Cold Rain

by Craig Smith

  ‘Have you ever wondered,’ I said during our third dinner together, ‘why I never asked you if you smoke marijuana?’

  We were in a public restaurant, safely tucked away from other people. Lucy had none of the easy exits available to her at the farm, such as something urgent to do in the barn. We were halfway through our meal, an unseemly time to depart for the restroom. But she did her best. ‘Because you know I don’t.’

  I did not remark on this statement. There was nothing untruthful about it, as such. She believed that I believed she had nothing to do with drugs, alcohol, or sex. She was seventeen, sure, but not one of those girls trying to be twenty-two. There had been three boys out to the farm to take her on a formal date, a total of eight or nine times: hayrides, parties, dances, a movie, a football game. She was pretty, but she was headstrong and smart and had no patience for compromise. I had no doubt she had been kissed, kissed plenty, maybe, but there was something so forthright about her that I never doubted her choices. When Lucy fell in love Molly and I would know it. Until then, we were free to delude ourselves with nineteenth century notions of chastity and goodness, if that made us feel better. And why not? Lucy was a good girl, whatever that means in the new millennium. Her reward for that was our silence. Even when it became clear she was getting high we didn’t say anything. We just watched and waited and hoped she was careful. Because she was seventeen, Lucy misunderstood our silence. She imagined we were stupid.

  ‘Not at all,’ I answered. ‘I don’t ask you about it because I’m afraid of your answer.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me, Dave.’

  Still no lie. ‘I don’t worry, because I won’t ask.’ Lucy did not quite understand this. She imagined after she thought about it that I was telling her life as an ostrich has its advantages. I let her work through things to that point before I continued. ‘You see, my greatest fear isn’t grass. It’s that you would lie to me about it if I asked you. That would hurt.’

  I am an evil man. I know how to manipulate a situation. Tubs taught me all too well. Lucy is an innocent. She cannot imagine I have anticipated her next two moves and already have the roadblocks set, that soon she will be lying to me and hating herself for it.

  ‘I’m not smoking grass.’

  Technically, because she did not understand grammar, Lucy thought this was true. She was not smoking it at this moment. I tried not to react. Even among loved ones my observations about grammar were not well received.

  I had put her here by my wickedness, and now it was time to twist the blade a little.

  ‘I’m not asking you!’

  ‘But I’m telling you.’

  ‘What are you telling me?’

  She retreated to silence. One of the first lessons I got in the wastelands was when you asked a question you needed to wait for an answer. I once watched Tubs sit for thirty minutes in front of an older couple. After five seconds the average salesperson will nervously blunder into the silence and ruin a perfectly good closing question. I had seen good salespeople hold out for thirty seconds. I never saw anyone but Tubs Albo last five minutes, but on that day Tubs waited five minutes and nobody spoke, so he just kept waiting.

  Do you want it? That was Tubs’s favourite question, and until he heard an answer he would not talk again.

  Thirty minutes later they were still thinking about it!

  And not a soul in that dealership was foolish enough to blunder into that closing booth and let them off the hook. Finally, seeing that Tubs would wait all day, the old man said, ‘Maybe. If the price was right.’ Five minutes later he owned a car. They were, Tubs explained in the post-mortem, the kind of people who liked to keep a car for seventeen years. Trouble was they had met a real salesman!

  What are you telling me? I asked my stepdaughter, and then I waited.

  Now Lucy was cornered by her own words as I had intended, and I was not about to let her off. She tried to eat, but when she saw that I was waiting for an answer, she set her fork down. Three minutes. The waitress came toward us. I held my hand out imperiously, ‘We’re fine,’ I snapped, and she faded. I kept my eyes on Lucy. What are you telling me? I would not repeat the words, nor would I change my expression. I waited to see if she would lie again, something she couldn’t wriggle out of with a faulty understanding of the present continuous.

  ‘I’ve been around it. Kids do it. Everyone does it.’

  This amounted to as much of a confession as she was willing to make: a syllogism for her step-papa.

