But she didn’t. Days turned into weeks. Always, it seemed, since the time I first met Stephanie, the purpose of my life was waiting in general and waiting for the phone to ring in particular, and now when it did ring and it wasn’t her, I turned nasty to whoever it was, especially if I was at home and some pre-programmed phone solicitor was trying to sell me magazines or tickets to the policeman’s ball or something – until I remembered that’s what I did for a living. MACHINES, in some cases, were now doing the soliciting, which didn’t bode well for my future in the business. I was in the wrong business anyway but still no phone call from New York, if ever. Give my regards to Broadway.
Man dreams, God laughs, but it’s not funny.
Marie, Fat Jack’s Monday afternoon delight on false pretenses, ended the boycott against me and said, “I’m not seeing him anymore.”
I pretended like I didn’t know who what where when why.
I gave her a dumb look.
“You know, don’t you?”
I shrugged.
“You don’t?”
Another dumb look. If I pull this off, I AM an actor.
“Of course you know.”
“Know what?”
“About me and…oh, you know. I know you know.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I know it doesn’t matter. To you. Nothing matters to you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Someday I’ll tell you why I did it,” she said.
“All right.”
“You don’t know women at all. If you did you wouldn’t have hired that witch.”
“You’re right there, Marie.”
“Some of the girls, we’ve been talking, and we decided we never seen you so miserable.”
“Thank you.”
“That ain’t no compliment. Where’s Stephanie?”
“I don’t know, Marie.”
“Mona thinks Stephanie…Stephanie’s hurt someplace.”
“Mona?”
“She’s worried. We’re all worried.”
“That includes me.”
“What are we going to do about it?” Marie asked.
Now there, I thought, is character.
“You’re something,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re okay.”
“We’re all ready to help.”
“If I think of something…”
“Just say the word, Eli.”
I thought of something. I pulled Mona out into the hallway. I told her I had searched for Sonja in Covington at that address her brother Wayne gave me, and there was no such place. But I was convinced she was somewhere in Covington, probably with Stephanie. We had that Internet Criss-Cross section devoted to Covington, which we never called, because it was low-rent. But now might be a good time to solicit Covington, not for carpet but for Sonja. We’d use the familiar pitch for selling carpet, but just to get a response, to hear a voice. Sonja’s voice had a sharp twang to it, a slight shrill that was unmistakable when she got to talking, so that it would be important to get the people talking, at least saying a few words, before the usual hang-ups. Fortunately, for the new girls, we still had Sonja’s audition tape – thanks to the automation introduced by Fat Jack when he thought it might be wise to test the girls on tape before hiring them.
“I know this will cut into your leads,” Mona…but just an hour a day. All the girls.”
“Of course. I’m as anxious as you are.”
“Fat Jack mustn’t know about this.”
“I know.”
We had thousands of names to cut into and it was slow-going at an hour a day, so I upped it to two hours, then three – until finally it consumed all eight hours of the working day. Through my extension I could listen in on any conversation, which I did whenever I got the hand signal that someone was HOT, and so many sounded almost like Sonja, but almost wasn’t enough.
The enthusiasm in the boiler room was something to behold. Now the girls had a purpose. They were driven. On their own, they cut their lunchtime in half, cut out their breaks altogether, and suddenly there wasn’t all this going to the bathroom. They tore into the work with abandon and hit the high points of the script, which went something like this:
“Hello.”
Pause for response.
“How are you today, Mrs. Blank?”
Pause for response. First rule of salesmanship – get the other person to respond.
“Isn’t this weather… wonderful… awful… (depending).”
Second rule of salesmanship – get the other person in the habit of responding in the affirmative.
“My name is Mona Waters (depending). I’m calling from Harry’s Carpet City. Have you heard about our sale?”
Usually the answer is no. A desired response.
“Well good, Mrs. Blank. This gives me an opportunity to tell you about our superlative savings on all our brand names. Of course that includes Bigelow, Karastan, Salem, Galaxy, Burlington Stain Resistant Plush, and even the finest Oriental makes, like Beaulieu of Belgium.”
At this point the person says she’s not interested. But the solicitor doesn’t hear this.
A good solicitor hears no discouraging words. She ploughs on. “Well Mrs. Blank, our field specialist (read: salesman, but a word that must never, ever be used) will be in your neighborhood all week (which wasn’t true) and he’d be glad to stop by…”
Really, I’m not interested.
“Will you be home tomorrow, Mrs. Blank?”
I said I wasn’t interested.
“Say around three, Mrs. Blank?”
I said I WASN’T INTERESTED.
“Mrs. Blank, this sale only lasts one week.”
I don’t care.
