by Jack Hodgins
Mr. Pernouski’s determination was not something he could easily explain to his son, who had only recently got into the business of selling real estate himself and had much to learn. The boy insisted he had no desire to be Number One Salesman of Anywhere, like his father, he simply liked his work. He claimed that he enjoyed the company of the people he met and the satisfaction of finding them what they wanted. It was clear to Mr. Pernouski that the boy hadn’t learned a thing from his father’s example.
Still, he spent most of dinner telling his family about the convention. You can always count on something outrageous to happen, he said, and told them about sprinkling peanuts all over Swampy Grogan’s body in his hotel room so the seagulls would come in while he was sleeping.
“EEEeeeeee!” The twins pulled faces at one another and squealed. They wanted to know if he had a shower before he came down to breakfast.
“Of course he did, but boy was he ever mad!”
Mr. Pernouski’s son said that Swampy Grogan must be one hell of a grouch. No sense of humour at all. “A real son-of-a-bitch, eh, not to think it was funny to have seagull shit on his body and smeared all over his face.”
Mr. Pernouski had learned long ago to ignore the sarcasm in his son’s voice. He said he didn’t know why Swampy Grogan ever went to these things since he certainly wasn’t any great shakes as a salesman. “If he ever sells a house it’s just because no other salesman’s around and the customer’s begging for it.” Mr. Pernouski’s son said he ought to be glad of that, at least there was no danger of Swampy Grogan pushing him out of the Number One spot in the foreseeable future.
Mr. Pernouski said that this year every person in that convention hall recognized him without an introduction. Even old Pimlott from West Vancouver forgot his snootiness and treated him like the star he was. They couldn’t ignore him now. When you were Number One Salesman on the Island, even mainlanders had to sit up and take notice. Everybody wanted to congratulate him, as if they’d only now discovered he’d held the position for five years in a row. Everybody wanted to know his secret. He was a hero. Naturally he enjoyed every minute of the convention and nothing short of an appointment with a potential buyer from Calgary could have pulled him away.
Without looking up from his plate, his son said he was sure all of Calgary was grateful for the fantastic goddam sacrifice that had been made.
Mr. Pernouski’s voice took on an impatient edge. “Look. That’s exactly the difference between Number One and all those others.” While he was over here selling a hundred thousand-dollar house to a retired druggist from Calgary, he said, Number Two and Number Three-hundred-and-two were still over there having a good time.
“Oh wow!” His son pushed away from the table and took his dishes to the sink. “I imagine we can count on you to let Number Two and Number Three-hundred-and-two know what stupid assholes they’ve been.”
Rather than call him back for an argument, Mr. Pernouski reminded himself that this was the same person who’d run away to live in a commune for six months only a couple of years ago. His first job after that had been on a tugboat hauling barges up and down the strait, where he’d turned himself into a legend by regularly stripping to the skin and parading around the deck of his boat in sunlight playing a flute. How much did you expect from a boy who behaved like that? He still smoked an incredible amount of something he liked to call “the green stuff” which he grew in an attic window. That such a boy should agree to try a job like selling real estate was something in itself to be grateful for, and Mr. Pernouski knew better than to push his luck too far. As his wife was fond of saying, you didn’t count on miracles to happen overnight, you just went on trying to set a good example.
He was reminded, now, that this was the day his wife was to make her big speech. “Think of me when I’m in Toronto,” she’d written. “You know how nervous I get.” While the twins washed up the dishes, Mr. Pernouski found her most recent letter and carried it into his bedroom where he sat to reread it. Her plane had been delayed by a dust storm off the Sahara, she wrote, but she’d arrived safely in Kano and spent her day wandering amongst the colourful market stalls. In all Nigeria, this promised to be her most rewarding stop. Calabashes. Carvings. Talking drums. Thornwood figures. Brilliantly dyed cloth. The place, of course, had been invaded by tourists but if you knew how to shop you could still get some bargains. The dust, the heat, were terrible! She might even adopt the local women’s custom of wearing a huge colourful rag around their heads — if it didn’t keep you cool, at least it would keep the dust out of your hair. She’d been nearly run down by a snub-nosed truck with bicycles and bedsprings roped to the sides and at least twenty people standing jam-packed in the back of it, in their robes, laughing at her with their huge white teeth. NO STANDING were the words painted on the sign that flapped just below their elbows. She enclosed a postcard showing the local emir on a white horse, the man so wrapped in white that only his eyes were showing. Mr. Pernouski didn’t know what an emir was but he could guess this fellow was some kind of prince. The men who surrounded him in their brilliant robes, she wrote on the back, were supposed to be his eunuchs. Whether they were or not she hadn’t found out for herself. “Think of me when I’m in Toronto,” she added. “You know how nervous I get.”
