What's in It for Me? (13 page)

“Now?”

“Sure. I can be over in ten minutes. I'm just five blocks away.”

“That will be very good.”

“Fine, Mr. Yazdabian. Then I'll see you in ten minutes.”

“All right, sir.”

“Good-by,” I said.

“Good-by.”

I got up and straightened my tie. Then I put on my hat and coat and stopped at the switchboard for a moment.

“How do I look, Miss Vinegard?”

She smiled roguishly. “Why, Mr. Bogen, you—!”

I held up my hand imperiously.

“No essays, Miss Vinegard. Just one word. Good or bad?”

The smile played all over me.

“Very good, Mr. Bogen.”

I sauntered up Seventh Avenue, from Thirty-fourth Street to Thirty-ninth, marshaling my thoughts and my arguments. I'd handled some strange cattle in my days, but this Armenian with the wavery voice and the pip-pip manners sounded like some new kind of fish.

From the outside, the set-up looked all right. He had half of the ninth floor in 550, which was the home of the higher-priced range almost exclusively. There was a modernistic front with indirect lighting and a string of stand-up letters over a swanky showcase that spelled out Hrant Yazdabian, Inc. in neon lights. The showcase was a full eight feet wide, but it had nothing in it but a bolt of expensive print silk in confined patterns against a background of purple velvet. Class. I liked that.

I pushed through the swinging doors into the showroom and heard a buzzer sounding somewhere in the back.

At the far end was a set of purple curtains. As I stood there, twirling my hat, the curtains parted and a girl came in.

She stopped quite a way off, like a duelist measuring his distance, cocked her head slightly, and gave me that bored, inquiring, hurry-because-I-really-must-get-back-to-Lord-Cats-ass look. I cocked my head and grinned back at her calmly with my own special brand of the you're-crapping-the-wrong-guy-look.

“Yes?” she said finally.

“Mr. Yazdabian,” I said bluntly. “Where is he?”

“Who wishes to see him, please?”

“The man with the ad in the
News Record,
tell him.”

“Your name please?”

“It's a secret,” I said. “Just say
News Record
ad. He'll know.”

She made her exit with a swish and a few moments later the curtains parted to admit a curious sight. It was a man because it was wearing pants, but everything else looked neuter. He must have been about sixty because the skin around his throat resembled crumpled tissue paper. He was nattily dressed in an artistic and vaguely foreign way, with a white flower in his buttonhole, spats, and a funny cut to the lapels and drape of his jacket. After the first glance, you didn't want to keep looking at his head, but you couldn't avoid it because it was so big. The hair was completely gone on top, and along the sides and back it was coming out in patches, so that where there should have been sideburns, there were ragged pink splotches, surrounded by messy-looking white fuzz. His eyebrows, however, were jet black and his face was white and sour-looking, like an oversoaked pickle that is beginning to load up with so much vinegar that the creases are in imminent danger of disappearing.

“Yes, sir?” he said, coming forward. “Are you the gentleman who spoke to me on—?”

“Mr. Yazdabian?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“My name is Bogen,” I said. “Harry Bogen.”

“Bogen?” he said. “I seem to have a very distinct recollection of that name.”

“No reason why you shouldn't,” I said. “I used to be Apex Modes.”

He frowned and looked down at the string of five yellow beads that hung loosely from his hand.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “The firm that went into bankruptcy several months ago.”

The fact that it had been the biggest money maker on the Avenue didn't stay with them. But the fact that it had gone into bankruptcy did.

“That's right,” I said. “But you can't hold that against me, Mr. Yazdabian. I'm just a salesman, not a business man. I had a crooked partner that was responsible for the bankruptcy. He went to jail for it, if you recall.”

“Yes, indeed. I do recall. Now that you mention it.”

“The way I can sell dresses,” I said, “we would still be the biggest firm in the nineteen-seventy-fives and over if it weren't for that partner of mine.”

The beads clicked briskly.

“I sell nineteen-seventy-fives and over, too, Mr. Bogen.”

I laughed heartily. It isn't hard if you take a deep breath first and let it come rumbling out fast.

