Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“Come on, you are going to freeze,” he said. “Here, take my coat.”

We stepped outside and he lit a cigarette.

“You smoke now? No? That’s good. But seriously, you might want to take it up. For the productivity. It’s been proven. Help you stay on your toes. Competition. They have the free market down here. Hey, here’s the car, get in. Christ, these Texans. A little snow and they think it’s the North Pole. We should set up a stand and sell fur coats. We’d be rich in an afternoon.”

It was a white Cadillac limousine. I had never been in a limousine before. The driver was wearing a shiny black cap like in a movie. He held the door open for us.

“Sorry about the limo,” Jim said. His big smile made me want to tell him about Wendy and leaving her and the jet bridge but I could not do that, either.

“This is Lisa. Lisa, my little brother, Robert. Or Bobby, really.”

Seated in one of the white leather seats of the limousine, with her back to the driver so that Jim and I could sit together on the bench, was a woman.

“Hi, Bobby.”

That was nice of her to use my name like that.

I did not know what to say to her. I tried to smile.

“I wanted to get a Rolls but apparently there’s a convention in Dallas. Cosmetic surgeons. They sucked up all the best limos. I guess we better go shopping. I knew you wouldn’t have the clothes for work but I didn’t figure you’d show up in Bermuda shorts.” He laughed. “I’m just kidding. I understand. Ready for a change. I been there. You know that. But you can’t walk into the store in that outfit. And we got to get back. It’s slammed down there. Customers were standing half a mile around the block when I came in to work this morning. With the ice storm and everything. People got the day off work, maybe. At seven o’clock in the morning. But it’s one helluva sale. This Christmas is going to be something. I am really glad you’re here. You’re going to love it. You are in a real country now.”

He showed me a small brown glass bottle about the size of half a thumb with a black plastic top, like something a doctor might use to inspect your eyes.

“Here, take a bump. This way.” He turned the bottle over twice and inhaled sharply into each nostril. “There you go. You’ll like it. Go ahead, do a couple more. Warm yourself up. That’s probably enough for a start. Oop, slow down. You gotta be careful with that stuff. Here, pass it over, I’ll join you. Lisa? Your turn. I trade it with a fellow for help with his watches. He sells Rolexes in brown-town to all the small-timers. Crap, mostly. Gold nugget bracelets, that kind of thing. He moves some merchandise, though. There it is,” he said. “Hot in here. See those towers? That’s Dallas. Downtown Dallas. We are going to make a quick stop and pick up some watches from Granddad. He’s a good old boy. Half dead from his liver. Keeps a submachine gun on the wall behind his desk. But he’s the best secondhand Swiss watch dealer in the South. Then we’ll go shopping and get you a suit, a pair of alligator shoes. We can still get back to work by three. I have a diamond appointment at three we can’t miss. Here, pass me back that one-hitter. Okay. Your turn. A five-carat radiant. I’ve got it right here. Take a look at this.”

He opened his briefcase and took a small white paper from one of the suede pockets. He unfolded it. Inside the heavy white paper was a slender blue paper, like wax paper, but more delicate, and in the blue paper rested a diamond. It was the size of a nickel.

“Hold out your hand,” he said. He picked it up with his fingers and dropped it in my palm.

“That’s thirty thousand dollars you’re holding. Thirty thousand dollars our cost. If I sell it today it’s a two-thousand-dollar commission. Not bad, eh? One day’s work, two grand. On top of my regular salary.”

“That’s your brother,” Lisa said. “It’s not like that for everyone at the store.”

I inspected the innocuous glassy stone. My palms were sweating and the water and oil coated the diamond.

“Hey, give me back that bottle, would you, Lisa? Here, Bobby.” I didn’t know where to put the diamond while I sniffed the cocaine. “Go ahead and hit it one more time. No, get them both. Both nostrils. Pinch the other one as you do it.”

He took the diamond from me, cleaned it with a yellow cloth, and placed it back in his briefcase. “Then we better slow down. We’ve got a big day. This is your first day at work.”

“He has to work today? Why don’t you just show him the store today? He’s fresh off the plane, Jim.”

Jim took the bottle of cocaine from me, handed it to Lisa, and laughed.

“He’s a Clark,” he said. “He’ll be fine. Won’t you, Bobby? You want the day off? Hell, you haven’t even worked yet and you want a day off? I doubt it.”

I did want the day off. But I could not disappoint Jim. Especially not on my first day. In our family you are eager to work. But I did not want to seem ungrateful to Lisa. I was awkward.

“You’re both working now? Today?” I said. I directed the question to Jim but I looked aside at Lisa to see if she had heard me.

“Of course we’re working. Lisa here is one of my top saleswomen. She has a deal on a pink gold Patek today. Patek Philippe. That’s the best Swiss watch in the world. Best brand, period. Skeleton back, moon phase. You’ll see when we get there. That’s why she’s coming to Granddad’s. I wanted you guys to meet. You would have met anyway at the store but I wanted you to meet just the three of us.”

She smiled at him easily and looked out the window.

“It’s snowing,” she said. “I love the snow.”

“Inside and outside!” Jim said, and laughed. I was embarrassed for him in front of Lisa about the joke. For years he embarrassed himself and me both that way. Especially in foreign countries. “Hell, we may as well just finish this bottle. There’s more where that came from.”

I kept looking back over at Lisa. I tried not to. But she looked like a woman in a magazine. She didn’t look like an everyday normal woman who might be sitting in a car with you. Though it was a limousine. She did look like a woman in a limousine. Like a dream woman in a dream limousine.

She opened the window, with the electric button, and the cold rushed into the cozy warm red and white leather compartment of the big car.

“Oops. Sorry, Bobby,” she said, and smiled at me again. Very gently and deeply, it seemed to me. “I just wanted to catch a snowflake on my hand.”

“With a big deal like that it helps if you talk to the wholesaler,” he continued. “Plus this old guy, the customer I mean, is sick as a dog in love with Lisa—”

“That’s not true,” she said.

“Of course it’s true,” Jim said. “Like every damn guy in our store, for that matter. Myself included.” He laughed.

“Don’t listen to your brother,” she said. “He’s being ridiculous. He’s joking with you.”

“Granddad can show Lisa things about the watch that he could not explain over the phone. Plus she needs to see how he holds it, how he treats it. How he cares for it. This is not an ordinary watch. The only sad thing is that there’s not much juice left in it. It’s a twenty-thousand-dollar deal that we won’t make three grand on. Hell, I’ll show him the invoice. That’s how you have to do it with these big collectors. They’re practically in the business themselves. But you take care of them on these deals and the diamond studs at Christmas, the tennis necklace for the girlfriend, the steel Rolexes for his best employees, all the cherry stuff comes your way. Once you catch a crow you never let him go. Isn’t that right, Lisa?”

“That’s what he tells me,” she said to me. “You’re making your poor brother dizzy,” she said to Jim.