In Milton Lumky Territory (1984) Read online

  “Yes,” Bruce said, in a noncommittal manner.

  “I always had it in the back of my mind to try to take her out some evening. For dinner or something. And try to penetrate that efficient pose and find out what she’s actually like. Can you believe it that she used to be a school teacher? It’s like finding out that the man who delivers your coal is Albert Einstein doing what he likes best. Of course, Einstein is dead. I read Time, so I know those things. It pays to keep up with world events. Don’t you think so? You never know when it might help you close a big deal.”

  “Do you live around here?” Bruce said.

  Lumky said, “Yes, goddamn it. My territory includes the entire Pacific Northwest, if you can believe it. I’ve been living up in Oregon, but that means too much driving. So now I’m living here in Idaho. Sort of in the middle. I go from Portland, down to Klamath Falls, then east to Pocatello. This is miserable to live in.” He lapsed into silence. “I really hate it here,” he said at last. “Idaho oppresses me. Especially the drive between here and Pocatello. Did you ever see such a wretched broken-down pure shit road? In any other state it’d be a county back road for farmers with wagons of melons. Here it’s the federal through route. And those bugs down around Montario. Those satanic yellow gossamer flappy silent all-stinger bugs … did you ever hold a dead one up close and get a real good look at it? The god damn thing leers. How a bug can leer without teeth or gums or lips I don’t know.”

  “I was born in Montario,” Bruce said.

  “I’d keep that to myself,” Lumky said.

  “If you had your choice,” Bruce said, “where would you want to live?”

  Lumky snorted. “I’d live in L.A.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you drive into a drive-in and buy a malted milk the girl who brings it has an ass like Marilyn Monroe’s.”

  That answered his question, certainly.

  “Don’t think I just sit around brooding about women’s asses,” Lumky droned on in his hoarse voice. “Matter of fact I haven’t thought about it for a year. That’s what living in Idaho does to you. And there’s nothing to do or read or see. There’re a couple of good dirty, spitty dark bars here, but that’s about all. Maybe it’s the cowboy hats that get me. I never trust anybody in a cowboy hat. I always think they’re a nut. I wasn’t cut out to sell typing paper. Can you see that? Is that obvious? Remember that next time when I come around and show you the summer specials. Just tell me no and I’ll go away. I don’t give a damn if you buy anything or not. In fact I hope you don’t. It means I have to write up an order. I don’t even know if I still have my pen.” He felt about in his coat. “Look,” he said. “The fugging thing leaks all over. What a mess.” He buttoned his coat again, morbidly.

  “You’d like Reno,” Bruce said.

  “Maybe so,” Milt said. “I’ll have to drive down there sometime and see. What do you aim to do working for Susan?”

  He said, “Get in something to sell. Get rid of the second-hand junk.”

  “You’re right,” Milt said.

  “I’d like to carry new portables, but the drugstore’s already gone into that.”

  “I’ll tell you what you should go in big for,” Milt said. “And I don’t handle it so you know I’m not trying to talk you into anything.”

  “Go ahead and tell me,” Bruce said.

  Milt said, “Imported portables.”

  “The Italian thing? The Olivetti?”

  “There’s a Japanese portable coming on the market. Electric. The first one in the world that I know of.”

  “Smith-Corona puts out an electric portable,” he disagreed.

  Milt smiled. “But that has a manual carriage return. This Jap machine is all electric.”

  “How much?”

  “That’s the big problem. They were going to have dealers and sell direct. Import them on a direct basis. But a couple of the big U.S. typewriter manufacturers got scared and started negotiating. Meanwhile, the machines have never gotten onto the market. They’re holding them up until they work out the franchise basis. There’s supposed to be at least one warehouse of them around here somewhere.”

  “I never heard that,” Bruce said, his trading blood aroused.

  They discussed it awhile, and then they finished their coffee and walked back to the R & J Mimeographing Service.

