I tell him the truth? Do you tell a man the truth, that he’s kaput? Not me. I won’t give that line and I won’t take that part or play that scene. As for that new girl, the real reason I had fired her was because after we had made love that one time she thought it was time to get married and even went around telling the others that we were engaged. Her name was Sue. Or maybe it was Mary.
“Just get me some good leads, will you pal?” He slapped me on the back. “We’re pals, right?”
“We’re pals, Lou.”
Slapping me on the back had taken up much of Lou’s energy and he started coughing again, which drove me nuts; I was afraid he’d never stop or start choking and that would be the end of him. He really was sad to behold. You kept blessing God that you weren’t in his condition. But it worried you what happened to people. Lou was a warning of things to come. It’s great that we get to live longer – but for what reason?
Lou walked over to Mona and kissed her on the cheek. She got red in the face and kissed him back. “Friends?” he said.
“We’ll always be friends, Lou,” Mona said. “You and I go back too far for it to be otherwise.”
“You’re my girl. Eli, you’re my pal, right?”
“We’re pals, Lou.”