Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“But they aren’t even worth anything,” I said. “You cannot expel me because of some fake rings.”

“You don’t belong here, Robert,” Mr. Robinson said. “This place is for good people. You are not a good person. You are a thief, a liar, and a coward.”

That made us quiet for a moment. Across his desk we sniffed each other. I suspect we both knew I smelled better than he did.

I sat outside on a curb in the parking lot and read Siddhartha . I kept that book in my backpack for occasions like this. Sometimes I would switch it out with Jonathan Livingston Seagull , or On the Road , or Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking , or Journey to the End of the Night . These were all favorites of mine I had read many times.

When I called my big brother, Jim, to tell him about my expulsion he tried to sell me on the jewelry store. I should have known that as soon as the pitch started Jim believed the lies he was throwing me. It’s like being an actor or prime minister, you get all worked up with the audience and you think you can say nothing false or unbelievable.

“It is not your fault,” he said. “The same thing happened to me, more or less, it was just drugs instead of thievery. Head south. The U.S. is where all of us should be, Bobby. That’s what I’m saying. Move down here with me. I’ll pay for the ticket and you pick it up at the counter at the airport. Dad knew what he was doing when he moved to the States. You and me lead the next charge. Let me handle Mom. I’m making five grand a week down here. That’s twenty thousand dollars a month. Plus the company car. A Porsche! Next year I get the convertible. You would live rent-free. I am practically a gemologist now. You can take the classes, too. Live with us. That’s college! You do it in the mail. You could be a gemologist in a year. You won’t believe what those guys make. The real GIA gemologists. That’s the Gemological Institute of America. That’s a whole lot better than university, Bobby. Paychecks. Not to mention the prestige.”

“I don’t really want to go to university, anyway,” I said. “I hate school.”

“Me, too. I always hated school. That’s natural.”

“What about my girlfriend?”

“Of course you’ll meet girls! You’ll meet a thousand of them. That’s what Mr. Popper hires if he can. Half the sales force is girls. College girls, too. Coeds! You know what they’re like. And customers. Girls love jewelry, Bobby. That’s most of the market. And women, of course. But lots of girls. You should see the girls! Everybody knows about the girls in Texas. They are the best girls in the whole country. These do not look like Canadian girls. You wouldn’t think they were the same kind of animal. And they are all over Canadian guys. They love the foreign accent.”

“What I was saying was I met a girl up here. A girl in one of my classes. I guess she’s my girlfriend.”

“That’s great! I say give it a try. You can have ten girlfriends. Plus you can always go back. Make some real money and fly her down for Christmas. Think of the presents you can buy her. That’s another thing. You can buy any jewelry you want. For employees it’s all twenty percent over cost. You don’t know how cheap it is until you’re on the inside. You can buy jewelry for nothing! I had no idea. It’s triple key, quadruple key, five times. That’s industry language. Triple key means you sell it for three times what it costs. You’ll learn all that when you get here. It’s called Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. Like a stock exchange. Only better, because anyone can buy. Anyone can walk off the street and get something for their money. And jewelry goes up in value! It’s an investment! That’s what I am telling you. I am not trying to talk you into anything. You have to make your own mistakes.”

Jim hung up. I called Wendy. I wanted to speak to her while I was enthusiastic.

“Why don’t I come over?” I said. “What are you doing?”

“I have too much homework,” she said. “I have chemistry homework and physics.”

“That’s joke homework. Do it before class starts. I’ll sneak into the library and help you with it. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. I can do it there if you want. I know that stuff.”

“I’m not learning it that way. We can’t do it like that anymore. Anyway, I have to get off the phone. I can’t see you tonight. I am supposed to go to the grocery store with my mom.”

“The grocery store?”

“I said I would. I said I would go with her.”

“I could come over afterward.”

I knew about the grocery store. Andrew. He went to high school by Wendy’s house. It was the high school she was supposed to go to before we met. Then she decided to go to my high school, which also had the honors program she wanted to be in, which was the reason she went there, and not falling in love with me. But whenever anything went wrong at Western it was on account of me that she had come to this lousy school. Now I was kicked out and she was hanging around the high school by her house. She even went to their basketball games. She was going to the grocery store with her mom to see Andrew in the produce department. She imagined herself spinning on his cock in the iceberg lettuce bin. He might stick a cold cucumber up her ass. I remembered that when I was in third grade Jason DeBoer had said that to me, “You walk like you’ve got a cucumber stuck up your ass.” I understood the remark.

Wendy was not a virgin but she preferred anal sex. She said it was because she could not take chances. As a matter of method she lied to herself first before lying to other people. Or she would lie with a truthful statement like, “I can’t get pregnant if you come in my ass.” That was a fact but concealed her genuine agenda.

“Fine. I get it. Go see grocery boy. I’ll just see you tomorrow.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is maybe you shouldn’t come over anymore.”

“You said you were going to the grocery store with your mom.”

“I said I was but I won’t. Fine. I’m staying home. I don’t care. That isn’t the issue. You are not listening to me.”

“Is your mom mad at me?”

“My mom is not the problem, Bobby. Okay. I didn’t want to say this. But you are giving me no choice. You made me say it. We shouldn’t see each other anywhere. At all. And don’t say what I know you are going to say. It’s not about anyone else. It’s about us.”

I listened to the telephone. I reassured myself that she did not understand the words that were coming from her mouth, and maybe did not even hear them.

“Us and Andrew, you mean,” I said. I hated to remind her of his name. But I wanted to hear her deny it.

“You’re not even in high school anymore, Bobby. I mean, what are you doing with yourself? What are you going to do? Just be a dropout? Sleep in the mall every day?”

To keep my mother in the dark, in the morning when I was going to school I would just take the bus down to the zoo or to the mall. I did not really sleep there. Wendy said that because I had fallen asleep in the food court once and been kicked out by a security guard. I only started going to the mall in the first place because Wendy liked the Caesar salads from the Copper Creperie and I would bring them to her for lunch. I had to sneak in and out of my own high school, because Mr. Robinson had his eye out for me. He had chased me right down the main hallway and out the front doors only a few days before. I later told people that the reason I was expelled was that he had caught me in the hallway by one shoulder and I turned around and clocked him one, right in the nose, and he keeled over like a cut tree. Flat on his back, right there by the cafeteria doors. My old man had been a boxer and he had taught me how to throw a right cross and a few combinations, I explained. That part was true.