  At the curb, Bruce saw a car unknown to him, a light gray sedan with an old-fashioned but highly classic radiator grill. The car had an archaic quality to it, but its clean lines implied recent concepts in design. Leaving Milt he walked over to inspect the car. A three-pointed star insignia attracted his attention. The car was a Mercedes-Benz. The first he had ever seen.

  “There’s a car I wouldn’t mind having,” he said, drinking in the sight with satisfaction. “It’s about the only foreign car I can see. Look at the leather inside there.” To him, thick leather seats were the last word in elegance.

  Milt said, “That’s mine.”

  “It is, is it?” He did not believe him. Surely the short, rumpled paper salesman was kidding again.

  Producing a peculiar-looking key, Milt unlocked the right front door of the Mercedes. In the back of the car piles of paper samples had been stacked up; some had slipped down onto the floor. “I’ve got thirty thousand miles on it,” Milt said. “I’ve had it all over the fourteen Western states and never had a bit of trouble with it.”

  “Is it an eight?”

  “No, no,” Milt said sharply. “A six. This is a real road-holding car. It’s got swing axles in the back. Synchromesh in low. They cost new about thirty-four hundred.”

  Bruce opened and shut the door. “Like closing a safe,” he said. The door fitted perfectly.

  After Milt had locked the car again, they walked on into the office. “I thought if I got a car like that,” Milt said, “I’d enjoy all the driving I have to do. But it doesn’t make much difference. A little. What I really need is another job.”

  “You want to come in and work here?” Susan said, overhearing him.

  “That’s the only thing worse,” Milt said. “Retail selling. Of all the degrading occupations in the world.”

  She gave him a pale, serious look. “Do you feel like that? I wish I had known. I had no idea. What do you think it does, corrupt?”

  “No,” he said. “It just corrodes your self-respect. You start looking down on yourself.”

  “I don’t consider that I’m in retail selling,” Susan said.

  “Sure you are. What are you in, if not?”

  “Performing a professional service.”

  Milt smiled. “That’s a laugh. You know better than that. You want to sell something and make money like everybody else. That’s what this street is for. That’s what I’m for. That’s why you hired McFoop here, to make your business pay.”

  “You’re too cynical,” Susan said.

  “Not quite cynical enough. If I was cynical enough I’d quit this business. I’m just cynical enough not to like what I’m doing. Remember, I’m a great deal older than you, so I know what I say. You just haven’t been in business long enough.”

  Bruce had no doubt that Lumky was kidding. But Susan took it all absolutely seriously; she went around the rest of the day with the grim tense look on her face, and with such preoccupation that at last he asked her if she was all right.

  “She’s all right,” Zoe spoke up. “She just can’t stand hearing the facts of life.”

  “He was just kidding you,” Bruce said.

  “I think he was,” Susan agreed. ” But it’s so hard to tell with him. He has that ironic way.”

  Of course, by that time Lumky had driven off in his Mercedes, dour to the last.

  “He’s a very intelligent person,” Susan said to Bruce. “Did he tell you he graduated from Columbia? A B.A. in European history, I think it was.”

  “How’d he get into the wholesale paper business?” Bruce said.

  “His father is one of the partners in Whalen. You saw
his car and his clothes. He has quite a bit of money. He’s a strange person … he’s thirty-eight and he’s never gotten married. He’s about the loneliest person I’ve ever know, but it’s impossible to get close to him; he’s so bitter and ironic.”

  Over at her desk, Zoe de Lima clacked away at her typewriter.

  “She doesn’t like him,” Susan said.

  “You bet I don’t,” Zoe said, without pausing. “He’s vulgar and foul-mouthed. He’s the worst of the salesmen who come in. I’m afraid to turn my back on him for fear he’ll pinch; he’s that kind.”

  “Has he ever?” Susan said.

  Zoe said, “He’s never had a chance. Not with me, anyhow.” She raised her head and said meaningfully, “How about with you?”

  “He’s not vulgar,” Susan said to Bruce, ignoring her. “He has extremely good taste. It’s an outside shell, some of the language he uses. I think he’s satirizing the men he has to work with. It’s his bitterness against the business world and salesmen in general. And many short men are unhappy and lonely. They keep to themselves.”

