I'll Call Every Monday

by Orrie Hitt

  She didn’t see me. She sat over on the bed squeezing the accordion and not knowing I was there. I tried to think of the tune but I couldn’t. Just looking at her gave me plenty of other things to think about.

  It’s hard to tell how big a person is when they’re sitting down, but I got the impression that she was short because I could see a lot of one leg. It was straight and firm and rounded and not too long from the knee down to her foot. She had the accordion in her lap and this had pulled her dress up. Her face was sort of turned away, maybe thinking about something that the music brought back to her. I could see that her hair was dark and pulled over the sides of her head into a bun in back.

  She kept pumping on the accordion and it kept moving around and her dress kept going up higher. She looked real good sitting low on the bed. I was getting ready to go over there when she saw me. She gasped and moved quickly, trying to catch the accordion.

  “Oh, my God!” she said. The accordion got away from her and landed on the rug.

  She jumped up and her dress went down around her knees. I saw right away that I’d been right about her height and some of the other things about her. She had on a dark blue dress and the way she was standing she was outlined against the window. She had high pointed breasts, a pulled-in middle that didn’t amount to anything, and a set of hips that drove the temperature in the room up to about a hundred and twenty.

  “I’m sorry!” she whispered. “So very sorry!”

  I went over and picked up the accordion and put it on the bed. I threw the suits down in a heap and looked her over again.

  “That cost me two hundred bucks,” I said.

  A little anger crawled around in those dark eyes.

  “I told you I was sorry.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  We stood there like that for a few moments, real quiet.

  “I guess you’re Mr. Weaver?”

  I nodded.

  “Miss Hankins is going to be awful mad when she hears about this,” the girl said. She looked down at the accordion. “I knew I shouldn’t, but I came in here to make your bed, and the case was over there by the closet, open — ”

  “She won’t know anything about it.”

  Her smile was grateful.

  “That’s a fine instrument, Mr. Weaver. You must like music to have something like that.”

  “I do.”

  “Do you play in an orchestra?”

  “Hell, no! I don’t know anything about music.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Is it?” I glanced down at the top of her dress, where it fell away and exposed a slight trace of the deep hollow between her breasts. “I know what I like,” I told her.

  She turned away, the color rising up into her cheeks. She looked good and clean, as though she had just come in out of the wind, with her skin pinkish and her breath exciting and sharp.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Sally.”

  “I like that.”

  “Sally Allen.’

  “That’s even better,” I said. I watched the swing of her hips as she walked over to the window and straightened the venetian blinds. “I didn’t know the old girl had a maid.”

  “She had to go down to the bank this morning. I’m just helping her out today.”

  “Oh,” I said. That’s the trouble with the good things you find — they never last.

  “I got in last night.”

  “Where are you from, Sally?”

  “Port Jervis,” she said. “Know where that is?”

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t bother telling her about the old man. “I know where it is all right.”

  “Miss Hankins used to live there, when she was teaching school. I had her in biology.”

  I knew I was thinking the wrong thing, but I couldn’t help it. There was this bed, nice and soft, and there was Sally, young and full, over by the window. I couldn’t help but wonder who had had Sally.

  “I guess you’re going to work around here,” I said.

  “I’ve got a job singing over at the Arrow Club, for the summer.”

  I knew where the Arrow Club was, out on Route 17 about four miles from town. It was right in the middle of the big summer colony on Shady Lake in the heart of Pine Valley. I’d been by there a few times, collecting the debit. I’d stopped there once looking for a dishwasher who’d forgotten that he’d ever had any insurance with Northern.

  “You ought to do all right out there,” I said. “That place is strictly class.”

  She came away from the window and I knew that somehow I’d tied it up so that she wasn’t going to stay. I guess maybe she was thinking about all the beds she had to make, and that Miss Hankins had been her biology teacher, and that she had to be a good girl.

  “I’ll come back to make your bed,” she said. “After you’ve gone.”

  I didn’t give a damn about that. It would be a lot more fun if we could get together and rip it apart.

  She stopped by the door.

  “You won’t be in this afternoon?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll come back then.”

  “All right.”

  She leaned up against the doorcasing, giving me a little laugh, and I could see the hard lines of her young breasts.

  “Thanks for the use of the accordion.”

  “Any time.”

  “Maybe I could use it some night out at the club in my act?”

  Things began to sound better.

  “I’ll even provide the transportation,” I said.

  She frowned and looked down at the carpet.

  “That’s one thing I hadn’t thought about,” she said. “The club’s out there quite a ways. I wish I had a car. But I guess I can always get a cab.”

  I walked over to her.

  “You can always get me,” I said. “I’m always out knocking around at night anyway, and it’s just a short distance out there. Remember that, will you, Sally?”

  Her eyes came up, studying me, and I knew by the way they laughed that I had passed lesson number one.

  “Thanks, Mr. Weaver.”

  “You call me Nicky.”

  “All right.”

  “When do you have to go out there? When do you start work?”

  “Tonight.”

  “What time?”

  “At nine.”

