George Higgins - A change of gravity

"How's that thing look, anyway?" Merrion said, ringing up the payment and lifting the change tray out of the register to put the check in the empty drawer underneath it. It had been a quiet day, the weather keeping the customers away.

"Danny came in one day when I was bored out of my mind," Merrion would say to people impressed with the depth of their friendship. "I also was lonesome. No one to play with. The salesmen're all out in the front of the store; mechanics out back in the shop. They had each other to talk to. Also all had their own things to do. I was all by myself, without either. Only people I had to talk to onna job were the customers; that's how I come to know Danny.

"It's snowing: no customers. Everyone headed home early from work. I'm there by myself. Phone isn't ringing. I already finished the papers.

Didn't have any my books with me; normal day, no time to study. No radio. And anyways, Friday afternoon in January: wasn't any game on.

So I got nothing to do. Except now I got Danny. Naturally I don't want him to leave. Knew him well enough to know if I can just get him goin', he may not know it yet but he's gonna entertain me.

"That's an important thing, having someone else around you can talk to.

People take it for granted, don't understand how important it can be until it's gone. My father died, I'd just started at UMass." but I wasn't going there because Harvard turned me down. I was going there because that was all my parents could afford. I was still living at home.

"So now he's dead. My little brother Chris's only ten and anyway, he's in school all day. My mother didn't have a job then. She's at home all by herself, like she always was, but now things're different. In a big way they are different. Nothin' to look forward to all day now anymore. My father comin' home at night: that'd been her big event.

Hadn't been that big a deal for me and Chris. Lots of other people alia around us alia time. School all day; inna summer we're out playin' ball an' so forth. Goin' swimming. All that stuff, onna weekend with our friends. Didn't think about Dad comin' home at night like she did but after he was dead, we did.

"My father loved to talk. "Talk your ear off if you let him," people used to say about him. "On any day I got nothin' to do; I'm just sorta killin' time, you know?" John Casey used to say, "those're the days I'm glad I got Pat. Never a dull day with Pat. Busy days, I'm still glad we got him. He's a large part of what makes our business successful valuable employee. Best salesman we got, which's why he's the manager.

'"But say it's a brutally hot afternoon, July or August; nobody's around. You're open but you know: no one's ever comin' in. They're all at the beach, Mountain Park, on vacation. No one in the world's buyin' cars. We're all fallin' asleep at our desks.

' "That is a day when I'm glad we got Pat on the payroll. All I got do to get through a slow day like that not makin' any money; can at least have a good time is go down in the salesroom. Pull up a chair beside Pat's desk and say: "Well, Pat, whatcha think's goin' on?" Anna next thing I know, my sides ache from laughin'. I mean it: they literally hurt and it's time to close up for the night.

'"I'd rather all the days're busy, naturally I wouldn't think of interrupting him. After all, havin' laughs ain't what we're in business for. Pat was on one of his patented rolls, there, he'd get onto sometimes, he'd have four sold by two the afternoon, when he'd finally break for lunch. And then two hours later, when he finally came back he did not like to hurry his lunch he'd have another prospect he picked up in the bar at Henry's Grist Mill. By five he'd have him sold five inna day.

'"All you hadda do with Pat was leave the guy alone. When he was on a hot run, all you could see was smoke. So, it's more'n his talk that we're gonna miss; we're all sure gonna miss the man too."

"He'd come home," Merrion would say, 'and wed have dinner and he'd tell us what he did. Who came in the dealership. What they had to say about what was going on. Talk and talk and talk. And most of what he talked about I thought about it quite a bit since then, when he died wasn't cars at all. Or baseball; wasn't golf. I don't think he ever played golf; don't think it ever crossed his mind. Basketball or football, anything like that; it was politics. When he picked the subject, as he could, at home, he picked politics.

"He knew about sports. He kept up with the games and the standings and so forth so he could talk about them if that's what his customer had on his mind. He read quite a bit too — Saturday Post. Collier's. Life.

Time 'nd Sports Illustrated. Reader's and Catholic Digest. Belonged the Reader's Digest book club. Every month unless you sent the card back, you got three or four books in one. Said he wished he could sell cars like that, send a card to people sayin' "You don't mail this back to me, two weeks from today, you' ll bought a brand-new car." They were mostly for my mother, but he generally tried to read at least one of them. Few of his customers taught up the road; hadda to talk to them too.

"He considered it part of his job, keeping the customers happy. You asked him how come he was so good at doing what he did, he made no secret of it: "The guy who buys a car from me today for the first time did not become my customer today. He became my customer three years ago, four years ago, whenever I first met him. Outside of church; having a few drinks. Rotary; Kiwanis; communion breakfast; town-committee meeting. Somebody's wake." Dad belonged to all the service clubs, went to all the wakes and breakfasts. But the one he liked the best was Democratic town committee. He always said he was glad he wasn't sellin' Cadillacs, "because then I would have to be on the Republican committee." Always hadda sense of humor.

'"That customer of mine didn't get to know me back then when he first did because he thought he might want to buy a Ford some day and I'be a good man to know. He bought the Ford from me today because he's gotten to know me as a man uses people all right doing business with them. So when he decided he needed a new car last night or the night before, he also decided he might as well come in and see me, and "maybe buy a Ford from Pat. Might as well, the price is right. Never put any pressure on me; always liked the guy for that." Really as simple as that."

"He was always schmoozing people, not that he called it that. Their pal who talked baseball with them or fishing, whatever they liked. But what he almost always talked about at home was politics, and then he died.

"At night after me and Chris and my mother got through having dinner, Chris'd go off to do his homework, watch TV or something 'til he hadda go to bed. And I'd be still sittin' there, at the kitchen table talkin' with her. What I should've been doing was studying. School wasn't easy for me. I was never what you'd've called a scholar, and with my job working for John Casey, and then on Danny's campaigns on top of that, I hadda lot on my mind. I should've been hittin' the books. But instead I am sittin' there, still in the kitchen, the this and the that, talking about what'd happened to us, my father dying like that.

"Not that we ever got anywhere, my mother and I, we had all those talks. Always the same thing, over and over again. What wed done, to get through it; what we could've done instead of that, and whether that might've been better. Then what we thought we were gonna do next. It never changed. It didn't because it didn't have to. What we were doing was hangin' on there to each other, tryin' to get our heads straight. I was really worried about her.

"I remember saying to her one night someone else'd dropped dead, someone else we knew; wed just come from the wake; I've forgotten now who it was. She just seemed so blue, really down. She really had me worried. So I said to her: "He;y, look now, you, just in case you forgot: This dyin' business's a very bad habit. They say once you've got it, it's very hard to get over it. And the fact a lot of people that you really like, admire, and never expect to see them fall into it like Dad did, that doesn't make it any better. So I hope you're not thinkin' you might take it up. Me and Chris wouldn't like that at all."