Proceeding slowly, past his old building, past garages, past bar-and-grills, past second-rate hotels, he followed the traffic further downtown. He drove into the deepest part of the city, down and downtown to the bottom, the foundation, the city’s navel. He watched the shoppers and tourists and messengers and men with appointments. He was tranquil, serene. It was something he could be content to do forever. He could use his check to buy gas, to take his meals at drive-in restaurants, to pay tolls. It would be a pleasant life, a great life, and he contemplated it thoughtfully. To drive at fifteen or twenty miles an hour through eternity, stopping at stoplights and signs, pulling over to the curb at the sound of sirens and the sight of funerals, obeying all traffic laws, making obedience to them his very code. Ed Wolfe, the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, the Off and Running Orphan, “Look Out for Ed Wolfe,” a ghostly wailing down the city’s corridors. What would be bad? he thought.
In the morning, out of habit, he dressed himself in a white shirt and light suit. Before he went downstairs he saw that his check and his twelve dollars were still in his wallet. Carefully he counted the eighty-two cents that he had placed on the dresser the night before, put the coins in his pocket, and went downstairs to his car.
Something green had been shoved under the wiper blade on the driver’s side.
YOUR CAR WILL NEVER BE WORTH MORE THAN IT IS WORTH RIGHT NOW! WHY WAIT FOR DEPRECIATION TO MAKE YOU AUTOMOTIVELY BANKRUPT? I WILL BUY THIS CAR AND PAY YOU CASH! I WILL NOT CHEAT YOU!
Ed Wolfe considered his car thoughtfully a moment and then got in. That day he drove through the city, playing the car radio softly. He heard the news on the hour and half-hour. He listened to Art Linkletter, far away and in another world. He heard Bing Crosby’s ancient voice, and thought sadly, Depreciation. When his tank was almost empty he thought wearily of having to have it filled and could see himself, bored and discontented behind the bug-stained glass, forced into a patience he did not feel, having to decide whether to take the Green Stamps the attendant tried to extend. Put money in your purse, Ed Wolfe, he thought. Cash! he thought with passion.
He went to the address on the circular.
He drove up onto the gravel lot but remained in his car. In a moment a man came out of a small wooden shack and walked toward Ed Wolfe’s car. If he was appraising it he gave no sign. He stood at the side of the automobile and waited while Ed Wolfe got out.
“Look around,” the man said. “No pennants, no strings of electric lights.” He saw the advertisement in Ed Wolfe’s hand. “I ran the ad off on my brother-in-law’s mimeograph. My kid stole the paper from his school.”
Ed Wolfe looked at him.
“The place looks like a goddamn parking lot. When the snow starts falling I get rid of the cars and move the Christmas trees in. No overhead. That’s the beauty of a volume business.”
Ed Wolfe looked pointedly at the nearly empty lot.
“That’s right,” the man said. “It’s slow. I’m giving the policy one more chance. Then I cheat the public just like everybody else. You’re just in time. Come on, I’ll show you a beautiful car.”
“I want to sell my car,” Ed Wolfe said.
“Sure, sure,” the man said. “You want to trade with me. I give top allowances. I play fair.”
“I want you to buy my car.”
The man looked at him closely. “What do you want? You want me to go into the office and put on the ten-gallon hat? It’s my only overhead, so I guess you’re entitled to see it. You’re paying for it. I put on this big frigging hat, see, and I become Texas Willie Waxelman, the Mad Cowboy. If that’s what you want, I can get it in a minute.”
It’s incredible, Ed Wolfe thought. There are bastards everywhere who hate other bastards downtown everywhere. “I don’t want to trade my car in,” he said. “I want to sell it. I, too, want to reduce my inventory.”
The man smiled sadly. “You want me to buy your car. You run in and put on the hat. I’m an automobile salesman, kid.”
“No, you’re not,” Ed Wolfe said. “I was with Cornucopia Finance. We handled your paper. You’re an automobile buyer. Your business is in buying up four- and five-year-old cars like mine from people who need dough fast and then auctioning them off to the trade.”
The man turned away and Ed Wolfe followed him. Inside the shack the man said, “I’ll give you two hundred.”
“I need six hundred,” Ed Wolfe said.
