Bookman

by Ed Baldwin

  “Well, it’s gettin’ late.” John finally said, getting the message I glared at him from over Pat’s shoulder. He and Gloria began arranging their clothes and looking for their coats.

  “Yeah. I guess I’d better be headin’ out too,” I said, looking for but not finding one of my shoes. I went into the bathroom and was trying to put my tie on as John and Gloria left.

  Pat locked the door. We were naked in two minutes and finished in five. I had already had all the foreplay I could stand. The lights were still on and I began looking around the apartment. There was a man’s jacket hanging behind a door. “Whose is that?” I asked.

  “Frank’s,” she said matter of factly.

  “Who’s Frank?” I said, not really questioning but sort of demanding.

  “Guy I live with,” she said, even more dryly.

  “Where is he?” I was suddenly terribly insecure.

  “Oh, he won’t be back tonight. He works on a barge. Sixteen hours on and thirty-six off. He’ll be back at eight.” She calmly retrieved an underthing from the middle of the floor.

  That pretty well cooled my ardor for the night. All I needed was to have some guy busting in after being out on a cold windswept river for sixteen hours to find me pumping his girlfriend. I found my shoe. “What about your husband?” I asked, not really caring anymore.

  “Oh, he and Frank are best friends. My husband doesn’t mind. He wants Frank to look out after me. We have a very mature relationship.”

  The next day I was anxious to see what changes in the office relationships would be noticeable after this major slip in discipline. John seemed a little embarrassed but sat next to Gloria at the sales meeting.

  Some of the glow seemed to have gone out of the situation for him, suggesting they had been together all night.

  Barney was grumpy and hung over and didn’t mention anything about our party. Gloria kept looking my way and smiling. Later in the car she called me by my first name.

  Pat showed no change at all. I put her out first and she didn’t object, even though that is usually reserved for a new man or someone who is currently in a slump. Gloria objected to her territory and called me by my first name again. I found something different for her, but not as good as what she had had at first and put her out before she could say anything. The next day I transferred her to Barney’s crew and she quit within a week.

  In spite of my serious misgivings about Pat, she continued to produce and got along just like one of the boys. I tightened the hiring of women a bit, giving them a stark factual picture of the job and if they still wanted it, left them waiting a few days before hiring them. There were few takers.

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  I was fascinated by the little garnet colored star as it danced around. Intense and sharp one moment, diffuse and barely visible the next. I had gotten off of the bed and was sitting on the floor to better observe this phenomenon of nature. It was formed by the April sun shining through the sip of wine left in a wine glass precariously balanced on Paris’ perfect butt. She was trembling with suppressed laughter as I encouraged her to hold still so that I could learn more about this absorbing subject. Finally, the moment was gone as she could hold it no longer and the glass toppled, spilling its contents over her flawless behind.

  This had started as a photographic session. Since acquiring some discretionary income, I had bought a 35 mm camera and was getting fairly good at using it. I started out with various shots of little Phil: playing in the snow, at the zoo, at a party surrounded by three-year-olds with birthday cake spread over his face. There were some nature shots, too, mostly of squirrels and rabbits, of some ducks at a distance, and of course, some topless shots of Honey, taken on a warm day by the river.

  With my new found artistic talent it was just a matter of time until I brought my camera along on one of my frequent visits to the Shelbourne apartment complex. I hadn’t had any trouble getting the topless shots developed, but they were only two on a role of 36 and at a distance. The stuff I had on this roll you couldn’t take to the corner drug store.

  I had sent the boys out of town with John in charge, and I brought along two rolls of film, a couple of six packs and two bottles of red wine for Paris. A cloudless day, the sun shone through her window providing me with an unprecedented opportunity to study light and shadows. We started with her clothes on and sitting in this magic ray of light. She tried on a few of her many night gowns, but the lace and feathers looked cheap in the natural glow of the sun. Nudity, I decided, was more fun anyway.

  It was kind of a phenomenon, but Paris had almost no brown, that is, no tan on her body. Since she burned so easily, she never exposed herself to the sun. There were no bikini lines, almost no freckles. Nipples strawberry colored and pubic hair as flaming red as her head, she certainly gave Mr. Kodak’s film an opportunity to show its stuff.

  Luckily, she was the perfect subject, not only physically, but emotionally. In fact, she loved every way I posed her and cooperated fully. She did, however, bore easily, so I had to be kind of innovative. By the time she was fully nude in the ray of sunlight we had stopped twice to grapple on the floor (and take a few shots in the full length mirror by the bed). Satiated for the moment, I tried to get her back into an artistic frame of mind, but each new posing reminded her of the possibility of a new position for intercourse and we got distracted.

  The wine glass perched on her haunch was novel enough to hold her for a few shots, but that ended with a pool of wine in the hollow of her sacrum, which I just had to help her clean up, and I don’t even like wine.

  “One day you’re going to be old and wrinkled and ugly and these pictures may be all you have to remind you of what a magnificent specimen you once were,” I said, trying to hold her still.

  “You’ll never see’m again if that dirty old man down at the drugstore ever gets a hold of them,” she said, wetting her lips like a sex goddess.

