Philip Dick - In Milton Lumky Territory

In the upstairs office overlooking the main floor of the Consumers’ Buying Bureau building, Ed von Scharf met him and sat down with him.

“Let’s have a look at them,” von Scharf said briskly.

Bruce said, “You sound as if you had been expecting me.”

“Your wife called,” von Scharf said. “She told us the situation. How much did you pay for them?”

Chagrined, he murmured, “Fifty bucks apiece.”

“I want to get somebody from the typewriter department in here.” Von Scharf excused himself. When he returned he had with him the buyer from the typewriter department and Vince Pareti, one of the Pareti brothers. The three of them huddled together over me Mithrias that Bruce had brought into the building with him.

“We can get a standard keyboard out of it,” the typewriter buyer said finally. “With a couple of minor differences. Not enough to matter. All the letters and numbers will be right. That’s what does it.” He nodded to Pareti and von Scharf and started out.

“How much?” Pareti asked him. “Figure the labor.”

“At our cost,” the expert said, computing. “Say, at the most five bucks a machine.”

After he had left, von Scharf retired to the rear of the office while Pareti conducted the negotiations. “We’ll take them off your hands,” Pareti said to Bruce. “We’ll pay you forty-five dollars apiece, and we want all sixty plus the name of your supplier. How many more does he have, according to your knowledge?”

“About three hundred and forty more,” Bruce said.

“And how much would he want?”

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling the futility of the thing fall onto him. “You can probably haggle him down below fifty bucks apiece. Which is what I paid.”

“Yes,” Pareti said. “That’s what your wife told us. We just wanted to be sure. We don’t want you to take a loss, but you can see that it’s going to cost us to get them into shape where we can sell them. What do you say to forty-five apiece? That means you take a loss of only three hundred bucks; that’s chicken feed.”

“To you, maybe,” Bruce said.

“I’d just as soon give him the full fifty he paid,” von Scharf said.

“Oh no,” Pareti answered, with finality.

“He got them down here for us. And he scouted them up in the first place; that ought to be worth something. His wife says he was on the road a week. We’re going to be listing them for almost two hundred.”

“I’m against it,” Pareti said, “but if you want, go ahead and make out a check for three thousand.” To Bruce he said, “How does that make you feel? You’re out from under them and you didn’t lose a nickel.”

Feebly, Bruce said, “I think they’re worth more than fifty bucks.”

The two men grinned.

“Flip a coin,” von Scharf said. He dug out a fifty-cent piece and spun it up into the air. “Heads you sell, tails you don’t.” The coin missed his hand and fell to the floor. “Tails,” he said. “You don’t sell.” He picked up the coin and put it back in his pocket.

Bruce said, “Give me an hour or so to decide. Okay?”

They both nodded.

As he left the office, von Scharf clapped him on the back and then walked along with him, to the exit door. “You know,” he said, “I’m a little surprised at you. You didn’t accept them sight unseen, did you?”

“No,” Bruce said. “I looked at them.”

“If you’d been working for us, you wouldn’t be now.”

“I’ll see you in an hour,” Bruce said. Turning his back he walked outside to the parking lot and his car.

For an hour he drove around and then he stopped at a drive-in ice cream stand and bought a pineapple malt. On long dry trips he found that a pineapple malt tasted least like the countryside; it made him think of girls and beaches and blue water, portable radios and dances, the happiness of his high school days. What there had been of it.

In most of the cars near his he saw teen-agers. Kids with their girls, parked in Mercury coupes, listening to their car radios, eating hamburgers and sipping malts.

I wonder if I ought to sell them the machines, he asked himself. If they can put them in shape for five bucks apiece, so could I. No, he realized. That’s their price; they have benches in the back and mechanically-inclined flunkies to do the job.

Yet it occurred to him, as a sort of last-resort possibility, that he might make an attempt to have the work done himself. It would cost at least three hundred dollars. Probably more. But he wouldn’t need all sixty machines altered at once; he could start with a few, sell them, and with the money get more changed, and so forth.

Finishing his malt he drove until he saw a typewriter repair shop. He parked and got out and carried a Mithrias inside. Showing it to the repairman he asked him what it would cost to have the keyboard changed.

The man, a short little solemn fellow, neatly-dressed in a white shirt, tie, and pressed sharkskin trousers, poked around inside the machine and then quoted a figure of twenty to twenty-five dollars.

“That much?” Bruce said, with a sinking heart.

The man explained that for some of the changes the type slugs would be unsoldered. Or the typebars could be cut, exchanged, and rewelded in a different sequence. But some of the keys would have to be split, and that was tricky work.

“Is there any chance,” Bruce said, “that I could do the work myself?”

The man said, “Depends on how good you are.”

“What about tools?”

“Yes, you’d need tools. But for one machine.”

“I have sixty of them,” he said.

The man said, “What you ought to do is make an arrangement with some fellow who’s in the business. Who has a shop, tools, and knows how to do it. If you try on your own you’ll damage a couple of letters, and that’ll finish the machine. Because I’ll bet you can’t get parts for these.”

Thanking the man he left the shop.

That was that. Unless, of course, he could make a deal with some repairman. Maybe cut him in.

And who did he know? Nobody. At least, nobody qualified.

They’ve got me, he told himself. They’ll buy the machines from me, make the changes, and roll up a hell of a big profit. All my work and all my driving and planning and farting around…and, he thought, the R & J Mimeographing Service or whatever we’d be eventually calling it. We’d have our money back—most of it—but I doubt very much if we’d go on from there. In fact, I know we wouldn’t go on from there. How could we? Where would we go?

Here I have the machines, he thought, and I can’t do anything with them. I can’t fix them and I can’t sell them. All I need is money . Money. A few hundred dollars. A thousand. Better yet, two thousand. But anyhow something. And where can I get it? We owe the bank fifteen hundred plus interest; I’ve hit my family, and Milt Lumky, and that does it. Nothing to sell, rent, exchange, put up for security.

What about my car?

His equity wasn’t large enough. That was out.

Maybe Susan’s house. Borrow against it. Long enough to get these goddamn machines in shape to peddle.

And then he thought, She did phone. She did call them and tell them about the keyboard. So perhaps, he thought, I don’t want to go on with it any further. Maybe this is a good place to stop.

What an immoral thing to do, he said to himself. Although of course it wouldn’t seem like that to her. In fact, to her it was virtuous.

That was the worst part. She had done it out of moral duty.

But to him it was lousy; it had put him in a terrible spot. Your wife called us , Ed von Scharf had said. Your wife told us. She tripped you up, you ridiculous bugger. You clown. In the name of what? To help the C.B.B discount house, which she has never seen and clearly doesn’t like?