She gave him her name and address, and he gave her a claim check torn from the bottom of the tag. Several days later when she stopped by, the radio had been fixed; the bill ran seven dollars and fifty cents.
“Just for a tube?” she protested.
“Filters,” the man said, showing her the tag. “Dollar-fifty for the pans, the rest labor.” He turned on the radio and it ran satisfactorily.
“Just to put in a part?” she said. But she paid him the money and left with the radio. That evening she told Roger how much it had cost. He listened solemnly. At one time, back in Washington, he would have run about in anger, but now he only picked up the receipt and read it, put it down, and shrugged.
“They’re probably crooked,” she said, thinking of a magazine article she had read.
Stretched out on the couch with his feet up on the arm, Roger said, “Maybe not. They charge around that.” He had taken off his glasses; his arm lay over his eyes.
“I wish you had been along.” She could not shake off her sense of aggravation. Prices for everything were going up; it was terrible. “You could have talked to him; I don’t know anything about radios. And they know when you don’t know anything; they always size you up and take advantage of you.”
But he remained unbothered, apparently asleep; for half an hour he lay on his back, his eyes shut, sometimes sighing, shifting, smoothing his hair with the flat of his hand. Meanwhile she washed underclothes in the bowl. From the downstairs apartment a radio could be heard, and once a dog barked in the yard. A car motor started up. Children ran along the cement path beneath the window; a woman yelled for them to come indoors to dinner.
To Virginia the apartment was peaceful enough; the pressure on all of them had let up and they were glad of it. They had finished the war in a sprint, an ordeal lasting night and day, without humor and certainly without idealism. Now it had come to an end; they lay on the couch or washed a few things, or sat around discussing what to do with their money, which opportunity to take advantage of. They had earned their money. The servicemen had begun to return; they had little or no money and many of them wanted to go to school on the G.I. Bill, or they wanted to get their old jobs back—saved for them by law—or they spent their time with their wives and children, glad to be able to do that and nothing else. For the warplant workers something more was required, something tangible. They had got used to having something in their hands, some real object.
“I guess we can afford it,” Virginia said.
On the couch he grunted.
“We have the money,” she said. She got the real estate ad section of the newspaper and read it, as she had been reading it now and then, watching the prices, the new areas opening up. How high property prices had gone in the last year. A house that had sold for five thousand dollars now sold for ten. New tracts, subdivisions they were called, had started to advertise; each had a picturesque name. The smallest of the new houses, the tract houses, sold for seven or eight thousand dollars. It seemed to her to be too much. The tracts advertised low down payment to G.I.s, and she thought that it would be harder without the G.I. provision; in their case they would need one or two thousand dollars.
“They’re not built as well,” she said. “The new houses. Isn’t the lumber green? Isn’t that what we read?”
After a moment he sat up, rubbed his eyes, lowered his legs and reached about for his glasses.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Look,” he said. “Let’s go down to the market and get something for dessert. Some ice cream or a pie.” Stepping into his shoes he looked around for his coat. “I’m still hungry.”
She put on her coat, too, over her cotton shirt, and they strolled along the evening street to the supermarket, where all the lights had gathered into one colorful smear. The sidewalk was untidy with candy wrappers and trash, but nobody noticed; they had got accustomed to it. Inside the market blue white fluorescent lights flooded down on the stacks of cans and bottles. She and Roger lined up at the checker’s counter with a cart of small items, beer and a jar of pickles, margarine, lettuce, and a berry pie. On the trip back to the apartment Roger stopped at a curb and peered around.
“Is that the radio shop?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. It was shut up for the night; the neon sign had been turned off. In the window the table model radios could be seen, illuminated by a row of small bulbs set behind them. Hoisting the bag of groceries Roger stepped from the curb and crossed the street to the window. She followed him.
“I wonder how much he’s got invested in it,” he said.
“I don’t think he has much, just a few little radios and some tubes.”
Roger put his hand to the glass and gazed in, past the window display, at the fixtures and shelves to the rear of the store. “You think he does the repair work himself?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s the only one there.”
“A couple hundred bucks worth of radios,” he said. “Used fixtures. A tube checker. Repair parts. What else? A cash register, I guess. That’s about all.”
“There’s rent,” she said.
“He probably lives in the back.” Turning away from the window he walked on. “I’ll bet he opened that place for less than three thousand dollars.”
“I don’t think he’s making very much,” she said. She did not like the store; it was too barren. Too small and dismal. She could not imagine herself in a place like that and she said, “Do you think a place like that can last very long? Nobody goes in there; that’s why he has to charge so much. In a month or so he’ll give up. And he’ll probably lose what he’s got invested.”
“There’s nothing to sell now,” Roger said.
“No,” she agreed, “he just has those little radios.”
“Later on,” he said, “in a couple of years, he’ll have television sets to sell.”
