“Yes, of course. Who wouldn’t be willing?” And where in the world were the police?
He started to write, then suddenly cried, “Oh!” and looked stricken. “I’m so sorry, there’s something I forgot, something I should have told you before. As I explained, you have the option either to keep the unit or return it. Now, we want to be sure our trial users won’t harm the units in any way, so we do request a small damage deposit before delivery. The deposit is automatically refunded after the six months, unless you wish to return the unit and we find that it has been mistreated.”
Would the unsuspicious housewife become suspicious at this point? Mary wasn’t sure. But if she seemed too gullible, that might be just as bad as seeming too wary. So she said, guardedly, “I see.”
“I’ll give you a receipt for the deposit now,” he went on glibly, “and you show it when the unit is delivered. It’s just as simple as that.”
“How much is this damage deposit?”
“Ten dollars.” He smiled, saying, “You can see it’s merely an expression of good faith on your part. If the unit is mistreated, ten dollars will hardly cover its repair.”
“I’m not sure,” she said doubtfully. She had to act more wary now, if only to stall until the police got here. “Maybe I ought to talk it over with my husband first.”
“Certainly. Could you phone him at work? I do have to have your answer today. If you elect not to take the unit, I’ll have to contact our second choice in this area.”
“No, my husband works outdoors. I wish I could phone him.” There was nothing to do now but pay him the money and pray that the police would arrive in time. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“Fine!”
“I’ll just get my purse.”
Mary went back to the kitchen and looked longingly at the telephone. Call the police again? No, they were surely on the way by now. She got her purse and returned to the living room.
It seemed to take no time at all to give him the money and get the receipt. Then he was rising, saying, “The unit should be delivered within three weeks.”
Desperately, she said, “Wouldn’t you like a glass of iced coffee before you go? It’s so hot out today.”
He was moving toward the door. “Thank you, but I’d better be getting back to the office. There’s still—”
The doorbell chimed.
Mary opened the door, and Mr. Merriweather walked into the arms of two uniformed policemen.
The next five minutes were hectic. Merriweather blustered and bluffed, but the policemen would have none of it. When Mary told them his line, they recognized it at once: complaints had been coming in from swindled housewives in the area for over a month. “There’s always a couple of these short-con artists working the suburbs,” one of the policemen said.
But Mr. Merriweather didn’t give up until one of the policemen suggested that they phone the local office of Universal Electric and verify his identification. At that, he collapsed like a deflated balloon. Turning to Mary, he said, “How? How did you know?”
“Women’s intuition,” she told him. “You just didn’t seem right to me.”
“That’s impossible,” he said. “What did I do wrong? How did you tumble to it?”
“Just women’s intuition,” she said.
The policemen took him away, shaking his head, and Mary went back to the kitchen and got started on dinner. She could hardly wait for Geoff to get home — to tell him about her day.
Geoff came in a little after five, his suit and white shirt limp and wrinkled. “What a scorcher,” he said. “If it keeps up like this, we’d better move north again.”
He pulled a handful of bills from his pockets, fives and tens, and dumped them on the dining-room table. As he counted them, he said, “How was your day?”
“Got rid of some of the competition,” she told him. “Guy working the Free Home Demonstration dodge. Get that grift off the table, I have to set it for dinner.”
1965
Stage Fright
Now, here was the room…
Armchairs at the sides, flanked by drum tables, and a green sofa in the middle of the carpet. A telephone on the end table beside the sofa, ashtrays on the drum tables, and magazines on the coffee table in front of the sofa. On the first wall, to the sofa’s right, a portrait of an angry-looking young blond woman in a breakaway frame. On the second wall, to the sofa’s left, a mirror smeared lightly with soap. On the third wall, behind the sofa, a glass-doored secretary containing books, this flanked by two tall windows through which could be seen a bit of formal garden and a lot of blue sky. There wasn’t any fourth wall; that was the curtain separating this room from the audience, who were now mumbling impatiently because it was twenty minutes to nine and the curtain hadn’t yet opened. And the curtain hadn’t yet opened because Heather Sanderson was lying on the sofa with her throat cut.
Sterling McCall and I wasted a good three and a half minutes arguing about who should go out and soothe the patrons, because somebody had to and neither of us wanted to. I thought he should because he was, after all, the producer, and he thought I should because I was, after all, the publicity and public relations man and this was, after all, public relations with a capital PR.
“Ling,” I said, “I can’t go out there, for God’s sake. I saw her, I’m still all shaken up.”
“Andy,” he said, “I can’t go out there, for God’s sake. You know how I stutter when I’m upset.” But he didn’t stutter when he was passing the buck.
And it didn’t help to have Bobbi Barten, her feral eyes all aglitter, interrupting all the time, telling us, “I could go on, Ling, you know that. You know that, Andy. We don’t have to cancel the show, I know it’s a terrible thing but I know the part, and you know what they say about The Show Must Go On. I mean, I am her understudy, and we could still go on.”
I give us both credit, Ling and I, we didn’t succumb. Ling didn’t want to have to give a lot of customers back a lot of money, and neither of us wanted to go out on stage and talk to the patrons, but we didn’t succumb. I said, “Forget it, Bobbi, this isn’t your big chance. There isn’t a Broadway producer in the house.”
She glowered, and sulked, and said, “I’m only trying to help,” and went back to her song and dance, while Ling and I continued to argue about who was going to go out there.
It was a foregone conclusion. I didn’t pay his salary. He did pay mine. So I went out from the wings, from where we’d been arguing by the light board, and walked along the strip of flooring between the edge of the drop cloth and the bottom of the curtain, not looking at the sofa, where Heather Sanderson, the girl in the painting in the breakaway frame, had now departed her own breakaway frame, leaving it behind with its throat cut.
You’ve always got to poke at the curtains to find where they meet, so you can get through. It looks funny out front maybe, but it doesn’t feel funny when you’re the one doing it. Particularly when you’ve got to stand there, poking at the curtain, with the body on the sofa seven feet behind you.
I got out there at last, just as some dimwit backstage dimmed the house lights. I turned my head and croaked, “Lights!” and a few patrons laughed. The lights came on again, and I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my unfortunate duty to announce that the performance of A Sound, Of Distant Drums scheduled for tonight—” And so on.