For a moment I just looked at her. Then I stood up and smacked the table with my fist.
“That’s what you think,” I yelled. “What the hell do you think this is, anyway? What do you think I am, a baby? You can’t pull any of that fancy stuff around here, Ma. If I don’t want to see her, I won’t. And nothing you can say or do can make me. Understand? Where the hell do you get that—?”
“What’s the matter, Heshie?” she said quietly, looking up at me from the other side of the table. “What are you afraid of?”
She had the word all right.
“Who’s afraid?” I said.
“You are,” she said.
It looked like I was the answer to everything.
“Don’t make me laugh,” I said. “Afraid!”
But I sat down again.
“Now look, Heshie,” she said, leaning forward. “Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think so. I think I’m right, Heshie. I think you like her and I know she likes you and I’m positive she’ll make you a wife like you won’t find again if you spend the whole rest of your life looking. But anyway, maybe I’m wrong. Let’s say for a minute, I’m wrong. Let’s say you don’t like her. But why, Heshie? Why? Tell me, tell your mother, why? Give me one good reason.”
“Aah, Ma,” I said, “you can’t give reasons about things like that. You either like a person or you don’t. That’s all.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But then you’re not so positive. But you, you’re so positive you don’t like her, you must at least have one reason. At least one reason let me hear!”
“Aah, Ma,” I began, squirming a little, and then I blurted, “she’s so damn Jewish-looking! You take one look at her, you see right away she’s a kike from the Bronx. For crying out loud, what do you want me to do, walk down the street and have everybody giving me the horse laugh because—?”
She flared up so suddenly that for a moment I almost couldn’t catch my breath.
“You crazy dumbbell without shame!” she cried. “So that’s what’s eating you! You’re a Jew yourself, aren’t you? Haven’t you got a little feeling in you? What are you, ashamed of what you are? What are you going to do, go around hiding from people what you are? Don’t think you’re so smart, Heshie. The world is smarter,” she almost screamed. “They only have to look at you to know. You can try all you want, you stupid dope, you, but it won’t help. I’m glad for once that your father is dead. He shouldn’t have lived to hear a son of his talk like that, I’m glad.” Her voice shifted to a sarcastic note. “So that’s why you don’t like Ruthie Rivkin! She’s too Jewish-looking for you, hah? And maybe I look like a shickseh to you? Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Dope. That girl is got more fineness in her one little finger than all the rest of those tramps you’re all the time running around with. She’s got more—”
“I didn’t say she didn’t have,” I yelled.
“Hold your tongue, my fine one,” she cried. “Who do you think you’re yelling at, those dopes that you got for partners?”
“Keep them out of this,” I cried, and was surprised for a second to find myself in a position where I was defending those two klucks. “I only said I didn’t—”
“Never mind what you said,” she shouted. “I heard what you said. You said enough for one day.”
Suddenly she dropped into her seat and was silent. I sat down, too, and tried to reach across the table to take her hand, but she snatched it away. She sat there, staring at her hands.
Finally she said, “Why do you bother coming home altogether, Heshie, if we’re going to fight like this?”
“I don’t want to fight with you, Ma,” I said. “I don’t want to stay away from home, Ma.”
“If this is what happens when you come home,” she said dully, “maybe it would be better—”
“Don’t say that, Ma,” I said, reaching across for her hand. She let me take it. “I’m sorry if I said anything, Ma. I didn’t really mean it.”
“That you’re sorry, I can believe,” she said quietly. “But don’t say you didn’t mean it, Heshie.” She shook her head. “When a person says what you said, it’s only because he does mean it. It’s a terrible thing, Heshie.”
“I guess it is, Ma,” I said, scowling. “But I can’t help feeling the way I do, can I?”
“No,” she said. “But me—I don’t feel like that.”
“But don’t ever say you don’t want me to come home,” I said. “I like to come home here. I have to come home, Ma.”
“What for? We should fight? You should say things you don’t want to say? We should holler at each other like two crazy ones? That’s what you like to come home for?”
“No,” I said. “And that isn’t exactly fair, either, Ma. This is the first time we ever even raised our voices to each other, isn’t it?”
“That’s all those things need,” she said slowly. “A beginning.”
“That’s not true, Ma. Don’t feel that way about it. I don’t want you to say those things. It means too much to me to come home here for you to say those things.”
“When a person begins to think and talk the way you do, Heshie, home doesn’t mean anything to him any more,” she said.
“Yes, it does, Ma,” I said.
“No,” she said. “You’re a businessman now. You’re a big businessman. You don’t think any more the way a son should think. You think the way a businessman thinks. What’s a home to a businessman?”
