Before I could pull the door open, it moved in toward me and Babushkin came into the office, carrying some papers.
“Hello, Meyer,” I said, “I was just going to look for you,” I said.
“Good morning, Harry,” he said. “Just a second.”
He walked over to one of the other girls, dropped the papers on her desk, and said, “Call the express company and tell them to put a tracer on this charge.” Then he turned to me. “You want me, Harry?”
“Yeah, Meyer,” I said, “I’ve got an appointment with some buyers and I’ll need some cash.”
I sat down at Miss A’s desk, opened the checkbook, and wrote a check for five hundred dollars. She watched me over my shoulder.
I stood up and said, “Come on down to the bank with me, Meyer, will you? I’ve got an appointment with some buyers this afternoon and I want to get this cashed.”
“All right, Harry,” he said, “I’ll go get my coat.”
“But Mr. Bogen,” Miss A said, “you just made an appointment with Miss Mills. You just spoke—”
“Just don’t worry too much about it, Miss A,” I said, shaking my hand at her. “You just make those payments like I told you.”
“Yes, Mr. Bogen,” she said.
“All right, Meyer,” I said, turning back to him, “step on it, will you?”
“Sure, Harry, I’m just going in for my coat.”
“All right, Meyer, but put a little jism into it, will you? Let’s get down to the bank. I’ve got to see some buyers.”
33
I WOKE UP WITH a headache, and the first thing I thought of didn’t help it any. The little bitch. What did she think I was buying her wrist watches and automobiles for, so I could practice penmanship in my checkbook?
I went into the bathroom for an aspirin. The bottle was empty. Just a well-ordered household. “That’s for you, you little whore,” I said, and fired the bottle into a corner of the room. One of the splinters backfired and nicked my leg. The iodine burned like hell, and the tape wouldn’t stay put. I ripped it off and yelled, “Ouch.” Two inches of skin and a fistful of hair came off with it.
Halfway into my pants I decided I wanted to wear my cordovan shoes. They weren’t in the shoe cabinet and they weren’t in the closet. I bit my lip and said, “All right, Mr. Bogen, you’re going to wear cordovan shoes to-day if you have to rip the leather off the window seats and make yourself a pair.” I started in one corner of the bedroom and worked my way systematically. Anything I looked into or under, and didn’t find them, I kicked over. When my right foot felt sore I started with my left. I found them under the sofa in the living room when I tipped that over. I held them in my hand and looked around the place. The only things left standing were a small vase that had set me back thirty bucks in Ovington’s and a framed picture of her on the mantelpiece. I picked up the vase and heaved it. The picture went down with a crash, and I felt a little better. Anyway, my aim was still good.
In the middle of knotting my tie the phone began to ring. I let it ring until I finished with the tie and buttoned on the vest. Then I picked it up, but I didn’t speak.
“Hello? Hello? Mr. Bogen?”
It was the girl at the switchboard in the office.
“What do you want?”
“Who’s this, Mr. Bogen?”
“Who the hell does it sound like, the King of England?”
“Whuh, whuh—! Mr. Bogen? Is this Mr. Bogen?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! This is Mr. Bogen. For Christ’s sakes, what do you want?”
“Mr. Babushkin told me to call you at home. He’s been looking for you all morning, and when you didn’t come in, he said I should call—”
“Tell Mr. Babushkin not to strain his milk.”
“What?”
“Ah, nuts! Tell Mr. Babushkin I’ll be down a little later,” I said, and slammed the receiver onto the hook.
I didn’t have enough troubles, I had to have that little pyoick calling me up on the telephone.
On the way out of the building I stopped to talk to the starter.
“Tell the super to send a couple of maids up to straighten out my apartment. I got in too late last night to tell him about it, but the place looks like a cyclone hit it.”
“Why, Mr. Bogen—”
“I haven’t got time to listen to speeches about it. Just tell him I’d consider it a personal favor if the help used somebody’s else’s apartment for their crap games while I’m out.”
