Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

“Sure, sure,” the man said. “You want to trade with me. I give top allowances. I play fair.”

“I want you to buy my car.”

The man looked at him closely. “What do you want? You want me to go into the office and put on the ten-gallon hat? It’s my only overhead, so I guess you’re entitled to see it. You’re paying for it. I put on this big frigging hat, see, and I become Texas Willie Waxelman, the Mad Cowboy. If that’s what you want, I can get it in a minute.”

It’s incredible, Ed Wolfe thought. There are bastards everywhere who hate other bastards downtown everywhere. “I don’t want to trade my car in,” he said. “I want to sell it. I, too, want to reduce my inventory.”

The man smiled sadly. “You want me to buy your car. You run in and put on the hat. I’m an automobile salesman , kid.”

“No, you’re not,” Ed Wolfe said. “I was with Cornucopia Finance. We handled your paper. You’re an automobile buyer . Your business is in buying up four- and five-year-old cars like mine from people who need dough fast and then auctioning them off to the trade.”

The man turned away and Ed Wolfe followed him. Inside the shack the man said, “I’ll give you two hundred.”

“I need six hundred,” Ed Wolfe said.

“I’ll lend you the hat. Hold up a goddamn stagecoach.”

“Give me five.”

“I’ll give you two-fifty and we’ll part friends.”

“Four hundred and fifty.”

“Three hundred. Here,” the man said, reaching his hand into an opened safe and taking out three sheaves of thick, banded bills. He held the money out to Ed Wolfe. “Go ahead, count it.”

Absently Ed Wolfe took the money. The bills were stiff, like money in a teller’s drawer, their value as decorous and untapped as a sheet of postage stamps. He held the money, pleased by its weight. “Tens and fives,” he said, grinning.

“You bet,” the man said, taking the money back. “You want to sell your car?”

“Yes,” Ed Wolfe said. “Give me the money,” he said hoarsely.

He had been to the bank, had stood in the patient, slow, money-conscious line, had presented his formidable check to the impassive teller, hoping the four hundred and sixty-three dollars and sixty-five cents she counted out would seem his week’s salary to the man who waited behind him. Fool, he thought, it will seem two weeks’ pay and two weeks in lieu of notice and a week for vacation for the hell of it, the three-week margin of an orphan.

“Thank you,” the teller said, already looking beyond Ed Wolfe to the man behind him.

“Wait,” Ed Wolfe said. “Here.” He handed her a white withdrawal slip.

She took it impatiently and walked to a file. “You’re closing your savings account?” she asked loudly.

“Yes,” Ed Wolfe answered, embarrassed.

“I’ll have a cashier’s check made out for this.”

“No, no,” Ed Wolfe said desperately. “Give me cash.”

“Sir, we make out a cashier’s check and cash it for you,” the teller explained.

“Oh,” Ed Wolfe said. “I see.”

When the teller had given him the two hundred fourteen dollars and twenty-three cents, he went to the next window, where he made out a check for $38.91. It was what he had in his checking account.

On Ed Wolfe’s kitchen table was a thousand dollars. That day he had spent one dollar and ninety cents. He had twenty-seven dollars and seventy-one cents in his pocket. For expenses. “For attrition,” he said aloud. “The cost of living. For streetcars and newspapers and half-gallons of milk and loaves of white bread. For the movies. For a cup of coffee.” He went to his pantry. He counted the cans and packages, the boxes and bottles. “The three weeks again,” he said. “The orphan’s nutritional margin.” He looked in his icebox. In the freezer he poked around among white packages of frozen meat. He looked brightly into the vegetable tray. A whole lettuce. Five tomatoes. Several slices of cucumber. Browning celery. On another shelf four bananas. Three and a half apples. A cut pineapple. Some grapes, loose and collapsing darkly in a white bowl. A quarter-pound of butter. A few eggs. Another egg, broken last week, congealing in a blue dish. Things in plastic bowls, in jars, forgotten, faintly mysterious leftovers, faintly rotten, vaguely futured, equivocal garbage. He closed the door, feeling a draft. “Really,” he said, “it’s quite cozy.” He looked at the thousand dollars on the kitchen table. “It’s not enough,” he said. “It’s not enough,” he shouted. “It’s not enough to be cautious on. La Meck, you bastard, detachment comes higher, what do you think? You think it’s cheap?” He raged against himself. It was the way he used to speak to people on the telephone. “Wake up. Orphan! Jerk! Wake up. It costs to be detached.”

He moved solidly through the small apartment and lay down on his bed with his shoes still on, putting his hands behind his head luxuriously. It’s marvelous, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll buy a trench coat. I’ll take my meals in piano bars. He lit a cigarette. I’ll never smile again, ” he sang, smiling. “All right, Eddie, play it again,” he said. “Mistuh Wuf, you don’ wan’ ta heah dat ol’ song no maw. You know whut it do to you. She ain’ wuth it, Mistuh Wuf.” He nodded. “Again, Eddie.” Eddie played his black ass off. “The way I see it, Eddie,” he said, taking a long, sad drink of warm Scotch, “there are orphans and there are orphans.” The overhead fan chuffed slowly, stirring the potted palmetto leaves.

He sat up in the bed, grinding his heels across the sheets. “There are orphans and there are orphans,” he said. “I’ll move. I’ll liquidate. I’ll sell out.”

He went to the phone, called his landlady and made an appointment to see her.

It was a time of ruthless parting from his things, but there was no bitterness in it. He was a born salesman, he told himself. A disposer, a natural dumper. He administered severance. As detached as a funeral director, what he had learned was to say good-by. It was a talent of a sort. And he had never felt quite so interested. He supposed he was doing what he had been meant for — what, perhaps, everyone was meant for. He sold and he sold, each day spinning off little pieces of himself, like controlled explosions of the sun. Now his life was a series of speeches, of nearly earnest pitches. What he remembered of the day was what he had said. What others said to him, or even whether they spoke at all, he was unsure of.

Tuesday he told his landlady, “Buy my furniture. It’s new. It’s good stuff. It’s expensive. You can forget about that. Put it out of your mind. I want to sell it. I’ll show you bills for over seven hundred dollars. Forget the bills. Consider my character. Consider the man. Only the man. That’s how to get your bargains. Examine. Examine. I could tell you about inner springs; I could talk to you of leather. But I won’t. I don’t. I smoke, but I’m careful. I can show you the ashtrays. You won’t find cigarette holes in my tables. Examine. I drink. I’m a drinker. I drink. But I hold it. You won’t find alcohol stains. May I be frank? I make love. Again, I could show you the bills. But I’m cautious. My sheets are virginal, white.

“Two hundred fifty dollars, landlady. Sit on that sofa. That chair. Buy my furniture. Rent the apartment furnished. Deduct what you pay from your taxes. Collect additional rents. Realize enormous profits. Wallow in gravy. Get it, landlady? Get it, landlady! Two hundred fifty dollars. Don’t disclose the figure or my name. I want to remain anonymous.”

He took her into his bedroom. “The piece of resistance, landlady. What you’re really buying is the bedroom stuff. This is where I do all my dreaming. What do you think? Elegance. Elegance ! I throw in the living-room rug. That I throw in. You have to take that or it’s no deal. Give me cash and I move tomorrow.”