  Everyone does it. I am part of the class of everyone.

  Therefore: I do it, too. That was the logic. The emotion was something else: I see it, but I don’t partake. I’d never do something like that! Now put your head back in the sand!

  But I am a stupid man. I do not understand syllogisms or emotional appeals. I waited for her to answer the question. No one should have such a stepfather.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said finally. ‘Not much. If you don’t... you feel like—’

  She stopped, expecting the lecture. I didn’t give it.

  After providing me with more than enough time to preach on the folly of peer pressure, Lucy had to finish her thought. ‘You’re mad.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I thought you would be really pissed off. You more than Mom.’

  ‘I’m concerned. On the other hand, I’m pretty much concerned all the time about you, even when you’re doing everything right.’

  ‘Did you ever smoke grass?’

  ‘Sure. The other kids made me. I mean I hated it, but to be popular... you know how it is.’

  Lucy had found an ally and laughed at my confession. She could even forgive me for mocking her.

  ‘You’re not going to tell Mom?’

  Point of the entire conversation: ‘I don’t keep anything from your mother, Lucy.’

  Lucy’s eyes frosted over, ‘Right.’

  ‘Is there something you want to ask me?’

  ‘What’s the point? You’ll just lie to me.’

  ‘That’s worse than adultery, isn’t it? The worst thing I could do?’

  Lucy was not confident about the answer to this.

  ‘Tell me something,’ I said. ‘If I told you I had an affair last summer would you think any less of me?’

  Lucy considered this solemnly. She wanted to be honest and she was eager for me to be honest, because, whether she realized it or not, my telling a lie to her was worse than anything else. We didn’t play that game, not about the important things. When I lied to Lucy she knew it was a lie. Even Ahab and Jezebel knew it!

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not if you were honest with me.’

  I smiled at her. ‘That’s because you already believe it. You think I had an affair, so you’ve already adjusted your opinion.’

  Lucy worked through this as if calculating the possibility for the first time. ‘It isn’t true?’

  I smiled. ‘It’s a frightening thing to ask that, isn’t it?’

  She got angry because I had finally gotten her to ask the question and now I wouldn’t answer it.

  ‘Is it true or not, Dave?’

  ‘I’m going to give you some time to tell your mother what’s going on with the grass. If you don’t, she and I are going to have a little talk.’

  ‘She’ll ground me.’

  I kicked one shoulder up, dismissing the consequences. ‘Would you rather lie to her?’

  ‘I’m not lying!’

  ‘Silence is the biggest lie of all, kid.’

  I called for the waitress. I made a fuss over the fact that I had been rude. I said we had been having a heart-to-heart. I gave her a wink. You know how those can be? She understood. She had a couple of daughters herself! Lucy corrected her. Stepdaughter. The waitress didn’t miss a beat. She had a couple of them too.

  I said we would like to have the check. Anything wrong? I smiled. Nothing at all.

  In the car I told Lucy I’d like a Baskin-Robbins.

  ‘How
about you?’

  She thought that sounded good. We were about halfway across town when she said, ‘You never answered my question, Dave.’

  ‘You’re right. That’s because it’s not your place to ask it. It has nothing to do with the two of us.’

  Long silence and then, ‘You did.’

  ‘What if I didn’t?’

  ‘I don’t understand. Did you sleep with that woman or not?’

  ‘I don’t want you to take sides, Lucy. What’s going on isn’t about your trusting me or believing your mother. It’s not about you. Believe me, you can be happy about one thing no matter how it ends between your mother and me. You’re not a part of the fight and you’re not a part of the solution. I came into your life twelve years ago. I’ll be there as long as you’ll have me. I hope that means forever.’

  Over ice cream, Lucy asked, ‘What do you think Mom will do about the grass?’

  ‘Depends on which of us tells her about it.’

  ‘You’re going to tell her if I don’t?’

  ‘I sure am.’

  She looked at me craftily. ‘Because you never keep anything from her?’

  ‘Never,’ I said.