“But, Mr. Bogen—”
“You heard me,” I said. “And you can tell him if it happens again I’m moving out, lease or no lease.”
I took a cab to the barber and slipped into my regular chair.
“Try to remember my face is covered with skin,” I told the ginney, “not asphalt.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Boge’, I never cut—”
“And save the talk for somebody else,” I said. “I got a headache.”
“You got a headache, Mr. Boge’? Special for you, Mr. Boge’, I give you, my steady customer, I give you free a massage, it’ll take away the headache, Mr. Boge’, one, two, three.”
“Just shut up for a change,” I said.
When I got out it was still too early to go down to the office. First of all I was in no mood to face that phiz of Babushkin’s, and secondly, I wasn’t getting down there so soon after he called me, anyway. I wasn’t giving him or anybody else the impression that I was taking orders.
I took a cab to the tailor.
One of the fitters was in the small front room.
“Good morning, Mr. Bogen,” he said, looking surprised.
“Where’s Caruso?”
“Mr. Caruso is out now, Mr. Bogen.”
“What does he think he’s running, a night club? Why doesn’t he stick around to take care of his customers?”
“Why, he’s, he’s out taking a fitting, Mr. Bogen. You didn’t have an appointment, did you, Mr. Bogen?”
He reached for the appointment book and began to turn the pages.
“Where’s my brown herringbone? Is it ready?”
“Ready?” He looked at me with his mouth open. “Why, you only had the measurements taken two weeks ago, Mr. Bogen! It won’t be ready for another week, Mr. Bogen!”
“Oh, no?” I lit a cigarette, but it tasted lousy. I dropped it on the rug and stepped on it. “I want to wear that suit to-morrow, see?”
“But Mr. Bogen—”
“Never mind,” I said. “Never mind. You can tell Caruso from me if that suit isn’t delivered at my place to-day he can take it and stick it up his ass and holler fire.”
I went out and slammed the door before he could Mr. Bogen me again. Boy, did I feel mean!
I stood on the curb and chewed my lip. I wasn’t sore at the dough I’d spent. Not too sore, anyway. Hell, there was acres of it where the rest had come from. What made me sore was that I couldn’t figure out what she was driving at. What was she holding for? What did she want me to do, get down on my knees, or send her an engraved invitation—? An engraved invitation? Say! Was that what she was holding out for?
The idea hit me so suddenly, and it seemed like such a perfect explanation, that for a minute I didn’t know whether to laugh or get more sore than I was. But I didn’t spend much time worrying about that. Because I knew right then and there just about how far she’d get with those ideas. What was she doing, stealing Ruthie Rivkin’s stuff?
Maybe I was right, and maybe I was wrong. But one thing was sure, I said to myself. She was going to come through. This just made it a little more interesting, that’s all. Whether she had that in her mind or not, she was going to come through, either which way. And it was going to be within the next day or so, too. I was getting a little sick of this stalling and spending three-quarters of my day trying to figure out what was going on in her mind.
Can you imagine the nerve of a little pot like that? Holding out for marriage? Jesus Christ and the gas company!
No wonder she was gett
ing fancy ideas. Instead of concentrating on her, I had to go around wasting my time in the Bronx.
What the hell was the sense of kidding myself? You couldn’t blow hot and cold at the same time. You took one or the other. You couldn’t have both. It didn’t work. You couldn’t reach for a Martha Mills and let yourself be distracted by a dumb squash that smiled pleasantly. You couldn’t reach for the big dough and listen to your mother’s lessons in morals.
All of a sudden I felt sore. What the hell was I going to do, sit on a fence the rest of my life? The hell with Ruthie Rivkin. And Mama? What was she doing for a living?—making me blintzes? She could stay up in the Bronx where she belonged.
From now on I was traveling in a straight line. Without any excess baggage, either. And the first stop was Martha Mills.
Making up my mind like that made me feel better already. I spit into the gutter and yelled, “Taxi!”
One of them swung out of the stream of traffic and stopped in front of me.
