Magician's Wife (2 page)

“I'll—take it under advisement.”

He began getting outrageous, reverting to her stomach, which once more was pressed to the opposite chair, and calling it “a dream stomach, curvaceous, shapely, and soft.” Then he asked: “Did you know your navel shows through?”

“Well, why wouldn't it? It's there.”

She didn't move, but sounded a little sharp, and pinked up. Suddenly he said: “Sally, I've fallen for you, which I suppose is why I say things like that. So why don't we step out? Why don't we do it tonight? At the Chinquapin-Plaza Blue Room or any place you like?”

“Well—I couldn't. Not tonight.”

Something about her manner caused him to look at her hard. Then, peremptorily he asked her: “This Sally Alexis—is she Miss or Mrs.?”

“I'm afraid I have to say Mrs.”

“As you could have said in the first place,” he said in a moment, his face growing quite red. Then, husking up, he added: “I'm sorry I overstepped.”

“Will that be all, sir?”

“All I think of now.”

When she had gone he sat in a sulk, his face getting redder and redder. Then he took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and slipped it under his plate. Then he got up and, looking neither to right nor to left, made his way between the tables and through the gate, then turned to follow the rail out. But he felt his sleeve plucked, and when he looked she was there, holding out his five-dollar bill. Coldly she informed him: “I don't accept tips, Mr. Lockwood.”

“O.K.—but the girl on the station?”

“I'll see that she gets it, then.”

He bowed, then stalked grandly out, pausing on the portico to let his chest expand, then heading for the parking lot. His glow got clouded, however, in an absurd, perhaps not so absurd, way. Passing the picture window, he happened to glance inside, and suddenly black eyes locked on his, glittering oddly through the glass. He tried to look away, couldn't seem to manage it. His feet carried him by, but of his own free will, he never broke out of the stare. His walk became a stumble, as he went on in a state of upset out of all proportion to the pitch of one brief moment.

G
ETTING INTO HIS BIG
green coupe, he drove from the downtown shopping district, where the restaurant was, through canyons of office buildings to a bridge over the Chinquapin River, and on the other side turned into Tidal Boulevard, or Death Avenue, as it was called, where Grant's, Inc., was located. It was a multilane complex beside the river, of lofts, factories, warehouses, piers, and a railroad track. At a heavy wire fence he pulled up, and when a watchman opened a gate, he drove into an asphalt enclosure to a space marked
MR. LOCKWOOD
. Leaving the car, he entered a low building of industrial brick, which was arranged inside on the split-level plan, with glassed-in offices topside and cold-storage rooms below. Bounding up a metal stairway, he reached his own office, a rectangular glass fish-bowl that commanded the whole floor. Calling Miss Helm, his secretary, a dumpy little woman wearing glasses, he told her to “set up” a meeting, for 3:45, of the three chain-restaurant salesmen, the girls in the packing room, all cutters, and the head bookkeeper. Then, after a glance at his call slips, he put on a black quilted coat for warmth and went down to the main storage room. His first act as he stepped through the heavy steel door was to inhale, deeply and attentively, as “Your nose knows.”

It caught nothing now but the clean smell of good meat, red and white hind- and fore-quarters hanging in rows on hooks fitted to trolleys, which in turn ran on an overhead rail system so complex, with its switches and spurs and sidings, that it made the railroad outside seem simple by comparison. After a solemn exhale, he began his afternoon rounds, spending a minute or so in each small room at one side, where things were being done by a force in quilted coats like the one he had on. First he stopped with two cutters slicing Delmonico steaks, using big curved knives and small spring scales, trimming off fat to make the exact eight ounces, and placing them in piles with paper “dividers” between. Presently he nodded and went on to the next room, where roasts were being cut, weighed, and ticketed with metal pins, and then on to another room, where veal, lamb, and pork were being cut. Then, crossing the main room, he went through a door to a room not quite so cold, where machines were being run, the biggest a hot-dog creator, as large and as exact in precision parts as an IBM computer. It took pink ground meat, fed it into a complex that stuffed it into skins, and changed it into dogs. Then, on a belt, it traveled these to a packaging mechanism. When they were wrapped in loose plastic bundles, the belt traveled these to a heater, where the plastic was neatly shrunk, so the bundles came out tight, falling into a basket and bouncing like playful pups. Finally it traveled them to a labeler, which covered one side with a happy scene of children having a cookout and eating dogs named
GRANT'S
.

