Her mother, as usual, answered the phone.
“I wish you would stop this,” she said. “Have you spoken to your friend?”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to Maishe.”
“Then he’s told you.”
“Everything.”
“Then you know this family has suffered a great tragedy.”
“I am part of that family, Mrs. Eaton.”
“Eli, at a time like this we deserve our peace.”
“I simply want to talk to her.”
“I assure you that Stephanie will get the best medical treatment available. Maybe someday…”
“Now. Please.”
“But Stephanie doesn’t want to talk to you, Eli.”
“There must be something…”
“There is NOTHING.”
* * *
Mona was acting strange. I couldn’t figure out what it was. She wasn’t her usual friendly self and wasn’t doing much talking, at least not to me. You get to know your people after a while and you get so you can tell one silence from another.
I figured she was upset over the dirty work she was now doing, known in the business as upscaling, which went like this: You called a person who had already purchased a medium-priced carpet and you acted ignorant. You said you had her order right in front of you, ready for delivery and installation, but weren’t sure which carpet she had bought, due to an error on the part of the salesman. The order failed to specify. Had she bought the medium-priced carpet, or the more expensive one? The medium-priced, came the answer. Oh, you said. It’s none of my business. I only work here in shipping. But, between you and me, the more expensive brand is quite a deal…resists stains and comes with not a 20, but a 30-year guarantee. So which one should we send out to you, Mrs. Blank?
The risk here was that it could all backfire, the customer might cancel the entire deal, even declining the medium-priced carpet she had already signed for, and that was one reason Mona hated upscaling; the other was that even though Mona could live with the marginal ethics of telephone soliciting, this was a step beyond, a leap from sales, and all the deceptions that involved, into the realm of outright crookedness.
Mona even had trouble verifying, the process by which you tested the strength of a lead by phoning the potential customer and never saying the obvious, which is, are you sure you want to buy? Most people said no, I just said yes to get the damned solicitor off the phone – or, no, I’ve changed my mind, or, no, I never agreed to anything. So what you said was, I’m just calling to check your address, Mrs. Blank, and if Mrs. Blank gave you her address that was a fairly strong lead, and if you said, fine, our representative will be over at the appointed time, and she still agreed, then you had a very strong lead.
But even that Mona considered deceptive, but manageable, to her conscience.
Upscaling was another story.
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to,” I said.
She shrugged.
“What’s the problem, Mona?”
She shrugged again.
“Out with it, Mona.”
“I have news for you,” she said.
I winced. You get so you dread news, even good news. My mom got that way toward the end and I noticed the same thing with many older people who’d been through a lot. They didn’t want to hear news. Even good news.
“Stephanie called.”
I looked at her.
“At least she said it was Stephanie.”
I kept looking at her.
“But it sure didn’t sound like Stephanie.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it didn’t sound like Stephanie.”
But anyway, I was supposed to await her phone call and not, absolutely not try to get in touch with her. She’d get in touch with me. She had been very strict about that, according to Mona. Mona didn’t know the story so it figured, her not understanding why Stephanie’s voice had changed. She had probably been stabbed there.
So it was back to that, back to waiting. I waited the day, the night, another day another night, until the call finally came and it was Stephanie. It was Stephanie. I could hardly hear her – she sounded as though she were holding a hand over the mouthpiece, muffled.
But that was understandable. “Can you meet me?” she said without so much as a hello or a how-are-you.
Also understandable.
“Stephanie?”
“Can you meet me?”
“Where? When?”
She mentioned the deserted parking lot a couple of blocks from deserted Fleischman Park at a deserted hour, one a.m., all of which made sense for someone who did not want to be seen. Perfectly understandable. She didn’t even want me to see her face. “You have to promise not to look at me,” she said.
I was to stay in the parking lot, kill the lights, turn down the rearview mirror, wait for her to pull up, open the back door to let her in without looking at her, and we’d communicate that way, with her sitting in back, me in front, awkward of course, but understandable.
“I promise,” I said.
She was adamant about my not setting eyes on her.
There was one more rule. If for some reason I couldn’t make it, I was not to contact her at home.
Understandable. I knew the situation.