Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“Your brother is already back there,” she said. “Why do you want to know? Go ahead. It’s not like you’re rummaging through my bedroom. I hope your dad gets better and everything but tell him I said he needs to find a new place to live. Peeing all over the neighbor’s yard. Peeing all over the kitchen. The stuff I had to throw out.”

I found his sandalwood meditation beads next to the bed where he always kept them, and his reading glasses and his extra pair of regular glasses. I took some incense, too, some of the special sticks I was never allowed to burn that he kept in a carved box from Tibet. This was all part of the regular routine. I looked in the closet for a cardboard box and put everything in there. He moved so often I even knew where he kept his packing boxes. One stack beneath the bed and another stack in the closet underneath his shoe boxes.

“Where are his keys?” Jim said.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I should give you those. I need his car. That is my only car.”

“Listen carefully to me. Our father is in the hospital. We came from Texas. We do not have a car. I will make this easy for you. I will not say it again. Give me his keys.”

It was the only time I ever heard him speak like our mother.

She went and brought the keys.

Then the car wouldn’t start—“It’s out of gas,” Jim said — and we had to call the cabdriver back.

At the hospital our dad was asleep. The skin of his face was as orange as earwax. But his arms on the blue blanket were white and thin. I looked away from him.

“Shouldn’t we wake him?”

“No, let him sleep,” Jim said. He took his wallet from a drawer next to the bed. “Let’s write him a note, though. Put his medals on that chair so he can reach them. He’ll want to look at those.”

I put his sandalwood beads by his water glass so he would discover them first. Then we put the note under the beads.

Outside, our cabdriver was taking a nap. He had his hat pulled over his face. I admired the fact that he could sleep like that. I knew I would never be the kind of man who could sleep on the bench of his cab with his hat down low over his eyes.

Jim patted him gently on the shoulder.

“Take us up Camelback Road,” he said. “You know the Phoenician Hotel? That’s where we want to go. It’s right at the base of Camelback Mountain. Not Superstition. Camelback.”

I hoped we wouldn’t be driving through any mountains. My stomach was still bouncing around.

“I always wanted to stay at this resort,” Jim said. “When I was in high school my buddies and me used to sneak into their swimming pool. We would listen until some guy ordered a drink and put it on his room. Then once he left we would use his room number. It worked every time. They never caught us. We came back over and over again.”

I watched the desert and the condo developments out the window. I was looking for a miniature golf course that I had loved when I was a kid.

“Putting us up at the Phoenician is the least Dad can do. Don’t worry. I’ll tell him it was my idea. But we won’t mention it until we’re leaving.”

I remember how for a moment I understood my affection for him differently, then. I thought of how women will have sex with a man simply out of admiring and liking him so much. Not because they are attracted in a physical way. As a brother you could understand that.

“Okay,” I said.

“And what’s the only rule?” He rubbed his nose with his finger. He looked suddenly very happy. We both needed some sun. “There are no stinking rules!” he said.

Under different circumstances our father would have approved this attitude. It may well have been an expression of his. Jim often repeated Dad’s expressions, likely without understanding he was doing so. I did not remember that particular slogan. But it was a good one.

•

When we left Dad was still in the hospital.

“I think they are going to amputate my feet, boys,” he told us. “It’s my diabetic neuropathy.”

Jim looked at me, so that Dad couldn’t see his expression, and rolled his eyes. He had been talking to the doctor, who explained that our dad’s problems were “largely psychiatric.”

“Maybe you can come out to Texas for Christmas, Dad,” I said. “Or for New Year’s Eve.”

“I doubt it, son,” he said. “I expect I’ll still be right here in this goddamn hospital bed.”

I t was mostly the ugly and the overweight who worked the phones, and two of Sheila’s cousins, twins, who were both in wheelchairs and could not navigate the showcases.

“Some of them used to be on the floor,” Jim told me. “Rachel, for example. Then her husband went into the catering business and she put on all that weight. I should have paid to send her to Weight Watchers. She sells three times back here what she ever sold on the floor. That’s why I’m sitting you across from her. When you’re selling, sell with one ear on Rachel. Take in every word she says. Especially if she’s selling a silver contract.”

I faced Rachel and I was close enough to her that if she was eating a donut the particles from her mouth almost reached me. That was helpful because it kept my nose down on the phone. I could not watch her chew on her food.

My phone was plastic and red. On my phone I had eight regular lines and ten Rolex lines. The Rolex lines were not sales lines. They were problem lines. These were paid orders we had already taken but the watch was nowhere to be found. The bottom line was the line to Mr. Popper’s office. You never used that line.

“We may as well get some blood on your hands, Bobby. Most of these guys are so mad you probably can’t make them any madder. Well, that’s not true. They can always get madder. Your leverage is the fact that they have paid. They have paid and they are not getting their money back. So use the watch. The watch they don’t have yet and are begging for.”

I nodded. I looked at the phone as though it were a live animal. A biter.

“Did you do what I told you? Did you watch the news this morning?”

“I said I watched it.”

“Okay, fine, you said that. Now take a call. Think about what you are going to say. What was on the news? You need something big.”

“There was a fire in Chicago. In a nightclub. A bunch of people died.”

“For Christ’s sake, Bobby. Don’t pretend to be stupid. I know you are not stupid. You can’t use a fire in Chicago, Bobby! Come on! Think! We need weather. Was there a tornado? A hurricane? You need international weather. You need — Oh, hell, it doesn’t matter. Just grab a call. Do your best.”

The Rolex lines were all blinking red. It was five after eight and already all ten Rolex lines were waiting, on hold. There was a special option on the voice mail you could select if you wanted to check on your Rolex. “Push 7 if you are inquiring about the status of your Rolex order.” You could leave a message, too, but no one ever checked the message. I tried not to look at Jim, picked up the phone, and pushed a button.

“Fort Worth Deluxe. Thank you for holding. Mr. Myers? Nice to speak with you, Mr. Myers. Yes sir. I understand, sir, I am sorry about that, sir. Yes, I have your information right here, Mr. Myers. Bobby Clark. That’s right, that’s my name, sir. No sir, Jim is not in the office at the moment. I am his brother, though, and I am fully familiar with your order. Yes, that’s right, I have it right here on my computer”—I opened the large filing cabinet next to Jim’s desk and started to look for the Matthew Myers file, then Jim pulled it out for me—“a ladies’ stainless and gold with a mother-of-pearl diamond dial. That’s a beautiful watch, sir, my own wife wears one. The good news is it’s here. No, not here in the store, not quite, but here in the country. The factory in Switzerland, that’s right, sir, that’s where the watch is coming from. But there’s been a holdup in Chicago. The flight from Zürich connects in Chicago, that’s right, sir, and that’s where our customs agents are. That means we’ve almost got our hands on the watch. Yes, we very much appreciate your patience, Mr. Myers. The holdup is this fire they had there last night. The problem is our broker. His name?”