“Fourteen Hundred Broadway,” I said. All the girls looked at me as I went through the office, but I didn’t say anything. I went into my private office, threw my hat and coat on the couch, and reached for the telephone. Before I could pick it up, Babushkin came in. This time he didn’t knock. Maybe I’d been wrong after all. Maybe he wasn’t a gentleman.
“Gee whiz, Harry,” he said, “I been looking for you all morning. I didn’t know where you were. I called your home even.”
“What’s the matter? What’s all the excitement about?”
“I can’t get any goods, Harry,” he said, spreading his hands. I’d never seen him talk so fast. “Nobody wants to ship. I called up Dommelick, I called up Mandel, they all tell me the same thing. They say Apex is slow. How can we be slow, Harry, with all the business we’re doing?” He waved a batch of papers. “Look at these orders, Harry. I got orders to fill, and I can’t get goods to cut! What’s happening, Harry? I gotta have goods, Harry! I gotta fill the orders! What’s this business all of a sudden, we’re slow? How can we be slow, Harry, with all the business we’re doing, all the money we got coming—?”
“Take it easy, will you, Meyer? Don’t get so excited.”
“But Harry, we got orders! If I don’t get no goods, how can I cut the dresses—?”
“Who’d you speak to? Who said we’re slow?”
“All of them, Harry. Dommelick, Mandel—”
“Aah, they’re nuts,” I said, getting up and patting him on the back. “Stop worrying about it. Let me handle this.”
“But Harry, we gotta get the goods or—”
“You’ll get the goods, you’ll get the goods,” I said, guiding him to the door. “Just let me handle this.”
As soon as the door closed behind him I went to the phone and called Martha.
“Listen, Martha,” I said, “I haven’t got much time to talk now. A couple of big buyers are in the showroom waiting for me. I’ll pick you up to-night right after the show. I’ve got something important to talk to you about.”
“Important?” she said. “Couldn’t you—?”
Sure I could. But not on the phone. Boy, was that baby going to get an earful of straight talk!
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” I said. “Right after the show. All right?”
“All right, dear,” she said.
“So long, kid,” I said. “I’m in a hurry.”
I jiggled the hook.
“Yes, Mr. Bogen,” the girl said.
“Get me Mr. McKee, the credit man of D. G. Dommelick.”
“Yes, Mr. Bogen.”
Pause.
“Hello? Hello, McKee?”
“Talking.”
“This is Bogen, McKee. Bogen of Apex Modes.”
“Oh, yes. How are you, Bogen?”
“Fine. Listen, McKee, what’s this I hear about you not wanting to ship us? What is it, a gag?”
“No gag, Bogen. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“Why?”
“Your account has been slow for months, Bogen. And we’ve checked you way above your credit limit. I’m sorry, Bogen, but we can’t send you another yard of goods until we get a check.”
“Don’t be like that, old man. We’ve got orders to fill. Send us the goods, and you’ll get a check on the tenth. What do you say, McKee?”
“Sorry, Bogen, it’s no dice.”
“Look here, McKee. You can’t do a thing like that to us. Why, we’ve done over seventy-five thousand dollars worth of business with you during the past year, haven’t we? After doing business with you like that, don’t tell me you’re going to cut us out just because we’re slow on one bill, are you, McKee?”
“It’s not one bill, Bogen, and you know it. You’ve been slow with us for months. We’ve carried you, but we can’t do it any longer. Your balance is too big right now, as it is.”
“Oh, come, now, McKee. Be a sport, will you?”
“Sorry, Bogen. With somebody else, maybe we would. But there’s no room for fine feelings in the way you do business, Bogen, and you know it.”
“Aah, now, McKee, listen. You—”
“No go, Bogen. The way you wrote your contract, there’s no room for that. You wrote the rules, Bogen, remember that. We’re just playing your way, that’s all.”
“Oh, come on, McKee. Don’t tell me you’re still holding against me those allowances we took last year. I’ll tell you what. I’ll send you a check on account right away. I’ll put a check for five hundred in the mail right away. What do you say?”
