I Can Get It for You Wholesale (29 page)

“You know there’s nobody ahead of you, Harry.”

Crap me easy, kid, I thought. You’ve played mumblety peg as much as I have. But I said, “Then how about tonight?”

“All right.”

“Same time?”

“Same time.”

“ʼBye, Martha.”

“ʼBye.”

This was the part I didn’t like. As soon as I’d hang up I’d begin remembering all the nights that had gone before, and I’d begin thinking of the one that was coming, and wondering if it would be the same. Then I’d begin thinking what a holy
schmuck
I was making of myself, and I’d get so sore at myself I felt like calling her back and telling her to drop dead.

But this time I didn’t get a chance to get sore. Because before I could put the receiver back on the hook the door opened and Teddy Ast came in.

“Hello, Theodore,” I said, “how’s the world treating you?”

He slapped a thin packet of blue-covered papers on my desk.

“I just been looking through the accountant’s report,” he said.

“Why, Teddy!” I said, surprised. “You didn’t tell me you knew how to read!”

“Never mind,” he said grimly. “I just been looking through it.”

“So’ve I,” I said, picking up my copy. “Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” I leafed through it to the operating statement. “Eight thousand net for the month. Not bad. Not bad at all.”

His face squeezed up a little tighter and he turned to the schedule of expenses.

“Traveling and entertaining,” he read, “twenty-two hundred dollars.”

I picked my teeth with my tongue but didn’t say anything.

“Well,” he said, “what’ve you got to say to that?”

“You really want to know?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“All I have to say is: in your hat and over your ears; you look good in brown.”

He snatched the report off the desk and rolled it into a thin line.

“Can that wise-guy stuff, Harry,” he said. “This is serious. I’m not kidding now.”

“My error,” I said. “I thought you were.”

He was so sore that his hand shook when he lit a cigarette. But I didn’t say a word. He was dumb enough to dig his own grave. He didn’t need any help from me.

“What are you gonna do about it?” he said.

“About what?”

He hit the desk with the rolled up report. “Don’t give me any of that, Harry. You know what. What about those entertaining expenses?”

“Well, what about them?”

“You gonna cut them out?”

“No,” I said. “I’m having a lot of fun spending that money, and it’s good for the business. If you got any objections, spit them out.”

“Listen, Harry.”

“What do you
think
I’m doing?”

He shook off the interruption.

“From the first minute we opened up here, you’ve been throwing money around like water. I didn’t like the idea, but I didn’t say anything.” No, not much. “But this is different.”

I picked up a sheaf of orders from my desk and waved them under his nose.

“Where the hell do you think
these
came from? How the hell do you think we got these? Just by showing your phiz around to the buyers? Don’t kid yourself, Teddy,” I said, “you’re not that good-looking.”

“Don’t try to hide things. What do you think I am, a dope?”

“Sure,” I said, grinning.

He glared at me.

“Well, I’m not as dumb as you think. When you spent all that dough, I figured all right, it was on buyers, it was for the business. But you can’t keep pulling that crap on me. The whole damn market knows what you’re doing. When you start pissing away the firm dough on a pot like that, on an actress, where we don’t stand to make anything, then I got a right to object.”

“You all finished?” I said calmly.

He didn’t answer.

“Now you listen to me for a change,” I said. “First of all you’re such a dumb bastard you don’t even know what you’re talking about. And secondly, where did you ever get this ‘I got a right’ business? If I want to spend money endowing a hospital for
cats
, I’ll do it, and I won’t ask for any advice from you, either.”

“I don’t care what the hell you do with your own money,” he said, “but when you start spending firm money, then I got a right—”

“Yeah? Who ever told you that?”

“I’m a partner, ain’t I?”

“But I happen to own sixty per cent of the stock,” I said, grinning at him, “and maybe I’ll endow that hospital for cats after all.”

“Not with
my
money,” he said, breathing quickly. “I don’t care what you say, I’m still a partner here, and—”

“Then maybe you and I better just stop being partners,” I said.

“That suits me,” he said, slapping the report onto the desk and turning on his heel.

“It can’t suit you any more than it suits me,” I said. “We’ll go down to Golig to-morrow.”