“If he can stay in business that long,” she said. He did not respond to that; she waited and then she said, “Is that the kind of place you mean? I thought you meant a larger place, like the shops downtown.” She was thinking of the department stores with their carpets and warmth and salesmen and indirect lighting. The escalators and the whirr of the air-conditioning. All her life she had loved to wander through the big downtown department stores; she loved the smell of the fabrics, leather, the jewelry, the perfumed salesgirls in black, wearing flowers.
“My Christ,” he said, “it takes a million dollars to open a department store.”
“I just meant—” She did not know what she meant.
“I’m talking about something that’s possible,” he said. “We could buy a place like that. I can handle the repair work; no salaries to pay, like he works it.”
“We only have twelve hundred dollars.”
“That’s pretty good,” he said.
“It’s awful in there,” she said. “You’ve never been inside; I have. Ratty little hole in the wall—it’s like a shoe-shine parlor or something. Just a place.”
Nodding, he conceded that she was right.
“What would you do, then?” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be like that?” That man probably thought his place would be nice-looking, she thought. And he didn’t have enough capital to fix it up. “He probably wishes he never opened it,” she said. But as a matter of fact the man had seemed content in his bleak little store. But, she thought, he was a pale, soft, clerkish man; a sort of neuter, humming to himself, smiling at the customers. Surely it was a miserable way to exist.
She said, “You don’t want that; you want more than that. I know you wouldn’t be happy. If you’re going to get a little store of your own it ought to be something nice. Pretty—” She thought of a modern shop, a dress shop she had visited in downtown Pasadena; an attractive, stylish front and plants set into a moat the length of the window. “You want to be proud of your store, don’t you? It wouldn’t be to make money anyhow; it would be for something more.”
Beside
her Roger said nothing.
“If it were me,” she said, “I’d rather work in a nice store than own a place like that.”
After that neither of them said anything. They walked the rest of the way back to the apartment in silence.
Later, as she heated the pie in the oven, she said, “I can see if my family could help.” Of course she meant her mother. The securities and annuities had been owned originally by her father. So they did not seem as much her mother’s as the family’s. In a sense, then, they were hers, too. She did not know exactly how much they amounted to, but as she remembered they were worth at least twenty thousand dollars. Enough so that her mother could begin thinking of a trip to Europe, now that the war had ended. In letters her mother had described various travel plans, including a visit to the West Coast. She had even considered going to Africa.
“What are you giggling about?” Roger said, at the doorway of the kitchen.
“I’m sorry.” She hadn’t realized that she had laughed at the idea, the vision of Marion in hip-boots, tramping across the veldt, a sun hat on her head, clutching a shotgun. Her calm, practical, New England mother… Good Lord, she thought. She remembered how Marion had looked when she came back from her vacation in Mexico: giant lacquered sandals on her feet, crimson trousers with gold braid, far too tight for her, a lace shawl, and a hand-carved cigarette holder as long as a ruler. At that she had told her that she looked like President Roosevelt, and the cigarette holder, at least, had vanished. But for months her mother had gardened in her Mexican outfit, until the crimson trousers split. The high sandals, she said, kept her feet out of the mud.
Beneath the kitchen window the woman from the next apartment gathered her washing in from the lines that crossed the lawn. A dog ran back and forth nearby. The woman—plump, in her thirties—wore her hair up in a net and Virginia thought, She looks like a waitress. In a highway café. Somewhere between—she had thought, between Arizona and Arkansas. Suddenly the woman screeched at the dog to go away from the clothes basket: her voice blared like a trumpet.
Lord, Virginia thought. Is that how I sound? Do I look that way? Automatically she dried her hands and lifted them to her hair; she patted her hair into shape. Now she kept it short, clipped close because of the machines with which she worked. For safety. And tied up in a red cotton bandana.
In the living room Roger had again sprawled out on the couch, his feet up on the arm. She thought, He can’t have a hole-in-the-wall store like that. Even if he wants it.
It has to be better.
After they had eaten up the pie, Roger said, “I’ll see you a little later.” He had his watch out. “Go to bed if you get sleepy. I’m just going down to the corner for a while.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” she said.
“I’ll be back pretty soon,” he said. From his eyes shone the leisurely, confident look; it was the sly quality that always annoyed her.
“I thought maybe we could talk,” she said.
He stood at the door, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted on one side. And he waited, showing his endurance, not arguing with her, simply standing. Like an animal, she thought. An inert, unspeaking, determined thing, remembering that it can get what it wants if it just waits.
“I’ll see you,” he said, opening the door to the hall.
“All right,” she said. After all, it didn’t come as a surprise.
“I’ve got some things cooking,” he said. “I’ll tell you about them later when they’re more sort of settled.” Mystical and cunning, he left. The door shut after him and she wondered what it was this time. She returned to the kitchen—which she liked to keep scrubbed and in order—and began to wash the dinner dishes.
8
In a particular bar-and-grill not far from his apartment, Roger found the men he wanted: they had taken a booth in the rear and he pushed past the bar toward them.
