I Can Get It for You Wholesale (23 page)

I walked through the lobby once more, the last time, but this time I didn’t go out the Thirty-Eighth Street entrance. I went into an elevator.

“Twenty-nine,” I said, and the young guy with the tiny nose and the marcelled hair punched the button. I wondered how long it would take him and the rest of the operators before they would remember my floor. What the hell, I wasn’t a shipping clerk in the building any more; I was a tenant.

As we stopped at the various floors, I noticed that the doors that faced the elevator had the names of the firms that occupied those floors painted on them. Before I stepped out of the car onto the twenty-ninth floor, I noticed that our name had not yet been painted on the door facing the elevator. I made a mental note to remind the super about that.

It was a lucky thing I made a mental note of it. Otherwise I would have forgotten it. Because the second I stepped into our showroom I saw the carpet.

There were a lot of things and people in that showroom. First of all, it was still full of ladders and pails of paint and brushes. Then some of the wrapping paper and excelsior and rope from the furniture was still lying around. And the pictures on the walls were new. They must have arrived since I had left in the morning. And there were three or four workmen moving around, too. But that didn’t matter. I noticed the carpet right away. It didn’t fit in with the way I had that showroom laid out in my mind. And after the fight I’d had with Ast over the money I was laying out on furnishings, I felt I’d earned the right to have everything just so. That was why, as soon as I walked in, I could see something was cockeyed. The carpet was supposed to be purple. But the stuff they had standing up in big rolls was the funniest looking purple I ever saw. It was red.

None of it was down yet. The workmen were just unrolling some of it and getting their tools ready.

“Hey,
bey
zon!” I called sharply from the doorway.

They looked up from their bent-down position.

“Whatsa matter?”

I came a little further into the room and they stood up straight.

“What the hell do you guys think you’re doing?”

They were all wearing overalls, but one of them, a thin one with a cigarette in his mouth, had a regular vest and shirt and tie on underneath. He did all the talking.

“Whaddaya mean, what’re we doing?”

“Listen,” I said. “I only had two meals to-day. I don’t feel so strong. Don’t make me go around repeating things. I said what do you guys think you’re doing?”

“We’re layin’ a carpet, ain’t we?”

“I’ll tell you,” I said. “You just let me ask the questions.”

He shrugged and took the cigarette out of his mouth.

“Not in
my
showroom you’re not laying that carpet,” I said. “Not here you’re not.”

He just looked at me. All right, I’m handsome. But I’m not that much of an attraction.

“What’s the matter with it?” he asked finally.

“Nothing’s the matter with it. It looks all right to me. Only it’s red, that’s all.”

He turned to look at it, then turned back to me.

“See?” I said. “I told you. I’m a regular whiz at those things. I just looked at it once and I saw right away it was red. Just like that.”

He dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it. Then he lit another one.

“Ah, nuts!” I said. “I ordered purple carpet. Purple, see? Not red. Purple. You can just roll that
tiniff
up and take it away. I ordered purple.”

He inhaled deeply without removing the cigarette from his mouth and bent his head a little, squinting his eyes, to see around the smoke that rose straight up from the cigarette.

“Mr. Ast saw it,” he said. “He said it was all right.”

Now, wasn’t that nice of him!

“Listen,” I said, “you heard me. Take that junk back and bring purple. And don’t worry so much about Mr. Ast. He made a mistake. He’s funny that way. He’s liable to make those mistakes every so often. You just take that crap back and bring purple.”

I waited till they began to roll up the piece they had opened, and then I went into the back.

Babushkin was sitting on a cutting table, watching the men around him setting up the machines. And Teddy Ast was standing next to him, leaning on the table and talking earnestly to him.

I didn’t even bother to walk up on them quietly. I wasn’t even interested in what they were talking about. It was just nice to know that Teddy Ast and I had gone to the same school. But I wasn’t worried. I was an honor student.

I called to them from the entrance to the factory. They turned around and Teddy smiled.

“Come on over, Harry,” he said. “Meyer and I were just talking about you.”

Surprise! Surprise!

“What’s up?” I said, coming over and swinging up onto the cutting table.

