He asked, “What are your plans after you leave?”
“Oh, I believe I’ll open a little place down near Dallas. I have friends living there.” She whacked out a few more sentences.
“Well, I wish you luck,” he said.
In a firm voice, Zoe said, “I wish you luck, too, working with Susan. Have you known her very long? If you can make a go of this place, it’ll be up to you and not to her—she has absolutely no aptitude or concern. She merely wants to be able to draw enough out of it to meet her needs.” Abruptly she stopped talking to him and returned to her work. Time passed, and then she said, “Have you had experience in retail selling?” She asked in such a manner as to suggest that it would not surprise her if he had years of it, that Susan had snared someone who could take over and manage the place with utmost efficiency. In spite of her dislike for him she obviously had respect for him, almost an awe. As if, by replacing her, he had already proved himself better equipped for the job. And of course he was a man. He felt, watching her and studying her, that she automatically conceded superiority to men. It would be a failing, a weakness in her. Part of the situation that had retarded them in trying to do business, in dealing with wholesalers and customers.
Two women trying to run a business. A disadvantage.
“I’d like to look over the last few months’ invoices,” he said.
“They’re in the file, in the cabinet. Alphabetically.”
Seated at a vacant desk he inspected the invoices, seeing how their costs broke down.
“Are you seeing what our profits have been?” Zoe asked, once.
Almost at once he saw that Susan and Zoe had been buying in the worst possible fashion, little driblets each month at the highest per unit cost. He saw, too, that they never picked their supplies up; they always had things delivered.
“What about returns?” he asked Zoe. “Defective stuff that goes back.”
“You’ll have to ask Susan about that,” Zoe said.
Probably they were missing out on the possibilities of clearing their inventories through periodic returns. He wandered about the office, poking into the supply cupboards, the shelves of reams of typing paper, boxes of ribbon, flat packets of carbon paper, and the weary old typewriters which rented for five dollars or less a month. He could tell at a glance that these ancient machines took up most of the storage space; they lined two entire walls, from ceiling to floor. Most of them had a layer of dust on them. The window space, too, was filled up by machines for sale, all second-hand, nothing new. Like a junk store, he thought morbidly. His experience went entirely against used merchandise; it made him feel queasy even to touch dusty, dirty-looking objects in second-hand shops. He liked things new, in sanitary cellophane packages. Imagine buying a used toothbrush, he thought to himself. Christ.
Lighting a cigarette and meditating, he began to wonder about franchises. If new typewriters were being sold nearby, the manufacturers might be unwilling to open more dealerships. But … there were always ways to get hold of merchandise. As long as the buyer had cash, and preferably a means of immediate transportation.
He began to thrill to the notion of it. Transforming this place.
“I think I can do her a lot of good here,” he said.
Zoe did not answer.
At noon Susan breezed into the office carrying an armload of parcels. She stoped by Zoe and began to show her different items. Bruce, conscious of her, continued working. Eventually she came over to him.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m making progress,” He had discovered the accounts receivable file and was tabulating the total outstanding.
“You look so busy,” Susan said.
From her desk, Zoe said, “If nobody objects I think I’ll go and eat.” She covered her typewriter and put her smock away.
“Go ahead,” Susan said, in a preoccupied voice. As soon as Zoe had left the office, Susan sat down across from him. “How did it go?” she asked urgently. “Did she say much?”
“Very little,” he said. He felt a certain amount of coolness at having had to enter the office alone; it seemed to him that she should have accompanied him.
“Good,” she said, with relief. “She knows she has to accept your presence here.” Leaning toward him she said, “Did she tell you that we tried to get the Underwood franchise and they wouldn’t grant it to us?” She studied him anxiously.
“No,” he said. “But I was wondering about franchises.”
“If we could raise enough money to put in a genuinely big initial order, they’d give it to us. Don’t you agree? You know all about that.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
“I’m counting on you to get things for us to sell.”
“I know you are,” he said. “But I can’t scare up the money.”
“But you can arrange deals so it doesn’t cost us so much. And you can get things on consignment. Don’t you suppose?”
“It depends,” he said.
“What do you think of the counters? If we get new portables we’ll need a place to display them.”
He said, “Speaking of money, am I officially at work for you?”
“How … I mean,” she said, drawing herself up in her chair and frowning in a hectic, worried fashion, “yes, of course, you started to work this morning, as soon as you got here. I consider you an official member of the firm.”
With great caution and tact he said, “How are we going to arrange my pay?”
“You get to draw from the receipts, the same as we do. Up to a point, of course. And we always write it down; we have a regular form we fill out, like a receipt, which both of us sign.”
“But how much?”
“What—do you think you need?”
He found himself, with her, at this point, up against a blank wall. “It isn’t a question of that. It’s a question of settling the arrangement so we know where we stand.”
That immediately troubled and confused her. “You decide,” she said, in an impulsive rush. “Anything you say is all right with me. Especially if—” She broke off and looked behind her. “If we proceed in our plans, which I really hope we do.” Her voice sank down. “Bruce, I want you to be free to decide what you want. I’ll get out the books and you can see what Zoe and I have been drawing.”
After she had shown him the books, and they had discussed it at length, they decided that he could draw up to three-fifty in the thirty-day period.
“Am I robbing you?” she demanded anxiously.
“No,” he said, glad to get it settled.
“I want to pay you more. You’re worth more. Maybe later on, when we have something to sell ” Clenching her fists she said loudly, “God damn it, we have to have something to sell!”
A customer had entered, and Susan got up to wait on him.
Later in the day he strolled across the street to the dime store to see for himself what they did and did not sell.
The paper and typewriter supply counter ran along one side, not visible from the street; the next counter sold imitation jewelry and buttons, and the store seemed about evenly committed between typewriter supplies and buttons. Their ribbons were heaped together in two cubbyholes. Each ribbon sold for 89C, an unfamiliar brand, and he recognized them as inferior extra-short ribbons, good only for typing letters, absolutely unfit for office machines. He saw, too, that the store did not stock ribbons for all model machines. Their typing paper came in 10 and 25C packs, not reams. It, too, was cheap second-quality stuff, no rag or linen watermarked bond that typists like for their first copy. That cheered him up. And their carbon paper was blue.