Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“Good. That’s better. Problem solved. In the worst-case scenario it’s a paternity suit. That wouldn’t be the end of the world. Plenty of dads have paternity-suit babies. Hell, that one ob-gyn client of mine has five or six paternity-suit kids. He even hangs out with some of them. I’m astonished I don’t have one myself.”

I cut us both a line. I made his twice as fat as mine. I didn’t want the cocaine. But I wanted to keep him talking. I handed him the mirror.

“Anyway, it’s not a baby,” Jim said. He sniffed the cocaine up. “Stop calling it a baby. It’s one of those things at this stage. A dot of cells. What’s its name? A bathysphere.”

“A blastocyst.”

“Whatever. The way I see it you need an argument for not having an abortion, not the other way around. I never get these idiots who think you should have a right to life. A right not to live is what we need. Don’t bring me there unless you really have no choice! If you’re gonna do this thing I hope you’ve got everything arranged! The way it’s supposed to be! That’s what I would have said to Mom and Dad if I could have. Why did you do this to me! That’s what I feel like most of the time. Here, have another drink. Let me fill you up. Drink up, Robby. You can use it.”

He poured me another glass of wine. He used a new glass. I already had a first glass half empty there next to it. It was a bottle from a case of Pomerol he was giving me for Christmas. He said, “I hate to spoil the surprise, but under the circumstances.” I was glad he did, because I hadn’t bought him anything yet, and hadn’t even thought about it. It didn’t seem like a year we would buy each other gifts. But we bought presents for each other every year.

Dad had once told me that two babies were easier than one. That made me happy because, after all, I had been his second baby. Of course, my two babies couldn’t really be in the same house. I did not think I would ever have custody of my other baby. But that was another reason for wanting this one. A baby to live with me in my home. To dress in the morning and bathe at night. We could even name the baby Robby, maybe. That name works for a boy or a girl.

“Anyway, what makes you think this blasto — this blasto — what makes you think this baby is yours? I mean, considering. It doesn’t seem statistically likely.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s mine. Who else’s could it be?”

My question was supposed to be rhetorical, but I didn’t like the way it came out. Nevertheless, I was sure it was the fact of the matter. That the baby was my baby, I mean. Our baby.

“Listen. Maybe there’s something I better tell you. Maybe there’s something you need to know, Bobby.”

He sniffed the other line, my line. He looked up at me with his cheeks and his chin bright red from the cocaine. It was cut with something hard that made your nose hurt.

“Let me tell you the story,” he said.

I took a swallow of my wine. It was too late for confessions now. Even I could see that.

“No, Jim.”

I don’t believe I had ever said those words before.

•

I t was after midnight when Lisa came to the store and knocked on the glass. Her eyes were circular. They looked like they might roll out of her head. She was chewing gum. Those are not cocaine signals but crank signals.

I had turned off the CLARK’S PRECIOUS JEWELS sign before she came but the yellow overhead lights were on in the parking lot. She must have parked on the other side, because my car was all alone out there. I said, “Hi.” I didn’t know what to say. When I called her on the number Jim finally gave me she said, “How did you get this number?” I said, “Lisa. Please. I have to see you,” and she said, “Fine. Tonight. At the store.”

So I said, “Welcome to the store.”

I didn’t know what to do, either. I didn’t know where to put my hands. So I showed her around. I took her to the back.

She said, “Where do you want to do it? Here in the back?”

I said, “I don’t know. I don’t care, Lisa. That’s a weird thing to say. Why do you say that?”

That’s the crank talking, I told myself.

Suddenly I felt shy. Shy like you are with prostitutes the first few times. Like masturbating in front of your lover.

This was the first time she had ever reminded me of a prostitute. Like a hooker, I mean.

We walked through the safe room and into my office.

She picked up the tweezers off my desk. “Nice desk,” she said, and patted it with her hand. I realized, How strange, that she’s never been in the store before.

I started to tell her the story we always told about the desks. We had bought them from a friend of ours who was one of the top guys in the Russian underworld diamond cartel. They were stolen. It was a good story. They were too big for the offices. They were three hundred years old. They matched. They were from the old Fabergé offices in St. Petersburg. But I stopped myself before I started the story.

She abruptly walked back into the back-of-the-house. That made me upset. I didn’t need her roaming around. Our hidden cameras were back there and they were on a twenty-four-hour tape. They never turned off. They could keep an eye on her. Because I could not very well tell her not to go back there.

She walked into the wrapping room, where the fridge was. I tried not to follow her too closely. She spun the wrapping paper on the big rolls in the wrapping room. I took a beer from the refrigerator.

“Do you want a beer?” I said. “Maybe we should have a drink? I think that’s a good idea.” One or two drinks would not hurt anything or anybody. The baby, I mean.

“Do you have Crown?” she said.

Crown? I thought. Since when did she drink Crown Royal?

“Okay,” I said. “It’s in the other room.”

“I am going to light a pipe,” she said. “Do you want to smoke?”

“Okay,” I said. That was an awful idea. I did not want to know what we would be smoking. But it did not matter.

That could not be good for the baby, though, I wanted to say. Of course, I couldn’t say it. It was crystal we would be smoking, I bet. I did not even know if there was still a baby living in there.

We reserved the hard liquor under the cappuccino machine with the mixer and the nuts and cocktail napkins. I went to the other room and thought, Why isn’t she following me? The safes were closed but there was the mailroom, and the phone sales people always left things out that they were looking at while they were selling them. In a busy jewelry store you never manage to get everything into the safe. Not to mention the cash box. You couldn’t get that cash box open. But she could hide the whole cash box somewhere while I was mixing her drink. I wasn’t worried about the money. It was the explaining. It was easy to know who had been the last in and the last out. If you had a key you had a unique alarm code. There were only three keys. And then Jim would look at the cameras.

It was like she knew the Crown was in the other room.

“Lisa. Are you okay?” I wanted to hear where she was in the store. By her voice I could know if she was doing anything.

“I’m here,” she said.

When I brought her the drink she had taken her shirt and her bra off. She was sitting with her legs open on Jim’s brass elephant we had brought back from one of the Thailand trips. She had the lapis lazuli ball of Jim’s desk globe in her hands. It was about the size of a volleyball and very heavy. It was inlaid with gold, silver, and various semiprecious gems: topaz, citrine, amethyst, that sort of thing. Cheap stuff. He thought those globes would sell like wildfire. I knew they were too expensive.

“Let’s go somewhere,” I said. “Let’s have this drink and go somewhere fun. Are you hungry? We could go to Dallas. It’s been almost a month since we’ve been to Dallas. We could stay in a hotel.”