Now the good phone solicitor, having got this far, uses every weapon available.
“You’re under no obligation.”
I really have to go now. I have a crying baby.
“Can you afford to pass up these savings? Don’t you owe it to your family?”
I’ll worry about my family. Now I’m going to hang up.
“Only a few minutes is all we ask. So can I put you down for three o’clock tomorrow?”
“Let me just check your address…”
I’m hanging up.
As a last resort: “Look, my job is on the line. Please give me a break.”
* * *
Fat Jack didn’t know what was going on except that he was getting more leads than ever for his men, a happy development until it turned out that most of them were for LINOLEUM. Fat Jack ran up, looked around and asked me to join him downstairs.
“Something’s funny,” he said. “There’s trouble in Carpet City.”
“What?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The girls. They’re so enthusiastic!”
“That’s bad?”
“Half hour lunches, no coffee breaks – no going to the john every five minutes.”
“This is a complaint?”
“No, but Covington is. Covington? Since when do we solicit Covington? They’re all hillbillies.”
“I thought we’d give it a try.”
“Yeah, and you’re doing very well – with LINOLEUM! Hillbilly carpet. LINOLEUM.”
“All right…”
“All right hell. You’ve got some of my best salesmen wasting valuable time on LINOLEUM.”
“Well, now we know about Covington.”
“We always knew about Covington! What’s going on, Eli?”
“Going on?”
“You think I’m STUPID?”
“No I don’t think you’re STUPID.”
“I’m not STUPID, Eli.”
“I never said you were STUPID.”
“You think Harry Himself would have made me manager if he thought I was STUPID?”
“No, Harry Himself wouldn’t do that,” I said.
“You think HARRY is STUPID?”
“No, Harry’s not STUPID.”
“So what’s going on? I have a right to know. I pay the bills.”
So I told him.
I told him why we were calling Covington.
He said this was a BUSINESS. This wasn’t a place for detective work. If I wanted to find Stephanie I should go to the police. I could get fired for this. Get all the girls fired, too, including Mona, who’d been here since CREATION. I was ruining people’s livelihoods, including mine and his. Harry Himself would have his head for this, if Harry ever found out. Harry would go through the ROOF. Using salaried employees for your own personal benefit was a disgrace, even unethical, even if the intent were honorable, as in saving a life. Saving a life was one thing, but this was DOLLARS and CENTS we were talking, which was bigger than life and death.
“Everything you say is true, Fat Jack. You’re correct on all counts.”
He wasn’t poking me in the chest or twisting my tie. He was truly upset.
“You know I can’t let you do this,” he said.
“I know.”
“It isn’t fair to the COMPANY, you understand.”
“I understand.”
He stared at me. I stared at him.
“But if I know you, Eli, you are going to DEFY me.”
“I think so.”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re in charge upstairs. I don’t HAVE to know what’s going on. Catch my drift?”
“Aha.”
“I mean if you keep calling Covington, I don’t have to know that, so long as nobody tells me.”
“Who’s to tell?”
He grabbed me by the shoulders. He whispered, “One week. I give you one week.”
* * *
Mona said Lou had called while I was downstairs. He sounded very bad.
“Wanted to talk to you in a hurry,” she said. “He’ll be calling back any minute.”
Had he finally run somebody over? Without a license?
“He was out of breath.”
“But he’s always out of breath.”
“Not like this, Eli.”
She shook her head.
I shook my head.
She sighed.
I sighed.
“Lou, Lou, Lou,” I said.
“I know what you mean,” Mona said.
I waited for his phone call. Finally it came. This was the story: He was out in that Northwood development, some 20 miles from Harry’s Carpet City, and he couldn’t move. He had been measuring this new house. The first floor went okay, but then, walking up the steps, he had collapsed. He crawled back down and made it to the phone.
“I’m dizzy,” he said. “Can you come get me? I’m afraid to drive.”
Was it another stroke? I asked. Another heart attack?
“Dizzy,” he said. “Very dizzy. Please come get me.”
“Can you give me directions?”
He tried, but he was all mixed up.
I said I’d call an ambulance.
“Please don’t. I’ll be finished. Fat Jack’ll never let me go out again. You know he won’t. Don’t do this to me, pal. Just pick me up, is all I ask. I’ll be all right. I just need to rest. Are we pals?”
He did manage to give me the address.
“Please hurry.”
I ran down two steps at a time. Fat Jack was busy with a customer, which was good.
I dashed to the parking lot where my car was and as I was about to put my key into the ignition a hand hit my shoulder.
“Where’s the fire?”
I tried to lie but Fat Jack knew all the lies. He was a salesman. So I told the truth.