“The quicker the better,” he said, and slammed the door.

With the door closed behind him I couldn’t hold it any longer. I just had to laugh out loud. It couldn’t have worked out any better if he’d’ve been killed in a railroad wreck. He had taught me all he knew a long time ago. As far as I was concerned he’d shot his load.

I picked up the receiver and spoke to the girl at the switchboard.

“Tell Mr. Babushkin I want to see him right away,” I said.

A
FTER THE WAITER PUSHED
the chair under her and she had done things to her lips and hair she looked up at me with a smile and said, “Now go on with your story, Harry.”

“Where was I?” I asked, sweeping my eyes from her thick black hair, that looked like a greased helmet, down her tiny button nose and thick red lips to her chest. From there I couldn’t go any further. That chest, with the dress bunched up and drawn tightly across it, had never failed to stop me yet.

“I don’t know exactly,” she said, shaking herself a little and clearing my mind of any doubts as to whether she was wearing a brassiere, “but when you decided in such a hurry that we had enough of Seventy-Seven—By the way, why do you always want to go from one place to another? We’re no sooner settled in one place, than you want to get out and go some place else.”

“You want to know the reason?” I said, smiling at her, and watching out of the corner of my eye the way the people at the next table kept staring at us.

“Oh, so you
have
a reason. Well, what is it?”

“I get a kick out of walking in and out of places with you,” I said.

“Oh,
Harry
!” she squealed, covering her mouth to stop the laugh, and sending her chest shivering all over the lot in a way that made me grip the edge of the table to keep my hands from running away with themselves.

“That’s the truth, Martha,” I said. “Honest.”

“Oh, Harry, cut it out.”

“I mean it, Martha,” I said. “You’re not like other girls.” Which was the bull. Upside down they all look alike. “You ought to see the way people look at us, at you, rather, when we come into a place. And they look at us the same way when we go out. So I leave it to you. The more times we get up and go out, the more times we walk in, which means the more times people look at us, and the more kick I get. See?”

“Oh, Harry, you’re funny.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” I said. “So far, that’s the only real pleasure I’ve had from going with you.”

She looked at me quickly and then down at the tablecloth. Bull’s eye! Score one for the old marksman! For the time being this dame had me stopped. But I wasn’t quitting yet. I had too much of an investment in her already. And besides, to be honest about it, I couldn’t have quit if I’d wanted to. Not while she was built the way she was. And not while she was an actress. And not while every guy on Broadway that saw us together wished he was in my shoes.

“What about the rest of your story?” she said.

“Oh, yes,” I said, putting my thumb in my vest, “my story. Now, ah, where, ah, was I?”

“Mr. Ast,” she said, mimicking my voice, and grinning, “had just told you he didn’t like the way you were running the business and he wanted you to—”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “So I said, Teddy, I said, my hearing isn’t so good these last few days, so maybe I didn’t get you right the first time. But did I understand you to say, I said, did I understand you to say that you didn’t
like
the way I was running the business? And he said yes. So I sort of leaned back in my chair and shook my head like I’d just gotten the news my mother died or something, you know, and I said, gee, Teddy, that’s too bad. That certainly is too bad, I said, because you know, Teddy, I’m a funny guy, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night if I knew a partner of mine didn’t like the way I was running things.”

“What did he say to that?” she said, laughing.

“What
could
he say? Nothing. So I continued, and I said in that case, Teddy, seeing as how you and I don’t sort of, well, you know, sort of agree on things, then maybe it wouldn’t be a half bad idea if you and I, we
stopped
being partners from now on. Well, Martha, as soon as I said that, you should’ve seen the look on his face. He started to cry and this and that and the other, you know, and tried to talk me out of it, but I just shook my head like a pallbearer, you know, and I said sorry, Teddy, you and I, we couldn’t continue being partners if I felt that you didn’t like the way I was running things. He tried a little more crying, you know, because he knew what a dope he was for letting himself out of one of the most profitable businesses in the city.” If she couldn’t take that hint, she was blind. “So the only thing left for him to do was to get tough. Well, Martha,” I said, pausing to light a cigarette, “I’m not saying I’m the bravest guy in the world. If Jack Dempsey would get tough with me, then maybe I’d just say yes, sir. But when a baloney like Teddy
Ast
gets tough with me, then Martha, old kid, I get so tough myself that you’d think I chewed battleships and spit rust.”

