Clancy Martin - How to Sell

She didn’t pick up until the seventh or eighth ring. I almost gave up.

“Can we get together for a drink? How about Birraporetti’s?”

“Hi, Bobby. It’s nice to hear from you. How’s Jim? I’m not taking meetings anymore. But I have a girlfriend who is. You’ll like her. She’s young. She’s pretty.”

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“She is taking over a few of my old clients. I am sure you will like her. Call her.”

The new hooker answered the phone on the first ring. She wanted to meet at my apartment. I did not recognize the voice because, of course, it was not what I was expecting.

“Shouldn’t we meet at a motel?” I said. I knew we should meet at a motel.

“No, thank you,” she said politely.

I was nervous like you are before a date. I started to straighten the apartment. Then I thought, No, you are not fixing up your apartment for a hooker. I brushed my teeth. I opened a beer. The doorbell rang. I looked through the peephole. A middle-aged man in a jean jacket stood there. I did not know if I should answer the door. He had blond bangs. He knocked and said loudly, “I’m the friend. Sylvia’s friend.”

“Where’s the girl?” I said through the door. “Who are you?”

“Open up,” he shouted. I thought about my neighbors. I had not met any of them but they would hear this. I opened the door but left the chain on.

“What?” I said. “Who are you?”

“I just need to check out the apartment,” he said. “Because you are a new client.”

He was about forty years old. He had a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of his jean jacket.

“Are you carrying a gun?” I asked him. “This is probably not worth it,” I said.

“Man, open up,” he said, and the way his eyes turned down I saw that he was kind, like you will see on poor people and black people, so I opened the door.

“I need to make sure you are not some weirdo,” he said.

“Look around,” I said.

I was still in an Armani suit and a Zegna tie. I was wearing Bulgari plique-à-jour cufflinks. I thought that ought to count for something. There was a half-empty bottle of Creed Taba-rome on the breakfast bar. But the mattress was on the floor and I had no furniture. There were candles, wine bottles, an alarm clock, the cutaways I had brought home with me from the new catalogue, and a few books. There was a blue and green Favrile-glass Art Deco ashtray, which Jim had given me as my moving-out-of-the-house present, with two cigar butts in it.

“I just moved in,” I said. “I just left my wife.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No, it’s for the best,” I said. “She cries all the time.”

“You have any children?” he asked.

“Just one,” I said. “She’s only a baby.”

“That’s sad,” he said. “They say it’s tough on the kids but really it’s toughest on the parents. My folks are divorced. It was always nice at Christmas.”

“Mine, too,” I said. “Two Christmases. Two birthdays, too.”

“Don’t divorce if you can help it.”

I started to offer him a beer but then I remembered what we were doing.

“I guess you are a lonely guy,” he said.

“That’s fair,” I said. “Just a lonely guy. Just like the rest of us.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said. “Have fun. Have a party. But remember I’ll be down in the truck.”

He left the door half open when he left. I started to close it but then jumped when the girl, on the other side, pushed it open at the same time. I let go and stepped back. For no reason, I felt embarrassed. Then she walked in. It was Lisa. I saw her before she saw me. Nine years had passed since I had seen her and here she was, walking in the door as the prostitute I had ordered. Boldly, like she expected to make me comfortable. I had noticed the confidence in her stride in the second or so before I even understood it was her.

Then she saw me. There was a moment while we waited. We might each have been seeing what the other one would do first. Or maybe neither of us knew what to do.

She abruptly covered her face with her hands. Like one of those three monkeys. She turned around and walked out of the apartment. I caught her at the bottom of the stairs.

“No,” she said. “I did not see you. I do not know who you are. I am leaving. I am not who you think you called for.”

“I didn’t say anything. You have not even let me stop to say anything to you. Stop. Stop walking.”

Then she turned around. She was over thirty now and I saw that she was one of those women who, when the bones of the face finally matured, found the powerful beauty that had almost already been there in their teens and twenties, but not quite.

I grabbed her shoulder. Then I got both arms around her and I held her. She smelled the same as she used to. But I could feel her sinews and the darker hollows in her muscles. My face was in her neck and her hair. She stiffened. Then she touched the back of my head. But it was too gentle, like your mother would touch your head if you were sick, or like when you were little and she was leaving the house and you didn’t want her to go.

“Bobby,” she said, and pulled away.

“Where did you get my number?” she said. “How did you get my number?”

“From Sylvia,” I said. “From that woman Sylvia.” I almost added, From Jim. But I did not want to say his name right then.

She closed her eyes. She kept them closed. I watched her.

“Can you come upstairs?” I said. She opened her eyes, then. “Not to have sex. I didn’t mean that. Can’t we just talk?” Why did you say that, Bobby? Why did you say anything about sex?

She took one of my hands and held it in hers. It was hard, then, not to start crying.

“Lisa,” I said.

“Your face is different now,” she said while we were making love. It was the only further thing she said to me that night.

Some nights later, when we met again, but not at my apartment, at a hotel, after we had sex I said, stupidly, “Don’t take this the wrong way. But why did you become a prostitute?” I didn’t want to say how lonely it made me feel.

In fact I should have just said it, because the question did not bother her. She laughed. It wasn’t a defensive laugh. It was an honest laugh.

“Bobby,” she said. “You are still so sweet. You will always be young for your age.”

“I don’t understand. Why do you say that?” Already Lisa felt more like my girlfriend, again, than some hooker. I couldn’t tell her that, of course.

“You sell jewelry for a living, Bobby. I was in that business once, too, remember? With what I do now, I sleep well at night. I don’t have any complaints about my line of work. I like the way I look in the mirror.”

I had no idea what she meant.

W e were playing backgammon outside the coffee shop behind the store. Jim was beating me. I was down four hundred dollars. Sometimes as much as three thousand dollars went between us in those backgammon games. But we only cashed in the debt if one of us needed the money urgently. Otherwise we just let the bets flow back and forth from one game to the next. Usually he carried me, and not the other way around.

I had rolled double 3s and was trying out different moves in my head, watching the board, when Jim said, “Oh-oh.” I looked up and saw his face. He looked like he might laugh, but in that way he laughed when he felt sorry for you. I turned to look behind me and there were Wendy and Claire. Claire was dragging her feet like she wanted her mother to pick her up. She had a stuffed lamb I had bought her at Neiman’s in her free arm. Ever since her first birthday she had always carried a stuffed animal with her wherever she went. I could see Wendy was angry about something.