“I don’t care about what it means to businessmen, Ma,” I said. “All I care about is what it means to me. For crying out loud, Ma, this is the only place where I can sit down and take a rest without feeling that somebody is going to jump on me from behind. This is the only place where it isn’t dog eat dog. Don’t you understand that, Ma? You think I enjoy all this fighting, fighting, fighting all the time, trying to show people you’re smarter than they are? All right, maybe I do enjoy it. I don’t know for sure. Maybe I think I enjoy it because I know it’s the only way to get any place in this world, it’s the only way to make money and buy the things you want and really live like a person, not a dog. But whether I enjoy it or not, that’s not the point. The point is you can’t stand a thing like that forever. You have to have a place where you can sit down and take a deep breath and know you’re with a friend, you’re with a person that really cares for you. That’s what coming home here at night means to me, Ma. It makes me feel like a human being for a change. I can sit back and stick my legs under the table and eat your blintzes, without thinking about whether somebody is trying to put one over on me or not. Aah, hell, Ma,” I said, “don’t you see what I mean?”
“Sure I see what you mean,” she said, nodding. “You think you’re saying something new? Maybe I never said it in the words the same like you use, maybe I never even thought of it that way. I suppose maybe I didn’t. But I know that. You aren’t telling me something I never heard. What do you think I want you should go with a nice girl like Ruthie Rivkin? Because she’ll be able to wear the diamond rings and the fur coats you’ll be able to buy for her? Of course not. Because a wife is to a man what you just said. How long do you think I’ll be here for you to come and sit and eat blintzes and talk? I’m not a chicken, Heshie. I’m an old woman already. Never mind,” she said when I tried to protest. “What’s true is true. I’m getting older, Heshie. What are you gonna do when I’m not here? You’ve got to have a wife. You’ve got to have the right kind of a wife. I don’t say you must marry Ruthie Rivkin. Maybe you know another nice girl, a girl you didn’t tell me about yet. If you have, so all right. But that’s the only reason I talk all the time about Ruthie Rivkin. Because about her I’m sure. A mother can tell those things, Heshie. A young boy, sometimes he can’t.”
The hell he can’t.
“All right, Ma,” I said. “Let’s forget the whole thing. Let’s not fight or argue.”
“When are you giving the party in the showroom for the buyers?” she asked. “To-morrow?”
I nodded.
&
nbsp; “So why don’t you invite Ruthie she should come down to the party, she’ll have a nice time, you can—”
“I don’t think she can make it, Ma,” I said. “You know she works during the day, and this is for the afternoon.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “For a thing like this she can get off a half a day. You just tell her she should ask her boss, that’s all.”
“Nah, Ma,” I said, “she wouldn’t enjoy it. These people are, well, they’re tough, Ma. They’re hard drinkers and things like that, Ma. A nice girl like Ruthie, she wouldn’t enjoy herself at all.”
She dropped her eyes from my face and withdrew her hand from mine.
“It’s up to you, Heshie,” she said quietly.
That was the trouble with hanging around with guys like Babushkin and Ast. I’d been softened by poor competition.
“But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Ma,” I said with a smile. “When she gets here to-night—” I looked at the clock—“she’s due here any minute, now, I guess. When she gets here, I’ll take her out and show her a good time. All right? For you, Ma, for you I’ll do it.”
Yeah, for her I was doing it!
24
“YOU STAY PUT HERE,” I said to the men behind the counter that the caterer had rigged up in one corner of the showroom. “All you do is keep mixing drinks and making sandwiches and whatever else you got there. That’s all. You just keep mixing them. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and nodded.
I turned to the three others.
“And you three, you keep loading up your trays here with drinks and stuff and keep on circulating around. Keep moving all the time and keep your trays filled. Make sure everybody’s got enough to drink and eat. There’s gonna be a big gang here, maybe a hundred, and I don’t want anybody to be thirsty. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” they said, and nodded.
I looked at my watch.
“They ought to begin arriving pretty soon now. So all right, then, you fellows, you know what I want. Go to it, and if everything’s all right, there’ll be a nice little something extra for each one of you when it’s all over. Okay?”
“Yes, sir,” they said, and nodded.
It wasn’t really as monotonous as it sounds. I even liked it a little, the way no matter what I said they yessed me and nodded.
I turned to the long, low platform the carpenters had built along the wall opposite the windows. It stretched, like a stage, for about twenty feet down the showroom, beginning at the curtained doorway that led into the models’ room. I climbed the three low steps at the far end and walked along its length, dropping my feet heavily, to test its strength. It was good and solid. At the end I stepped down, parted the curtains, and walked into the models’ room.
There was so much noise and smoke in the room that nobody noticed me. About twenty girls were jammed into the small space, dressing, undressing, smoking, and all the time jawing away at each other. In the middle, fitting a dress on a platinum blonde with a cute little fanny, was Meyer Babushkin. He had a tape measure around his neck, a mouthful of pins, and from the frown on his face you would think he was measuring his closest friend for a wooden overcoat.
I rapped on the wall with a hanger until they heard me and began to quiet down a little. Then I held up my hand and said, “Can I have your attention for a minute, girls?”
I heard a few “Who’s thats” and “Who’s hes” and I heard my own models say, “That’s Mr. Bogen. That’s the boss.”
In a few seconds they were quiet.
“You all know what we want, girls,” I said, smiling pleasantly. “But just a quick summary before we begin. The guests’ll be arriving soon, and when they’re all here, say in about, oh, I don’t know, say a half hour or so, I’ll come to the doorway here and give you the word. Then you begin to file out slowly, in the order Mr. Babushkin told you about. After the show, when I give the word, you come down off the platform and mingle with the guests. Okay?”