  This time she didn’t answer wise.

  Chapter 13

  LIKE A GOOD TRIAL lawyer, Gail fought three battles simultaneously. One involved complaints about procedural errors. The second argued definition of terms.

  The last objected to findings of fact.

  While I resisted an essentially technical defence, I took special satisfaction in one of Gail’s letters of protest. Having scoured the university handbook, she wrote the university lawyer to inform him that while smoking was prohibited in faculty offices there was nothing in the handbook, either explicit or implicit, prohibiting sexual intercourse.

  Gail explained that by highlighting issues concerning the university’s failure to follow its own procedures and by insisting they observe definitions as written in their own handbook, we were essentially demonstrating the wisdom of finding a solution other than firing me.

  The only trouble with this approach was the vice president’s committee would not really care how the thing played out in court. The committee’s concern would be focused on my actions. If we could make those understandable, even if we admitted wrongdoing, my chances of the whole thing going away would be excellent. Moreover, the appellate process would still be in place. In other words, I gave nothing up, but I had an excellent chance of finding closure for the case in committee.

  ‘What they want is a victory against sexism. In and of itself, that is more important to the committee than whether you are guilty of either sexual harassment or misconduct. They don’t care if a court brings judgement against the university for failing to follow its own rules. It’s not their money. The president might because he’ll have to find a way to pay you for a wrongful discharge, but the people sitting on your committee are idealists. They’re tired of male professors using the student body as their own private harem.

  These proceedings might be confidential in theory, but nobody believes it. The people on that committee want to send a message to every male professor on campus.

  That’s important to remember. They don’t want to fire you, David. They want to make a point.’

  We had come to the critical moment. It was time for me to decide. Confess or tell the truth.

  GAIL HAD CAREFULLY kept the issue of my innocence in the subjunctive mood. Her letters on my behalf admitted nothing, nor did they explicitly deny guilt.

  Every salesperson I ever knew who was worth his salt had been in a situation like this. You negotiate to a certain point, then hand the victory to your customer.

  Even Tubs routinely employed this method of salesmanship. It’s written in all of the manuals: let the customers feel as though they have won a battle or two and you will always win the war.

  This was all Gail wanted. If I let the committee members watch me grovel and weep, if I went down on my knees and begged for mercy, they would have no reason to forward a particularly harsh recommendation.

  On the car lot, the easiest way to hand your customer a victory was to admit you lied. It assured buyers their view of the world was correct. While it cost the salesperson a bit of lost pride, the commission was usually sufficient to take the sting away. The classic case involved the salesperson delivering a final price. If that did not work, and it usually didn’t, the salesperson’s credibility was shot but not the deal. The solution was to bring in a new face. Management overrules the salesperson: the customer gets a victory and drives the car home.

  Tubs was the only salesman I had ever met who would not stand for it. As a matter of principle, he never drew a line in the sand with a final price. He was too clever to get himself trapped by his own words.

  His words were his weapons. He didn’t hand them over to the customer to use against him! And he never relied upon a single method to close a deal. His only go-to-close was in fact his go-to-hell-close, and he trotted it out whenever he got good and pissed off.

  He called it his A Gun in my Face Close.

  I saw it once, early in my sojourn in hell, but it was a thing of beauty, a memory as bittersweet as any I had of the old bastard.

  ‘I screwed up,’ I said, before I told Tubs anything else.

  Tubs looked up at me. He had been examining his customer list, divining whom he should call at just that moment. Tubs was not a man to tell you a screw-up could be turned into an opportunity. He believed, on the contrary, every screw-up could be turned into his opportunity, so he smiled at me in his kindly, paternal way, already counting his fifty percent on my commission. ‘What happened, Davey?’

  ‘I told this guy on the phone the Mustang convertible is sixty-four hundred, and it’s seventy-four.’

  ‘Tell him you made a mistake.’

  ‘I did. He doesn’t believe me.’