“I’ll lend you the hat. Hold up a goddamn stagecoach.”
“Give me five.”
“I’ll give you two-fifty and we’ll part friends.”
“Four hundred and fifty.”
“Three hundred. Here,” the man said, reaching his hand into an opened safe and taking out three sheaves of thick, banded bills. He held the money out to Ed Wolfe. “Go ahead, count it.”
Absently Ed Wolfe took the money. The bills were stiff, like money in a teller’s drawer, their value as decorous and untapped as a sheet of postage stamps. He held the money, pleased by its weight. “Tens and fives,” he said, grinning.
“You bet,” the man said, taking the money back. “You want to sell your car?”
“Yes,” Ed Wolfe said. “Give me the money,” he said hoarsely.
He had been to the bank, had stood in the patient, slow, money-conscious line, had presented his formidable check to the impassive teller, hoping the four hundred and sixty-three dollars and sixty-five cents she counted out would seem his week’s salary to the man who waited behind him. Fool, he thought, it will seem two weeks’ pay and two weeks in lieu of notice and a week for vacation for the hell of it, the three-week margin of an orphan.
“Thank you,” the teller said, already looking beyond Ed Wolfe to the man behind him.
“Wait,” Ed Wolfe said. “Here.” He handed her a white withdrawal slip.
She took it impatiently and walked to a file. “You’re closing your savings account?” she asked loudly.
“Yes,” Ed Wolfe answered, embarrassed.
“I’ll have a cashier’s check made out for this.”
“No, no,” Ed Wolfe said desperately. “Give me cash.”
“Sir, we make out a cashier’s check and cash it for you,” the teller explained.
“Oh,” Ed Wolfe said. “I see.”
When the teller had given him the two hundred fourteen dollars and twenty-three cents, he went to the next window, where he made out a check for $38.91. It was what he had in his checking account.
On Ed Wolfe’s kitchen table was a thousand dollars. That day he had spent one dollar and ninety cents. He had twenty-seven dollars and seventy-one cents in his pocket. For expenses. “For attrition,” he said aloud. “The cost of living. For streetcars and newspapers and half-gallons of milk and loaves of white bread. For the movies. For a cup of coffee.” He went to his pantry. He counted the cans and packages, the boxes and bottles. “The three weeks again,” he said. “The orphan’s nutritional margin.” He looked in his icebox. In the freezer he poked around among white packages of frozen meat. He looked brightly into the vegetable tray. A whole lettuce. Five tomatoes. Several slices of cucumber. Browning celery. On another shelf four bananas. Three and a half apples. A cut pineapple. Some grapes, loose and collapsing darkly in a white bowl. A quarter-pound of butter. A few eggs. Another egg, broken last week, congealing in a blue dish. Things in plastic bowls, in jars, forgotten, faintly mysterious leftovers, faintly rotten, vaguely futured, equivocal garbage. He closed the door, feeling a draft. “Really,” he said, “it’s quite cozy.” He looked at the thousand dollars on the kitchen table. “It’s not enough,” he said. “It’s not enough,” he shouted. “It’s not enough to be cautious on. La Meck, you bastard, detachment comes higher, what do you think? You think it’s cheap?” He raged against himself. It was the way he used to speak to people on the telephone. “Wake up. Orphan! Jerk! Wake up. It costs to be detached.”
He moved solidly through the small apartment and lay down on his bed with his shoes still on, p
utting his hands behind his head luxuriously. It’s marvelous, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll buy a trench coat. I’ll take my meals in piano bars. He lit a cigarette. I’ll never smile again,” he sang, smiling. “All right, Eddie, play it again,” he said. “Mistuh Wuf, you don’ wan’ ta heah dat ol’ song no maw. You know whut it do to you. She ain’ wuth it, Mistuh Wuf.” He nodded. “Again, Eddie.” Eddie played his black ass off. “The way I see it, Eddie,” he said, taking a long, sad drink of warm Scotch, “there are orphans and there are orphans.” The overhead fan chuffed slowly, stirring the potted palmetto leaves.
He sat up in the bed, grinding his heels across the sheets. “There are orphans and there are orphans,” he said. “I’ll move. I’ll liquidate. I’ll sell out.”