He knew how nervous she got before these things but he also knew she could handle it. She even enjoyed it. She looked forward to working herself up into a high-strung nervous state, like an actress. She would stand in the middle of her hotel room and holler at the top of her voice, over and over, that she was terrific, that she was marvellous, that she was fantastic, and that she was going to knock them dead. He knew, too, just what she was going to tell those women, all those young Christinas who came lusting after her kind of success. She’d practised several times in front of him. Up there behind her lectern she would give her secrets away, her top ten requirements for the successful modern woman of business. Necessities, she liked to call them. Pride in yourself was one, you could get nowhere at all without it. Flexibility too. Understanding the workings of your business. Each of these she developed in detail for several minutes. Independence — it came natural to her. Caring for others. Tenacity. Planning. Honesty. Clear-sightedness. These were her first nine. She had several others that she used for her tenth, depending on the audience and the circumstances. The women loved it. When she’d explained all ten of the necessities they begged for more; she couldn’t possibly make all the speeches she was asked to make, not if she wanted to keep her own business growing, and pay a little attention to her family.
Mr. Pernouski wondered if sometimes, in front of those audiences so eager for secrets, his wife was tempted to use him as an example of what you could do. It wasn’t impossible. That he was Number One in his line of work was indisputable. Five wooden plaques on the wall of his office proclaimed him Salesman of the Year. Last spring, with over one and a half million dollars’ worth of business, he’d won a trip to New Zealand. Three years in a row his own company had awarded him a trip to the World Real Estate Convention — last year in Greece. Once, he’d won a station wagon for the largest volume of sales in just this district — his wife still drove it — another time a mobile home for the largest volume of sales in the mid-Island region. And if the plaques on his office wall weren’t proof enough, there was his healthy bank account to consider, his accumulated investments in properties that would boom some day, and this comfortable house with the spectacular view of the strait. And of course (most important of all) there was the long list of buyers, sellers, and businessmen who refused to do business with anybody else but him. If that wasn’t proof of success, what was?
A more important question he liked to ask himself was, how did he do it? He could list the ways. He’d often done so, in fact, for the benefit of his son, but liked to go over the list in his head once a day in case he came up with anything new. Most obvious, of course, was his high profile. He was noticeable. When he was travelling as a private individual, Mr. Pernous
ki wore conservative grey suits to offset the attention his bulk quite naturally drew, but when he was on duty he wore a red-and-white tartan jacket and white pants and shoes, in order to take advantage of his size. People could hardly avoid him. Dressed up like that he became a presence in the town — everyone knew him. Other salesmen, who believed you should wear quiet three-piece suits in order to improve the public image of the profession, called him the Plaid Tank. Mr. Pernouski was always prepared to tell a joke about his appearance. He had to wear brighter clothes than most, he said, so he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, a tiny fellow like him. He said he bought his suit from Brown’s Tent and Awning and rented it out to circuses on weekends when he wasn’t working.
Of course there was seldom a time when he wasn’t working — and that was part of the secret too. Energy. Enthusiasm. He never let up. If you turned your back or closed your eyes or put your feet up for a rest, somebody else (his eye on the Number One plaque) would grab those clients away from you. He couldn’t blame them, it was part of the job, in fact he would be happy to show respect for any man or woman who deposed him as Number One, any man or woman who equalled his talent for sales and salesmanship.
