I Can Get It for You Wholesale (28 page)

I rapped on the wall with a hanger until they heard me and began to quiet down a little. Then I held up my hand and said, “Can I have your attention for a minute, girls?”

I heard a few “Who’s thats” and “Who’s hes” and I heard my own models say, “That’s Mr. Bogen. That’s the boss.”

In a few seconds they were quiet.

“You all know what we want, girls,” I said, smiling pleasantly. “But just a quick summary before we begin. The guests’ll be arriving soon, and when they’re all here, say in about, oh, I don’t know, say a half hour or so, I’ll come to the doorway here and give you the word. Then you begin to file out slowly, in the order Mr. Babushkin told you about. After the show, when I give the word, you come down off the platform and mingle with the guests. Okay?”

“Yes, Mr. Bogen,” they said.

“Fine,” I said. “And if everything goes all right, when it’s all over there’ll be a nice little something extra for every one of you.”

They began to giggle and chatter, but I held up my hand for silence.

“Everything okay, Meyer?” I asked.

He nodded. That was the big trouble with him. He was always shooting off his mouth.

“That’s fine,” I said, and went out. So far it looked like I was the only one who thought so.

The first thing I ran into was Teddy Ast, standing in the middle of the showroom, watching the caterer’s men and the platform and the decorations in the showroom with a face that looked like it could reach from here to Kocktebel, Russia.

“Hello, Teddy,” I said cheerfully.

“Boy,” he said, shaking his head, “what this thing cost!”

“So what?” I said.

He just looked around the large room again and shook his head.

“Boy, oh, boy!”

“Ah, nuts,” I said. “Got a cigarette on you?”

He gave me one and held the match for me.

“Boy,” he said again, “what this thing cost!”

“Pipe down, will you?” I said. “The war’s over. This is the way to sell dresses and make dough these days. Don’t worry so much about what this cost. We’ll get it all back spades doubled.”

“Yeah,” he said, “we’ll get it back. In the pig’s eye.”

The only reason I didn’t say what I wanted to say or do what I wanted to do was that the front door opened and the first gang of buyers came in.

“See if you can look alive there a little,” I said out of the corner of my mouth, and then we both went forward to meet them.

Soon they were arriving so fast that one of us had to keep standing near the door to greet them. Teddy seemed to like the idea, so I said, “You better circulate around a little and see that everybody’s got enough to drink.” This was my show and the buyers were going to remember
me
, not Teddy.

By four o’clock most of them had arrived and had a couple of drinks. So I climbed up onto the platform and rapped for silence. They turned to face me, holding drinks and cigarettes.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, flashing my best smile from one end of the room to the other, “may I have your attention?”

The large room became quiet.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, thank you, thank you. I want you all to know that I really and sincerely appreciate your all showing up like this, and if there’s anything I’ve forgotten, and it’s something anybody here thinks will in any way make this a bigger and better party, why, then, folks, let him speak up now and I, as the management, will do my little bit to see that he or she is taken care of properly. What say?”

I looked around the room, smiling, and they smiled back. But nobody spoke.

“All right, then,” I said, “let’s get on with the christening. The firm,” I said, “is Apex Modes. The president”—I pointed to myself—“is Harry Bogen. We are the proud parents, ladies and gentlemen, who present, for your approval, the apple of our eye—our new fall line.”

There was a little applause, not much, because most of them were holding glasses or sandwiches, but a little. I ran down the three steps of the platform, stuck my head into the models’ room, and said, “Okay, Meyer.”

“Okay,” he replied, and I stepped back, holding the curtain away from the doorway.

The first girl was a blonde. She stepped through the doorway, climbed the steps of the platform, turned slowly to show the lines of the dress, and moved down the platform. She was followed by a brunette. Then came a redhead and then a platinum. They followed each other like that slowly, a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, a platinum, until the platform was jammed with a long line of them, some twenty strong. They stood like that for a few moments, posing with their hands on their hips or clasped in front of them. Then the whole group turned slowly and came to rest again, like a line of statues.

This time the applause was louder and longer. When I saw some of those boozehounds actually set their glasses down so they could clap their hands, I knew the line was a hit.