He went to the phone, called his landlady and made an appointment to see her.
It was a time of ruthless parting from his things, but there was no bitterness in it. He was a born salesman, he told himself. A disposer, a natural dumper. He administered severance. As detached as a funeral director, what he had learned was to say good-by. It was a talent of a sort. And he had never felt quite so interested. He supposed he was doing what he had been meant for—what, perhaps, everyone was meant for. He sold and he sold, each day spinning off little pieces of himself, like controlled explosions of the sun. Now his life was a series of speeches, of nearly earnest pitches. What he remembered of the day was what he had said. What others said to him, or even whether they spoke at all, he was unsure of.
Tuesday he told his landlady, “Buy my furniture. It’s new. It’s good stuff. It’s expensive. You can forget about that. Put it out of your mind. I want to sell it. I’ll show you bills for over seven hundred dollars. Forget the bills. Consider my character. Consider the man. Only the man. That’s how to get your bargains. Examine. Examine. I could tell you about inner springs; I could talk to you of leather. But I won’t. I don’t. I smoke, but I’m careful. I can show you the ashtrays. You won’t find cigarette holes in my tables. Examine. I drink. I’m a drinker. I drink. But I hold it. You won’t find alcohol stains. May I be frank? I make love. Again, I could show you the bills. But I’m cautious. My sheets are virginal, white.
“Two hundred fifty dollars, landlady. Sit on that sofa. That chair. Buy my furniture. Rent the apartment furnished. Deduct what you pay from your taxes. Collect additional rents. Realize enormous profits. Wallow in gravy. Get it, landlady? Get it, landlady! Two hundred fifty dollars. Don’t disclose the figure or my name. I want to remain anonymous.”
He took her into his bedroom. “The piece of resistance, landlady. What you’re really buying is the bedroom stuff. This is where I do all my dreaming. What do you think? Elegance. Elegance! I throw in the living-room rug. That I throw in. You have to take that or it’s no deal. Give me cash and I move tomorrow.”
Wednesday he said, “I heard you buy books. That must be interesting. And sad. It must be very sad. A man who loves books doesn’t like to sell them. It would be the last thing. Excuse me. I’ve got no right to talk to you this way. You buy books and I’ve got books to sell. There. It’s business now. As it should be. My library—” He smiled helplessly. “Excuse me. Such a grand name. Library.” He began again slowly. “My books, my books are in there. Look them over. I’m afraid my taste has been rather eclectic. You see, my education has not been formal. There are over eleven hundred. Of course, many are paperbacks. Well, you can see that. I feel as if I’m selling my mind.”
The book buyer gave Ed Wolfe one hundred twenty dollars for his mind.
On Thursday he wrote a letter:
American Annuity & Life Insurance Company,
Suite 410,
Lipton-Hill Building,
2007 Beverly Street, S.W.,
Boston 19, Massachusetts
Dear Sirs,
I am writing in regard to Policy Number 593-000-34-78, a $5,000, twenty-year annuity held by Edward Wolfe of the address below.
Although only four payments have been made, and sixteen years remain before the policy matures, I find I must make application for the immediate return of my payments and cancel the policy.
I have read the “In event of cancellation” clause in my policy, and realize that I am entitled to only a flat three percent interest on the “total paid-in amount of the partial amortizement.” Your records will show that I have made four payments of $198.45 each. If your figures check with mine this would come to $793.80. Adding three percent interest to this amount ($23.81.), your company owes me $817.61.
Your prompt attention to my request would be gratefully appreciated, although I feel, frankly, as though I were selling my future.
On Monday someone came to buy his record collection. “What do you want to hear? I’ll put something comfortable on while we talk. What do you like? Here, try this. Go ahead, put it on the machine. By the edges, man. By the edges! I feel as if I’m selling my throat. Never mind about that. Dig the sounds. Orphans up from Orleans singing the news of chain gangs to cafe society. You can smell the freight trains, man. Recorded during actual performance. You can hear the ice cubes clinkin’ in the glasses, the waiters picking up their tips. I have jazz. Folk. Classical. Broadway. Spoken word. Spoken word, man! I feel as though I’m selling my ears. The stuff lives in my heart or I wouldn’t sell. I have a one-price throat, one-price ears. Sixty dollars for the noise the world makes, man. But remember, I’ll be watching. By the edges. Only by the edges!”