Even as he drifted off to sleep that night, Mr. Pernouski was aware that despite the difference in time his wife would be still performing for those women in Toronto. Her speech would be over by now but they would be pressing themselves on her for more, touching her, praising her success and her speaking ability and the remarkable flair with which she carried everything off. In the crowd, she would be the tallest, the most poised, by far the most tastefully dressed. One of the women, the one who was the most like Christina, would be standing back from the rest, with her eyes narrowed, thinking Just you wait. In his sleep this woman walked into his head and lit a cigarette and squinted at him through clouds of smoke out of Mrs. Eckhart’s face.
Exactly the way Mrs. Eckhart was looking at him in real life the next morning when Mr. Pernouski stepped into the coffee shop for his break and discovered the couple sitting at the booth nearest the door. They didn’t seem at all surprised. Mrs. Eckhart took a Kleenex out of her purse, blew her nose, and put the Kleenex back. “My nose has been running since I arrived,” she said. “It’s your damp air.”
Mr. Pernouski squeezed into the bench on the facing side of their table and ordered his usual from the waitress, who looked up from behind the counter and smiled. Three doughnuts and a glass of diet cola. “A beautiful day out there,” he said, unwilling to let this woman get away with her jibes. “The sun is going to break through those clouds any minute, you wait and see.”
Mrs. Eckhart drew her eyebrows together in a frown. “What will people do, if it does come out? Will they hide, or fall down and worship it?” Through his laughter her husband explained to Mr. Pernouski that prairie people believed that folks out here would dry up and shrivel away like a jellyfish on the beach if it ever stopped raining.
When Mr. Pernouski had finished the last of his doughnuts, he insisted on paying for the Eckharts’ coffee and buying Mrs. Eckhart a package of cigarettes. Out on the sidewalk she looked at the package as if she couldn’t quite believe they sold her brand in this part of the country. “And now, since it’s obviously Providence that we should meet this second time,” Mr. Pernouski said, “I insist on being allowed to take you on a scenic drive of the area.”
Mrs. Eckhart’s head jerked up. “No!” By the look on her face it was clear that she smelled a plot. Her eyes shifted to her husband for support. “We’ve got things to do! Shopping! And there’s Nellie’s . . . you know.”
Mr. Eckhart shook his head, as if to say he regretted everything, everything. “A half-hour’s drive, Mr. Pernouski, would be pleasant. But after that, I’m afraid my wife is correct. There are things that must be done. We have friends here, you see, who are expecting us.”
Mrs. Eckhart allowed herself to be helped into the back seat but she slouched in one corner where her clouds of smoke could escape through the open window and made it clear, almost immediately, that she intended to make a nuisance of herself. Was there an art gallery in the town, she wanted to know. Mr. Pernouski laughed. With all this beautiful scenery to look at, he said, why would anyone want to look at pictures? When he stopped his car in front of a small waterfront home with his company’s sign on the front lawn so that they might admire the view of the strait and a few little islands, she blew her nose again and wanted to know what you could do with a view after you’ve looked at it twice. She hated views. “After a week of living along this stretch these people probably couldn’t tell you whether their windows looked out on the strait or the city dump. The eyes adjust to anything.” When Mr. Pernouski drove them down the lane of a small hobby farm he’d been trying to sell for a year and a half, she wanted to know what kind of tree that was whose ratty bark was peeling off like the hide of a mangy dog.
In a new subdivision high on a hill behind town he insisted they all get out of the car and admire the panorama. He led them to the edge of the gravel and remained silent while they took it in: the sharp treed slope beneath them, the town laid out around the harbour with its little islands and cluster of sailboats, the strait and the purple mountains of the mainland and the moving clouds in the sky. “And all that,” Mr. Pernouski said, “is what I’m offering you.”
Mrs. Eckhart seemed to find something amusing in what he’d said. “You offer us that?” She moved closer, prepared to laugh. Just by the amused and squinting look on her face she made him feel that he didn’t understand a thing. “You offer us that?” she repeated, and jabbed her cigarette in the general direction of the view, laughing. “If we what? If we what? If we hurl ourselves down this cliff? If we sign away our souls to you?”
