Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“I wish we had more time like this,” I said. “Just the two of us. It seems like I never get to see you. Not enough, I mean.”

“Bobby.” She laughed. “You are sweet. Don’t be crazy. We spend about twenty hours a day together.”

“I tried to call you from Dallas last night when I was on my runs.” I had called from the phone in Kizakov’s office. “I thought maybe if I got back early, if I hurried, we could have a late dinner. You weren’t around.” Jim had been out, too. More and more I had been noticing that about the two of them. How they went missing at the same time. I couldn’t ask Jim where he was, of course.

She ignored me. She was focused on cooking the drug.

“Jim is a schemer. I don’t mean that as a criticism. It’s because he’s an entrepreneur. He’s always busy cooking up something for Jim. That’s what keeps him out of trouble. Kind of.” She laughed. “His plans. If he doesn’t include you in all of them it’s for your own good. Trust me on that one. I’m older than you are.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s not like I’m trying to impress him. I just want to do a good job. I want to be a good employee.”

“He’s already proud of you, Bobby. You don’t have to prove anything to him. He loves you because you’re his brother. Because you are the person you are. Not because of anything you’re doing.”

That reminded me of something my mother once told me. It was after an award ceremony for the safety patrols in elementary school. I had cheated on the national exam and won “The Smartest Safety Patrol in Canada” or some such crazy Canadian award. After I received my new ten-speed bike and carried the flag down the Seventh Street Mall, my mother took me aside and said, “You see that? That’s what success does, Bobby. No one is going to like us for who we are. You have to make people like you. They will never like you just you on your own.”

That was not what my father would have said. He thought human beings loved one another, truly, all the way down.

B lack Friday had come and gone and I was still not on the sales floor.

“That was the promise,” I told Jim. “I am back-of-the-house and the buys until after Thanksgiving and then I go on the floor.”

“It’s true, Jim,” Lisa said. It was after hours, almost midnight, and the three of us were sitting at his desk sorting diamond melee. The Watchman was still there, too, a few desks away, checking in diamond bezels, counterfeit buckles, and other Rolex accessories that we had shipped in from all over the world.

“It’s Sheila who is holding you up,” Jim said. “You know how it works, Bobby. Sheila’s in charge of all the employees. In the end it’s her call.”

“She shouldn’t lie. She shouldn’t break her promises,” I said.

“I don’t think it’s Sheila at all. I think it’s Dennis,” Lisa said. “It’s because you are Jim’s little brother.”

“Whatever,” Jim said. “Who knows? It doesn’t matter. It’s politics. Dennis wants my job. He’s sick of running the back. We’ll get you on the phones and then he won’t be able to keep you off the floor. Sell some silver contracts. That’s how the Polack got everyone paying attention. Other than her tits, I mean.”

He said that for Lisa. She was small-chested and complained about it, often, especially after sex. I looked away from both of them, afraid that they would read something on my face that they should not see. Each of them something different.

“Nice, Jimmy,” Lisa said. But she was smiling. “Real funny.”

“Sheila started her out as a hostess,” he continued. “Then she nailed some big bullion contracts, working the phones, and she was on the floor two weeks later. If you really sell on the phones Sheila will know she is wasting you in the back.”

What you did was, you sold the customer a quantity of precious metal as an investment, and sold him the security of storing it for him in your safes. When silver was at $5.60, a customer could buy a thousand ounces of silver at five dollars an ounce. “We can sell the metal at below the market price because we buy it off the street and smelt it ourselves, and it is in our interest to sell it below market value to you, sir, because then when you want to buy a diamond tennis bracelet for your tenth anniversary you will call me first.” Customers paid a nominal fee of fifty dollars per year, per thousand ounces, to store it in our safes. We never actually bought the metal. And that was how you made money in it. The official story around the store was we stored the metal off-premises but even the phone girls knew that was bullshit. So it was pure profit, and you were paid a straight ten percent commission on any metal contract. A ten-thousand-dollar contract meant a thousand-dollar commission. We were selling them by the hundreds.

“Okay, that sounds good,” I said. “I want to learn how to sell metals contracts. I want to be one of the silver guys.”

“I still think you’d be best out on the floor,” Lisa said, and smiled at me. Those wide-open smiles of hers were one of the best things about her. “And you shouldn’t compare your brother to that woman, Jim. What is it with you and her lately? Bobby is nothing like her.”

“We’ll start you out on my Rolex calls,” Jim said. “That will soften up your phone manners. The phone is an art, Bobby. They can’t see what they’re buying. You have to learn how to pitch your voice. That’s all you got on the Rolex lines. The sounds of your own mouth.”

B obby, we need to talk to you.”

It was three of the saleswomen. They hot-boxed me in the old safe room, the little closet-sized room near the front where we kept the appraisal folders, wrapping paper, pearl folders, and recent mailers now. Tracy, who was pretty, this old yellow-skinned bitch Rita, whom everyone hated and feared, and a fat woman, one of the hard-core phone saleswomen who used to train everybody but now had gone to part-time because of health problems, whose name I didn’t know. The Polack disliked her, because of a battle between the two of them from years before, and she called her simply “Pig.” She would say it directly to her face, with other people around, too. Even customers, if she was out on the floor looking for a piece of jewelry for a client on the phone. When you worked the phones the rule was you always held the article of jewelry you were trying to sell. If it actually existed, that is, and wasn’t only a picture in our catalogue. It’s surprising how much that helps with the sale.

The fat saleswoman stood at the door and kept an eye out so that no one would overhear.

“We don’t think you should be seeing Lisa,” Tracy said.

“She is not a nice person,” the fat one said. “Okay, she’s nice enough. But she’s not the kind of person you think she is. Not nice in that way. She’s a slut.”

I did not know what to say. Why did anyone know about me and Lisa?

“She’s Jim’s girlfriend. I am not going to have sex with my brother’s girlfriend.”

“What? What did you say?” Tracy said.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Rita said. “For about a year now. Inseparable. No one knows what all they are up to. That’s what I would say. More than just you-know-what.”

“Wow. This is good,” Tracy said. “This is juicy.”

“I think it’s illegal for both of them,” the fat one said. “Remember that schoolteacher? And the high school boy? That was just last year.”

“That’s because the boy murdered her husband,” Rita said. “A minor cannot be prosecuted for statutory rape.”

“What about two sixteen-year-olds? What if they had sex? I used to do it all the time,” Tracy said. The fat one laughed. “I mean, like with boyfriends. A boyfriend. Not like this. Like we were both sixteen. Or eighteen, maybe. Maybe we were both eighteen. So that would be different. Because we were adults.”