His friend, Dick Makro, waved a greeting and pointed at the man beside him. “Hi,” he said. “Say, this is John Beth, only don’t call him Mac, he doesn’t go for that; and this is Davis. I didn’t catch your first name; I’m sorry.”
Davis shook hands with Roger and reseated himself, not speaking. His first name remained his secret. John Beth, never called Mac, stuck up his hand. He had smart, clear eyes, like glaziers’ points, and his hard-woven sharkskin suit kept him looking in top health. His hair bunched in mounds, puffed from the use of pomade. To Roger he gave a firm handclasp, leaning upward and moving his mouth. He had an immense overbite, but his teeth were an even color, probably because he did not smoke. At a guess he was in his middle fifties.
“I’m glad to meet you,” Roger said, taking a seat across from John Beth and Makro. Davis, a sunken-chested dour person, fiddled with his drink and did not appear to care what the others discussed.
“Is that right?” Beth said.
“I can’t help being conscious of the fact that you’re the owner of the Beth Appliance Center,” Roger said.
Beth agreed.
“Say look,” Roger said. His friend Makro scratched at the wall and looked vague, leaving Roger and Beth alone. “I want to talk to you about a matter,” he said, jumping in. “Now I’ve been by your place and I know what a fine store you have; you have all the different appliances, stoves and refrigerators and washers, the major appliances, and when they’re in supply again you’re going to do a tremendous business there in that location you have. But this thing I want to mention is something I think you’ve overlooked. Now I know you’ve got what radios are available, and you’re probably taking orders; you have table models and consoles and phonograph combinations—”
“I carry Zenith,” Beth said, “and Hoffman, and Crosley, and R.C.A. I don’t carry Philco or any junk brands like Sentinel.”
“I see,” Roger said. “Well, here’s the thing; I was in your store and I noticed the extensive line of radios and combinations you have or will have, but I noticed you don’t have a service department.”
Beth said, “No, we have the work done outside.”
“Well here’s the thing,” Roger said. “One of your salesmen showed me downstairs in the basement and I saw where you have stuff warehoused there, in the cartons, and it occurred to me you could put in a service department there.”
“I need that space,” Beth said.
“Well what are you using it for? You’re using it to stack up boxes; you could rent a garage for that for five dollars a month on some side street and bring the stuff around on a dolly; uncrate it there in the garage and not have the packing waste where customers have to trip over it getting downstairs to see the phonographs demonstrated.”
Beth swirled his drink.
“What I’m thinking about is the future,” Roger said. “When you clear out minor lines like vacuum cleaners and steam irons—I noticed your display racks along one whole wall on those—and you get in television. Then you’ll have to have a service department.”
“That’s years,” Beth said.
Davis, in an ordinary voice, said, “There won’t be any television for another ten years.”
“Oh no,” Roger said. “That’s where you’re wrong; there’s going to be television inside one year—I read all the trade journals and I know; it’s the truth. This time next year you’re going to have as big a television inventory as everything else put together; that’s a fact. I’m not making that up.”
“That’s just talk,” Beth said.
“It’s the truth, I give you my word I’m not making it up.”
Beth said, “What do you want me to do? Hire you to repair television sets they haven’t even invented yet?”
Both Makro and Davis snickered, and that put an end to the business. John Beth raised a glance across to Davis, and then he lifted himself up to search out the waitress. Roger pretended not to notice the glance.
Later on, after a couple of drinks, when Makro had excused himself to go on home and Davis was off at the men’s room, Roger said to Beth, “I’m not askin
g you to hire me.”
Beth merely moved his lips. “What, then?”
“I want you to let me open a service concession. I’ll buy the equipment and pay my share of the overhead; you’ll get a slice of the gross and if there’s not enough business then I don’t see what you lose, except some warehouse space you won’t need for six months anyhow.”
Beth closed his eyes.
“I’ll do my own advertising,” Roger said.
“Under what name?”
“Beth Appliance Center.”
Beth let his head sink.
“You’re not risking anything,” Roger said. “And when you get in television you’ll really be glad you have a service department. I know what television service is going to be like; do you realize those television chassis will carry fifteen thousand volts on them? I’m reading the manuals now, as fast as they come along.”
“Are you?”
“There’s ten times the parts in a television chassis than a radio chassis. There’s the high voltage power supply alone.”
Beth eyed him.
“Every set you sell will have to be serviced. The difference between making a dime on television and losing your shirt is going to be in service.”
Beth studied him as if he had managed to fart through his nose.
“If you have to farm it out, they’ll eat up your profit. I’ll bet you pay out too much now. What happens if you have to do a lot of service work under your guarantee? You have to take that off the books; you write it off. It’s a big item, isn’t it?”
Beth studied him, smiling.
“Somebody else is making a profit out of you,” Roger said. “Who’s making the real profit, you or the outfit that does your service?”
Puttering About in a Small Land Page 10