“Nothing,” he said, which isn’t a bad way to begin. “Only we’ll be opening up soon here, in a couple of days, maybe a week, so Meyer and I were sort of splitting up among the three of us the various duties of, well, of running the business. You know what I mean?”

“I sort of get a rough idea,” I said. “But don’t let me stop you, Teddy. You go right ahead.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said, waving his skinny hand, “just who’s gonna take care of this and who’s gonna take care of that and all that sort of stuff. You know.”

“That isn’t a bad idea,” I said. “Did you come to any agreement yet? I mean, anything definite?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you. It’s like this. First of all there’s Meyer here. He’s the factory man. Right?”

I nodded.

“Then there’s me. I’m the salesman. Right?”

I nodded again. But I didn’t smile the way I wanted to. This guy was smooth, and no maybes about it. If baloney were religion, he’d’ve been the next Pope.

“That leaves only you, Harry, see? So Meyer and I, we both thought the perfect set-up for you was to be a sort of office manager. Sort of superintendent of the whole works. You could run the office, and keep your eye on things in general while I was out selling and Meyer here was in the back in the factory, and sort of, well, you know, sort of superintend the whole works.”

I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the ceiling before I spoke.

“I get the idea, Teddy,” I said. “You want me to sort of superintend the whole works.”

“That’s right,” he said, shaking his head and looking at Babushkin. “That’s what we sort of figured out, wasn’t it, Meyer?”

Meyer nodded. Meyer was the greatest little nodder you ever saw. But I didn’t mind. In a three-cornered set-up you can’t afford to have the pair-off two and one. Especially if you’re on the short end. The best way out is for one of the three to be a hammerhead. At least then it’s one against one. And so long as I’m not outnumbered, I don’t worry.

“What do you think of the idea?” Teddy asked.

“It’s great,” I said. “It’s one of the greatest ideas I ever heard of.” Teddy grinned. “There’s only one thing wrong with it.”

Teddy stopped grinning.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“What am I going to do with the rest of my day?” I said.

He stared at me.

“What do you mean, the rest of your day?”

“You don’t think a thing like running an office is going to keep me busy all day, do you?” I said. “Of course, I could go sit in the crapper with a newspaper for a couple of hours every day. But I’ll tell you the truth, it would be a waste of time. My bowels move pretty good without coaxing, so I’m in and out in five minutes. And I never read the papers anyway. I just look at the pictures.”

“You mean you don’t think that’s gonna keep you busy enough?” he asked. His face wrinkled into sharp little regular furrows, like a washboard.

“That,” I said gently, “is the general idea, Teddy.”

“Well, then, what do you want—?”

“Look, Teddy,” I said, “there’s a couple of things we might as well get straightened out right now. You and me and Meyer here are partners in a new dress business. But it’s not just an
ordinary
dress business. I can see from the way you and Meyer were laying things out, figuring on just one salesman, yourself, that you’ve been thinking this is just an ordinary small dress concern. But that’s where you’re wrong. You don’t think I’d go to the trouble of getting the best factory man in the business and the best salesman in the business just to start another small dress concern, do you?” Who’s a dope? “You don’t think I’d sink a young fortune into a showroom if I thought we were gonna match for cigar store coupons, do you? Oh, no, Teddy. Apex Modes, Inc. is gonna be
the
house on the street. Forget about Schmul and Toney Frocks and those other
schwanzos.
We’re stepping right into Pulvermacher’s class. And when we learn all they got to teach there, we’re gonna get promoted. We’re going into the big time, Teddy, and we’ll need a lot more than just one salesman.”

“All that’s very nice,” he said quickly, before I could continue. “And I’m with you right from the start, Harry. But just remember. I’ve been in this game for a long time. I know it inside out. You can’t just start a million-dollar dress firm just by talking about it.”

“I know that, Teddy,” I said. Get this Teddy and Harry bull. Just a couple of buddies. “I know it. But you just watch our smoke. I’ve got a couple of tricks up my sleeve that’ll make this market sit up and take notice. You just leave that to me.”

He sucked in his cheeks like he was getting ready to whistle, but he didn’t. He just looked at the ceiling, and said, “So what about what we were talking about first? About you being office manager and superintendent and it wasn’t enough to keep you busy?”