  That would give me plenty of time to drive out to Pine Valley, jam an app down somebody’s throat, get back to town and make a few night calls.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty.”

  She hesitated with the proper degree of innocence which is reserved for only the very young — or the very wise.

  “All right-Nicky.”

  She gave me a fifty percent dividend on her smile and started off down the hall.

  “You’re in the insurance business, aren’t you, Nicky?”

  “Yeah.”

  She turned around and came part-way back.

  “I guess it’s a good business,” she said.

  “We get paid every week.”

  “I mean, other than that. You meet so many people.”

  “Most of them are dopes,” I said. “They think they’re so cute and they don’t know from nothing.”

  “That’s only human, Nicky.”

  “Yeah.” I could see the white line of her brassiere under the dress. It fascinated me. She ought not to stand there like that. “Maybe that’s the trouble with all of us, Sally. Human.”

  She pushed her toes down into the carpet, watching them.

  “It would be pretty bad if we weren’t,” she said. Then she looked at me and laughed. “What do the animals say to the animals? Do you know, Nicky?”

  I moved down the hall toward her.

  “Once upon a time, there was a great big bear,” I said. “And he–”

  But she laughed some more and got away from me. At the end of the hall she stopped and opened a closet door. She reached inside and pulled out a vacuum cleaner.

&nb
sp; I leaned up against the wall, grinning after her.

  “Say, Sally?”

  “Yes?”

  “Anytime you want the accordion, just let me know.”

  “Thanks, Nicky.”

  She waved to me and pushed the vacuum cleaner into the corner bedroom.

  There was no doubt about it.

  I had a yen for that.

  CHAPTER III

  PINE VALLEY IS A TYPICAL RESORT SECtion, studded with high hills covered with towering pines, cut apart only by the lush green valleys where the lakes and the streams sparkle down below the curving highway. All along the road there are cabins and wood trails that lead up into the mountains to more cabins. Here and there the state highway department has built small drive-ins and fireplaces where people can have picnics, wash their cars in the sun or try to make it pay off with some skirt after dark.

  I drove along, getting the clean smell of the air through the open window, feeling the big Buick slide over the bumps, thinking about how God-damned good the world can be.

  On the seat beside me was the debit book, the nightmare of all insurance collectors, the one thing that has caused more ulcers than the fiscal policy of High Tax Harry. Of course the book beside me was the current one, and there had been others, many others, just as there had been other agents in the past. But the agents were gone, some of them dead, some of them retired, a lot of them fired for laziness or shortages, and some of them had just quit to go with other companies or take different jobs.

  Three months isn’t long in the debit business, but it’s long enough to get the equivalent of a college education and a jail sentence at wholesale. Me, I was getting the education — about money and about people.

  Money is plentiful.

  People are jerks.

  “I’ve got a twenty-payment life policy,” a doctor tells me. “I guess that means I get the money after twenty years.”

  That makes just about as much sense as though a patient walks in and says to the doctor:

  “I got a pain in the can, doc. I guess you pull my teeth.”

  So, rather than start a long-winded speech that won’t be understood, anyway, I tell the doctor that he’s a smart guy and he’s dead right, and the doctor tells his patient the same thing.

  It’s a great world. And the way a guy can sell insurance makes it even better. Your client may be a laborer or a lawyer or some smart second-hand dealer, but if you want to sell him all you have to do is talk fast, so fast that he has difficulty keeping up with you. He won’t ask you what you said, because he wants to prove that he’s smart and that he’s always right up there with you. You make sure he hears the things he likes to hear — if he’s got kids, he’s interested in them; if he’s a bachelor, he’s probably selfish; if he’s got a mistress, he’s trying to hang onto a good piece. But, whatever it is, you sell him on what he wants to hear and give him the other stuff so fast that it doesn’t make any difference, and you’ve got him.

  There’s another good thing about the insurance business. You never lie. People just misunderstand you. And they are so dumb that they believe this. They get disgusted with themselves because they are dumb, and they’ll claim that you’re smart, even though you lied to them, because they have to have some excuse for being on the short end of a policy.

  The money is something else again. You can always sell a policy — hell, you can pay the first week yourself and get thirteen in return. Collecting premiums, however, is something else again. It fools you. You go into holes in the walls, up ladders to some garrets, where people live like hogs, and your money is right there on the line. Then later in the day you’re calling on high-class stuff, the big houses where you wear your thumbs out on chimes, where the flat-chested bags are getting ready to go out and play bridge, or talk over books, or chart the course of the city, and you can’t raise a thin dime. They hate collectors and you hate them, but you have to keep on going back because they haven’t got sense enough to take care of things themselves. You wish to Christ that some of them would break their mainsprings.

  And there are those who ask you for insurance. They are usually the ones who are sixty-five or over, or have been sick, or are just curious to find out how fast you can talk. They are the phonies. And they usually come at you like this Schofield matter.

  I slowed the Buick near the crest of the hill. Down below, on all sides, stretched the deep green of the valley, and beyond that were the mountains again, purple with the pines and lying hot in the sun. Off to the left stood the Cape Cod that I was looking for, appearing cool and New Englandish with the wide carpet of grass, the wagon wheels painted white and the big lawn chairs. I pulled off the main road and heard the gravel click against the fenders.

