Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“I didn’t think we could do it three days from Thanksgiving,” Jim told him. “Everybody’s out. There are just no new ladies’ two-tones available right now. I called all over. Not even Rolex USA in downtown Dallas has them. But I have a friend across town who saves a few back for occasions like this. To sweeten a deal. He drove this over for me. His last ladies’ two-tone. He was planning on giving it to his wife for Christmas. Brand-new in the box. Books, papers, everything. Fresh from the factory.”

“What the hell does a jeweler’s wife want with one of these?” the customer said. “Shouldn’t she have a gold Rolex? I wouldn’t put my wife in a three-thousand-dollar watch. Not if I was in your line of work.”

He opened the box. The gold plastic Rolex crown fell out and sat next to the necklace.

“You know how it is with women. They are just the thing right now,” Jim said. “This guy’s wife has a couple of Presidents, she has a Patek and a Cartier. But now she wanted a ladies’ two-tone. She wants what she knows her friends want and won’t get this year.”

“Looks like she won’t get it, either,” Dennis said. His curly hair, along with that bright-toothed smile of his, made him look like an elf or a devil. “The shoemaker’s wife.” He laughed.

“Hell, I imagine she’ll get her turn,” the customer said. “Her husband’s in the business.”

“After Christmas,” Dennis said. “A few months after Christmas Rolex will loosen up on them.”

Dennis and Jim fell into their own imaginary world of the made-up jeweler and his wife who was supposed to get this watch for Christmas, the watch that I had taken from the wrist of my customer only minutes before. I could almost see the worried jeweler and his disappointed wife. And I could feel the story working. It made even me want the customer to have the watch. Just so that other fictional woman who was supposed to get it couldn’t. It was ours now. In our hands. She would have to wait.

“You boys do come through. I gotta hand it to you, Jimmy. Well, Dennis, let’s get down to business. How much you gonna sell me this little dude for? This one of those nineteen ninety-five specials you fellas run in the paper?”

“Let’s think about it as a package,” Dennis said. “You know Mr. Popper wants to move this necklace. You know what it’s worth. You know he needs the money. Make him an offer. I’ll take any fair offer up to him. Make him a cash offer, Glen.”

The customer looked over at me. His black eyes were supple and healthy. You would have bet he was an honest man. But he’s rich, I told myself. He must be cleverer than he appears.

“Make yourself useful, would you, son, and refill my drink here? I think these boys are about to mug me.”

He shook the ice in the empty glass.

“The Macallan, Bobby. The thirty-year-old,” Dennis said without looking at me. We did not have any thirty-year-old scotch, but we did have Macallan, and I jogged out to the bar cabinet behind the bookkeeper’s office. As I passed the stairs to Mr. Popper’s office with the fresh drink I saw him coming the other way. He caught me by the shoulder.

“What’s happening in there?” he asked. His face sparkled with happiness and anticipation. “Is he buying it? What’s he buying? He’s buying it, isn’t he? Is he buying the necklace? The alexandrites? Is he going for it?” Mr. Popper was bouncing in his shoes. He was shorter than I was and his round belly and the bouncing made him seem like a red rubber ball bouncing in a playground. You wanted immediately to hold him or hug him. He was that enthusiastic. He was one of those geniuses. I’ve only met three or four of them over the years. He was not human like you and me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”

“Well don’t stand here jawing with me,” he said. He pushed me by the small of my back while holding my shoulder. We shoved our way into the salespeople around the watch counter, who when they saw I was with Mr. Popper parted a way for me to the door of the diamond room. “Get in there, son! Get in there!” Then he leaned forward and whispered, “If he buys it, it’s a thousand cash for you, too. A thousand dollars! Today! Close him,” he said. “Get him, Bobby, get him!” he said. Then he laughed. “Isn’t this wonderful?” he said, and held open his arms as though he would lift the whole showroom between them. “It’s almost Christmas, everyone,” he said. “It’s the most glorious time of the year!” Customers and salespeople laughed aloud with him. The air grew golden around us. We all shone together. The halogens brightened even whiter. The music of the voices of the salespeople and the customers in the showroom lifted like a chorus. There was music playing, of course, on the Muzak, Christmas music. The Chipmunks’ Christmas album. I looked for Lisa and saw her there spotlighted in the halogens with the big pearls she was selling around her neck. She was facing the other way and her customer, a narrow-shouldered man in an elegant gray suit, was helping her with the clasp. I bet that is a sale, I thought. The way he’s fingering her neck he looks like he’s buying. Then I opened the door and was in. Mr. Popper closed the door behind me.

“There he is,” the customer said. “There’s your boy. Boy, we got a job for you.”

All three of their faces looked at me.

“This is a time for champagne,” the customer said. “Here, hand me over that scotch. There’s a good fella.”

“I’ll get the champagne,” Jim said. “Bobby, you take this Rolex and have it gift-wrapped. Wait for it. Ask Lisa if she wouldn’t mind wrapping it, she’s the best. I am going to give this necklace one more steaming and then we’ll take a last look at it in its case. I better get Ronnie. We’ll be right back. Let’s start with the champagne and go from there. Congratulations, Mr. Redback.”

Jim and I left with the Rolex and the necklace.

“So he’s buying it?” I said to Jim.

“He bought it. He already bought it. He bought the alexandrite necklace. Dennis, that son of a bitch, sold it. He sold it.” I looked at him to see if he was jealous but he was delighted. This was perhaps my older brother’s most compelling virtue: he enjoyed the luck of others, particularly if he loved them. He would never understand envy or resentment. I worry that I am wired the opposite way.

“Get that woman’s watch wrapped,” Jim said. “Your customer closed the deal. Her COA sold that necklace. You sold it, really, Bobby, when you sold that clean, oil, and adjust.”

In my excitement I had almost forgotten that the watch was not ours.

“This watch?” I said. “Wait. I thought we were just showing it. You want me to wrap up her watch?” I cannot say, now, whether I was feigning innocence or I was genuinely confused. But that was what I said.

“You know of any other like-new ladies’ two-tones lying around? Think you can get on the phone and have one here in the time it takes for Ronnie and Redback to count the cash?”

“No, I was just asking,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Don’t worry, your customer will get a watch,” Jim said. “She may have to wait awhile, and it won’t be that watch, but she’ll get a watch. Meanwhile, she can wear around one of our Bertoluccis. She may even get attached to it. Bertolucci is really a much nicer watch.” Even I knew that was false. “Hell, we would even be willing to trade her, which is an upgrade for her. Come to think of it, I know a used eighteen-karat Bertolucci we could lend her. Dennis paid too much for that thing, but she probably figures her watch is worth five, the Bertolucci lists at eighteen, you tell her we give her a discount apology to our cost which is nine thousand, that’s easy math. You can sell that. Just return her phone calls promptly. Make her earn every inch of it. She has to think she is beating you up. I’ll walk you through it. If that beat-up old gold Bertolucci is still here after Christmas that’s a perfect solution. We can tighten the bracelet with Teflon spray. It won’t last, but it will be perfect for this deal.” He was losing me in the whirlwind of the imaginary pitch I was going to have to deliver to the irate, cheated customer.