Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

Then I began to hear about the new cars, and planes with pressurized cabins, and trains with vestibules you couldn’t see, except on curves, and boats with Diesel-electric stuff that hadn’t even been dreamed of before. It was my kind of world, something that spoke to what Hannah had called my mechanic’s soul. Then I got a load of the frozen food, and for ten minutes I saw things, and couldn’t fight them back. I mean, I saw something that made sense, and would fit in with my life, and let me get it back on the track, so it meant something. It seemed to me, if you could freeze stuff this new way, and have it taste good and be fresh, you could deliver dinner for a whole family with no home cooking necessary, except boiling of vegetables, and no washing up afterwards. A picture of the whole thing popped in front of my mind: central kitchens, to be located in each city I went into, where stuff would be cooking all day long, but not for any rush-hour trade, as everything would go in to freeze as soon as it was done; classified storage rooms, where everything would pack in portion units; assemblers, to work like department-store shoppers, and put each meal together in its container, with the dishes required, according to the order on the customers’ lists; trucks, with freeze compartments in them, to deliver each container to the house where it was due; other trucks, to call later, maybe late at night, to collect the containers, with dirty dishes in them, where they’d been put out like milk bottles; dish-washing rooms, that would take all dishes as the collectors brought them back, and wash them up with machines that would fit the dishes and cut breakage to a minimum. I meant to make dishes of plastic, so they could stand some slamming around, and still not get smashed.

I went into it pretty thoroughly. I talked to manufacturing plumbers on the washer stuff, and plastic people about the dishes. I took trips all around, and learned how stuff is frozen in central plants, with the ice company furnishing refrigeration by the ton of product. I got it through my head what a terrific amount of food, like the muskrat carcasses they throw away in Louisiana, goes to waste in this country, stuff I figured I could use, and show a profit on. I began to think in terms of colored help, for the handy way they had, on mechanics, and the little trouble they’d give, on organization. I was out every day, and cruised from deep bayou country up to Tennessee, all around the TVA Valley, the greatest thing in the way of farm development I ever saw. It seemed funny to be zipping around, in my little Ford car, through country I’d hoboed over, but I tried not to think of that. I knew, of course, that Mrs. America wasn’t going to do any standing broad jump into my lap for all the trouble I was taking over her, or do anything except act like the hundred-per-cent nitwit that in my opinion she was. From the beginning, I knew that this once more was a problem in public relations, or in other words that it involved people, instead of things. So, for one day I put in on freeze units, washing machinery, and fish, I put in two trying to figure the advertising, and wasn’t too proud to remember Denny, and thank him in my mind, for what he had taught me. I went into publications, art, type, and ideas. I worked out a bunch of ads, to run in three national magazines, that would eat up a hundred thousand dollars before we ever served a meal. They were all about two women, one a pretty, slick, sexy blonde, named Dora Dumb. The other was a gray-haired, quiet, refined wife, named Bessie Bright. Dora was to be the queen of all the department stores in her town, the markets, the shops, garages, beauty shops, and massage parlors. She broke appointments, charged things on the account, had five dollars put on the gasoline bill for cash because she’d forgotten to go to the bank, sent things back after she’d ordered them, and everybody was just as nice to her as they could possibly be. She had a husband named John Q. Dumb, that never had any money, that was always in hock to the furniture store, the finance company, and the loan sharks, and would try, with pencil and paper, to explain to her that all that nonsense of hers was costing them two prices on what anything ought to cost, that the interest on all that installment buying was charged just like the lamb chops were charged, that there was no need for them to be broke all the time, if she’d just pay cash, use her head, and keep things, once she bought them.

Bessie Bright had a husband named Louis, who always had money, never was in hock, lived twice as well as the Dumbs, and all because she paid cash, kept things, gave the stores no trouble, and got the breaks. I made it clear that Dora Dumb could not trade at Dillon, Inc. That was to be an exclusive place, reserved to Bessie Bright and her friends. And the point I was trying to put over was, that if you took the Dillon Variety Budget Dinner, you got a different meal every night in the month, but with no daily order to fool with, no mind-changing at the last minute, no Dora Dumb nonsense, we could put it on the table cheaper than Bessie could cook it, so cheap as a matter of fact, and with so little work, that Bessie needn’t keep a maid, and Louis, Jr. could have that car. I got pretty well along with it, at least in my mind. Then I went over to New Orleans and lined up my dough. I picked the biggest bank on Canal Street, went in, sat down with the cashier, and told him I wanted the name of a million dollars, “available for investment purposes.” That hit him funny, as I expected it would, and we took it easy a few minutes, he being respectful to the uniform, but plenty shy of the idea. After a few minutes he said: “Major Dillon, I’m sure the investment you have in mind is a sound one, at least to your satisfaction, and well, you know, O.K. But I can’t be sending you to anybody to—”

“Nobody’s asking you to.”

“That’s what you said.”

“I asked you for a name. I didn’t ask you for a reference, anything of the kind. Naturally I’ll leave you out of it.”

“Yes, but even so—”

“Tell you what we’ll do.” I took a quarter out of my pocket, laid it down on his blotter. “There’s a two-bit piece, with the eagle on one side and George Washington on the other. Now you get yourself called outside, to have a drink at that far water cooler. Before you go, you write a name on a slip of paper, this scratch pad here. When you come back it’s gone, and I am. If I don’t land the million dollars, you keep the two bits, and it’s a comical little story for you when you’ve had a couple of these Sazerac cocktails they make down here. But if you land him, you pay me. Of course, I may use your bank to handle my money — that depends on how the million dollars feels. But it could turn out that way. Just a long shot, but worth two bits, I’d say, as a gamble.”

He laughed again, wrote something on the scratch pad, went out. It was just one word, when I got on the street with it, a French name I’ll call Douvain. Twenty minutes later I’d found out who Douvain was, and that afternoon I was in his office. I didn’t talk much, or try to close a deal, or anything crazy, or big. I spoke my piece in five or six minutes, told my idea, said I hoped to interest him if he’d reserve time for me whenever convenient. I made it clear I wanted a great deal of money, “at least a million dollars — if you don’t think in figures that big, say so and I’ll blow.” When I had it said, I shut up and sat there, letting him look me over. I guess it helped, what I’d learned standing reveille in the Army, to hold it an hour if I had to, without twitching my nose or coughing or scratching my leg, but I didn’t make any vaudeville show out of it, giving an imitation of a statue of Lincoln, anything like that. I just let him study me, and looked out at the street, up on the wall at the signed pictures of four or five presidents, and at his bookcases. In about five minutes he picked up the telephone, told his operator to get his home. He spoke in French, to his wife, and it seemed to me, from the basic I’d studied in camp, he was talking about me, and about dinner. When he hung up he said: “Major, you take me by surprise. I hadn’t expected to go into the restaurant business — or the polar storage business — or the farm business — or the advertising business — I’m a little confused which business you have in mind for me. But I have a feeling — some peculiar feeling of confidence you communicate to me. So I have spoken with my wife, and we shall be very glad if you can come to our home tonight, for dinner. Yes? At seven thirty?”