“Yes, Mr. Bogen,” they said.
“Fine,” I said. “And if everything goes all right, when it’s all over there’ll be a nice little something extra for every one of you.”
They began to giggle and chatter, but I held up my hand for silence.
“Everything okay, Meyer?” I asked.
He nodded. That was the big trouble with him. He was always shooting off his mouth.
“That’s fine,” I said, and went out. So far it looked like I was the only one who thought so.
The first thing I ran into was Teddy Ast, standing in the middle of the showroom, watching the caterer’s men and the platform and the decorations in the showroom with a face that looked like it could reach from here to Kocktebel, Russia.
“Hello, Teddy,” I said cheerfully.
“Boy,” he said, shaking his head, “what this thing cost!”
“So what?” I said.
He just looked around the large room again and shook his head.
“Boy, oh, boy!”
“Ah, nuts,” I said. “Got a cigarette on you?”
He gave me one and held the match for me.
“Boy,” he said again, “what this thing cost!”
“Pipe down, will you?” I said. “The war’s over. This is the way to sell dresses and make dough these days. Don’t worry so much about what this cost. We’ll get it all back spades doubled.”
“Yeah,” he said, “we’ll get it back. In the pig’s eye.”
The only reason I didn’t say what I wanted to say or do what I wanted to do was that the front door opened and the first gang of buyers came in.
“See if you can look alive there a little,” I said out of the corner of my mouth, and then we both went forward to meet them.
Soon they were arriving so fast that one of us had to keep standing near the door to greet them. Teddy seemed to like the idea, so I said, “You better circulate around a little and see that everybody’s got enough to drink.” This was my show and the buyers were going to remember me, not Teddy.
By four o’clock most of them had arrived and had a couple of drinks. So I climbed up onto the platform and rapped for silence. They turned to face me, holding drinks and cigarettes.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, flashing my best smile from one end of the room to the other, “may I have your attention?”
The large room became quiet.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you, thank you, thank you. I want you all to know that I really and sincerely appreciate your all showing up like this, and if there’s anything I’ve forgotten, and it’s something anybody here thinks will in any way make this a bigger and better party, why, then, folks, let him speak up now and I, as the management, will do my little bit to see that he or she is taken care of properly. What say?”
I looked around the room, smiling, and they smiled back. But nobody spoke.
“All right, then,” I said, “let’s get on with the christening. The firm,” I said, “is Apex Modes. The president”—I pointed to myself—“is Harry Bogen. We are the proud parents, ladies and gentlemen, who present, for your approval, the apple of our eye—our new fall line.”
There was a little applause, not much, because most of them were holding glasses or sandwiches, but a little. I ran down the three steps of the platform, stuck my head into the models’ room, and said, “Okay, Meyer.”
“Okay,” he replied, and I stepped back, holding the curtain away from the doorway.
The first girl was a blonde. She stepped through the doorway, climbed the steps of the platform, turned slowly to show the lines of the dress, and moved down the platform. She was followed by a brunette. Then came a redhead and then a platinum. They followed each other like that slowly, a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, a platinum, until the platform was jammed with a long line of them, some twenty strong. They stood like that for a few moments, posing with their hands on their hips or clasped in front of them. Then the whole group turned slowly and came to rest again,
like a line of statues.
This time the applause was louder and longer. When I saw some of those boozehounds actually set their glasses down so they could clap their hands, I knew the line was a hit.
“Okay, girls,” I said, and they walked off the platform and began to mix with the crowd.
A half dozen buyers, men and women, crowded around me.
“Where did you get the models, Bogen? They’re a knockout!”
“Say, that’s some bunch of babies. Where’d you get them?”
“Hey, Bogen! I don’t see models like that around the other houses. How come?”
“That’s easy,” I said, laughing. “They’re not regular models.”
“Who are they?”
“That’s the chorus of Smile Out Loud,” I said.
“You mean that?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy! Pick me that little redhead with the you know whats. Gangway, boys, here I go!”
Five minutes after the girls joined the crowd on the floor, the place was in an uproar. People kept slapping my back and spilling their drinks over me, but I didn’t mind. The opening was a success. Not only were the dresses pips, but the idea of getting the chorus of a musical comedy to wear them had caught on.
One of my regular models came up to me.
“Mr. Bogen,” she said. “What’s the matter with Mr. Ast?” She pointed to Teddy sulking in a corner. “What is he, drunk?”
He wasn’t, but it was as good an explanation as any. “Drunk?” I said. “Why, for Christ’s sakes, he’s potted. Just let him alone and don’t worry about him.”
The hell with him, I figured. Let him sulk. After all, he was the only one there that didn’t seem to be having a good time.
I poked my nose into the little group around Boonton of Arnolds-Tepperman. She bought the highest-priced stuff in the market, and the mere fact that she was present was something of a triumph. I knew the others, but I had never met her.
I Can Get It for You Wholesale Page 22
