Philip Dick - In Milton Lumky Territory

He was silent with disbelief.

“I want to wash my hands of it,” she said.

“I know you do,” he murmured.

“I’m not cut out for cutthroat things like business. I want to stay home and be with Taffy. I only see her for an hour or so in the evenings. I have a woman come in about two and clean up the house and then go pick up Taffy and bring her home and be here with her until I get home at six. She took care of the house and Taffy while I was down in Mexico. Walt’s in Utah, in Salt Lake City. He’s been there for almost a year.”

“I see,” he said.

“Couldn’t you do that?” she demanded. “Run the office?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“Here’s what I thought about paying you. Zoe and I draw two salaries out. You can have exactly half the profits. Not a salary but exactly fifty percent of the net. How’s that? As much as I make, and you don’t have to worry about any investment.”

“That’s wrong,” he said.

“Why?”

“It’s not fair to you.”

In an agonized voice she said, “I have to have somebody to help me.” She moved away from him, her arms folded tightly about her. “I need somebody I can depend on. I don’t have Walt—I used to depend on him. He’s in the galvanized pipe business. All my time has to be spent with Taffy; that’s all there is to it. That has to come first. I don’t know how much you’re making now…you’re probably making more. But if you were smart, you could make it pay off. Don’t you agree? It’s small, but it’s a good location.”

“Yes it is,” he said.

Suddenly she spun around to face him. “Bruce,” she said, in a husky, almost tearful voice, “last night I lay awake thinking about you. I knew you’d come by. I was sitting out in the backyard hoping you’d come by. I waited all morning. I knew you had this—” She waved her hand. “This business to finish up. That’s why I stayed home from the office. I didn’t want to see you down there. Zoe and I don’t get along at all; I don’t want her to know anything about this until it’s all been arranged and there’s nothing left but simply to walk up to her and face her squarely and tell her I want to buy her share. It’s part of the legal agreement between us. We agreed when we became partners. I dread telling her…we’ve been friends for years. She and I lived together in Montario, when I was teaching at Garret A. Hobart.”

He thought: Perhaps she was one of the women in that house.

“Listen, Bruce,” she said in a grindingly serious voice. “I’m going to be totally honest with you. I’m really up against it. I didn’t get any alimony from Walt. He’s out of the state. He will send some money every month, but that’s for Taffy. And it won’t be much. I have exactly four thousand dollars that was my share of what we had, plus this house. There’s about five thousand more in the house. He kept the car. I got some furniture but it isn’t much. I really feel desperate. I’m not going to get a job; I’ve had my fill of that. I gave up teaching when I got married. I’d go to my grave before I’d teach again, or get a job as a secretary or a typist or a clerk somewhere. I won’t be degraded. I’d let Walt have Taffy and I’d—” She broke off. Rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped about her, she said, “I’m very lonely. Most of our friends are off me because they think it’s my fault Walt and I split up. You saw those people at Peg’s. They’re just a bunch of—”

“Clerks,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s what you get in a small town,” he said.

“Maybe that’s what I should do. Go down and live in Reno. Or go to the East Coast. But I have this goddamn mimeographing and typing business. Bruce—” Her voice rose. “I have to make it pay.” She advanced toward him. “I’ll bet with you running it it would pay. I know it would. If you hadn’t come by I would have gone down to Reno on the Greyhound and looked you up. I even called them and found out when the buses go. I’ll show you.” She shot past him, out of the room. Almost at once she was back, waving a folded piece of typing paper on which, in pencil, she had jotted down the bus schedule.

“I’d have to think it over,” he said, thinking about his job at C.B.B., his apartment in Reno, his friends there, his boss Ed von Scharf, on whom he depended, everything that he had planned for himself.

But, he thought, I could make it pay. I could run it. A retail outlet of my own, a business of my own. Nobody to tell me what to do. I’d have a free hand. Put my talent and experience to work.

“It does sound good,” he admitted.

“Do you know when we have to order merchandise for Christmas?”

“In the Fall,” he said.

“In August,” she said, with resentment. “I’d want you to be already in and fully organized by then.”

He nodded. And then he took the bottle opener, opened the other bottle of beer, found a tall tumbler in the rack on the drainboard, and poured a second glass of beer. Susan watched absently.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “As a sort of celebration,” he said, feeling clumsy and thick-tongued.

“Oh no thanks,” she said. “It’s too early in the day. Anyhow I have the darn checks to finish.” She started off, and when he followed he found her again seated with the checkbook before her, pen in hand, writing and frowning.

“I guess it’s agreed on,” he said, bewildered, but aware that unbelievably, in essence, he had said he would do it.

“Thank God,” she said with fervor, pausing in her check-writing. “I really need you, Bruce,” she said. And then she resumed her work.

He stood sipping his beer, standing in the cool living room.

When he got back to Reno with the load of car wax he drove directly to the Consumers’ Buying Bureau building and searched up his boss, Ed von Scharf. He found him in a stock room in the rear, seated on a carton, with a Popsicle in one hand and an inventory sheet on the floor before him. Wearing his tie, vest, black oxfords and herringbone trousers, his boss had been making an inventory and flinging around cartons of electric mixers. His black hair was speckled with the dust of the brown cardboard cartons; it made his look distinguished.

Bruce said, “I ran into an emergency up in Montario. I have to go back. If I can’t get an indefinite leave of absence, then I guess I’m quitting my job.” On the drive he had worked out his story. “My Dad’s ill,” he said, knowing how little his employers could complain against that reason. “I want to be up there indefinitely.”

They argued for an hour and a half. Then they went upstairs and discussed it with two of the Pareti brothers who owned C.B.B. At last the Paretis wrote out a two-weeks’ paycheck, shook hands with him, and told him he was free to go. He left with the assurance that his job would be there if and when he wanted it again.

His boss walked out to his car with him, grave and discouraged. “It’s a hell of a surprise,” he said, as Bruce unhitched the trailer load of car wax. “Keep in touch. Will you?”

He clapped Bruce on the back, wished him and his family luck, and then returned to the C.B.B. building.

With a strong sense of guilt, Bruce drove away in the direction of his apartment. But, at least, he had made sure of his job, if things did not work out. It was only practical.

After he had told the landlady, he went upstairs and got out a suitcase and began packing his things. By sundown he had carried all his things down to the Merc, loaded them where the boxes of wax had been only a few hours earlier, and then had given Mrs. O’Neill back the apartment key. She wished him luck, too, getting up from the dinner table to follow him down the hall.