“Later. I’m calling.” The number was already ringing.
“Please, Mr. Wolfe.”
“Later, I said. In a minute.” The girl went away. “Hello. Let me speak with your husband, madam. I am Ed Wolfe of Cornucopia Finance. He can’t cope. Your husband can’t cope.”
The woman made an excuse. “Put him on, goddamn it. We know he’s out of work. Nothing gets by. Nothing.”
There was a hand on the receiver beside his own, the wide male fingers pink and vaguely perfumed, the nails manicured. For a moment he struggled with it fitfully, as though the hand itself were all he had to contend with. Then he recognized La Meck and let go. La Meck pulled the phone quickly toward his mouth and spoke softly into it, words of apology, some ingenious excuse Ed Wolfe couldn’t hear. He put the receiver down beside the phone itself and Ed Wolfe picked it up and returned it to its cradle.
“Ed,” La Meck said, “come into the office with me.”
Ed Wolfe followed La Meck, his eyes on La Meck’s behind.
La Meck stopped at his office door. Looking around, he shook his head sadly, and Ed Wolfe nodded in agreement. La Meck let him enter first. While La Meck stood, Ed Wolfe could discern a kind of sadness in his slouch, but once the man was seated behind his desk he seemed restored, once again certain of the world’s soundness. “All right,” La Meck began, “I won’t lie to you. ”
Lie to me. Lie to me, Ed Wolfe prayed silently.
“You’re in here for me to fire you. You’re not being laid off. I’m not going to tell you that I think you’d be happier some place else, that the collection business isn’t your game, that profits don’t justify our keeping you around. Profits are terrific, and if collection isn’t your game it’s because you haven’t got a game. As far as your being happier some place else, that’s bullshit. You’re not supposed to be happy. It isn’t in the cards for you. You’re a fall-guy type, God bless you, and though I like you personally I’ve got no use for you in my office.”
I’d like to get you on the other end of a telephone some day, Ed Wolfe thought miserably.
“Don’t ask me for a reference,” La Meck said. “I couldn’t give you one.”
“No, no,” Ed Wolfe said. “I wouldn’t ask you for a reference.” A helpless civility was all he was capable of. If you’re going to suffer, suffer, he told himself.
“Look,” La Meck said, his tone changing, shifting from brutality to compassion as though there were no difference between the two, “you’ve got a kind of quality, a real feeling for collection. I’m frank to tell you, when you first came to work for us I figured you wouldn’t last. I put you on the phones because I wanted you to see the toughest part first. A lot of people can’t do it. You take a guy who’s already down and bury him deeper. It’s heart-wringing work. But you, you were amazing. An artist. You had a real thing for the deadbeat soul, I thought. But we started to get complaints, and I had to warn you. Didn’t I warn you? I should have suspected something when the delinquent accounts started to turn over again. It was like rancid butter turning sweet. So I don’t say this to knock your technique. Your technique’s terrific. With you around we could have laid off the lawyers. But Ed, you’re a gangster. A gangster.”
That’s it, Ed Wolfe thought. I’m a gangster. Babyface Wolfe at nobody’s door.
“Well,” La Meck said, “I guess we owe you some money.”
“Two weeks’ pay,” Ed Wolfe said.
“And two weeks in lieu of notice,” La Meck said grandly.
“And a week’s pay for my vacation.”
“You haven’t been here a year,” La Meck said.
“It would have been a year in another month. I’ve earned the vacation.”
“What the hell,” La Meck said. “A week’s pay for vacation.”
La Meck figured on a pad, and tearing off a sheet, handed it to Ed Wolfe. “Does that check with your figures?” he asked.
Ed Wolfe, who had no figures, was amazed to see that his check was so large. After the deductions he made $92.73 a week. Five $92.73’s was evidently $463.65. It was a lot of money. “That seems to be right,” he told La Meck.
La Meck gave him a check and Ed Wolfe got up. Already it was as though he had never worked there. When La Meck handed him the check he almost couldn’t think what it was for. There should have been a photographer there to record the ceremony: ORPHAN AWARDED CHECK BY BUSINESSMAN.
“Good-by, Mr. La Meck,” he said. “It has been an interesting association,” he added foolishly.
“Good-by, Ed,” La Meck answered, putting his arm around Ed Wolfe’s shoulders and leading him to the door. “I’m sorry it had to end this way.” He shook Ed Wolfe’s hand seriously and looked into his eyes. He had a hard grip.
Quantity and quality, Ed Wolfe thought.
“One thing, Ed. Watch yourself. Your mistake here was that you took the job too seriously. You hated the chiselers.”
No, no, I loved them, he thought.
“You’ve got to watch it. Don’t love. Don’t hate. That’s the secret. Detachment and caution. Look out for Ed Wolfe.”
“I’ll watch out for him,” he said giddily, and in a moment he was out of La Meck’s office, and the main office, and the elevator, and the building itself, loose in the world, as cautious and as detached as La Meck could want him.
He took the car from the parking lot, handing the attendant the two dollars. The man gave him back fifty cents. “That’s right,” Ed Wolfe said, “it’s only two o’clock.” He put the half-dollar in his pocket, and, on an impulse, took out his wallet. He had twelve dollars. He counted his change. Eighty-two cents. With his finger, on the dusty dashboard, he added $12.82 to $463.65. He had $476.47. Does that check with your figures? he asked himself and drove into the crowded traffic.
Proceeding slowly, past his old building, past garages, past bar-and-grills, past second-rate hotels, he followed the traffic further downtown. He drove into the deepest part of the city, down and downtown to the bottom, the foundation, the city’s navel. He watched the shoppers and tourists and messengers and men with appointments. He was tranquil, serene. It was something he could be content to do forever. He could use his check to buy gas, to take his meals at drive-in restaurants, to pay tolls. It would be a pleasant life, a great life, and he contemplated it thoughtfully. To drive at fifteen or twenty miles an hour through eternity, stopping at stoplights and signs, pulling over to the curb at the sound of sirens and the sight of funerals, obeying all traffic laws, making obedience to them his very code. Ed Wolfe, the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, the Off and Running Orphan, “Look Out for Ed Wolfe,” a ghostly wailing down the city’s corridors. What would be bad? he thought.
In the morning, out of habit, he dressed himself in a white shirt and light suit. Before he went downstairs he saw that his check and his twelve dollars were still in his wallet. Carefully he counted the eighty-two cents that he had placed on the dresser the night before, put the coins in his pocket, and went downstairs to his car.
Something green had been shoved under the wiper blade on the driver’s side.
YOUR CAR WILL NEVER BE WORTH MORE THAN IT IS WORTH RIGHT NOW! WHY WAIT FOR DEPRECIATION TO MAKE YOU AUTOMOTIVELY BANKRUPT? I WILL BUY THIS CAR AND PAY YOU CASH! I WILL NOT CHEAT YOU!
Ed Wolfe considered his car thoughtfully a moment and then got in. That day he drove through the city, playing the car radio softly. He heard the news on the hour and half-hour. He listened to Art Linkletter, far away and in another world. He heard Bing Crosby’s ancient voice, and thought sadly, Depreciation. When his tank was almost empty he thought wearily of having to have it filled and could see himself, bored and discontented behind the bug-stained glass, forced into a patience he did not feel, having to decide whether to take the Green Stamps the attendant tried to extend. Put money in your purse, Ed Wolfe, he thought. Cash! he thought with passion.