  “Do you know him very well?” he asked her.

  “We have coffee,” Susan said. “When he’s through here. One time he asked me to have dinner with him, but I couldn’t. Taffy was sick and I had to get right home. I don’t think he believed me. He was sure I wouldn’t do it anyhow. I just proved he was right.”

  6

  AS HE AND SUSAN DROVE HOME that evening she said, “You didn’t mention anything to Milt about your staying at my house, did you? I know you didn’t.”

  “No,” he said. He was well aware that salesmen carried tales from one end of the state to the other.

  “We have to observe caution,” she said. “I’m tired. We really didn’t get much sleep. And this tension with Zoe … I’ll be relieved when she’s finally out. I saw you going through the invoices. Did you come across anything important you want to change?”

  He outlined different matters he had discovered. Mainly he dealt with the need of buying in quantity. Halfway through, while stopped at a light, he glanced over and saw that she had her mind on something else; the rapt, faraway expression had again appeared on her face and he knew that she had heard little or nothing he had said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, when he managed to attract her attention. “But I’ve just got so much on my mind. I’m worried about Taffy’s reaction to not seeing Walt. He had become a father in her mind. I hope you will. That’s how it has to be. I really can’t interest myself in these little petty business details. I think Milt is right; it corrodes your self-respect.”

  He said, “I don’t feel like that. I enjoy it.”

  Leaning over she kissed him. “That’s why you’re no longer living in Reno. You know, we have a wonderful future to look forward to, you and I. Isn’t that how you feel? I feel as if I’m coming to life. I know that sounds corny, but that’s the way I feel. There’s probably a perfectly sound physiological basis for that sort of feeling … probably the whole metabolism is affected. The endocrine system, too. New enzymes unlock untouched energy.” She clutched his arm with such force that he almost lost control of the car. “Let’s stop and pick up something special for dinner. You know what I’d like? A can of crepe suzettes. When I was getting cigarettes over at the supermarket I noticed that they sell them there.”

  He stopped the car in the supermarket lot, and while she sat waiting he trudged off and got the can of crepe suzettes and stood in line, paid, and returned.

  “I also have to stop at the drugstore,” she informed him, as they drove on. “This one I’ll have to get myself; it’s not something you can go in and ask for.”

  While he double-parked, Susan disappeared at a leisurely rate into the drugstore. A car behind him honked until he was forced to drive off and around the block. When he got back again he saw no sign of her, and he drove around once more. This time he found her waiting and pacing on the sidewalk.

  “Where did you go?” she demanded, as she hopped in and slammed the door. “I thought you were going to wait.”

  “I couldn’t,” he said.

  On her lap she held a long square package wrapped with brown paper and white twine. He averted his eyes from it, feeling melancholy. This peculiar frankness of hers bothered him; it had from the start.

  “You’re so quiet,” she said, once later on.

  “Tired,” he said. He had bought the can of crepe suzettes with his own money, and he did not have much money. The arrangement about that still made no sense to him, and it remained to plague him.

  “When do you feel you’ll be able to take over?” Susan said.

  “Hard to say.”

  “In a week?”

  “Maybe.”

  She sighed. “I hope so. Then I can devote all my time to taking care of Taffy.” With energy, she said, “You see, as soon as I’m in a position to let Mrs. Poppinjay go, I save two hundred and some dollars a month right there. And that’s a lot, even these days. And I’ll feel much healthier, too, when I can be home with her, take her to school and pick her up, and be with her after school.”

  “Does that mean you’re not going to be down at the office?” This was the first time he had heard of that. “Two people have to be there. And I can’t do any of the typing and stencil-cutting.” He had watched Zoe doing it, and beyond any doubt it was a full-time job in itself.

  “I can do quite a bit at home,” Susan said.

  “You’ll have to be down at the office,” he said.

  “I’ll be there some.”

  He let the subject drop.

  “You knew I wanted you to take over,” she said.