  I parked in the driveway, just a few feet behind the Chevvy station wagon that stood in the garage, out of the sun. I got out and opened the rear door and took out my briefcase. I felt the sun hot and close at my back. It was a good day for a swim, or drinking, almost anything except work.

  There was a broken-flag terrace around the front of the house and I followed that up to the screen door. I remembered having put my card there, under the handle, and at the time I had thought that it wouldn’t be necessary for me to come back, or that there wouldn’t be anything there for me if I did.

  My knock sounded hollow through the house. I tried to look in but the screen blocked my view and it seemed to be dark in there, with the shades drawn. I knocked again and the silence didn’t move a bit.

  The lawn furniture looked new and sturdy and comfortable, the kind some retired policeman might have dreamed up while bawling up traffic on Sheridan Square. There were a lot of those kind in the valley, retired this and retired that, people who sat around and wondered how long it’d be before a hearse backed up to the door.

  The screen almost knocked me over; it opened out and I hadn’t heard it move. I got a glimpse of a little yellow and a lot of brown.

  “Pardon me!” she said, coming out and closing the door.

  She was tall, about five-seven, and she looked like she had about a forty-inch bust. Her hair was blond, almost to the point of being white, and it was held in place by a green scarf that came up through her curls and ended in a little bow on top. She wore yellow shorts that were plenty short and a halter of the same color that wasn’t holding up anything that couldn’t have stayed up by itself.

  I took as long a look at that smooth brown skin as I dared and got back into the insurance business.

  “Mrs. Schofield?”

  “Yes?”

  She had a low, throaty voice that went very well with her moist, carmine lips. Her cheekbones were high and rounded. It was difficult to tell whether her eyes were gray or a pale light blue.

  “My name is Weaver.”

  “Oh, yes. The insurance man.”

  “I got your phone call.”

  “So it would seem.”

  She’d had me going all the way until then, but what she said, and the superior way in which she’d said it, threw me right back into low gear.

  I let her make the next move and she didn’t lose any time doing it. She came down the couple of steps and into the sun. Her hips were full and I could see the gentle mounds of her buttocks beneath the thin material of the shorts. I shifted back into second.

  “We could talk out here, Mr. Weaver.” She started around the corner of the house. “I just love the summer, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  There were a lot of grape vines crawling over a large arbor and a couple of rustic benches under that. She sat down on one of the benches. I remained standing, smelling the green of the leaves and listening to the hum of the honey bees over my head.

  “Sit down, Mr. Weaver.”

  I sat down and she got up again, real quick. She was close to me and I could smell the cleanness of her. I got a good look at her navel and the clear skin around it and the way her breasts pushed out from her body.

  “Would you like a drink, Mr. Weaver?”


  That wasn’t all I wanted just then.

  “Thanks, I would.”

  She started back around the house.

  “Rye or scotch?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I heard the front door slam and I sat there, running up a fast sweat. The next to the last time that I’d been wild after a hundred pounds of human flesh had been in Iceland, the night the Colonel’s wife thought she was getting in bed with the Major. Now it was two in one day. And they were different. Sally, cool and small and lovely in her fresh young way. And, now, this Mrs. Schofield with a body like something out of an indecent act in burlesque, sensuous in every movement.

  She returned and handed me a glass. There was a lot of ice in the glass, a small portion of soda and it was cold.

  “I like rye,” she said.

  “This is fine.”

  She sat down on the bench again and pulled one leg up under her. The shorts pulled away from her thigh and I could see more than I was supposed to see. The drink started boiling over.

  “I was interested in some insurance.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not fire insurance, Mr. Weaver.”

  “I don’t sell that.”

  She took a long drink, frowning thoughtfully at me across the rim of her glass.

  “I want to buy some life insurance, Mr. Weaver.”

  I grinned. It began to look as though I’d get two things from Mrs. Schofield. An app. And an excuse to come back. One would be good for Northern, and they would both be good for me.

  “What plan do you have in mind?”

  You have to be careful about that in the insurance business. A lot of people, whether they know anything about it or not, have a definite plan in mind. Right or wrong, that’s what they want. You try to change their minds about that, steer them right, and you’ve had it. Even in as short a time as three months I’d learned to take an app like this, write whatever stupid plan the client wanted, collect my premium and be happy about it.

  “I hadn’t any,” she said, giving me a smile. “I thought you might tell me.”

  So I told her. I told her about twenty-payment life and twenty-year endowment and I explained straight life coverage. I don’t know whether or not she listened, because I didn’t watch her face, except to notice that she had her eyes closed, her head back a little, letting the sun poke down through the grape leaves and wash the rest of her in light. I kept looking at her legs, how straight and firm they were, and the way her middle kept going in and out as she breathed. I didn’t look at her breasts much, because I couldn’t stand that any more. I didn’t want any trouble. And there was plenty of it crowding around me with this dame being so close.