“Okay, girls,” I said, and they walked off the platform and began to mix with the crowd.

A half dozen buyers, men and women, crowded around me.

“Where did you get the models, Bogen? They’re a knockout!”

“Say, that’s some bunch of babies. Where’d you get them?”

“Hey, Bogen! I don’t see models like that around the other houses. How come?”

“That’s easy,” I said, laughing. “They’re not regular models.”

“Who are they?”

“That’s the chorus of
Smile Out Loud
,” I said.

“You
mean
that?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh,
boy
! Pick me that little redhead with the you know whats. Gangway, boys, here I go!”

Five minutes after the girls joined the crowd on the floor, the place was in an uproar. People kept slapping my back and spilling their drinks over me, but I didn’t mind. The opening was a success. Not only were the dresses pips, but the idea of getting the chorus of a musical comedy to wear them had caught on.

One of my regular models came up to me.

“Mr. Bogen,” she said. “What’s the matter with Mr. Ast?” She pointed to Teddy sulking in a corner. “What is he, drunk?”

He wasn’t, but it was as good an explanation as any.
“Drunk?”
I said. “Why, for Christ’s sakes, he’s potted. Just let him alone and don’t worry about him.”

The hell with him, I figured. Let him sulk. After all, he was the only one there that didn’t seem to be having a good time.

I poked my nose into the little group around Boonton of Arnolds-Tepperman. She bought the highest-priced stuff in the market, and the mere fact that she was present was something of a triumph. I knew the others, but I had never met her.

“Everybody happy?” I said, putting my arms around two of them.

“Oh,
Harry.
It’s
you
.”

“Harry Bogen, I want to congratulate you. You little louse, you’ve got the hottest line on the Avenue, do you know that?”

“Thank you, my dear,” I said, bowing from the waist and grinning. “But that’s the general idea I had.”

“You can take it from me, it is—Oh, by the way, Harry. Do you know Miss Boonton?”

“Why, no,” I said, bowing again. It’s easy, once you get used to it. “I’ve never had the pleasure.”

If meeting Miss Boonton was a pleasure, then so is a case of piles. She had a figure like a subway kiosk and a face like the state of Texas done in three shades of pink.

“All right, then, here goes. Miss Boonton, Mr. Bogen. Mr. Bogen, Miss Boonton.”

“How do you do?” I said.

“Lousy,” she said in a voice that started somewhere about eighteen inches below her feet. “But seeing a line like that makes me feel better already. Who’s your designer?”

“Meyer Babushkin.”

“Of Pulbetkal?” she said, surprised.

“Right.”

“How in the God damned hell did you ever get the little kike away from Pulvermacher?”

I tapped my nose and winked.

“My hidden charms,” I said.

“So
that’s
the kind of guy you are, eh?” she said, and we all burst out laughing. “Seriously, though, how come I haven’t seen any of your stuff before?”

“We were making sixteen-seventy-fives up to now.”

“I get it,” she said, giving me a shove. “Getting high hat, eh?”

I grinned. I couldn’t talk. That gentle shove of hers had knocked the wind out of me. It looked like I’d have to join a gym if I wanted to sell the higher-priced trade.

“Well, just watch out you don’t get so high class you don’t know the difference between a good dress and a lousy one.”

“Not me,” I said, waving my hand from side to side. “I wrote a poem to remind myself.”

“A
what
?”

“A poem.”

“Listen, brother,” she said, grinning, “Maybe that’s the way you got Babushkin, after all. A poem!”

“Sure,” I said, grinning back at her. “I always write poems in my spare time. In fact, I’m just about the world’s champion lavatory poet. Most of my stuff is unpublished, but if you’ve ever seen the walls of a men’s toilet, you’ve seen—”

“Jesus Christ,” she said, “you got me all excited. How does it go?”

So I had her all excited.

“Like this,” I said, and swung into something real dirty.

All of a sudden she broke into a squeal and collapsed into my arms. Now I know how it must feel to support the Woolworth Building when it begins to lean over too far. She shook up and down for a while until she recovered her breath. Sometimes I wished I could get as much pleasure out of my own jokes as the dopes I told them to did. It looked like I was the only one who knew they were lousy. Well, at least there was some little kick in knowing that I could adopt the right tone in a conversation, even down to the crummy jokes.