“Doris,” Mr. Eckhart warned.
“I meant it only in a manner of speaking, of course,” Mr. Pernouski said. “For the price of the lot behind us.”
“Oh.” Was she satisfied or disappointed? In either case she twitched her nose and shifted her attention to a crow that was making a racket in a fir.
Perhaps it was the altitude. Perhaps it was the sense he had that he’d just put the Eckhart woman in her place. Whatever the reason, Mr. Pernouski decided to risk a confidence and tell Mr. Eckhart his special dream. He saw all the rest of the world made up of broken-hearted people, he said, whose own dreams had failed them. Millions and millions out there who lived in squalor and ignorance and hunger and backward cultures, looking for something better. He saw mothers and fathers and hopeful children, he saw old people and sick people and tired people, all living amongst the ruins of plans that had come to nothing — wars and dead civilizations and outdated languages and old-fashioned buildings and meaningless religions. All of them, he said, dreamed of a place where they could start over again — a place that was green and clean and still uncluttered by the ruins of other people’s mistakes. He saw himself — oh, he knew this was a romantic notion but wasn’t it still worthwhile? — he saw himself as a person whose job it was to make all those dreams come true, to gather all those tearstained faces full of worry lines onto this island and give them the chance they needed, provide them with a home. Nothing made him happier than to hear that a new family had landed in from India, say, so he could start looking around for a nice house painted blue with a basement large enough for all the relatives who were bound to follow soon, and of course in a neighbourhood where they would be surrounded by relatives who had already arrived before them. Prairie people were his favourites, because he knew that by the time they put themselves into his hands most of them were panting for what he had to offer. It was an impossible dream, he knew that! There wasn’t enough room for the whole world here, he just wished the Island were a little bigger so that everyone who deserved to live in this place could find the room. Sometimes he felt he was offering a little piece of paradise to anyone out there who needed it!
Mr. Eckhart made appreciative muttering noises and pushed back his hat and looked out over the strait as if he cou
ld see all those homeless broken-hearted people heading this way right now. He lifted his camera and snapped a picture, perhaps to capture Mr. Pernouski’s vision on film.
His wife, however, was trembling. “Sir!” She puffed her cigarette and narrowed her eyes at Mr. Pernouski. He hadn’t noticed before how noisily she sucked on her smoke, how impatiently she blew it out. “Do I understand . . .?” She seemed unable to find the words she wanted. “Do I understand that you . . . that you think you’re in a position . . . to offer us paradise?”
“Doris,” her husband said, his face colouring, “is that any way . . .?”
Mr. Pernouski, who hadn’t even realized the woman had been listening to him, thought she must be working up to some bitter joke, in her manner. But she hunched over her crossed arms and paced along the gravel shoulder of the road and came back to squint up angrily at him through her smoke. “When you are more likely the proprietor of . . . ,” her eyes searched for the word amongst stones by her feet, “. . . of hell.” From her sudden smile, you might think she expected to receive congratulations for her daring.
Mr. Pernouski decided he would tell his family at the dinner table that after all these years he had finally met an honest-to-goodness madwoman, something right out of a loony-bin, or a book. “No more meat on her bones than a cat,” he would say, “but she’s as crazy as they come.”
He would be sorry, though, that he’d mentioned her at all. Mr. Pernouski’s son threw himself back in his chair and laughed. “She said you were the proprietor of where!” This struck him as so funny that he had to leave the table and get himself a drink of water from the kitchen sink to keep from choking on his peas. Shit, he wished he could have met this babe, he said. She must be really something.
Mr. Pernouski did not add that she’d gone on to accuse him of wearing a jacket that made her think of a mobile billboard, a lurid advertisement for the attractions of his native land. And by his native land, she said, jabbing her cigarette into the air all around her, she did not mean this. He knew what she meant but he saw no point in taking advantage of the woman’s mental illness for the sake of an easy laugh.
