James Cain: The Magician's Wife

“Kids, you’re doing fine,” he told the girls. “Looks like we got a smash.” The girls, who seemed to like him, twittered their thanks.

He held the meeting in the “file room,” a place filled with cabinets, but large enough for the chair Miss Helm brought, and having a desk with phone. At the last moment he remembered Hal Daley, his chief salesman and right-hand man, and invited him himself. He gave Hal the place of honor, at one side of the desk, opposite Miss Helm. Then he stood at the door, waving the others in, the salesmen and cutters, all quiet, well-dressed men; the girls from the corned-beef unit, looking quite collegiate, and much slimmer now that they’d shed their thick coats; and Miss Niemeyer, the chief accountant, a tall woman, with an intellectual face, who habitually held her glasses over one thumb. When all were seated, he took his place at the desk, saying he wanted to bring them down to date “on this corned-beef thing — but first let’s call Portico, see what the score is there.” But the call to Mr. Granlund, Portico’s president, ran into a snag, as Miss Helm cupped the phone and told him: “Nelly says he’s not there. Will you call in twenty minutes?” His face darkening, he took the phone and growled: “Nelly? Have Mr. Granlund call me. Tell him it’s important, and I won’t wait twenty minutes! You have him call me at once! ” When he hung up, applause broke out from the salesmen, themselves fed up, perhaps, with Mr. Granlund and the difficulty of getting him on the line.

Then the phone rang, and he took the call himself. When a man’s voice asked, “Clay, what do you mean, cussing out my girl?” he answered curtly: “I didn’t cuss her out.”

“You did something, the way she’s acting.”

“All I did was tell her to have you call, but I can damned well cuss you if you keep up this hard-to-get routine! Who do you think you are, De Gaulle?”

To this, Mr. Granlund bellowed: “I’ll not have Nelly mistreated — I won’t have it, I won’t have it, I won’t have it! ” Then, even louder, but not quite so mean, he asked: “What did you call about?”

“The corned beef. How’s it doing?”

“Well, how would I know, so soon after—”

“Steve, quit cracking dumb! The same way I know, by getting with it and finding out! But it’s O.K. If you don’t care how it’s doing, I can always switch.”

“What do you mean, switch?”

“Switch to Coastal, what do you think?”

Mention of Coastal, Portico’s chief competitor, seemed to enrage Mr. Granlund, for he roared: “Clay, that’s blackmail, and I damned well won’t stand for it — not for one minute, do you hear?” Clay, suddenly sweet, replied: “I guess it is, Steve. I guess it is, at that, and I certainly apologize. Just the same, blackmail or not, another chain of restaurants, that I won’t call by name, gets it — and gets it quick — unless you start making sense. Once more, how’s my salthorse doing?”

“Why, O.K., of course. It’s big.”

“Fine. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“And where’s somewhere, Clay?”

“I want a year’s commitment.”

“Commitment? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” exclaimed Clay, and then, bellowing loudly: “Miss Helm, get me Coastal!” Then, “Be seeing you,” he told Mr. Granlund, and hung up. But he stayed Miss Helm’s hand when she reached for the phone, and waited. Sure enough, it rang, to a big laugh from the meeting. “We were cut off, Clay,” said Mr. Granlund when Clay answered. And then: “That commitment — you want it in writing?”

“Stop clowning,” said Clay. “Your word’s plenty.”

“Then we’ll make it a year, but give me a week on exact amounts. It’s too early yet to be sure how much we can sell. On a daily basis the demand might drop once the novelty wears off.”

“Take a month.”

“But now, Clay, I want your commitment.”

“ My commitment? How so?”

“I must have this thing exclusive.”

Caught by surprise, Clay tapped the desk with a pencil, taking a moment to think. Then, parrying: “You mean, in the area?”

“Well, we have no interest elsewhere.”

“So let’s see, let’s see.”

“I want no knife in my back from Coastal.”

“Then, O.K. — it’s yours alone provided we get menu credit. This must be Grant’s corned beef you’re selling — Grant’s corned beef, cabbage, and spud.”

“Well, I thought that was understood.”

“Then, Steve, we’re set.”

He hung up to a round of applause, not only from the salesmen but also from everyone in the room, clearly implying pent-up resentments that his triumph had handsomely requited. He nodded, then got up and took a bow, saying “Thankew” like Bob Hope and “How sweet it is” like Jackie Gleason. Then a bit sheepishly: “ So, our meeting’s over before it’s started! It’s all wrapped up and presold — but thanks for the memory!” They all laughed and he laughed, but once again, as when drinking in Bill Jackson’s praise, he betrayed deep emotion in sharp contrast with his temper, so marked with Sally, Portico’s Earl, and Mr. Granlund. And yet they seemed somehow related, as though facets of something else, a deep, consuming vanity that on the one hand hated frustration and on the other thirsted for praise, for understanding, for fellow human warmth. In the end, as they all started filing out, he rapped for quiet again, and told them. “I would forget the best news of all! Without my saying a word, he let drop all by himself: It’s to be a daily feature! ”

This got a hand and a cheer.

He sat down, quite overcome for a moment.

Back in his office, he put in a call to Mankato, Minnesota, where the company’s main office was, and asked for Pat Grant, the president. Ostensibly he was requesting outsize beef, “the bigger the better — I can sell all you let me have. Big meat is on the way back, and I don’t know what looks prettier on the plate than a half-acre slice of roast beef.” But then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned the day’s coup and swelled again to Pat’s praise. By five he was at the yacht club, playing billiards with Mr. Garrett, one of the habitués. It was a pleasant, rambling place, with a glassed-in balcony running around the second deck, its front facing Chesapeake Bay, its rear the yacht harbor, a pretty jumble of jetties, cruisers, and sailboats on a cove that made in from the river. By six he was at dinner on the bay side of the balcony. By seven he was home at the Marlborough Arms, an apartment house on Spring Street at John F. Kennedy Drive, formerly West Boulevard.

His place, on the seventh floor, was quiet, spacious, and airy, and he was secretly, perhaps not so secretly, proud of it. It had an entrance alcove, with phone table, closet for wraps, and arches that led to the living room on one side and to a long hall on the other, along which were dining room, kitchen, bath, bedroom, second bath, and second bedroom — though this last was fixed up as an “office,” with typewriter, filing case, and dictating machine. The kitchen was a miniature World’s Fair exhibit, full of twenty-first-century gadgets, which he used on his inspirations, such as the corned beef. Office, bedroom, and dining room were in birch, not very original and not very masculine. But the living room was his, and masculine in every detail. It had large windows, looking down on city, river, and bay. Between windows were shelves filled with “books that I read,” mainly on history — handsome sets of Parton, Nevins, Van Doren, Freeman, Sumner, and the Bancrofts. They stopped at eye level, and over them, standing, leaning, or hanging, were all sorts of things: his framed diploma from Lafayette College, cups he once won for swimming, pictures of Grant’s conventions, and quite a collection of paintings, line drawings, and woodcuts, mainly Mexican. At one end of the room was a Steinway baby grand, and near it a record cabinet, with spinner, hooked up to a hi-fi system. The furniture was upholstered in crimson, and each chair had a table beside it, holding ashtrays and cigarettes. Facing the windows was a fireplace, a brass basket of wood beside it, a fine-mesh screen in front. Flanking it were two sofas, a cocktail table between. But a rug was the room’s most striking feature. It was Persian, very big, and soft to the feet over its waffle-rubber foundation. Its colors were rose, yellow, blue, and gray, but with the gray predominating. It blended subtly with the dusty tone of the paintings and with their weathered raw-oak frames.