“Sorry, Bogen. That’s all you’ve been giving us for months, just on-account payments. We want a check in full, to clean up your balance immediately, or we don’t ship.”
“But McKee—!”
“Sorry, Bogen. Not an inch of goods till we get your check.”
All of a sudden, while I was holding the phone in my hands, it occurred to me that here I was, begging, actually begging, a thick-headed Irish putz like that to sell me goods. The realization that I was crawling in front of anybody made me so sore, that for a few seconds I couldn’t talk straight. But when I spoke, it was in a low, clear voice, so he shouldn’t miss a word.
“You know what you can do, McKee?” I said.
“What?”
“You can go right straight to hell,” I said. “I’ll get all the goods I want from some other place.”
I wanted to say a lot more, but I didn’t have time. I had to beat him to the punch. I slammed the receiver down on the hook. Nobody was going to slam receivers down on me.
34
AS I GOT INTO the elevator, I had to laugh a little to myself. Not that I was in what you could call a happy frame of mind. But it was a little funny, the way the whole thing was working out, just like in a movie. I’d even gotten to the stage where I was buying her a diamond bracelet!
But that’s as far as the similarity went. Because while I’d been willing to let her think I was a rummy and she’d been taking me over, I had my limits, too. The bracelet was the last payment. And as a payment it was going to be strictly C.O.D.
I knew that once I got my mind concentrated on this thing it would begin to work out. I should have done it long before, instead of wasting so much time. Now, if she wanted the bracelet, she knew what she had to do. I’d made that plain. No tickee, no shirtee.
I had to admit, though, that there was a little pleasure in that laugh, too. There was a certain satisfaction in knowing that you could actually afford to go out and buy a diamond bracelet. I liked milestones like that.
But even that little bit of pleasure was knocked out of me when I saw the elevator pass my floor.
“Twenty-nine!” I said sharply.
“Sorry, sir,” the operator said, giving me a look out of the corner of his eye. “You have to call your floor, sir.”
That was a nice way to start off a morning. You can always count on some eighteen-dollar-a-week punk to put you in a nice cheerful frame of mind. You pay ten thousand dollars a year for a loft, an
d the elevator operators don’t even remember what floor you’re on. But when Christmas comes around they’re there with the gimme act. Well, wait till Christmas came. I’d get him a gift. A fur-lined jockstrap I’d get him. The little jerk.
“I’ll stop on the way down, sir.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s goddam nice of you.”
I opened the door into the showroom and stopped. Half a dozen credit men were standing around Babushkin, all talking at the same time.
“Well, well, well,” I said, grinning at them from the doorway. “Good morning, gentlemen. What is this, a convention?”
They turned around quickly, and looked at me. I recognized McKee of Dommelick and Hazzard of Mandel. Before I could spot the others, Babushkin let out a cry and came toward me.
“Harry!”
In all the time I’d known him, this was the first time I’d ever seen him look happy.
“What’s going on here?” I said, coming into the showroom. “What’s up?”
He opened his mouth to tell me, but the others beat him to it.
“Gentlemen, please!” I said, holding up my hand. “One at a time.”
“Look here, Bogen—”
It was McKee talking.
“We-ell! Good morning, Mr. McKee,” I said, bowing a little toward him and smiling. “I’m glad to see we’re still on speaking terms. No hard feelings, eh?”
He clamped his teeth around his cigar so hard that his face looked like it was made out of little crossword puzzle squares.
“Cut the comedy, Bogen,” he said out of the other corner of his mouth.
“Okay,” I said, running my hand over my face and wiping off the smile. “Look how serious I am!”
“Harry!” Babushkin cried, “they say—”
“Listen, Bogen,” McKee interrupted.
“That’s my specialty,” I said, turning back to him. “What do you want?”
“We want our money,” one of the others said.
“Yeah, we want our dough.”
“You’re way past due,” McKee said. “We want our bills paid.”
I looked around at all of them, and then back at McKee.
“You’ll get your dough,” I said.
“Yeah? When?”
I Can Get It for You Wholesale Page 29