  “I’ll keep the rolls down at the office locked away until I can find someone who can do justice to them. Just sit there for one more minute while I get this exposure right.”

  We finished the film, the wine, the beer and the afternoon, then fell into a stupor that lasted until almost midnight. Hungover at a time when the rest of my office was just getting warmed up, I went down to see how they did. I wrote up a fake order so it would look like I worked, but I didn’t fool anybody.

  “Where have you been?” Honey snapped like an angry cricket.

  “Where do you think?” I replied, not in the mood to discuss my whereabouts and not expecting her to be up. The guys had not done well and my week was a zero so far. A couple beers had softened the hangover from the two six packs that afternoon but not completely.

  “Did you write an order?” she said, not giving an inch.

  “No,” I said, honest for some god-awful reason. Maybe I figured if I didn’t argue she’d leave me alone. I figured wrong.

  “Did you give any presentations?” She was worse than Burt.

  “What are you, my manager?”

  “Hey I have a stake in this, too. You’ve been screwing around so much lately instead of writing orders you’re gonna get fired.”

  “How do you know I’ve been screwing around?”

  “You come home with more beer spilled on your clothes than you used to drink. And sometimes your shirts smell… well, different.” Her eyes were filling with tears.

  “What do you mean ‘different’?” I asked defiantly, having missed an important clue.

  “Like a girl.” She was sobbing now.

  “Oh, that’s fine! Now you’re accusing me of running around with some other girl!” I shouted, deciding a good offense is the best defense.

  “You do have one right in the crew with you.”

  “You’re jealous of Pat? Hell, she’s the best salesman in the car. She’s got three on for the week. I wouldn’t mess with someone that good even if I found her attractive, which I don’t.”

  This argumen
t had taken place over a period of several minutes while I was undressing. I was down to my shorts when, right in the middle of the last sentence I remembered how cute Paris thought it would be if she shaved my pubic hair. She thought it would make me look bigger and more masculine. It had been worth a few laughs at the time, and being well into the beer, the consequences had not seemed insurmountable. Now I was in deep shit.

  “Well, come on to bed. I believe you,” she said, suddenly giving up and shucking her robe as she slipped under the covers.

  “I want to give Phil a kiss. I’ll be right in,” I said, wishing we didn’t always sleep nude so I could put on some pajamas.

  I turned out the light and felt my way into the other bedroom. Phil was asleep and I took my time rearranging his bed, hoping Honey would fall asleep before I got back. When I got back to the bedroom I slipped off my shorts and got under the covers. She was waiting. She rolled over close and put an arm over me. I was facing the other way.

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I trust you with Pat. I know how much trouble she gave you at first. I guess if you were fooling around with her all the other guys would know it, too.” Damned if her hands weren’t roaming all over my body, then, “Shit! Where’s your hair?” She was sitting straight up in bed and glaring down at me.

  “What hair?” I said, feigning ignorance.

  “Down there!” she screeched, already heading for the light.

  “Oh that! I shaved it. I didn’t think you’d notice so quickly. It was going to be a surprise.”

  “Surprise, my ass! When did you do it? It wasn’t that way this morning.”

  “I did it in the shower before work. I thought it would be a real kick for you when you saw it.”

  “Shaved it with what in the shower?” she said, standing in the middle of the fully lit room staring at my member, which seemed embarrassed and shriveling and trying to hide.

  “A razor, for god’s sake.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch! We don’t have a razor in the house. You use an electric and so do I.”

  With that last statement she opened the closet door and began throwing my clothes out on the bed. “Out! You whore mongering son-of-a-bitch! Carol Ann was right about you. She said when we got married that you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants. Well, now you can have any girl you want—except me!”

  She was throwing shoes, bottles of cologne off the dresser, emptying drawers onto the floor and crying hysterically. Phil woke up and began to cry too. I was hurriedly trying to get some clothes on before she found a knife, muttering a few words of explanation. She wouldn’t have any of it, though. The neighbors must have had a good laugh with all the yelling and crashing, and five minutes later, they probably had a real roar over seeing me run down the front steps, a half-closed suitcase in one hand and my raincoat in the other, trying to fend off the deluge of bottles and cans raining down on me from the front door. Honey even lofted a half-filled Pepsi bottle while I was starting the car. It missed and crashed on the pavement, waking what few neighbors might still be asleep.

  “Bastard son-of-a-bitch!” was hanging in the night air as I turned the corner out of the parking lot. There was a sore place beneath my right shoulder where she caught me with a well aimed bottle of face cream and scratches on the side of my face where she fought off my conciliatory embrace at the very beginning. I stopped at the all night gas station down the street and called Barney. He had an empty couch.

  The next day we planned a road trip to Oxford, Mississippi, to write some book orders and hire some students. Gerald had dropped off hiring posters the week before, and there were a number of replies when we arrived. Pat played Honey’s old role of “administrative assistant” even better than Honey did, making sure the applications were properly filled out and generating some interest from the applicants, which turned out to be all male. We left the rest of the crew playing gin rummy at the Holiday Inn.

