Lawrence Block - No Score

I said, “Hey! Hey, hang on a minute!”

“This weapon is loaded and primed, young man.”

“I believe it.”

“And let me assure you that it works perfectly well. It is old, but age is not always detrimental. This pistol is in full possession of its faculties.”

I was sure it was. I was perfectly willing to believe that it was still every bit as good as it was the day Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton with it.

“You don’t understand,” I said.

“You will leave this block of houses at once, young man. You will leave directly. The people on this block are all good Christians.”

“You don’t under—”

“Except for the young woman in Number One twenty-one,” she said her voice quavering. “She is a Methodist, and I believe her husband is a wine drinker or worse. You may stop there if you wish. I would not advise it. Last September a boy a bit older than you examined that young woman’s furnace and took it all apart and refused to repair it unless he was paid. I doubt she’d let you into her house after an experience of that sort, but you may try if you wish. I’ve enough on my mind without protecting Methodists, and them wine drinkers in the bargain. Not that I know for a fact that she drinks with him, but they flock together, you know. And I thought you had come about the bake sale. You have an innocent face in sheep’s clothing. Read the Book of Ezekiel.”

“Rowrbazzle.”

“Calvin dislikes you, young man. Our animals can sense things which we can only discover through reasoning. I am going to count ten, and if you are not off my property by the time I reach ten, I will shoot you. I do not hold with violence, but the Lord protects those who look to their own protection. Read the third chapter of the Second Samuel. One. Two. Three. Four—”

I scrambled down the porch steps and between two rows of private hedge to the street, expecting a musket ball to come tearing into me at any moment. The only reason it didn’t was that I was well out of the way before her tinny old voice got to ten. Otherwise she would have shot me. No question about it, she would have blown my goddamned head off without thinking twice about it If Calvin said Rowrbazzle to you, you just didn’t stand a chance around there.

I passed up all the houses on that block. Even the lady in Number 121, the Methodist. I didn’t care if she was a Sun Worshipper. I wasn’t taking any chances.

Around the corner I almost collided with Jimmy Joe. He started to tell me he had just written out an order, but I cut in and told him about Calvin and Rowrbazzle and Grandma Tilden. “Oh, that’s nothing,” he said airily. “I’ve had more guns pointed at me than fingers. They never shoot.”

“This one would have.”

“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the guns aren’t even loaded. These people keep unloaded guns around just to put guys like you and me uptight. And the average person, especially a lady, they couldn’t hit a barn from inside of it.”

“This gun was loaded, and she would have shot, and she wouldn’t have missed.”

“Yeah, sure. Prove it.”

“Okay,” I said. I was still having trouble catching my breath. “Okay, smart ass. You go up on the porch and give her a pitch and see if she shoots you or not. I’ll bet you ten bucks you get shot.”

“It’s a sucker bet for you. If she shoots me, how do you collect?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

He laughed. When he did this, it always reminded me of a big old boxer who belonged to one of the masters at a school I went to in Connecticut. That dog barked just about like that. “Forget it,” Jimmy Joe said. “The important question is did she call the cops.”

“I don’t think she would. Never even threatened to. She’s the vigilante type.”

“That’s all to the good.”

“But I’m not supposed to go on that block because of all the God-fearing Christians. And one Methodist.”

“Methodists are Christians.”

“You want to go tell her? If Flick wants me I’ll be working the next block over.”

“They’re all new houses.”

“How’s the one after that?”

“Better.”

“Then that’s where I’ll be. Luck.”

“Up yours,” he agreed. “And watch out for the Christians.”

“Right, and you watch out for the Lions.”

I didn’t meet any more old ladies with dueling pistols that afternoon, or any cats named Calvin with weird vocabularies. I did meet a whole lot of people who had no trouble closing the door in the middle of my pitch.

I had always thought that was about the most aggravating thing that could happen to someone working door to door, getting a door slammed in your face. It can be sort of jarring the first couple dozen times it happens, but I’ll tell you something, once you get used to it you learn to welcome it. Not that you set out looking to get doors closed on you, but if you’re going to strike out anyway, which is going to happen ninety-nine times out of a hundred to the greatest salesman who ever lived, you might as well strike out as soon as possible. The less time you waste on the stiffs, the more calls you can make in a given period of time. And the more calls you make, the more sales you make, and that’s gospel. Old Flickinger says he’d rather have a chimpanzee who makes a hundred calls a day than a genius who makes fifty. Good old Flick.

“I been on the road for thirty years and more, kid, and if I learned one thing it’s you don’t lose money by ringing doorbells. And if there’s one word of advice I can give you it’s never get into any woman’s pants without she signs on the dotted line. Once you got the order written it’s another story. With the sale made you can afford half an hour in the kip, even an hour if you like the broad’s style. But without you get the order there’s no percentage. You just waste time you can’t afford, and then all she wants to do is get you out of there without she buys anything, or else she keeps you around and gives you coffee and dangles it in front of you that maybe she’ll buy, and you wind up going another round in the kip, and you waste the whole fucking afternoon without you get any order at all. Now maybe you’ll give her a kiss or a feel to set up a sale, on the lines of what you might call a free sample, but that’s all. If there’s one word of advice I can give you that’s it.”

Good old Flick. The first time I heard that little speech I saw myself giving in gracefully to one woman after the next, and doing so well in bed with them that I got order after order, and — Well, there’s no big suspense to keep up, since Francine wasn’t in the picture yet and you know I was still as pure as Ivory Soap when I met her, so let’s just say that it wasn’t like that at all in the door-to-door game, at least not for me, and while Flick’s advice might have been sound, I wasn’t getting a chance to put it into practice.

“As I said, I got doors closed in my face, and I also got the usual percentage of dimwits who felt sorry enough for me to let me give them the whole speech, but who didn’t feel sorry enough for me to let me sell them anything. And then just before it was time to quit I hooked a gray-haired lady who lived all alone in a Victorian house that must have had a hundred rooms in it. She had a cat, but it said what any normal cat says. She said its name was Featherfoot, and that it was a boy but she had had it fixed. She said it so daintily that I almost asked what had been wrong with it. She also had had it declawed so it wouldn’t ruin the furniture. She might have gone all the way and had it stuffed so that it wouldn’t go to the bathroom and to cut down on the cost of feeding it. If I ever have a cat, which I probably won’t, since it’s hard enough to keep myself in sardines, let alone two of us, I would let it keep its claws and its balls intact. I mean, if you don’t want the complete animal, I don’t think you should have any of it. I mean, how would you like it if you were a cat and they did that to you?