On Friday he went to a pawnshop in a Checker cab.
“You? You buy gold? You buy clothes? You buy Hawaiian guitars? You buy pistols for resale to suicides? I wouldn’t have recognized you. Where’s the skullcap, the garters around the sleeves? The cigar I wouldn’t ask you about. You look like anybody. You look like everybody. I don’t know what to say. I’m stuck. I don’t know how to deal with you. I was going to tell you something sordid, you know? You know what I mean? Okay, I’ll give you facts.
“The fact is, I’m the average man. That’s what the fact is. Eleven shirts, 15 neck, 34 sleeve. Six slacks, 32 waist. Five suits at 38 long. Shoes 10-C. A 7½ hat. You know something? Those marginal restaurants where you can never remember whether they’ll let you in without a jacket? Well, the jackets they lend you in those places always fit me. That’s the kind of guy you’re dealing with. You can have confidence. Look at the clothes. Feel the material. And there’s one thing about me. I’m fastidious. Fastidious. Immaculate. You think I’d be clumsy. A fall guy falls down, right? There’s not a mark on the clothes. Inside? Inside it’s another story. I don’t speak of inside. Inside it’s all Band-Aids, plaster, iodine, sticky stuff for burns. But outside—fastidiousness, immaculation, reality! My clothes will fly off your racks. I promise. I feel as if I’m selling my skin. Does that check with your figures?
“So now you know. It’s me, Ed Wolfe. Ed Wolfe, the orphan? I lived in the orphanage for sixteen years. They gave me a name. It was a Jewish orphanage, so they gave me a Jewish name. Almost. That is, they couldn’t know for sure themselves, so they kept it deliberately vague. I’m a foundling. A lostling. Who needs it, right? Who the hell needs it? I’m at loose ends, pawnbroker. I’m at loose ends out of looser beginnings. I need the money to stay alive. All you can give me.
“Here’s a good watch. Here’s a bad one. For good times and bad. That’s life, right? You can sell them as a package deal. Here are radios. You like Art Linkletter? A phonograph. Automatic. Three speeds. Two speakers. One thing and another thing, see? And a pressure cooker. It’s valueless to me, frankly. No pressure. I can live only on cold meals. Spartan. Spartan.
“I feel as if I’m selling—this is the last of it, I have no more things—I feel as if I’m selling my things.”
On Saturday he called the phone company: “Operator? Let me speak to your supervisor, please.
“Supervisor? Supervisor, I am Ed Wolfe, your subscriber at TErrace 7-3572. There is nothing wrong with the service. The service has been excellent. No one calls, but you have nothing to do with
that. However, I must cancel. I find that I no longer have any need of a telephone. Please connect me with the business office.
“Business office? Business office, this is Ed Wolfe. My telephone number is TErrace 7-3572. I am closing my account with you. When the service was first installed I had to surrender a twenty-five-dollar deposit to your company. It was understood that the deposit was to be refunded when our connection with each other had been terminated. Disconnect me. Deduct what I owe on my current account from my deposit and refund the rest immediately. Business office, I feel as if I’m selling my mouth.”
When he had nothing left to sell, when that was finally that, he stayed until he had finished all the food and then moved from his old apartment into a small, thinly furnished room. He took with him a single carton of clothing—the suit, the few shirts, the socks, the pajamas, the underwear and overcoat he did not sell. It was in preparing this carton that he discovered the hangers. There were hundreds of them. His own, previous tenants’. Hundreds. In each closet, on rods, in dark, dark corners, was this anonymous residue of all their lives. He unpacked his carton and put the hangers inside. They made a weight. He took them to the pawnshop and demanded a dollar for them. They were worth more, he argued. In an A&P he got another carton for nothing and went back to repack his clothes.
At the new place the landlord gave him his key.
“You got anything else?” the landlord asked. “I could give you a hand.”
“No,” he said. “Nothing.”
Following the landlord up the deep stairs he was conscious of the $2,479.03 he had packed into the pockets of the suit and shirts and pajamas and overcoat inside the carton. It was like carrying a community of economically viable dolls.
Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers Page 6