“Well, what happened?”

“Nothing,” I said, waving my hand. “Nothing much, I just picked up the little heeb”—what the hell, Mama wasn’t listening—“I took him by his collar and kicked him out of my office. And that was the end of my partner Teddy Ast.”

“You mean just like
that
you got rid of him?”

“Oh, well,” I said, dusting my ashes elaborately, “just like I get rid of anything else I can’t use.” Hm. “There were a couple of minor details, of course, but I’d taken care of all that in advance. I knew he’d run to Babushkin, so I’d spoken to Babushkin in advance. I knew he’d run to the lawyer, so I’d fixed it with Golig in advance. In fact, before Teddy Ast knew what hit him, he was out on his ear with nothing but his original investment and his share of the profits to date, which, compared to what that business is capable of earning, is the equivalent of not only taking his shirt, but his pants too.”

“You mean that from now on the whole business is
yours
, Harry?” she said, leaning toward me across the table.

The light began to dawn so suddenly, that for a moment I almost forgot to look down into the front of her dress. But you don’t get as far as I’ve come if you haven’t got a halfway decent portion of self-control. So I managed to keep my face straight and at the same time get my look in, too. Hell, I was paying for it.

“Practically,” I said. “I’ve still got Babushkin, but I really
need
him. He’s my designer. But I’m not worrying about him. There’s one thing you can be sure
he’ll
never die from, and that’s brains.”

“Gosh, Harry,” she said, shaking her head at me admiringly. “A young man like you, with a business like that!”

Well, anyway, it
looked
admiringly. But whether it was or wasn’t, there was one guy she wasn’t kidding. And that was the president of Apex Modes, Inc., Harry Bogen, to you.

“This is only the beginning,” I said. “You just watch my smoke.”

Smoke was right. I was hot enough to burn.

“How about another drink?” I said. “Waiter!”

“Oh, no, Harry, please! I’ve had enough.”

“Let’s get something to eat, then.”

“Gosh,” she laughed, “don’t you ever want to do anything but eat?”

“Sure,” I said quickly, “but this is about as good a substitute as I know.”

Am I subtle! Boy, like an after-dinner speaker.

“Yes, sir?” the waiter said at my elbow.

I looked at her. “No, nothing, Harry.”

“Check, please,” I said to the waiter.

In the cab going uptown I put my arm around her, but when we came to her door and she said, “Good night, Harry, call me in the morning,” I wasn’t surprised. I was disappointed, but not surprised.

And even though I was in the same place I’d been every night at the same time for almost a month, out on the sidewalk, this time I wasn’t sore.

The first time she’d stopped me at the door, I admit I was surprised. Maybe, I thought, maybe, Mama knows best. Teddy had said she had some kind of a heel of a husband floating around somewhere, but I didn’t attach much importance to that. I didn’t even ask too much about it. It was enough for me that they didn’t live together. That’s all I ever want to know about husbands. So at first I figured maybe I’d picked a foul ball. But then I remembered how attractive she was, and all the guys hanging around her in the showroom. There was no sense in kidding myself. She had dates and she went out with married men, too. And when a dame like that goes out with a married guy, it’s not so he can read poetry to her, either. So why should it be any different for me? If she wouldn’t have been married, I’d have thought well, maybe. But she was married, or she’d been married. So what was one more slice off a cut loaf? The first time I figured all right, maybe the flag was up. But I’d seen her every night for almost a month. So
that
was out, too. Which left what? Until to-night the answer was search me. But now the answer was different.

And that’s why, even though I was still standing out on the sidewalk, this time I wasn’t sore, the way I’d been every other night. Because this time I had the combination. Now, at last, I had the formula. From now on at least I knew where I was going. I was going to play
her
way. It was going to be expensive, but what the hell did I care about that? She was an actress, wasn’t she? Actresses weren’t like bookkeepers or stenographers or models. You had to play them differently. But that was all. Once you got the hang of the game, the rest was the same. And whether dear old Martha knew it or not, she was going to come through with a bang.