“Maybe between the two of us we can make
you
the biggest firm in that line on the Avenue,” I said.

“Shall we go into my private office?”

“All right with me.”

I followed him through the curtains into a little hole in the wall that looked like a small corner of my living room. There was a single wooden table and two rickety chairs. The rest of the place was jammed with scattered bolts of cloth, stacks of sketches, and half-finished dresses.

“You will pardon the appearance of my office,” he said. “I am my own designer.”

“I'm used to the part of a dress house that exists behind the showroom,” I said with a smile.

He waved me to a chair. I sat down and pulled out my cigarettes but he stopped me with his hand.

“Please,” he said. “I can't stand smoke.”

“Of course,” I said. “My error.”

He took the other chair and looked at the beads in his hands.

“I was very much interested in your advertisement in the
Daily News Record,”
he said, “because, frankly, I am in need of a partner who is an excellent salesman. But I am a little upset by the fact that you were a member of the firm of Apex Modes, Mr. Bogen.”

“Why should that bother you, Mr. Yazdabian?”

“Well, this is a little embarrassing for me, Mr. Bogen, but—”

“You can talk plainly,” I said. “I've been in the dress business long enough, Mr. Yazdabian, to know that fancy decorations belong on the garments, not in business talks.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“So you can talk plainly,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “I believe you, Mr. Bogen, when you say that the bankruptcy of Apex Modes was no fault of yours. But the unfortunate fact remains that you, as a former member of that firm, have a, well, an unsavory reputation in credit circles. It is unfortunate, and probably unfair, but true nevertheless.”

“I agree with you that it is unfair and unfortunate,” I said, “and in a moment I will show you how it is of no importance at all. But first, Mr. Yazdabian, if you will explain to me why you answered my advertisement, I will be glad to—”

“Of course,” he said, addressing the yellow beads. “My problem is simply this. I have a good business here. I make a profit on every dress I sell. But I am under-capitalized. Therefore, I find it necessary to borrow money continually from the bank to meet my maturing bills. I should like to eliminate this condition by taking in a partner with sufficient capital to make it possible for me to meet my maturing obligations regularly without having to borrow money from the bank.”

It wasn't a bad reason, but it didn't sound like enough to me.

“Very well,” I said. “Now assuming that I am that partner. Just assuming that, Mr. Yazdabian. The only objection you can think of offhand is my former connection with Apex Modes and the fact that the credit men are down on me and that any firm in which I am a partner, to put it as bluntly as possible, any firm in which I am a partner will not be able to get credit from the silk houses. Right?”

He nodded to the beads and clicked them through his fingers.

“Precisely, Mr. Bogen.”

“Well, then,” I said, “if that's your objection, we can eliminate it immediately. I am not interested in broadcasting to the world that I am your partner, Mr. Yazdabian, or anybody else's partner. I can come in here with my investment as a silent partner, and to the world I can appear merely as a salesman in your employ. Nobody is going to refuse to check you for merchandise because you employ an ace salesman, Mr. Yazdabian. And let me tell you, sir, when it comes to salesmen, I can teach them all lessons.”

He smiled delicately.

“I don't doubt it, Mr. Bogen. I remember the tremendous success of Apex Modes very well.”

“You may also, recall,” I said, “that that success was almost entirely due to my ability as a salesman. I'm not a business man, Mr. Yazdabian. Money and figures and things like that, that's all Greek to me. But selling? That's my meat.”

“Your reputation as a salesman has preceded you, Mr. Bogen.”

“No reason why it shouldn't,” I said with a grin. “It's my only stock in trade, and I devote myself to it accordingly, Mr. Yazdabian. I don't depend on the quality of my merchandise only. I surround myself with all the glamour and hocus-pocus that buyers fall for. I live with an actress, I spend all my spare time in night clubs, I wouldn't wear a suit that cost less than a hundred and seventy-five dollars or a shirt that wasn't made especially to my order, and when everything is added up and subtracted, Mr. Yazdabian, I've got a following among the men and women who buy the dresses, the higher-priced dresses, in this country that would fill Madison Square Garden twice.”

