Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

Greenspahn looked at the men in the booth and at many-daughtered Traub, who seemed as if he were about to cry. Kibitzers and criers, he thought. Everywhere it was the same. At every table. The two kinds of people like two different sexes that had sought each other out. Sure, Greenspahn thought, would a crier listen to another man’s complaints? Could a kibitzer kid a kidder? But it didn’t mean anything, he thought. Not the jokes, not the grief. It didn’t mean anything. They were like birds making noises in a tree. But try to catch them in a deal. They’d murder you. Every day they came to eat their lunch and make their noises. Like cowboys on television hanging up their gun belts to go to a dance.

But even so, he thought, they were the way they pretended to be. Nothing made any difference to them. Did they lose sons? Not even the money they earned made any difference to them finally.

“So I was telling you,” Margolis said, “the guy from the Chamber of Commerce came around again today.”

“He came to me too,” Paul Gold said.

“Did you give?” Margolis asked.

“No, of course not.”

“Did he hit you yet, Jake? Throw him out. He wants contributions for decorations. Listen, those guys are on the take from the paper-flower people. It’s fantastic what they get for organizing the big stores downtown. My cousin on State Street told me about it. I told him, I said, ‘Who needs the Chamber of Commerce? Who needs Easter baskets and colored eggs hanging from the lamppost?’ ”

“Not when the ring trick still works, right, Margolis?” Joe Fisher said.

Margolis looked at his lapel and shrugged lightly. It was the most modest gesture Greenspahn had ever seen him make. The men laughed. The ring trick was Margolis’ invention. “A business promotion,” he had told Greenspahn. “Better than Green Stamps.” He had seen him work it. Margolis would stand at the front of his store and signal to some guy who stopped for a minnute to look at the TV sets in his window. He would rap on the glass with his ring to catch his attention. He would smile and say something to him, anything. It didn’t make any difference; the guy in the street couldn’t hear him. As Greenspahn watched, Margolis had turned to him and winked slyly as if to say, “Watch this. Watch how I get this guy.” Then he had looked back at the customer outside, and still smiling broadly had said, “Hello, schmuck. Come on in, I’ll sell you something. That’s right, jerk, press your greasy nose against the glass to see who’s talking to you. Shade your eyes. That-a-jerk. Come on in, I’ll sell you something.” Always the guy outside would come into the store to find out what Margolis had been saying to him. “Hello there, sir,” Margolis would say, grinning. “I was trying to tell you that the model you were looking at out there is worthless. Way overpriced. If the boss knew I was talking to you like this I’d be canned, but what the hell? We’re all working people. Come on back here and look at a real set.”

Margolis was right. Who needed the Chamber of Commerce? Not the kibitzers and criers. Not even the Gold boys. Criers. Greenspahn saw the other one at another table. Twins, but they didn’t even look like brothers. Not even they needed the paper flowers hanging from the lamppost. Paul Gold shouting to his brother in the back, “Mr. Gold, please show this gentleman something stylish.” And they’d go into the act, putting on a thick Yiddish accent for some white-haired old man with a lodge button in his lapel, giving him the business. Greenspahn could almost hear the old man telling the others at the Knights of Columbus Hall, “I picked this suit up from a couple of Yids on Fifty-third, real greenhorns. But you’ve got to hand it to them. Those people really know material.”

Business was a kind of game with them, Greenspahn thought. Not even the money made any difference.

“Did I tell you about these two kids who came in to look at rings?” Joe Fisher said. “Sure,” he went on, “two kids. Dressed up. The boy’s a regular mensch . I figure they’ve been downtown at Peacock’s and Field’s. I think I recognized the girl from the neighborhood. I say to her boy friend — a nice kid, a college kid, you know, he looks like he ain’t been bar mitzvah’d yet—‘I got a ring here I won’t show you the price. Will you give me your check for three hundred dollars right now? No appraisal? No bringing it to Papa on approval? No nothing?’

“ ‘I’d have to see the ring,’ he tells me.

“Get this. I put my finger over the tag on a ring I paid eleven hundred for. A big ring . You got to wear smoked glasses just to look at it. Paul, I mean it, this is some ring. I’ll give you a price for your wife’s anniversary. No kidding, this is some ring. Think seriously about it. We could make it up into a beautiful cocktail ring. Anyway, this kid stares like a big dummy, I think he’s turned to stone. He’s scared. He figures something’s wrong a big ring like that for only three hundred bucks. His girl friend is getting edgy, she thinks the kid’s going to make a mistake, and she starts shaking her head. Finally he says to me, listen to this, he says, ‘I wasn’t looking for anything that large. Anyway, it’s not a blue stone.’ Can you imagine? Don’t tell me about shoppers. I get prizes.”

“What would you have done if he said he wanted the ring?” Traub asked.

“What are you, crazy? He was strictly from wholesale. It was like he had a sign on his suit. Don’t you think I can tell a guy who’s trying to get a price idea from a real customer?”

“Say, Jake,” Margolis said, “ain’t that your cashier over there with your butcher?”

Greenspahn looked around. It was Shirley and Arnold. He hadn’t seen them when he came in. They were sitting across the table from each other — evidently they had not seen him either — and Shirley was leaning forward, her chin on her palms. Sitting there, she looked like a young girl. It annoyed him. It was ridiculous. He knew they met each other. What did he care? It wasn’t his business. But to let themselves be seen. He thought of Shirley’s brassiere hanging in his toilet. It was reckless. They were reckless people. All of them, Arnold and Shirley and the men in the restaurant. Reckless people.

“They’re pretty thick with each other, ain’t they?” Margolis said.

“How should I know?” Greenspahn said.

“What do you run over there at that place of yours, a lonely hearts club?”

“It’s not my business. They do their work.”

“Some work,” Paul Gold said.

“I’d like a job like that,” Joe Fisher said.

“Ain’t he married?” Paul Gold said.

“I’m not a policeman,” Greenspahn said.

“Jake’s jealous because he’s not getting any,” Joe Fisher said.

“Loudmouth,” Greenspahn said, “I’m a man in mourning.”

The others at the table were silent. “Joe was kidding,” Traub, the crier, said.

“Sure, Jake,” Joe Fisher said.

“Okay,” Greenspahn said. “Okay.”

For the rest of the lunch he was conscious of Shirley and Arnold. He hoped they would not see him, or if they did that they would make no sign to him. He stopped listening to the stories the men told. He chewed on his hamburger wordlessly. He heard someone mention George Stein, and he looked up for a moment. Stein had a grocery in a neighborhood that was changing. He had said that he wanted to get out. He was looking for a setup like Greenspahn’s. He could speak to him. Sure, he thought. Why not? What did he need the aggravation? What did he need it? He owned the building the store was in. He could live on the rents. Even Joe Fisher was a tenant of his. He could speak to Stein, he thought, feeling he had made up his mind about something. He waited until Arnold and Shirley had finished their lunch and then went back to his store.