by Max Shulman
“Gross profit—$17,986.47,” said Mr. Young.
“Hm,” I said with some surprise. “Gross profit used to be $18,000. Now, with more than twice the volume, it shows a four-dollar drop.”
“That,” explained Mr. Atterbury, “is because he cut the prices of his liquor so much.”
I scratched my head. “But buying liquor in those huge quantities—didn’t that reduce the cost a great deal?”
“To be sure,” replied Mr. Atterbury. “But you’re forgetting warehouse charges. Rent, insurance, night watchmen—those things add up.”
“Of course,” I said. “How silly of me. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Jim gets home from work and Della gives him the watch chain. Then it develops that he has sold the watch to buy her a set of fancy combs for her hair. Only now, of course, she hasn’t got the hair because she’s sold it to buy him a chain for his watch. But he hasn’t got the watch any more. Well, sir, they have a good cry and then a good laugh and then they fall into each other’s arms with many a hug and kiss.”
“That’s O. Henry’s story,” said Mr. Atterbury.
“Operating expenses—$16,249.79,” said Mr. Young.
“Whew!” I whistled. “That’s up nearly $6000 over what it used to be.”
“Advertising,” said Mr. Atterbury.
“Of course,” I said. “How silly of me.… You’re wrong, P.A. It’s not O. Henry’s story. Wait till I finish it. You’ll see. Now, everything goes along just dandy between Jim and Della for a few months. Then one day she’s downtown shopping and she sees a man standing outside of a store. He’s an ugly little bowlegged man in his late fifties, dressed in a horrible, flashy suit. Della, since she met Jim, has never even looked at another man, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have chosen this repulsive little man in the flashy suit. And yet there is something about him that attracts her so strongly that she can’t take her eyes off of him. She doesn’t know what it is, but there is something about this man that draws her with unbelievable strength. She just stands there and stares at him in utter fascination.
“After a while the little man notices her staring. He leers and walks over and takes her arm. Her flesh creeps at his touch. All her instincts tell her to scream or strike him or run away or call a policeman. But she can’t move. There’s something about him that leaves her completely helpless. ‘Do you live around here, babe?’ he asks, and she nods dumbly. ‘Let’s go, then,’ he says, and without volition, as though in a dream, she takes him to her flat and submits to his loathsome caresses.
“He keeps coming back every day when Jim is at work. Although she finds him nauseating and is profoundly disgusted by the whole sordid mess, she is absolutely powerless. The attraction of this little man, whatever it is, simply destroys her will.”
“Will you, for Christ’s sake,” yelled Mr. Young, “let me finish and get out of here?”
“But I thought you were finished,” I said truthfully. “Gross profit is $17,986.47. Subtract operating expenses—$16,249.79—and you get a net profit of $1736.68. It’s not much, but at least it’s a profit.” I smiled. “George will be so relieved to know the store is safely his. I’m going to wait till Christmas to tell him the good news. It will make such a nice present.… And now, to finish my story—”
“Harry,” said Mr. Atterbury, “Mr. Young has one more item.”
“In a minute,” I said. “Let me finish first.… The little man keeps coming around to Della’s flat every day for several months, and then he begins to get worried that Jim will find out. So one day he says to Della that it is too risky to keep using the flat. He has a much better idea. From now on they will go out each afternoon on the Hudson River day boat. He has arranged for a cabin in a secluded sector of the upper deck where they can have complete privacy. Unable, as always, to deny him anything, Della agrees.
“They board the boat and he takes her to the upper deck where his cabin is located. The deck, as he promised, is deserted. ‘Nice layout, huh?’ he says proudly, and he starts for the cabin with her. But at this moment Jim suddenly leaps out from behind a smokestack! ‘Aha!’ he cries. Jim, it seems, has become suspicious of his wife and on this day he has not gone to work but has trailed her to her rendezvous.
“‘Jim!’ cries Della, panic-stricken. ‘What are you doing here?’
“‘What,’ counters Jim hotly, ‘are you doing here? And with this loathsome creature?’ He points a scornful finger at the little man.
“Della does not wish to cause her husband any pain, so she makes up an innocuous little lie. ‘You mean this gentleman here?’ she says. ‘I was just asking him the time, that’s all. Wasn’t I, sir?’
“‘Yes. Oh yes,’ he says with alacrity. He pulls out his watch. ‘It is a quarter past two, madam. And now if you’ll excuse me—’
“‘Oh, no you don’t!’ thunders Jim. ‘Take this, you cad!’ And he strikes the little man a blow of such severity that he goes flying over the rail and into the Hudson River below. The deck being deserted, nobody witnesses this occurrence.
“‘Help!’ shrieks the little man in the water. ‘I can’t swim.’
“‘Save him, Jim,’ cries Della wildly. ‘You must save him!’ Jim, startled by the desperation in her tone, plunges immediately into the river. The little man is sinking. Jim reaches out and grabs his hair. The hair comes off. It is a toupee.