  “If you let Zoe go,” he said, “you’ll have to spend almost as much time down there as you do now. If we can get anything to sell, that will be one job, that plus the general managing, and then the typing and stencil-cutting will be another. Later on we can probably give up the typing and stencil-cutting, but certainly not right away.”

  “Whatever you say,” she said. “You know better than I.” But on the rest of the trip to the house she seemed aloof.

  After dinner, while he and Susan were doing the dishes, the phone rang. She dried her hands and went off to answer it.

  “For you,” she said, returning. “It’s Milt Lumky.”

  He went to the phone and said hello, wondering what Milt wanted.

  “Hi,” Milt growled. “I figured I had a good chance of finding you this way. Finished dinner?”

  “Yes,” he said, with some resentment.

  “How about a beer? I need somebody to talk to. I’ll drop by and we’ll go down town and have a beer.”

  “You mean just me? Or me and Susan both?”

  Milt said, “Doesn’t she have a little daughter?”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “If you don’t want to just say so,” Milt said. “It was just an idea on the spur of the moment. I’ll be around town a couple more days and then I take off for Pocatello. And then I’ll be back in a week. All I have here is a room with a bath and private entrance. It’s not enough to keep me here. I eat all my meals out.”

  “Just a second,” he said. He re-entered the kitchen.

  “What did he want?” Susan said. “All he said to me was hello and were you there.”

  “He wants me to go downtown and have a beer with him.”

  “Oh, he must be feeling lonely. Why don’t you do that? I’m tired anyhow; I think I’ll probably go to bed as soon as Taffy does. I might read awhile in bed or watch TV.”

  As he returned to the phone he mulled it over. “Thanks anyhow,” he said to Lumky. “We have a lot of business to talk over. Maybe some other time, and I’ll buy.”

  “What!” Lumky said.

  He said, “I’ll have to take a rain check on it.”

  “What are you, Red or something? Okay, if that’s how you feel. Maybe I can find somebody in Pocatello.”

  “I hope this doesn’t mean our relationship is finished,” Bruce sa
id.

  “No,” Lumky said. “Probably not.”

  They both said good night and hung up.

  “I told him no,” he said to Susan. He did not especially feel like sitting around in a bar listening to anyone’s troubles. “I’m happy where I am,” he said, which certainly was true. Down in Reno he had sat around in bars, as lonely as possible; he hoped all that was over. There were, in the world, millions of lonely unattached men drinking beer by themselves. Wanting to tell someone all about it.

  “As long as you’re not going,” Susan said, as she finished up the dishes and put away her apron, “I won’t go right to bed. I said that so you’d feel free to come and go as you please. I don’t want you to feel tied down, with me. In that connection I have something I picked up for you this afternoon but I forgot to give it to you.” She went into the living room for her purse. From it she brought forth a doorkey, which she presented to him. “To the house,” she said. “Oh, and also.” She fished around in the purse and this time produced a key ring on which hung many keys. “To the office,” she said, maneuvering a key from the ring. “See how free and relaxed I feel with you?”

  The two keys improved his disposition. They gave him a moment of elation and he said, “I hope you never wish you hadn’t.”

  “I know I won’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t let me down, Bruce. It isn’t so hard to tell one way or another about people. We haven’t talked very much about love. Has it been on your mind, though?”

  “Somewhat,” he said, feeling clumsy.

  “It’s not so much what you tell me,” she said. “Because a person finds himself saying almost anything in a situation where there’s so much involved. It’s what you feel that you don’t say. I’ve never been very articulate. And I don’t demand elaborate expressions of sentiments … if I can’t give it I don’t see that I have any right to ask. I think I can tell what you’re thinking. This gives you. a lot, doesn’t it? I actually know so little about how you used to be, before. I can only guess what you were like before you met me. Were you lonely that night at Peg’s?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I had driven up from Reno. It’s a lonely trip.” He did not want to say that he went around habitually lonely; for some reason he shrank from conceding that. Perhaps because it would seem that he had been drawn to her through sheer loneliness, and that was not true.