He tarried briefly by this mechanical miracle, but then passed on to a smaller machine, tended by several girls, and gave it close attention. Its main part was a slicer, to which a girl clamped meat, big slabs of beef brisket, already corned, cooked, and chilled. A rotary blade took off big even slices, which dropped to a belt. From it another girl took clutches of three slices each, and placed them on squares of aluminum foil. Other girls folded the foil, crimped it, tucked the shining packets so formed into boxes, and pasted on labels showing a gay restaurant scene and carrying the caption:

ATTENTION, CHEFS!

This Dish Is Ready to Serve!

NO COOKING—NO CARVING—NO WORK

Heat in Cover One Minute—Remove Cover

THAT'S IT!

IT'S READY!

“Kids, you're doing fine,” he told the girls. “Looks like we got a smash.” The girls, who seemed to like him, twittered their thanks.

He held the meeting in the “file room,” a place filled with cabinets, but large enough for the chair Miss Helm brought, and having a desk with phone. At the last moment he remembered Hal Daley, his chief salesman and right-hand man, and invited him himself. He gave Hal the place of honor, at one side of the desk, opposite Miss Helm. Then he stood at the door, waving the others in, the salesmen and cutters, all quiet, well-dressed men; the girls from the corned-beef unit, looking quite collegiate, and much slimmer now that they'd shed their thick coats; and Miss Niemeyer, the chief accountant, a tall woman, with an intellectual face, who habitually held her glasses over one thumb. When all were seated, he took his place at the desk, saying he wanted to bring them down to date “on this corned-beef thing—but first let's call Portico, see what the score is there.” But the call to Mr. Granlund, Portico's president, ran into a snag, as Miss Helm cupped the phone and told him: “Nelly says he's not there. Will you call in twenty minutes?” His face darkening, he took the phone and growled: “Nelly? Have Mr. Granlund call
me.
Tell him it's important, and I won't wait twenty minutes! You have him call me
at once!
” When he hung up, applause broke out from the salesmen, themselves fed up, perhaps, with Mr. Granlund and the difficulty of getting him on the line.

Then the phone rang, and he took the call himself. When a man's voice asked, “Clay, what do you mean, cussing out my girl?” he answered curtly: “I didn't cuss her out.”

“You did something, the way she's acting.”

“All I did was tell her to have you call, but I can damned well cuss you if you keep up this hard-to-get routine! Who do you think you are, De Gaulle?”

To this, Mr. Granlund bellowed: “I'll not have Nelly mistreated—I won't have it, I won't have it,
I won't have it!
” Then, even louder, but not quite so mean, he asked: “What did you call about?”

“The corned beef. How's it doing?”

“Well, how would I know, so soon after—”

“Steve, quit cracking dumb! The same way I know, by getting with it and finding out! But it's O.K. If you don't care how it's doing, I can always switch.”

“What do you mean, switch?”

“Switch to Coastal, what do you think?”

Mention of Coastal, Portico's chief competitor, seemed to enrage Mr. Granlund, for he roared: “Clay, that's blackmail, and I damned well won't stand for it—not for one minute, do you hear?” Clay, suddenly sweet, replied: “I guess it is, Steve. I guess it is, at that, and I certainly apologize. Just the same, blackmail or not, another chain of restaurants, that I won't call by name, gets it—and gets it quick—unless you start making sense. Once more, how's my salthorse doing?”

“Why, O.K., of course. It's big.”

“Fine. Now we're getting somewhere.”

“And where's somewhere, Clay?”

“I want a year's commitment.”

“Commitment? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, for God's sake!” exclaimed Clay, and then, bellowing loudly: “Miss Helm, get me Coastal!” Then, “Be seeing you,” he told Mr. Granlund, and hung up. But he stayed Miss Helm's hand when she reached for the phone, and waited. Sure enough, it rang, to a big laugh from the meeting. “We were cut off, Clay,” said Mr. Granlund when Clay answered. And then: “That commitment—you want it in writing?”

“Stop clowning,” said Clay. “Your word's plenty.”