“You make yourself very alluring, Mr. Bogen.”

“As a partner, you mean,” I said with a grin.

“Of course,” he said hastily.

I could understand his sensitivity.

“How much are you asking for a half interest in your business, Mr. Yazdabian?”

“Twenty thousand dollars,” he said promptly.

“That sounds interesting,” I said in my best unruffled manner. “Suppose we leave the details for another meeting?”

“Very well, Mr. Bogen. When would you suggest?”

He was getting a full twenty thousand dollars worth of anxiety into his voice, all right.

“Oh, say in a couple of days or so. That suit you?”

“That will be fine, sir.”

I'd know soon enough whether it would be or not.

“Then suppose you let me give you a ring?”

“Very well, sir.”

I stood up and extended my hand. He stood up and took it. Phooey. Next time he could keep playing with his beads.

“Good-by, Mr. Yazdabian. See you in a day or so.”

“Good-by, Mr. Bogen.”

A
NY SLIM CHANCE THAT
Selman still had to get his two tickets for
Smile Out Loud
disappeared soon after I returned to the office. His envelope, with the replies to my ad, was waiting for me. I went through the whole batch of letters and then fired them into the waste basket. Five hundred and fifty bucks down the sewer, and all I had to show for it was an Armenian fag with an Oxford accent who played with beads and wanted twenty thousand bucks.

As I rode uptown I gave myself a bit of advice: next time don't be so quick to start shooting off the big trap all over the Beaux Arts at noon with half-assed plans before anything was clinched.

“Oh, Mr. Bogen!” Charlie called to me as I came into the lobby. “There's a—”

“Nuts,” I said, walking right past him into the elevator. I was still sore because he'd been out to lunch the last time my mother called and the call had gone through to Martha.

“Mr. Bogen!” he called again.

“Let's get going,” I said to the elevator operator. “I'm in a hurry.”

The elevator doors closed and shut him off. But as soon as I let myself into the apartment I saw what he had been trying to tell me, and it occurred to me that it would help things a lot if I stopped being such a wise guy and laid off getting sore at people at the wrong time.

Sitting upright in the armchair, facing Martha on the couch, was my mother.

I took the situation in quickly. She was wearing a trim little suit with a fur collar and she hadn't taken off her hat. In fact, she still held her purse and her gloves in her hands. Okay. What the hell she was driving at I didn't know, but if only she didn't start making herself too much at home I might still be able to straighten this thing out.

“Hello, Mom,” I said guiltily.

“Hello, Harry,” she said cheerfully. Too cheerfully.

“When did you get here, Ma?” I said quickly. “I was calling you at home for almost an hour from the office, but nobody answered, so finally I decided to come up here and—”

“This time at least I can't call you a liar,” she said with a dry laugh. “Because I left the house over two hours ago and—”

“Two hours?” I said. “Two hours to get down from the Bronx?”

“Don't grab my words out of my mouth. You've got enough of your own. I started to say I left the house two hours ago and I got here, downstairs, an hour ago and the man by the desk, the man downstairs, he—”

“Charlie,” Martha explained to me with a charming smile.

“Yes, of course,” I said with a flash of the smile that had made me famous from Honeywell Avenue to Times Square.

What the hell was her act, anyway? When that screwball brain of hers started to go places, it took three guides and a safari to follow her.

“The man downstairs said you weren't here,” mother continued, “so I said to myself he's not here, so I'll wait. To wait it doesn't cost any money. So I sat down downstairs and I was waiting, when—”

“When I came along,” Martha trilled. Two bars of girlish breathlessness in her laugh. “I was just passing by the house, Harry, and I thought I'd drop in and say hello. Charlie said you were out and that your mother was waiting in the lobby. Then I remembered that you had said she wasn't feeling so well lately, so I told Charlie perhaps it would be all right if I introduced myself to her.” I would like to have heard that introduction of hers. “I thought it would be better if I took her upstairs so she could wait here in your apartment instead of that draughty lobby. I knew you wouldn't want her sitting in that lobby, Harry. So I did, and here we are, just chatting and waiting for you, when in you come!”