Philip Dick - In Milton Lumky Territory

He told him that he had just started.

“Are you going to manage the place?” Lumky said, with resignation if not approval. “That’s what they need, someone who can come in and take over. Otherwise they make no decisions. Everything slides. Where were you before?”

He told him that he had been with C.B.B.

“For that you get a kick in the crotch from me,” Lumky said.

“Don’t you approve of discount houses?”

“Not when they sell stale candy.”

That was an argument that he had never heard. It struck him as funny and he laughed, thinking that Lumky was kidding. But the man drew himself up with hauteur and a determination to convince him.

“I got a carton of Mounds at a discount house in Oakland, California,” Lumky said, coughing through his cigarette smoke in his insistence to make his point. He waved the smoke aside. “It tasted like soap. They must have found some left-over stock from old World War Two PXs.”

“It’s not all like that,” he said.

“It’s your word against mine,” Lumky said. He put out his cigarette and extended a pack of Parliaments to Bruce. “I think it’s going to fail because you discount people don’t do a job of selling. It’s a craze, like home freezers. You have to sell people.” He said it gloomily, as if it was a fact that he did not necessarily approve of but which he accepted. His hands trembled as he lit a fresh cigarette; the end of the cigarette waggled away from the man’s leather-bottomed Ronson lighter and he had to push it back with his thumb. “Anyhow, you stick with your story,” he said, out of the side of his mouth. He had gotten smoke in his left eye, and it began to turn red and water. He grinned wryly at Bruce.

Entering the office, Susan said, “Oh, hi, Milt.”

Milt Lumky put his lighter away in the pocket of his coat; it made a bulge that destroyed the proper line of his suit. “Where have you been? I helped myself to money from the till, just to teach you a lesson.”

“Isn’t Zoe around?”

“Down using the can,” Lumky said. “You want to go out and have a cup of coffee?”

Susan said, “I just ate; that’s where I was. I don’t think there’s anything we want to buy this time. I’m sorry. Unless you have something new you want to show us.”

“How about a line of cheap adding machines?”

“No,” she said.

“Digital computers.”

“No.”

“Home-model Univacs for $17.95. That’s your cost. Lists for I think $49.95. What a profit. Ideal Easter gift.”

She put her arm around him and patted him on the back. “No,” she said. “Some other time. We have a lot of reorganization to worry about. Lots of plans.”

Twisting his head to look at Bruce, Lumky said to him, “How about you having a cup of coffee with me?”

“That would be a good idea,” Susan said. “Milt, this is Bruce Stevens. He’s going to do the buying.” She lowered her voice. “Zoe is leaving.”

“Come on,” Lumky said, tilting his head toward the door to wag Bruce along with him. “I’ll leave my crud here,” he said to Susan, meaning his leather satchel. “You can look through it if you want to be infantile.”

He and Bruce soon seated themselves at the counter of the coffee shop a few doors down.

“So Zoe de Lima is leaving,” Lumky said, lighting a third cigarette and sitting with his elbows on the counter and his hands in front of his nose, his thumbs hooked into his nostrils. “Susan is doing a smart thing. She should have got out from under that two years ago. Susan is erratic and Zoe is pure chicken about everything. What a combination.”

Their coffee arrived.

“You can reason with Susan, at least,” Milt said. “But you could never get through to Zoe de Lima. She’s rotten clean through, like an old pine plank. All Susan needs is somebody to tell her what to do.” He slurped at this coffee, his napkin wadded beneath his chin.

“It’s a good location,” Bruce said, a little taken aback by Milt Lumky and his outspokenness. He was more accustomed to enthusiastic, sincere-type salesmen who never told the truth.

“I’ve know Susan for years,” Milt said somberly. “She’s a fine person. I always wondered about her, though. How she is outside of the business.” He picked at one of his teeth, scowling. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t you agree with me that she’s attractive as hell?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, in a noncommittal manner.

“I always had it in the back of my mind to try to take her out some evening. For dinner or something. And try to penetrate that efficient pose and find out what she’s actually like. Can you believe it that she used to be a school teacher? It’s like finding out that the man who delivers your coal is Albert Einstein doing what he likes best. Of course, Einstein is dead. I read Time , so I know those things. It pays to keep up with world events. Don’t you think so? You never know when it might help you close a big deal.”

“Do you live around here?” Bruce said.

Lumky said, “Yes, goddamn it. My territory includes the entire Pacific Northwest, if you can believe it. I’ve been living up in Oregon, but that means too much driving. So now I’m living here in Idaho. Sort of in the middle. I go from Portland, down to Klamath Falls, then east to Pocatello. This is miserable to live in.” He lapsed into silence. “I really hate it here,” he said at last. “Idaho oppresses me. Especially the drive between here and Pocatello. Did you ever see such a wretched broken-down pure shit road? In any other state it’d be a county back road for farmers with wagons of melons. Here it’s the federal through route. And those bugs down around Montario. Those satanic yellow gossamer flappy silent all-stinger bugs…did you ever hold a dead one up close and get a real good look at it? The god damn thing leers. How a bug can leer without teeth or gums or lips I don’t know.”

“I was born in Montario,” Bruce said.

“I’d keep that to myself,” Lumky said.

“If you had your choice,” Bruce said, “where would you want to live?”

Lumky snorted. “I’d live in L.A.”

“Why?”

“Because when you drive into a drive-in and buy a malted milk the girl who brings it has an ass like Marilyn Monroe’s.”

That answered his question, certainly.

“Don’t think I just sit around brooding about women’s asses,” Lumky droned on in his hoarse voice. “Matter of fact I haven’t thought about it for a year. That’s what living in Idaho does to you. And there’s nothing to do or read or see. There’re a couple of good dirty, spitty dark bars here, but that’s about all. Maybe it’s the cowboy hats that get me. I never trust anybody in a cowboy hat. I always think they’re a nut. I wasn’t cut out to sell typing paper. Can you see that? Is that obvious? Remember that next time when I come around and show you the summer specials. Just tell me no and I’ll go away. I don’t give a damn if you buy anything or not. In fact I hope you don’t. It means I have to write up an order. I don’t even know if I still have my pen.” He felt about in his coat. “Look,” he said. “The fugging thing leaks all over. What a mess.” He buttoned his coat again, morbidly.

“You’d like Reno,” Bruce said.

“Maybe so,” Milt said. “I’ll have to drive down there sometime and see. What do you aim to do working for Susan?”

He said, “Get in something to sell. Get rid of the second-hand junk.”

“You’re right,” Milt said.

“I’d like to carry new portables, but the drugstore’s already gone into that.”

“I’ll tell you what you should go in big for,” Milt said. “And I don’t handle it so you know I’m not trying to talk you into anything.”