Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“It’s ice-cold out there,” I said.

“We’ll have sex in the hot tub. We’ll wear robes. It will be fun.”

In the bathroom I sat on the edge of the tub and she sat on the floor with her back against my legs.

“I honestly can’t sniff cocaine anymore, Bobby,” Lisa added, as she started her cooking. “I quit sniffing it years ago. Sniffing it is too fake.”

J im was on the phone. I kept the pocket door between our offices open so that I could watch him when he grabbed the phone. This was not easy because we were very busy and the phones rang constantly. I always answered the phone now. With customers at my desk, too. I would smile and apologize and roll my eyes at the sales floor to express my frustration with my lazy salespeople and then get it on the second ring. “Clark’s Precious Jewels.” If it wasn’t her I stuck them on hold. Even the Polack told me, “You are the boss. Let those salespeople answer your phone.” But she didn’t answer it any faster herself. It was never Lisa when I answered. But I knew that sometimes when Jim picked up it was her. I could see it on his face. He would stand, sometimes, too, and slide the door closed. He might do that just because the customer in his office wanted privacy. But he would do it when he was on the phone, too. I knew he could call out if he wanted. But when you called her she never answered, you always had to leave a message, and then she would call back. So I watched for that behavior especially closely. Call, leave a short message, watch the phones. When I could see him doing that I grabbed every call. I thought about cutting the line to his phone. If it was practical I would have done it. It would give me a few easy days. A few days before we got it fixed. He shouldn’t be answering the phone anyway. The Polack was right about that. We were too busy to be answering the phone.

M y boyfriend doesn’t like you anymore,” Lisa said.

“I don’t blame him,” I said.

It was late Saturday night and we were driving across I-10 to spend the night in a cabin on Caddo Lake in East Texas, in the Piney Woods. It was too far a drive for just one night and the next day. There was an oversized limestone fireplace in the cabin and I would make a real fire. In the morning there was a place on the lake we could have pancakes. This was our first trip there but I had read about it in a guidebook. I hoped the pancake place would be open with the cold snap. Maybe there will be ice on the edges of the lake, I thought. That will look nice against the dark water. In the guidebook it said it was the only natural lake in the state of Texas. And Texas was covered with lakes. All of those other lakes were made by human hands. That was upsetting to think about. Or bulldozers, more likely.

“He always liked you before. He always said you were a good one.”

She tapped out two little polka dots of crank onto the plastic makeup mirror she carried with her. Then she sniffed them quickly up. She blinked.

“Do you want some of this?”

“I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood. “If I were him I wouldn’t like me, either.”

“He’s not like you. He’s not jealous. He knows I love him.”

“He still doesn’t have to like me.”

“I swear sometimes you act like I should be grateful to him. It’s like you think most guys wouldn’t want me for a girlfriend.”

“That’s a stupid thing to say. Hey, do you want some of this?”

I had brought a bottle of champagne for us to drink on the drive. It was a Louis Roederer I had not tried before. But when Lisa climbed in the car and saw it she was immediately irritated. “We’re not celebrating anything, Bobby,” she had said.

I tried to hand her the bottle. She ignored me. I thought she could use a drink.

“It’s okay. I like it. I like how you think about me. You think something is wrong with me.”

She is trying to let me in by faking a little bit of vulnerability, I thought. Or even not faking it.

“You don’t know how I feel,” I said. “Or if you do, you don’t let me know.”

I hadn’t meant to be vulnerable back at her. But when I saw her face in the lights of the dashboard like that, with the cold champagne bottle between my legs, and the lights of my car on the highway, the truth just snuck up inside me and jumped out of my mouth.

“I’m sorry to be the one to give you the news, but you’re not all that mysterious, Bobby.”

I thought that through. I seemed plenty mysterious to myself.

I hated moments like this, but I noticed they were getting more common, in more than one of my relationships. It was like we were having two entirely different conversations, and each of us was talking only with ourselves. Yet along the way we managed to say enough to screw things up between each other.

“You should want me to break up with him. You should be afraid if I don’t.”

“Come on, Lisa. You know I would like it if you broke up with him. But I’m not going to ask you to.”

“You should, though. You would if you knew.”

I pulled the foil off the champagne bottle. Then I held the steering wheel with my knees and opened it. It was very good champagne and it did not bubble over. I took the steering wheel back and tried again to hand the bottle to Lisa. She waved it away.

“Maybe he’s angry with me,” I said. I took a swallow of the champagne. It was already much warmer than it should have been. I couldn’t really tell what it tasted like anymore. “It’s not like he hasn’t always known what was going on with us. Anyway, I think he would be angrier if he knew I asked you to break up with him.”

She was quiet.

Then it occurred to me that she was worried about herself.

I noticed what a small person she was, physically I mean, curled up in the car seat. Not much more than a kid, really.

“Afraid of what, Lisa?”

I looked at her but she wouldn’t look over at me. She was staring down the road.

I took the last swallow of the champagne.

The highway was dark and seemed to be getting smaller and smaller in the night, as the tall black trees gathered closer to its sides.

At the lake the fireplace in the cabin started easily. That was a good sign. The flue was not stuck and I could see which way was open and which way was closed. The smoke went straight up the chimney.

We drove into the little town and looked for a bar. “I need a beer,” she said. There were three of them, but two were already closing, because they were attached to restaurants. The third was a pool hall.

“Do we want to go in there?” I said. The men coming out of it looked like the men you see in small towns in Texas. Big men. I thought I noticed one looking at my car and laughing. He was drunk and was probably laughing about something else. But my car didn’t look much like a truck. It was the contrary of a truck, in fact.

“Come on, let’s play a game of pool. We need something fun right about now.”

I thought my success with building the fire in the fireplace had already done that work for both of us.

When we parked she said, “Wait one second,” and tapped out some more crank on that mirror of hers. I reached for it and did a couple of bumps myself. I figured it was about that time.

Inside, people were noisy and excited — it was Saturday night — and there were more men than women. I noticed the men looking at Lisa, first, and then the women, too.

I should have changed before we came over. I was still in my suit and tie from the store. I always made the salesmen wear a jacket and tie. Jim was the only man in the store who would wear a shirt and tie, or a jacket with an unbuttoned shirt collar.

“You want to play pool, little lady?”