“Now suddenly the reason for the little man’s attraction is clear to Della. It is the toupee. For the toupee is made of her hair! The little man obviously bought it from the wigmaker to whom she had sold her hair the previous Christmas. Della, as I have pointed out, was terribly proud of her hair. She did not realize it, but after her hair was gone she had a fierce subconscious desire to get it back. When she saw it on the little man, although she did not recognize it consciously, it struck a deep chord in her subconscious. And that was why she was so mysteriously attracted to him: he had her hair.
“But now that Della knows the reason, the spell is broken. The little man no longer has any hold on her. She looks over the rail and sees Jim churning around in the river, trying mightily to save the little man. ‘Never mind, Jim,’ she calls. ‘Let him drown.’
“Jim forthwith gives up his attempts at rescue and clambers back aboard. She throws herself into his arms, wet as he is. ‘Forgive me, Jim,’ she begs. ‘I’ve been such a fool.’
“‘It’s all right, darling,’ he replies tenderly, kissing her contrite tears away. ‘It’s all right.’
“And then Jim, chancing to look down, sees a watch lying on the deck. The little man dropped it when Jim knocked him overboard. Jim’s eyes bulge. It is Jim’s watch! With a peal of joy he picks it up, puts it in his pocket, and they live happily ever after.”
“Holy Jesus Christ,” breathed Mr. Young. “Atterbury, this guy is a maniac.”
“Read him the last item,” said Mr. Atterbury.
The accountant blinked a few times and then picked up his balance sheet. “In the last quarter,” he read, “Overmeyer bought merchandise in the amount of $394,-024.03, which he borrowed at 2 per cent per annum. Quarterly charge, therefore, is $1794.12.” Mr. Young closed his brief case and started for the door.
“When you add the interest charges to the operating expenses,” said Mr. Atterbury, rubbing his hands together briskly, “you find that George showed a net loss of $12.44.… The store, Harry, is mine.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Mr. Young.
CHAPTER 21
Business!
I laid a Gladstone bag on my bed and started to pack. (It was a nice bag—real pigskin. The bed was nice, too, though not, of course, pigskin.)
I’d had all of business that I wanted. Duplicity and heartlessness, that was business. Trickery, perfidy, and avarice.
I was through with business, through with Atterbury, through with my loveless marriage, through with Ivanhoe Gardens. I was walking out. I would be poor once more, yes, but never again would I be party to the ruination of another human being in the name of
business.
I put a half-dozen shirts into the bag. I took them out again. They were Dad Geddes’s shirts, not mine. So, in fact, was the bag. I closed it and stuck it in the closet.
I would go as I had come—in my cheap suit, my un-Sanforized shirt, my leatherette bow tie. Good-by to luxuriant tweeds and sleek worsteds. Good-by to silk neckties and argyle sox and handmade brogans. Good-by to linen as soft as a caress. Good-by to all that.
Clothes did not make a man. Far better to be shabby and honest; far better to wear rags and eat crusts than to lose one’s soul. Crusts, as a matter of fact, were not so bad. They could be mighty tempting when fixed in a bread pudding with raisins. It was not, to be sure, peach Melba, but it was nourishing. (I had grown quite fond of peach Melba. I liked it especially with a hard sauce after sirloin Chateaubriand, or with chopped nuts and grenadine after lobster thermidor.)
But this was no time to be thinking about peach Melba and sirloin Chateaubriand and lobster thermidor. Or about racks of spring lamb or baked squab or chocolate mousse or succulent filet of sole, done to a turn in lemon butter and served with fresh tartar sauce and a sprig of parsley. Good-by to all that. I was going back to pork jowls and decency.
I retched for a moment thinking of pork jowls, but a swig of Courvoisier revived me. (Good-by to that too.)
Back now to poverty and want. Back to my hard life and my pallet, also hard. My soul would be my own once more, and that was worth all the toil and privation I would have to suffer. Wasn’t it?
Of course it was.
Was it really?
Certainly. What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
Yes, that was so. But still—
There was a knock on my bedroom door.
“Come in,” I called.
Miss Geddes entered. “Darling!” she exclaimed.
I blinked in astonishment. Perhaps she was confusing me with the gardener; we were the same build.
But no, she was calling me by name now. “Harry darling!” And kissing me!
“Miss Geddes,” I stammered.
“Call me Esme,” she said with a warm smile.
“Oh, how I’ve wanted to!” I cried. “But what—”
She pinched my cheek. “Aren’t you the sly one?” she said playfully. “Well, you don’t have to pretend to be a dope any more. Your secret is out.”
“My secret?”
“I know all about it now—how you played dumb to win George Overmeyer’s confidence, how he trusted you, and how you snatched his business away from him. Brilliant, Harry, brilliant!”
