Clancy Martin - How to Sell

A man about my own age in black jeans with a red bandanna tied around his hair was talking to Lisa. He had large dangerous lips. I was a few steps away, at the bar buying our beer.

“No, thank you. I am here with my boyfriend,” she said.

It was nice to hear her describe me as her boyfriend. Even if it was a lie. But maybe she truly thought of herself as having two boyfriends. I could be her second boyfriend, I thought. That’s one step away from being her first boyfriend.

“Hell, I bet he wouldn’t mind if you play a game of pool. Hey, buddy, you mind if this pretty gal of yours plays a game of pool with me?”

I turned around. I tried to smile naturally. Naturally but confidently. Or naturally but faintly aggressively. Cockily, maybe.

“That’s up to her.”

“I already said no, thank you.”

He took her by the arm. He had a pool cue in his other hand. She pulled her arm away. She looked at me for a second. There was something hopeful in the expression.

“One game.” He pulled at her arm. I was unsure what to do. I was still waiting for the beers. But I had to do something. Then the bartender put down our beers next to me. I picked them up, one in each hand, and started for Lisa. I thought I might even say, Here, have a beer, buddy. We’re not in the mood for pool right now, and give him one of them. That would settle him down, I bet. But as I elbowed my way out from the bar I saw Lisa struggle with the man — he was really tugging her arm — and when he turned to her with that same sloppy face she kneed him, as hard as she could, in the balls. If it had been any woman other than the woman I was with I would have admired it. She looked like she had done it many times before, like she was the blade of a jackknife folding up. He bent over and she pushed him to one side so that he collapsed, on his side and then on his back, onto the pool table. Then she took the pool cue he had dropped and poked it into his nose. She shoved the felt tip of the pool cue into his nostril and pushed. He was shouting. The ease with which she did it was almost comical. It looked like a kung fu move. She said, “You aren’t much of a listener, are you?” Then she gave the pool cue another push, but not as hard as she might have, and turned to me. The guy was still scrambling on his back on the pool table. I thought, Where do I find these violent, capable women? First the Polack and now this one. She stepped quickly over to me and took me by the arm — just like he had held her, I thought — and said, “Let’s go. We’re getting out of here.”

People stepped out of our way and no one tried to stop us. When we got to the car I realized I still had the bottles of beer in my hands. I didn’t know where to put them to get my keys. You couldn’t balance them on the roof of the car because it was a convertible with a cloth top and they would just fall over. I was trying to hurry because I imagined the guy and his friends rushing upon us outside the bar. I was not drunk enough to want that to happen. I put one of the beers between my knees and got the keys from my suit pocket. We climbed into the car and drove back to the cabin. Lisa drank her beer. That was good. But the whole drive back we did not say one word to each other.

Inside, the fire had already gone out and the cabin was cold. I knelt to start it again but Lisa said, “I’m going to bed,” and I thought, Why bother? I knew she couldn’t sleep, not after the fight in the bar and the crank, but I couldn’t bear the idea of sitting up there with her on the bed in the silence and the dark. If we still didn’t have anything to say to each other, I mean. I sat in the living room, under the Navajo blanket that was across the back of the leather sofa, and drank a glass of water. There was no minibar in the cabin. Then I went to the car, opened the trunk, and found the Burgundy that I had brought for us to have with lunch tomorrow. I had planned for us to take the boat out and have a picnic on the lake.

In the morning we drove to the pancake place, but we weren’t hungry.

F or weeks we had been building things. We drew designs and swapped them back and forth, we got out the stencils, the French curve set, and the Staedtler compass, we critiqued each other, we sent Sosa to the SMU art supply store for fresh 9000 pencils, we arranged tiny stones in black and purple sticky wax to evaluate sizes and patterns. We filled the holes in our inventory with pieces created by Jim and Bobby. The cocaine was helpful in this process — Jim was doing it with me now, too, or maybe he had never stopped and had just been hiding it from me — and we usually worked at Jim’s desk, and late into the night. We drew sketches and checked diamonds for size against the open-pronged holes in yellow gold blanks. Christmas was rearing its fierce, beautiful head, and there was no time to dawdle or sleep.

“So she’s a hooker now. Wonderful. Good for her. She’s really moving up in the world. And you are paying her? I know you’re not paying her. Why do you need a hooker for a girlfriend? In a way it’s not fair to her. It’s like you are making her into a liar. She’s a hooker, so let her be a hooker. That’s probably what she was meant to be all along.”

“I pay her by the month now. She’s not doing it for the money. I mean, she needs the money, of course. But that’s not why we do it that way.”

“Well, Lisa was always smart. Now she’s a smart hooker. I’ll give her that. What got her hooking anyway?” He paused for a minute. His eyes softened at the corners. “I guess it was the crystal. That’s what does it to all of them. I told her not to smoke it. I told her and told her.”

“She’s not really doing drugs anymore. She doesn’t do drugs at all, in fact.”

She had done drugs once or twice with me, now, but I didn’t know if she was doing them on her own. I didn’t think she was. Not that I wouldn’t have lied about it.

Except he might know better than I did what drugs she was doing. If they were doing them together.

“And I wouldn’t say she’s exactly a prostitute, Jim,” I continued. If they were seeing each other he wouldn’t say that. Unless he was paying her, too. “That’s not fair. Or even accurate. It’s more like a networking thing. That’s what I’m saying. I was thinking we should hire her as a gift wrapper.”

If I brought Lisa into the store I could understand whatever was going on between Jim and her. Then it would all be transparent, and my relationship would have the moral authority because I wasn’t hiding anything from either of them. Plus, that would force me to end it with the Polack, which I needed to do regardless. I doubted I had the strength to remove the Polack from my life without outside help.

“Good idea. Hire the hooker. Free blow jobs with every Rolex.”

“Like they don’t get them already.”

“Maybe I should call her.”

Here it is, I thought. He’s warming me up for it. The truth.

“You called her? She said something like that. I thought you had called her.”

“I didn’t call her. But maybe I should.”

“Sylvia said something. She said she had given you her number.”

“Don’t you think I would tell you if I called her? Why don’t you ask her? Do you think I would lie to you about a hooker?”

He had lied to me thousands of times. He lied to me almost as much as he lied to his customers. But that was beside the point. And if you told him he lied he would deny it with a sincere heart. He was extraordinarily healthy. Psychologically, I mean.

“She’s not your type. I mean, not now, not anymore. She said something about it.”

“I wasn’t talking about having sex with her, Bobby. Jesus. Lisa and I used to be pretty good friends, you know. But maybe I should call her for sex. She would do it. Maybe that would show you. The point is you don’t know anything about that girl. That hooker, I mean. I think she was fucking Popper, too. Did you know that? Did I ever tell you that? I bet she didn’t tell you, did she? She’s attracted to men like us. I bet she would like this new belly of mine.” He patted his stomach. “The king muscle. Smart hooker.”