I had planned to switch these two to Sosa. They were referrals of mine but a young couple and easy to switch. I was exhausted. But I looked around for him and he wasn’t in yet, naturally. So the hell with it. I would sell them myself.
I took a deep breath when I sat them down at my desk. Okay, I thought. Maybe this is what you need right now, Bobby. A clean sale. A bit of sanity to start the day.
How do you sell a diamond to a young couple? It is very, very easy to do. Find out who’s in charge. Usually it is the woman. Then focus your attention on the other one: explain everything to the weak one, act as though the power’s over on that half of your desk. He’s grateful, he trusts you, he thinks you understand him, he thinks you like and respect him. Now, when you are getting down to selecting a diamond, subtly betray him. Let her know that you understand that she is the decision maker. How? Push on one stone that he likes. She won’t like it, for the obvious reasons. When she insists that that diamond, some other diamond, is really the prettiest one, agree with her: You know, I think she’s right. On your hand (ask her to extend the fingers of her left hand and hold them tightly together, and then with diamond tweezers lay the stone carefully in the groove between her ring and her index finger), there is something about that one, you are exactly right, I didn’t see it myself until now, but that one is just right. You picked it. That’s the one.
Sold.
It works just as well the other way, if the man is in charge. Maybe better, because they need it more. The belief you can give him. The belief you can sell him, sell them both. That way it’s not just jewelry they are buying. You can sell her belief in him.
They purchased the stone. It was a carat and a quarter radiant, I VS2, pleasant. A faked GIA certificate. Sosa had made it for me a few days before on our copier.
She loves it. It will appraise for twice that price! Sosa arrived and walked casually through my office. I asked him to take the job envelope to Old John: I was going to set it while they waited, so she could try it on before she left. He might give it to her then. They often did. Propose right in front of the jeweler. Well, the diamond would last.
I introduced them to Sosa. “One of our best salespeople.” I said it sincerely, but he laughed sarcastically to make them think I was mocking him. Why did he do that? I wondered.
The young woman, her hand oddly out as though the diamond were still balanced on her woven fingers, gave me an inquisitive, unhappy look. She did not want to believe I could be tricking them about anything, or that I was the kind of person who would ever do that. The particular sales technique I had used on them depended, like all lazy lying, upon unimpeachable sincerity. But he just kept on going, right through the office, and closed the rear door abruptly behind himself. I smiled at them and said something funny, “He’s late, and I get in trouble,” to put us on the same side, and they were fine again.
I rang up the card (you never really expect it to go through, and then like a locked door opening it does, and everyone feels reassured, both about themselves and one another), walked them to their car, opened her door for her, and told them I’d see them tomorrow. Old John was behind and couldn’t mount the diamond before closing, plus the platinum mounting took time to size.
Then I went into Jim’s office.
“Do you have time for lunch today?” I asked him. “We need to talk about the Polack.” He gave me a look. He was on the phone. It sounded like it was a customer he was talking to, at least.
He shook his head at me. While he was talking he wrote on his desk pad, “Let her go.” Then he tapped his pen on it. He smiled at me.
Okay, I thought. That’s how we were going to handle this. I went back to my office and sat in my chair. I tried to call Lisa. She was on the other line and she didn’t pick up. Or her phone was turned off. Or she didn’t have her phone because it was in her purse and her purse was still in my car, in the tow yard. I looked in my desk drawer for my coke. I was out. I picked up the phone and called Maria, my connection. One thing at a time, I thought. Another appointment had come in and was waiting for me there on the showroom floor. It was a custom order. He was coming to preview the diamonds for a necklace. I still had not picked the stones. I tried to decide on the best lie to tell him. Maria didn’t answer the phone. I used the beeper option, and then stood up to go greet my customer.
•
The ceiling of the room was partially lit, through my curtains, by someone’s headlights outside my bedroom window, a floor below. I could hear one voice and then another voice. Go back to sleep, Bobby, I thought. This is no time of the night to think about things. I closed my eyes. But just then there was a tiny movement on my pillow. I opened my eyes and there was a movement, again, in the dark. It could have been my body pulling at a sheet that tugged the fabric of the pillowcase. I reached and turned on the light. There was a very small brown bug on the pillow. I put on my glasses. It was a baby cockroach. About the size of the ash on a cigarette, but a cockroach. I crushed it between my thumb and forefinger. I would have let it live if it had been some other kind of bug, I thought. But, even in my present circumstances, I could not let a cockroach run around in my bed at night.
That made me think of another time, visiting my father in West Palm, in the summertime, when I was eight or nine. I had finished my eggs and I started to put my dishes in the dishwasher like we did at home. “Nope, not in there, son,” my dad said. He opened the dishwasher so that I could see, but not too widely. Dozens of cockroaches scampered around the plastic walls. “There’s a whole family of them living there,” he said. “I just wash the dishes by hand.”
Larry’s bench was now behind Old John’s: Jim had moved Larry up in the jeweler’s line after he had successfully hand-fabricated a gold breastplate modeled after the breastplate of Aaron for a Jewish cardiologist in Houston. Except for Old John, who was working on a pink gold and chalcedony necklace for a client of mine, one of my Highland Park ladies, everyone had gone home. I sat at Larry’s bench and watched Old John’s deft, pretty torch-work. He had sections of the clouded, grayish blue stone masked off with tiny pieces of balsa wood to protect it from the heat.
Old John had his snake coiled over his shoulders. It knew to keep its head away from the invisible flame of the torch. It was moving, though, looking around with its neck and head, as it liked to do while he worked.
“When are you going to go to college, Bobby?” He said it without turning his head. I was startled. I almost stood up. Then I tried to make it look as though I were only inspecting a tool on Larry’s bench. But Old John hadn’t noticed. He was focused on his work. “When are you going to start making a real life for yourself? ”
“I’m a businessman, Old John,” I said. “This is my life. This is the life I want.”
“Bobby, you are my friend. You are also my boss. But let’s be frank, you aren’t a businessman. You know it and I know it. Maybe everybody doesn’t know it. Not for me to say. But you won’t be able to hide it forever.”
That hurt my feelings. It was something the Polack would say.
“I’m the best salesman in this store, Old John,” I said. “For that matter, people say I’m the best salesman in the whole metroplex. Even Granddad says so.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t a salesman. That’s the chief problem, I’d say. I’ve never seen one better. But a salesman is the opposite of a businessman, Bobby. A businessman cares about the practical details of life. A salesman is an artist. He can’t tie his own shoelaces. He lives on tomorrow. He’s a cloud-and-sky guy, a rainbow man. He can’t hold money. He can’t make a goddamn dollar out of four quarters and a can of glue, if you want to hear the truth of it. That’s you, Bobby.”