“No, no!” I cried in horror. “It wasn’t me.”
“Now, you don’t have to be modest with me, darling. I know you were working for Atterbury. But it was all your idea. He told me so himself. He told everybody! The whole neighborhood’s talking about you, Harry.”
I sank to the bed and clutched the bedpost weakly, overwhelmed by the monstrosity of Atterbury’s lie. Why, I thought in anguish, was he giving me the credit? And then I knew. It was better that way, better for his nefarious purposes. He didn’t want people to think him too clever; it might scare away new victims. Oh, infamous, infamous!
“You’re the sensation of Ivanhoe Gardens. Everybody’s raving about how clever you are. I’ll bet thirty people stopped me on the street today to congratulate me … What’s the matter, Harry? You’re white as a ghost.”
I shook my head dumbly; speech would not come.
She looked at me with sudden suspicion. “It was your idea, wasn’t it, Harry?”
All the softness was gone from her now. She stood over me, tense, hard, demanding … And lost, lost to me forever unless I lied and said it was my idea to ruin George. Lost, her silken skin; lost, her breasts like young roes, her cunningly hinged thighs, her dimple-kneed, full-calved, slender-ankled legs. Lost, my ripe and fragrant wife, unless I told her it was my idea to ruin my best friend, to steal the bread from his mouth … Well, maybe “steal” was too strong a word. It had all been perfectly legal. No law had been broken.
Suddenly I sat up straight. The legality, it occurred to me, was an aspect I had not heretofore considered. No law had been broken. Didn’t that put rather a new light on everything? After all, George hadn’t lost his store at gun point. Nobody had broken and entered; nobody had embezzled or forged or looted or burned. George had been just plain outsmarted. It was tough luck, all right, but it was the breaks of the game.
The game, yes! That’s what business was—a game in which the trophies went to the swift and strong and resourceful, just as in any other game. And just as in any other game, people got hurt. You wouldn’t call football or baseball or basketball reprehensible. Then how could you call business reprehensible?
George lost because he wasn’t a good player, that’s all. It was sad, of course, that he should now be a poor man, without money, without a business. Very sad—But was it?
For I was suddenly remembering the night I had first seen George at Miss Geddes’s house. He had talked that night about two poor boys who got rich. One was smart; one was dumb. The smart one wanted to save the world, but when he had money he got lazy and forgot all about his noble plans. The dumb one was a harmless slob until he got rich. After that he was dangerous.
George had called both these boys hypothetical. But all at once I knew that only the dumb one was hypothetical. The smart one was real. It was George himself!
He had gotten rich and lazy and forgotten his plans to save the world. But I had made him poor again. Now, removed from the stultifying effects of wealth, he would become strong and vital again—a whole man. And he had me to thank for it!
Well, not me, actually. It was really Atterbury’s doing. But people believed it was me. That was the important thing: what people believed. After all, what is truth? Truth is what people believe. People believed I outsmarted George; ergo, it was true.
A great weight was lifted from my heart. Business was a game, and I had done George a favor.
Now I would go back to playing the game. Eventually I would become as proficient as any of them. But meanwhile—during my apprenticeship, as it were—I would be mighty careful about having any more dealings with Mr. Atterbury. He had shown himself a formidable player, the old rascal!
Of course I didn’t have to do business with him any more. With my new reputation as a sharp trader, I would soon have all the clients I wanted. I could tell Mr. Atterbury I was too busy if he came around again … Still, if he had some proposition that was really interesting—
“Harry,” said Miss Geddes sharply, “answer me. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“Certainly,” I said, “Esme.”
Her face relaxed into a proud smile. She sat down beside me on the bed and kissed me full on my carmine lips. “That’s my darling,” she breathed.
“Pshaw,” I said, reddening.
She leaned back on the bed and stretched her arms over her head. “I’m so tired, darling,” she said languidly. “Isn’t it almost bedtime?”
“Yes, it is getting late,” I said and pulled the shade to keep out the afternoon sun.
About the Author
Max Shulman (1919–1988) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer best known as the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951), and the popular television series of the same name. The son of Russian immigrants, Shulman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a celebrated column for the campus newspaper and edited the humor magazine. His bestselling debut novel, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943), was followed by two books written while he served in the Army during World War II: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). The Tender Trap (1954), a Broadway play co-written with Robert Paul Smith, was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. His acclaimed novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys! became a film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Shulman’
s other books include Sleep till Noon (1950), a hilarious reinvention of the rags-to-riches tale; I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959), which chronicles the further adventures of Dobie Gillis; Anyone Got a Match? (1964), a prescient satire of the tobacco, television, and food industries; and Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971), the tale of a romantic Jewish college student in depression-era St. Paul. His movies include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse) and House Calls (with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson). One of America’s premier humorists, he greatly influenced the comedy of Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, among many others.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1950 by Max Shulman
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2781-6
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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