“Then we'll make it a year, but give me a week on exact amounts. It's too early yet to be sure how much we can sell. On a daily basis the demand might drop once the novelty wears off.”

“Take a month.”

“But now, Clay, I want
your
commitment.”

“
My
commitment? How so?”

“I must have this thing exclusive.”

Caught by surprise, Clay tapped the desk with a pencil, taking a moment to think. Then, parrying: “You mean, in the area?”

“Well, we have no interest elsewhere.”

“So let's see, let's see.”

“I want no knife in my back from Coastal.”

“Then, O.K.—it's yours alone
provided
we get menu credit. This must be
Grant's
corned beef you're selling—Grant's corned beef, cabbage, and spud.”

“Well, I thought
that
was understood.”

“Then, Steve, we're set.”

He hung up to a round of applause, not only from the salesmen but also from everyone in the room, clearly implying pent-up resentments that his triumph had handsomely requited. He nodded, then got up and took a bow, saying “Thankew” like Bob Hope and “How sweet it is” like Jackie Gleason. Then a bit sheepishly: “
So,
our meeting's over before it's started! It's all wrapped up and presold—but thanks for the memory!” They all laughed and he laughed, but once again, as when drinking in Bill Jackson's praise, he betrayed deep emotion in sharp contrast with his temper, so marked with Sally, Portico's Earl, and Mr. Granlund. And yet they seemed somehow related, as though facets of something else, a deep, consuming vanity that on the one hand hated frustration and on the other thirsted for praise, for understanding, for fellow human warmth. In the end, as they all started filing out, he rapped for quiet again, and told them. “I would forget the best news of all! Without my saying a word, he let drop all by himself:
It's to be a daily feature!
”

This got a hand and a cheer.

He sat down, quite overcome for a moment.

Back in his office, he put in a call to Mankato, Minnesota, where the company's main office was, and asked for Pat Grant, the president. Ostensibly he was requesting outsize beef, “the bigger the better—I can sell all you let me have. Big meat is on the way back, and I don't know what looks prettier on the plate than a half-acre slice of roast beef.” But then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned the day's coup and swelled again to Pat's praise. By five he was at the yacht club, playing billiards with Mr. Garrett, one of the habitués. It was a pleasant, rambling place, with a glassed-in balcony running around the second deck, its front facing Chesapeake Bay, its rear the yacht harbor, a pretty jumble of jetties, cruisers, and sailboats on a cove that made in from the river. By six he was at dinner on the bay side of the balcony. By seven he was home at the Marlborough Arms, an apartment house on Spring Street at John F. Kennedy Drive, formerly West Boulevard.

His place, on the seventh floor, was quiet, spacious, and airy, and he was secretly, perhaps not so secretly, proud of it. It had an entrance alcove, with phone table, closet for wraps, and arches that led to the living room on one side and to a long hall on the other, along which were dining room, kitchen, bath, bedroom, second bath, and second bedroom—though this last was fixed up as an “office,” with typewriter, filing case, and dictating machine. The kitchen was a miniature World's Fair exhibit, full of twenty-first-century gadgets, which he used on his inspirations, such as the corned beef. Office, bedroom, and dining room were in birch, not very original and not very masculine. But the living room was his, and masculine in every detail. It had large windows, looking down on city, river, and bay. Between windows were shelves filled with “books that I read,” mainly on history—handsome sets of Parton, Nevins, Van Doren, Freeman, Sumner, and the Bancrofts. They stopped at eye level, and over them, standing, leaning, or hanging, were all sorts of things: his framed diploma from Lafayette College, cups he once won for swimming, pictures of Grant's conventions, and quite a collection of paintings, line drawings, and woodcuts, mainly Mexican. At one end of the room was a Steinway baby grand, and near it a record cabinet, with spinner, hooked up to a hi-fi system. The furniture was upholstered in crimson, and each chair had a table beside it, holding ashtrays and cigarettes. Facing the windows was a fireplace, a brass basket of wood beside it, a fine-mesh screen in front. Flanking it were two sofas, a cocktail table between. But a rug was the room's most striking feature. It was Persian, very big, and soft to the feet over its waffle-rubber foundation. Its colors were rose, yellow, blue, and gray, but with the gray predominating. It blended subtly with the dusty tone of the paintings and with their weathered raw-oak frames.