  Tubs held onto his smile, but it turned icy. He leaned back in his chair. Placidly, he folded his hands over his big belly. ‘Is he still here?’ I nodded. ‘What does he want to give?’

  ‘Five thousand.’

  ‘Have you got him sitting down?’

  ‘We’ve been at it for an hour. He won’t budge. He’s sure I’m lying.’

  Tubs blinked. ‘Let me see what you have.’

  I opened my hands. ‘Verbal offers. Milt told me to T.O. to you.’ A T.O. was a Turn Over, the act of bringing in another salesperson and thus splitting a commission. A good salesperson usually understood when it was time. Most people loved it when they got to make a T.O. to Tubs Albo. If they had a buyer and hadn’t gotten themselves stuck on a number, Tubs could get a signature and make a salesperson more money with half a commission than a full commission working solo.

  ‘Can Milt go sixty-four?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t even know about the car until this guy called.’

  ‘You mention a number yet?’

  ‘Just the seventy-four hundred. I’ve been trying to get him off five.’

  Milt came into Tubs’s private office. He was a tall, roughed up looking man, maybe thirty-two or thirty-three years old. Milt was born ready for a fight, but he had a talent for giving back what he got, and he always treated Tubs with velvet gloves. Ask any manager in the world, when a guy sells twenty to twenty-five cars a month, he can do anything he wants. He’s the king, and Tubs was all of that. ‘Tubs, I got the invoice on that son-of-a-bitch-Mustang we bought last night.’ Milt’s voice was rotten with cigarettes. He shook a slip of paper at the two of us.

  ‘This cowboy doesn’t believe David screwed up on the price, and he’s not budging. Where did you get that price, David?’

  ‘Larry told me,’ I said.

  ‘Larry! And you believed that lopsided set of duck nuts?’

  ‘I hadn’t seen it,’ I said. ‘I had the guy on the phone, and I had to trust Larry.’

  ‘Next time trust that he’s lying!’ Milt turned his attention to Tubs, his voice going soft again: ‘We’re g
oing to lose this guy if we’re not careful, Tubs. I can’t afford to go sixty-four, and five is, well, he’s just pushing David around to see what we can do.’ The way Milt said he couldn’t afford to go sixty-four suggested to me that if pushed that was a good number. Tubs could automatically add five hundred dollars to such a figure for an excellent commission, even after splitting it. I knew, too, that if I could figure this out, Tubs understood it completely. The numbers were locked in. We had to move the guy, and anything around sixty-four was good, above that, golden.

  ‘Does the guy want the car?’ Tubs asked. Tubs always liked to know that before he’d go make a pitch. Amazingly, not many salespeople bothered asking that question. But Milt knew people. Milt had gasoline in his blood. He smiled with big yellow horse teeth. ‘Tubs, the guy is creaming his jeans, but he’s getting mad. Now, look, I want you to take this invoice to him and show him just what I paid for it last night.’

  ‘I don’t need an invoice.’

  Milt got just a little excited, considering he was speaking to the Zen Master of the Wastelands: ‘He’s a hard-headed cowboy, Tubs. He wants the car. He just doesn’t want us to screw him.’

  Tubs rose, a man called to his sacred duty. ‘I’ll screw the son of a bitch, and he’ll like it. Introduce me, Davey.’

  Tubs shook hands and sat down where I had been sitting. The two of them were laughing almost immediately. I’d worn the man down with my young man’s grim determination, and Mr Dietrich was glad just to have a man his age to talk to. ‘Now Mr Dietrich, Dan, can I ask you a question?’ Still pleasant, but Tubs’s smile had screwed down a little tighter, and Dietrich could see we were about ready to give him the car.

  He nodded. I could smell eager coming off the man.

  ‘Do you want the car?’

  Mr Dietrich waited almost sixty seconds to see if Tubs would trample over his own question, but Tubs just held his gaze and waited for the answer. Finally, Dietrich reared back in his chair and blew hot air. Last inning, he couldn’t play too coy, but he wasn’t going to throw away everything he’d won, either. ‘Maybe.