  The hiring brochure provided by the company advertised a trip that could be won at the end of the summer. This year it was to be Tokyo. Most of the guys came in filled with enthusiasm for the trip but with very little interest in actually proving to us that they could do any useful work. I knew the ones who gave a state senator and a bank president as references would never make it with Collier’s but agreed to hire them since I like a bullshitter just as much as the next guy.

  A lot of guys I hired never showed up anyway. There were two who had part time jobs while going to school and listed them as their references. They were more interested in how much money they could make rather than in the promise of any trips. I offered the $112 a week salary since that seemed to be more than they could make doing anything else. They assured me they’d be there the following week.

  By four we were finished with the applicants and picked up the crew to begin work. I dropped everyone off quickly and cruised around trying to find something that interested me. Five-thirty found me still without an area that looked good so I stopped for a cup of coffee and read the local paper. There was an ad about some apartments that seemed to appeal to the young married college crowd—easy deals.

  I drove to the other side of town and found the units. A whole block of fairly new fourplexes, cluttered with tricycles and swing sets. It looked good, but right in the middle of it was John Sevier, straying from his territory a few blocks away. I stopped to talk for a moment, but he was anxious to get back to an appointment that looked too good to be true.

  It was getting dark and I gravitated to the seedier side of town, away from the college. A duplex caught my eye. Five or six years old, it had once been brightly painted and was now faded and flaking off. An old pickup was parked in the front yard, making the place look that much more dumpy.

  The place was surely occupied by a young family. There were broken toys, a rusted screen door and part of a swing set in the back. A thin, neatly dressed man in a Hart’s Bread uniform met me at the door. This was too good to be true. Bread truck drivers are the ultimate mooch.

  “Hi there! Stopped by to talk to you for a minute. Can I step in?”

  “What for?”

  “Just some questions. We’re interviewing all the young families in the neighborhood. Just takes a couple minutes.”

  “You selling something?”

  “No, nothing like that. Just want to talk,” I said cheerfully.

  He looked like he might have some lingering doubt about this, but he let me in and called in his wife.

  “So you see, Darrel (it was stitched on his uniform shirt), we’re looking for just the right kind of family in this neighborhood to represent our company in its promotion of a revolutionary new reference library.” I had even taken a little extra time to embellish on the quality of the product and the pickiness of the company in choosing the lucky family.

  “I thought you weren’t selling anything,” he said, unimpressed with my oratory.

  “Oh, we’re not. Under this special program we select a family in each neighborhood to receive this library at no cost to them. All we ask is the chance to use their name as a reference and have them write us a letter about the set.”

  “I wouldn’t want my name used in no sales pitch. Especially with guys comin’ by saying they’re doin’ a survey when they’re just tryin’ to sell something.”

  “Well, I guess you wouldn’t qualify for this special deal then. I’ll have to just find some family in the neighborhood who would truly appreciate a quality reference library,” I said, putting on my most executive facade. I could see that I didn’t have a presentation here but wanted to leave in control, rejecting him rather than the other way around.

  He stood up. I was so busy concocting a put down for this bumpkin that I missed the significance of his body language.

  “Are you done?” he asked, taking a step toward the door.

  “I have to complete the interview. Even with a disqualified family we have to make sure there are no misconceptions,” I said, taking out a pencil. I had decided to write down his name and addr
ess, identifying his as a rejected family.

  “You’re leavin’ right now before I kick your ass out into the street!” he roared, suddenly grabbing my arm and ushering me toward the door. He literally shook with rage, and there was no hesitation in his actions, even though I outweighed him by several pounds. In 10 seconds I was out the door and it slammed behind me. He even turned the porch light off.

  I walked out to my Chrysler past his worn pickup truck. The hair on my back was suddenly on end and I was aware of a cold sweat dripping down from my armpits. I had really misjudged this guy. Instead of being a perfect mooch he had had me for lunch. It took two cigarettes and half an hour of aimless driving before my hands quit shaking. I didn’t even look at another door.

  What had happened? I had used the same pitch I always use. I’d even thrown in some extra schmalz to improve it and a bread truck driver totally destroys my presentation. Throws me out on the street, for god sakes! This had never happened. Not even close. Always I had been in control and now, for the first time I had a hard glimpse of what things had been like for Barney on his long downhill slide. Needless to say, I didn’t like the picture.

  I drove to a barbecue joint and had a barbecue and a beer. Over the second beer I thought back to Billie Joe, my first order. I had had an ignorant kind of confidence then. It never even entered my mind that I might not succeed because I didn’t know that you could do this job and not succeed. For 10 months I was too busy writing orders and showing others how to write them to consider what would happen if suddenly it all didn’t come so easily.

  Now, standing on that Mooch’s front porch, knowing he should be a deal, I tried too hard. Instead of closing up and smiling and shaking his hand and talking about the weather on the way out, I pushed him too hard, insinuating that he didn’t care about his family. In Whiteville, Tennessee, I had salvaged a gone deal by bringing out the family Bible. I guess every gone deal can’t be salvaged.