I get it! Sarcasm!

“Here’s my idea,” I said. “I’ll be office manager and superintendent and all the rest of that bullshit. But I’ll be a salesman, too. We’re gonna need an extra one before long, and it might as well be me, instead of us hiring somebody.”

He laughed a little at that.

“That just shows how little you know about the dress business,” he said, putting his hand on my arm to pull the punch a little. “You’re no salesman, Harry. You know that.”

“That’s nothing,” I said, laughing back at him. “You ought to hear what my public school teachers used to say about me and how fast I could learn things. So what if I’m
not
a salesman, now, so what? Haven’t I got the best salesman on Seventh Avenue for a partner, Teddy? Can’t he teach me?”

The general idea, gentle reader, was that no
pyoick
with canary teeth and a snowplow nose was going to bury Harry Bogen of the Bronx Bogens in the back some place, while all the souvenirs and nickel-plated favors were being passed out up front.

Teddy laughed again.

“You’re really funny, Harry,” he said. I must have been. I was positively panicking him. “You can’t learn to be a salesman overnight.”

“So it’ll take me
two
nights,” I said, hopping off the cutting table to end the interview, but not forgetting to grin up at him in friendly fashion. This politeness was beginning to make my jaws ache. “So it’ll take me
two
days,” I said again. “So what?”

A
ST STUCK HIS HEAD
into the office from the showroom and scowled a little.

“What do you say, Harry?” he said irritably, shoving out his wrist to look at his watch. He was wearing his hat and coat and he had
Stampers Arrival Of Buyers
in his hand. “It’s ten to nine already.”

I looked at my own watch.

“Throw the watch out, Teddy,” I said. “It’s only twenty to nine.” Then, before he could open up again, I said, “All right, all right, all right. I’ll be out in a minute,” and turned back to the girl. He went back into the showroom.

“All right, then, Miss K,” I said. “I have to go now. I guess I’ve explained everything there is, and you know what we want. If there’s anything you don’t understand, anything you want to know, just ask Miss A here,” I pointed to the bookkeeper, “or wait’ll I get back. But I think you got everything down all right. No?”

“Yes, Mr. Bogen,” she said, shaking her head so the glasses shivered on her nose.

“One more thing,” I said, turning back. I like to get these things off my chest while they’re hot. “I’m a pretty easy boss to work for, but there’s one thing I can’t stand. Nothing personal, now, Miss K, and I don’t mean to insult you or anything, but I can’t help it. I’m funny that way.” I pointed to the glasses pinched up on her nose with the long silver chain stretching down and around her neck. “Every time I see a nice young girl, a girl like you, for instance, Miss K, wearing those kind of glasses, I get good and sore.” She blushed and her hand shot up quickly to the glasses. “If you have to wear glasses, get yourself a pair of simple frames. But for God’s sakes, get rid of those things. All right?” I said, and smiled reassuringly. I know it’s a little silly, and maybe in a way it was stupid, too, to risk getting her sore, in case she was merchandise, I mean. But I was telling her the truth. I can’t stand that kind of fake ritz. Every time I see a dame with those things on I feel like putting a couple of extra dents in her profile. “All right?” I repeated, smiling.

“Yes, Mr. Bogen,” she said, and took the glasses off.

“Okay, then,” I said, patting her on the head, and then went out into the showroom.

Teddy was sitting at one of the little tables, smoking a cigarette and looking through
Stampers.
He jumped up as soon as I came in.

“Jesus, Harry,” he said, folding up his face like an accordion, “I can’t sit around all day waiting for you. We gotta get over there.”

“Aah, quit bellyaching, will you? We got a good fifteen minutes yet.”

“What the hell takes you so long to get out in the mornings?”

“I gotta paste up my stamp album first,” I said. Go tell him what takes me so long to get out in the mornings! “What do you think, all I do is worry about getting over to the buying offices? Just in case you forgot, just in case it slipped your mind, Teddy, I also happen to be the office manager around here. Remember?” He made a funny face. Or rather, he tried to make it funnier. But it was a waste of time. “When do you think I take care of that, when I’m sleeping?”