Philip Dick - In Milton Lumky Territory

“But,” she said, “as it expands you’ll acquire an equity in it. It won’t just be as if you worked there as an employee. It’ll become joint property. I should have Fancourt tell me the law, for your sake as well as mine. I want you to have an equity in it. In fact, I’ve been thinking of having him write up the tide so that you stand as co-owner. I’d do it like this: I’d give you the three thousand as a gift, outright, with no strings, and you’d buy Zoe’s half interest, and acquire equal title with me.”

“Hell no,” he said, horrified.

“Why not?”

“I didn’t earn it. All I want to do is build it up into something.”

“But that makes you just an employee, who draws a fixed salary each month, for his work.”

“That’s okay. I’m office manager. In charge.” In charge, he thought, of my wife and myself. There aren’t very many people to manage. But, he believed, Susan would allow him to make the business decisions: she had already shown that she wanted to lean on him.

“You have complete authority down there,” she said, nodding her head slowly up and down. “You’ll be able to sign for things, and order things, and sign checks, and write up ads for the newspaper and so on. But you know—it’s hard for me to realize it—all our money has to come out of that place. It isn’t like it used to be; I could simply live on Walt’s earnings when the office lost money. It’s got to support two adults and one grammar school child. Two and a half people. That means it’s got to net something like five thousand a year minimum, no less.”

“That would be only about four hundred a month,” he said.

“We’ve never netted four hundred a month. In all the time we’ve operated it. You know, all of a sudden I have cold feet.” She put down her fork. “It scares me. Real panic.”

He sat down next to her and put his arms around her, but she sat as stiffly as she possibly could. “Remember that you hired me because you considered me an expert,” he said. That seemed remote, the original business relationship between them in which she had wanted him because he worked as buyer for a large and successful discount house.

“But you’ve never managed a place,” she said.

That chilled him, hearing her talk like that. As if no matter what she said, about anything at all, she could in the next breath take it back, unsay it, force them to start over again at the bottom and therefore perhaps arrive at a different conclusion altogether.

“We settled that,” he said. “That’s water under the bridge. You presumably made up your mind, so I won’t discuss it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You have to keep me from backtracking; I know it’s one of my fundamental weaknesses. Everybody says so. I tell them something, and then next day I get worried and I forget I said it.”

“I know I can run the office,” he said shortly, “so we can drop the subject.”

She appeared genuinely contrite.

While he was putting the dishes into the sink, she said from the table, “Let’s go somewhere. To a cocktail lounge or somewhere. I got spoiled down in Reno. I keep wanting to rush right out and have a big time. We do have something to celebrate.”

“What about Taffy?”

“If we’re only gone a little while she won’t wake up,” Susan said.

This sort of business being new to him he said, “What if she does?”

“She won’t,” Susan said.

“I’ll take your word for it.” He dried his hands. “Better put on something, though.”

She disappeared into the bedroom. After some equivocation she decided on a plain dark suit. “Will this do?” she asked.

Putting on a sports coat he told her yes it would do, and then they sneaked out of the house to the Merc. Soon they had parked in the gravel before a highway cocktail lounge and cafe. As they stepped out and up onto the long porch, he said. “Wouldn’t it be a typical blow if they asked to see my identification.”

“You mean they might think you were too young to buy a drink?”

“Yeah,” he said, as lightly as possible. But he wanted to prepare her in advance; it occasionally still happened.

“Then we’d leave,” she said.

“No,” he said, “I’d show them my identification. I’m not too young.” Or don’t you grasp that? he thought with some irony.

The waitress served them without comment. The place seemed quiet and warm, with no noisy people. In fact there was virtually no one there except themselves. They seated themselves in a booth at the back, away from the jukebox. Presently, however, a man and woman entered, both of them obviously travel-weary. They seated themselves at the bar, and as they drank their drinks they laid out a map of Idaho and Utah and began arguing in sharp, accusing voices.

“They’ve been on the road,” Bruce said.

“Yes,” she said, indifferently.

The couple, middle-aged and well-dressed, could not decide which route to take across Oregon. There were three routes in all. The waitress and the bartender had never driven any of them, so they were no help.

“I’ll go talk to them a second.” Bruce said. He got up and walked over to the bar. “I’ve driven the middle one,” he said to the couple, who stopped talking and gratefully listened. “Route 26. I’ve never been on 20, but they tell me it goes over a lot of desert. 26 is mostly through forest. It’s fine. Very little traffic, and some nice towns, and the scenery is terrific.”

“What about 30?” the man asked.

“The only part of 30 I know is through Idaho,” he said, “and it’s lousy. But all the roads in Idaho are lousy.”

“We found that out,” the woman said. “We thought we’d try going across Idaho instead of Nevada this time, and we’ve lived to regret it. I’d take 40 or 50 across any time, in preference to 30. It’s like a goat trail, up the sides of canyons—and all the awful construction work. We’re completely worn out.”

“It’ll be better,” he said. “Once you get into Oregon.”

The man asked, “Do you live around here?”

He started to answer, No, I live down in Reno. But that was not true, now. “I live here in Boise,” he said. “I just moved up here.” He added, “I just got married.”

The man and woman had noticed Susan, and now they both turned to wave politely at her and say congratulations.

The waitress, overhearing, went to the bartender, conferred with him, and then brought a tray of drinks for Bruce and Susan. “Wedding present,” the bartender said, from where he sat on his high stool.

“Thanks,” Bruce said. He felt embarrassed.

“What’s your wife’s name?” the woman asked.

He told her, and the man said that their names were Ralf and Lois McDevitt and that he was in the trout fly game. His company manufactured lures for fishermen.

Bruce invited them to join him and Susan, and they did so. The four of them chatted and joked for a time, although it seemed to him that Susan did not enter in, much; she answered politely, but she volunteered very little and her voice remained low, without luster. And she did not appear to be following the conversation.

Ralf McDevitt asked him what business he was in, and he told him that he and Susan operated a mimeographing and typing service. And then he added that he wanted to change what was now an office doing a service into a store selling merchandise. For a long time he and McDevitt discussed retail buying and selling. He told McDevitt about the chain drugstore across the street, and the dime store, and the Japanese portable that Milt Lumky had talked to him about. Once, he noticed that Susan was frowning at him. Evidently she did not approve of him talking so openly about business, so he switched the conversation back to driving and me various highways. That remained a topic for at least half an hour. In that conversation Susan took no part at all.