“Mr. Bogen,” she said finally, “or maybe I better call you Harry. Yeah, Harry. Harry old kid,” she said slapping me on the shoulder, and drying her eyes with her sleeve, “do I get a poem like that with every order I place with you?”

“You bet,” I said.

And more.

“Shake, kid,” she said.

We shook, and she slapped me on the back once more. I didn’t wince, though. I was getting used to it.

“Hey, Molly,” she yelled suddenly at a woman across the room. “You wanna hear something?” And she went charging across the crowded showroom, shoving people out of her way like a cowcatcher going through a snowdrift. She left just in time. My constitution isn’t what it used to be.

I turned toward the rest of the room, and stopped with my mouth open. Standing near the platform, talking to two men, was the neatest-looking brunette I’d ever seen. She stood so that I saw her in profile, and for a moment I couldn’t catch my breath. She had the kind of tits you could see coming around a corner ten minutes before the rest of her body followed.
Ma-ma!

I walked over to Teddy and pointed her out to him.

“Who’s the dame?”

He looked at me in surprise. “What are you, screwy?” he said.

“Why?”

“You don’t know who she is?”

I looked again. She wasn’t a buyer, she wasn’t one of my models, and she wasn’t wearing one of our dresses.

I shook my head.

“That’s a hot one all right,” he said, screwing up his lips. “You’re paying her, and you don’t know who she is.”

“You mean she’s from
Smile Out Loud
?”

“Sure she is.”

“Well, how come she isn’t modeling one of our dresses, then?”

“Aw, she’s not just in the chorus. She does a specialty number. She sings or something.”

“Oh, yeah? You know so much about her, how about a knockdown?”

He looked disgusted.

“Aw, Christ! Why don’t you keep your mind on your work for a change, Harry? What do you want to bother with those pots for?”

Get an earful of
that
!
He
was giving me advice!

“Listen,” I said, “I’m paying her, ain’t I? All right, then. Come on.” I took his arm. “By the way, what’s her name?”

“Martha Mills,” he said.

T
HERE ARE TWO KINDS
of dames. The kind you want to put, but with whom you wouldn’t be found dead. And the kind you not only want to put, but with whom you get a kick out of being seen walking down the street. All the others don’t count.

This dame was in class two.

For three weeks in a row I took her out every night. We had dinner and talked until it was time for her to go to the theatre. After the show I called for her and we made the rounds. Always, when the time came to take her home, I thought maybe to-night. But always that’s as far as I got, her front door.

Sometimes, after I’d had a chance to cool off a little and I wasn’t sore any more, I’d stand there on the sidewalk in front of her apartment house for a while and ask myself was I crazy or wasn’t I. If somebody would’ve told me that I’d be spending the time and money on any dame that I was spending on her, and not even getting to first base, I would’ve told him to go get his head examined. I would’ve told it to myself, too. Yet there I’d be, out on the sidewalk, with my hot pants to remind me that I wasn’t dreaming. Then I’d get sore and say the hell with her and go home.

Then, the next morning, sorting out the checks in my private office, going over the mail, I’d remember the way we’d looked the night before. I’d remember the jealous looks of the heels around the stage door when I called for her. Or the way all eyes turned to look at us when we walked into a restaurant or a night club. Or the line in Winchell’s column, “Martha Mills, the baby-voiced warbler of
Smile Out Loud
is doing the hot spots with what prominent young manufacturer of feminine haberdashery?” I’d think of how swell it made me feel just to be seen walking down the street with her, and how people looked after her, and then at me, and wondered who I was and wished they were me. I’d think of all that, and I’d reach for the telephone.

“Get me Riverside 9-0437.”

In a few seconds the girl at the switchboard would ring me.

“Here’s your Riverside number, Mr. Bogen.”

“Okay.” Then, “Hello, Martha?”

“Hello, Harry.”

“How do you feel?”

“Sleepy. What’s the big idea waking me up so early in the morning?”

“Sorry,” I laughed. “I just wanted to make sure I was filing my application for to-night before the rest of the city. Anybody ahead of me yet, Martha?”