Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“They’re so retro,” she said, meaning the wives. “I feel sorry for them.”

“Why?”

“Why? You know. Stuck out there in suburbs, raising kids.”

“They seem quite happy to me.”

“They do? Probably you’re right. Actually, the truth is, I don’t feel sorry for them. I mean, they took the easy way out. It’s not like it was for my mother — she didn’t have much choice. If they were guys, you’d call them wimps.”

“A couple of them work.” I named two women who had jobs.

“Oh, yeah?” Halley said. “Good for them. I didn’t know.”

“Actually, I thought the women were first-rate. It’s the old story. You get a group of men and women together and my sex always runs a distant second. I guess your father’s saved all the talent for the technical side.”

“Oh, I don’t agree. They’re first-rate guys. Jack Truman’s a great salesman. He came up with the direct mail idea that made us a major player in PCs. We’re really starting to hurt IBM now. Going direct’s allowed us to undersell them by thirty percent. It’s gonna help us on Centaur too. I think we can price Centaur at fifty percent of Toshiba’s laptops.”

“I didn’t know,” I said sheepishly. “I assumed the direct sales idea came from your father.”

“Well, he approved it. But it was Jack Truman’s idea. Dad was going crazy trying to raise capital to go the Radio Shack route, or fighting IBM in the retail stores, which is their turf. I mean, how could Jack hope to compete with a tenth of Big Blue’s sales force and one one thousandth of their budget? He saw that a lot of computer buyers were reading magazines to get tips on how the hell the machines work and he figured, hey, these people are sophisticated, they know we’re all using the same chips, we run the same software. So we started selling peripherals through the mags and it wasn’t that big a leap to selling whole machines. We’re really gonna test it with Centaur. No retail at all, except maybe for a discounter.”

“Are people going to feel comfortable spending a few thousand dollars on something they’ve never held in their own hands?”

“Well, that’s the challenge with this campaign. I think the way to go is not to reassure them.”

“Not to reassure them?”

“Right. Make it seem snobby. You know, hip. We’ll sell them self-esteem. Like, ‘I’m not an unsophisticated jerk who needs to spend twice as much for some salesman in an overpriced retail store to hold my hand.’ I mean, realistically, at first we have to aim at second- or third-generation buyers, people who already feel savvy. Then let them promote the machine for us. I mean, if the one guy in your office who knows portables and laptops has a Centaur, then you’ll feel safe buying one. Eventually, you’re gonna feel stupid not calling our 800 number and ordering.”

“Very clever. Psychologically very subtle.”

“Marketing is all psychology.” She leaned toward me and teased, “That’s why Daddy should have you working with us, not in Geek Heaven.”

“I’ll suggest it,” I said, glancing at her. She winked at me. “So this sales approach with Centaur was Jack Truman’s?”

“No,” Halley said. She touched my arm, smiled when I glanced at her, and then pointed to herself. “It was mine. I mean, direct order in general was his. But going all direct with Centaur and going cutting edge with ads is mine.”

“Funny,” I said somberly.

“Funny?” she asked.

I didn’t seem to have heard. I nodded at the road and furrowed my brows.

She released her feet from under her and stretched, sliding them back into the penny loafers. She twisted in my direction. “You said something was funny.”

“Oh. Nothing.”

She made one of her noises of multiple feeling, at once annoyed and amused. “It is not nothing. What’s funny?”

“Just that — you know, sometimes it seems like there’s no need for your father.”

“No need for my father,” she repeated incredulously. “What, for God’s sakes, do you mean?”

“Well, the guys in the labs build the machines and you and Jack figure out how to sell them. Your father’s obviously a brilliant man and he picked you all, but who needs him now?” I paused. Hearing nothing from her, I mused, “Unless that’s the answer — that he’s a coach of a collection of star players.”

She didn’t say anything. I slowed for the final toll to enter Manhattan. After I paid and got back to full speed, as we scooted underneath the George Washington Bridge, Halley said, “Are you going to watch the fireworks?”

“I haven’t decided. Are they on the East Side or the West Side this year?”

“East Side.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How about you? Oh, that’s right. You have work to do.”

“I’ll be done by nine. The fireworks are at nine-thirty.”

“Okay, I’ll pick you up at nine,” I said. She nodded. We were silent until I stopped at her apartment on Seventy-sixth, only a block from my sublet. She opened the door, one penny loafer going out, the other still inside.

“See you at nine,” I said.

She twisted back. “He’s not just a coach,” she said. “Without Daddy, nobody’d know the difference between a great idea and a lousy one. He’s the star.” She smiled cheerfully. “See you at nine.”

HALLEY KNEW WHERE WE SHOULD GO FOR THE BEST VIEW OF THE FIREWORKS. They closed the East River Drive from Eighteenth to Fifty-ninth Streets to allow pedestrians on it; she said the farther down we went, the better our angle. We took a cab to the Twenty-third Street entrance and walked onto the highway with streams of people: families, gangs of teenagers, gay and straight couples. We passed hawkers of flags, noise-makers, and sparklers. I stopped to buy a box of sparklers.

“You’re kidding,” Halley said, but she complied when I put one in her hand and lit it. At first she was too self-conscious to hold the sparkler high and wave. She had changed into a pale blue cotton dress, very short, showing off the full length of her slim tanned legs. The sparks flowed over her neck and chest. She winced and turned her head to the side. Putting a hand on her elbow, I lifted and moved her arm. “Be patriotic,” I said.

Halley took over. I watched, following the white of her underarm up to the brown of her forearms, her pretty face flickering in the light. She was my very own animated Statue of Liberty.

A little boy, with kinky hair and dark skin, planted himself in front of her and said, “Abuela! Mira,” to a fat old woman holding his hand.

I said to her, “Le doy uno? No son peligrosos.”

I lit a sparkler for the boy. He zigzagged back and forth across the highway’s white lines, startling people with his bloom of sparks. His grandmother shouted at him, smiled at me, and waddled off in pursuit.

Halley’s sparkler sputtered out. “You speak Spanish?” she asked. It flared again briefly, a last gasp. She was left with a withered burnt stub.

I nodded, removed the dead sparkler, and gave her another. I didn’t light it. “Let’s get to the water.”

That was hard. People had gathered hours in advance. Halley was aggressive, however, and, in her short clingy dress, she also caused some men to make way without their intending to, especially when they realized she had me in tow. She pushed us all the way to the edge of the water.

I lit her sparkler. This time she raised it high on her own. I covered her forearm with my hand and stroked toward her shoulder. The skin was soft, the muscles firm. She watched my hand gravely. I let go. “Throw it,” I said, nodding at the water. She obeyed. The sparkler’s flight was cheered by our immediate neighbors. It arched up, a tiny firework, and nosedived into the water.