Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

“Who straightens stock on five?” he asked suddenly.

There was a greasy flash of a pompadour as a young boy looked up.

“It’s a pigpen,” Feldman said. “The fucking suits are out of line. Nothing is sized. I counted nine jackets loose on the cases.” The boy stared down at his shoes. “All right,” he demanded, “what’s holding up the deliveries? Why can’t the orders go out faster? Customers are calling up for their merchandise and I see half-empty trucks going out.” They shifted uneasily. “What’s the matter with you? Do I have to get new people back here? I will, goddamnit. Your union isn’t worth boo, and I can hire and fire till the cows come home. You’re breaking things. We’re getting too many returns.”

A man in a red-checked shirt put up his hand.

“What is it?”

“Sir,” he said, “we never have enough excelsior.”

“Balls,” Feldman shouted back. “Excelsior’s twenty-five dollars the ton. Bring newspapers from home. Use the goddamn candy wrappers, the paper cups. Do I have to tell you everything?” He harangued them this way for twenty minutes while they shifted under his gaze. “You’ve been using the postage meter for personal mail,” he said. “That’s stealing stamps. I’ll prosecute, I swear it. I’ll be back to see you in two months. If things aren’t shaped up by then, I’ll fire your asses all the hell out of here.”

They turned to leave, and something in the soft, bewildered shrug of their shoulders suddenly moved him. “Wait,” he called. “Wait a moment.” They turned back, and he descended from the bench. “Life is not terrible,” he said. “It isn’t. I affirm life. Life is not terrible.” They stared at him. “Get back to your duties,” he said roughly.

Ah, but how tired he was of his spurious oomph , of all eccentric plunge and push and his chutzpa only skin-deep, that wouldn’t stand up in court. “I like your spirit, boy,” the skinflint says, surprised by brashness. “I need a man like you in Paris.” Feldman didn’t. He was exhausted by his own acts of empty energy. Unambushable he was, seeing slush at spirit’s source, reflex and hollow hope in all the duncy dances of the driven. He was helpless, however. He had been born without a taste for the available. “No more looking askance at reality” had been his fervent prayer. But ah, ah, there was no God.

It occurred to him that he ought to knock off and go to a cocktail lounge and sulk. He could drink liquor and listen to the jazz they piped in. It might be pleasant. But then, he thought, he couldn’t hear the melodies without thinking also of the words, the college-kid love poems. Not for him. For him there should be new songs, new lyrics. “I got the downtown merchant’s blues,” he sang softly. “My heart is lower than my bargain basement — all alone at the January White Sale.” Stirred, he buzzed for Miss Lane. “Will green be the color this season?” he sang.

Victman was in Feldman’s office with him. He was excited. Eight years ago Feldman had been proud of Victman — his New York man, his Macy’s man. (Today everybody had his Neiman-Marcus man, his May Company man, but Victman was the first.) He had been a hot shot, in department-store circles a wonder merchant. (He had invented the shopping center, and the suburban branch store, and was in on the discussions when the charge plate was only in the talking stages — in department-store circles a household word.) Now Feldman could not look at him without wincing. He looked at him and winced for his $287,000, winced for his failed campaign. (Three columns and a picture in Woman’s Wear Daily when he came with Feldman, articles in the New York Times , and the Wall Street Journal .)

“Leo,” Victman said, “you ought to listen to this.”

Feldman’s irritation was such that he began to scratch himself. (If he could get just some of his money back, it would be goodbye Victman.)

“Please, Leo,” Victman said.

Feldman looked at him. He winced and said, “Victman, where you going to command a salary like the one I pay you?”

Victman groaned and Feldman winced again.

“ Where , Victman?”

“You ruined me, Leo,” Victman said.

“Ruin is relative,” Feldman said. (A picture of this man had been in Fortune .)

“You ruined me, Leo,” Victman said again.

“I’m the more injured party,” Feldman said. “I can’t look at you without wincing.”

“Yes. I meant to say something about that,” Victman said. “I wish you’d try to control that, Leo. It embarrasses me.”

Yet he was sorry for Victman. He had ruined him. If he left tomorrow, though it was impossible that any major store would have him now, there would be nothing in the Times , nothing in the Wall Street Journal . Mum would be the word from Woman’s Wear Daily . Looking at him, Feldman was often reminded of those “Where are they now?” features in magazines. Question: “Whatever happened to Norman Victman?” Answer: “He’s with Feldman. He’s sitting on his ass for many thousands of dollars a year.”

“Victman started talking again, but Feldman wasn’t listening. Victman stared at him. “You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?” he asked.

“You’re on my shitty list,” Feldman said weakly.

Eight years ago Feldman’s fortunes had been at their apogee. He had come up and up, the upstart, and in the last few years had outtraded and outdealt all of them, his store neck and neck with the largest ones in the state. Movie stars in town for personal appearances carried home his shopping bags on airplanes.

And his demon told him that it couldn’t last, that prosperity was short-lived deception, that at last Red China and The Bomb and Civil Rights and The Russians would take their toll: that the world was turning a corner, the blue sky was falling. He saw a terrible fight for survival in which America — white men everywhere — backed against a final wall, would have to scrap its style. (Hadn’t he been there himself, a passionate Jewish guerrilla fighter on the beachheads of the Diaspora? Hadn’t he, the little terrorist, thrown his bombs and Molotov cocktails, and didn’t he understand ardor, zeal, impatience, all the harassing, importuning passions? Wasn’t he, by analogy then, an expert on the little yellow men, the little brown ones, the big black ones?) He foreknew the failing markets and the finished fads, anticipated in some sweeping, dark, Malthusic vision America’s throes, this very city’s — saw it choking on its fat. When others spoke warmly of progress Feldman kept his troubled peace, but he knew they were wrong.

Then he saw Victman’s picture in Fortune and read his articles: “The Suburbs: America’s New Market Towns.”

He made the phone calls, sent the wires. Then the flights to New York and the wining and the dining and the feeling him out, and finally the secret meeting between the two men in the motel outside Chicago. “What can you expect from Macy’s, Mr. Victman? You know their setup. Their echelons. Think of those echelons. Think of your distance from the king. How many princes and dukes and archdukes and barons and counts stand between you and the throne?” “That’s true,” Victman said, “that’s true.” “America is West, Mr. Victman. The whole world is, the whole universe is. Dare to dream. I’m talking future with you tonight — empire, dynasty, destiny. Neiman-Marcus, Norman. Consider, conjure. Soon Hawaii will be a state. Guam. The Philippines. Dare I suggest it? Come closer. Formosa. Quemoy. Matsu. Quemoy — keen; Matsu — mmnn. Shh. Shh. Are you the passionate man I think you are? Did you mean what you said in ‘The Suburbs: America’s New Market Towns’? Then get in on the ground floor. This is foundations, first principles. Make a wish on the stars, on the blue horizon. Climb every mountain, Mr. Victman. Pioneers, O pioneers, sir. Come West, young Victman.”