He slipped in on the shotgun side.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Good thing, too, that he was coming along, because I really had no idea where this place was, me and my terrible sense of direction, which had earned me the nickname Magellan.
“You’d have been heading SOUTH without me,” Fat Jack said.
“I know where I’m going.”
He took that philosophically. “Where the hell ARE we going, Eli? Here’s a guy who may be dead by now on account of a CARPET sale.” I’d never heard Fat Jack disparage carpet. You never knocked the product. “Here I am,” he continued in a reflective vein, “married, and I was paying a hundred bucks a week for a piece of strange pussy. Where the hell am I going? Where the hell are YOU going, Eli?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Fat Jack.”
“You’re a boiler room flunky! That’s all you are! Ever think about it in those terms? You’re not an ACTOR. You’re not on BROADWAY. You’re on VINE STREET. You’re not married to Stephanie Eaton. You don’t even know where she is! You’ll end up marrying on of those two-bit Covington broads. Worse, NEWPORT! You’ll have a house-full of LINOLEUM! You’ll go BOWLING Saturday nights. That’s where you’re going. You had your chance. You’re a fucking failure.”
“Are you a success, Fat Jack?”
“Yeah I’m a success. I’m manager of Harry’s Carpet City. I make one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year, plus commission. I got a house in the suburbs. My wife golfs in the CLUB. My kids go to private school. I have a gardener.”
“And you’ve been paying for strange pussy.”
“Well – YOU tell me what that means?”
“It means you’re a bigger loser than I am.”
“You’re probably right, Eli. You’re probably right.”
“Harry Monocle,” I said. “He’s a success.”
“Oh yeah? He stays late in his office upstairs, sometimes till midnight. You want to know why? Because he hates going home. He hates his wife. His wife hates him. Their daughter hates them both. He hasn’t talked to Sasha in five years. SIX years. He despises his wimp son-in-law. For all his millions, Harry DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A HOME!”
It wasn’t often that we talked like this.
“Harry’s whole life has been carpet,” Fat Jack said, “and making money, and look where it’s got him! Where’s HE going? I don’t think he’s got a friend in the world. Carpet, carpet, carpet. Sell, sell, sell. So our wives can walk around in mink coats – and then you die. Like Old Lou, that poor son of a bitch. What the hell does HE live for?”
“Carpet, carpet, carpet. Sell, sell, sell.”
“I think, between you and me, he wanted to kill himself. That’s what I think, Eli.”
“He ain’t dead yet.”
“He knew he was driving himself into the ground. Measuring a house a day. In HIS condition. Now you tell me!”
“I think somebody was trying to kill him.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. How did he get hold of that Quality list anyway?”
“How did you know he had it?” I asked.
“Eli – I know EVERYTHING. Everything.”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Well, we’ll find out. That’s who killed him.”
“Why do you keep saying he’s dead?”
“My instincts say he is. Did you know he was once our top salesman?”
“So you’ve told me.”
“You know what we used to call him? Iron Man. He could go out on seven calls a day. He was one mean HUNGRY son of a bitch. Did you know he had a wife? A son? He’ll never talk about them and no one knows what happened. Man works his balls off all his life to come to THIS?”
Which was exactly what the preacher said, if not in so many words. Only a few salesmen attended the funeral service. Morris Silver was there; the Big Three couldn’t make it, they were out on calls. Mona was there and so was Harry Himself, and that would have made Lou proud. Fat Jack was there, of course.
The preacher said that we should not think of Lou Emmett as he had been the last few years. Forget THIS man, he said, pointing to the casket. Try to remember THAT man, the earlier, the younger, the vibrant Lou Emmett. Forget the man who had been broken by illness. Think back…
Later, outside, I asked the preacher what he was talking about. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but Lou HAD been vibrant. Even if not, I still want to remember Lou as he was in the end. There was NOTHING WRONG with him. A heart attack and a stroke crippled him? So what? Did that make him less of a man than you or me? What was wrong with him in the end that would make you say we should forget him?”
“You misunderstand me.”
“There was nothing wrong with Lou.”
“You misunderstand me.”
“You insulted him.”
“You misunderstand me.”
Fat Jack stepped in and pried me away.
As we drove back to Harry’s Carpet City, Fat Jack said, “You misunderstood this guy.”
“He didn’t even know Lou. Lou never went to church. He never got close to a preacher, unless it was to measure his living room. He had no right talking about Lou the way he did. I kept worrying he’d call him by some other name. The guy probably does a funeral a week. You think he really knows who’s in the box? You think he really cares? To the rest of us it’s a funeral. To him, you know what it is? It’s another SALE!”
Fat Jack cracked up laughing. He was close to tears.
Maybe he wasn’t laughing.