Clancy Martin - How to Sell

“You didn’t write him a receipt? Okay, that’s good. Okay. Let’s go tell Sheila you sold the floor model. At least you got cash. At least it’s not a charge. She’s going to shit. But it’s all right, it’s just Sheila. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good sale. You didn’t know. What were you doing out there? Why didn’t you come get me? You did the right thing. You sold the watch. Nobody can say you didn’t do the right thing. You made the sale. Good man. Hell, we shouldn’t have the damn thing out there if it’s not for sale. How could you know any better? It could have happened to anybody. Who would have guessed you would have sold the damn thing? You didn’t even come to me for a price. That’s the instinct. That’s the Clark blood.”

I wanted to hug him. I didn’t, of course.

“It’s funny,” he said. “Remind me to tell you the story about how the Polack sold her first big watch. I was there. I was a customer, actually. It was back in my vacuum cleaner days. But I helped her sell it. It was a Patek Philippe, not a President, but it was like this deal of yours. She needed an assist, though. She couldn’t swing it on her own. Nobody else in this store could have sold that watch the way you just did. Nobody except me and Mr. Popper, anyway. Hell, I don’t even know if I would have had those kind of balls, Bobby.”

This was more or less the same pitch he gave Sheila in the bookkeeper’s office. He was just rehearsing it for himself. She started to yell and then Jim showed her all the cash provided by my customer. She settled down. That was why he told her the story before he showed her the money. Because he knew once she saw green her volume would lower.

Nevertheless Sheila explained that I had broken company policy and cost the store money. None of this made sense to me at the time, but the thing was, with Christmas still three and a half months away, we were already not selling Rolex watches, we were only selling Rolex orders. We took the money and promised the watch, that was it, you got a piece of paper in the mail saying that your watch would arrive as soon as possible. In fact, I learned years later, we never even intended to order any more Rolexes. Or maybe we intended to but never did.

In the middle of Sheila’s speech Mr. Popper entered the office and she stopped.

“Did I hear right?” he asked. He barely let a smile come through. I tried to look at the pink and purple raccoons on his tie, so I wouldn’t smile too big myself. I didn’t want to seem proud.

“Did I hear what I think I heard? News around here is one of these Clark brothers sold himself a men’s President first thing. Before he even ate his scrambled eggs for breakfast. Now which one of you done it? Not this little one?”

He patted me on the shoulder. Then he took two one-hundred-dollar bills off the pile of cash from my Rolex sale on the bookkeeper’s desk and folded them in half and tucked them in the breast pocket of my jacket, in with the receipt.

“Hell, Sheila, sounds to me like we got another genuine twenty-four karat Clark here. Jim, why is this fella still stocking the box room? When were you planning on putting him on the floor? When he beats you on the boards? Looks like he’s gonna sell whether you put him there or not!”

He took a stick of ChapStick from his pocket and rubbed it quickly around the inside of each nostril. He had delicate skin and his lips and nostrils chapped in the dry Fort Worth air. As strange and disorienting as this habit of his was, the first time you saw him do it, because he was Mr. Popper you wanted to line your own nose with ChapStick, or maybe to carry a stick of ChapStick with you so that you could quickly do it for him when you saw him reaching in his pocket.

“You just listen to your big brother,” he told me. “When you’re ready, he’ll let you sell. Sheila here is right. We got protocols for a reason. You just do like Jim here does and you’ll be all right. Hell, that’s something, though. Doesn’t even have a set of showcase keys and he’s already sold his first President.”

J im had green eyes, green eyes like our father’s, eyes as green as a bird’s. His shoulders were broad and he had been California’s number one gymnast when in high school living with Dad. Before then he had attended Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minnesota, where our dad had sent him when he was first getting into serious trouble back in Calgary. “It’s where Marlon Brando went to school, son,” our dad had told Jim. At Shattuck Jim met the fellows who helped him to become a drug smuggler and a dealer. That was when he became a salesman, he said. When he realized he had a talent.

He enjoyed the same ease with women our father had, but because he lacked our dad’s energy he did not have sex with nearly so many of them. He could talk, though. He lied less than our father did. He was reasonable.

He did not know how to dress. He did not say hurtful things to other people.

He was my big brother but for me when I was a kid and a teenager he was like someone else’s big brother, one I had read about in a book.

When I knew him better, from hotel rooms, three-day Ecstasy-and-cocaine-fed drunks, shared rooms in whorehouses, and overnight international flights, I learned that he would whimper in his sleep. By then, of course, I understood what he might have to fear.

I n the cold early mornings before opening, the store was quiet. First thing as we walked to the back we turned on the heat. It was off during the day, even in the coldest months of winter, because of all the bodies. When we entered we could often see our breath. The best part about Jim having a key was that we usually got in before the other employees arrived. Then it was just the two of us, we had the whole store to ourselves. The white leather of the showcase interiors and the display stands, the risers and the stair-step displays for the rings and the bracelet rolls, looked like the vacant interiors of many shiny-clean, rich, and glamorous apartments.

Lisa and I were putting out the showcases together. She liked to do the wedding rings while I did the men’s jewelry in the case next to her.

“I don’t believe you won’t read your mother’s letters. That’s awful. Your own mother. She is probably crying when she writes those letters. You can probably smell her tears on those letters.”

Not reading my mother’s letters was revenge because Wendy was not calling. She could blame that on the cost of long-distance. But she would not write me letters, either. I wrote Wendy a letter every day at first. Then as we got busier at work I wrote two or three a week. I would lie in bed when we got home in the evening, at eight or nine, smoke a joint, and write her part of a letter or a letter.

Later that day Lisa brought it up again.

“You should try reading one,” Lisa said. “Just pick any letter she sent you. Open it and read a few sentences. You never know, she might surprise you.”

We were having lunch together at a Mexican restaurant we liked over on Third and Main, just a few blocks from the store. Jim was not with us.

“You’re saving them for a reason,” she said. “When was the last time you read one?”

We were on our second margarita and had ordered only a guacamole and a plate of blue corn tortilla nachos.

•

I was anxious about the hour we had been away but she was placid. “It’s so busy they will never notice,” she said.

“Can we talk about something else besides my mother?” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

There was something about her neck and her collarbone that made you really want to have sex with Lisa. In addition to her many other sexy qualities, I mean. But even if she let me, which I knew she wouldn’t, that would be cheating. On Jim and Wendy both. Not that I could ever ask her, even if she would have let me. Jim was married but Lisa was his girlfriend nevertheless. Having sex with your brother’s girlfriend was worse than cheating on your own girlfriend.