He strolled down to the drugstore.
Sure enough, the drugstore carried four brands of popularly-priced portables, and each was well-displayed, the machines were placed at the end of the photo supplies counter, next to cameras and inexpensive tape recorders. He noticed that the drugstore stocked only the lowest priced portable in each line, and no office model machines.
When the girl meandered over to wait on him he asked about the guarantee on the portables. It was a flat ninety days, she told him.
“And I bring it in here?” he asked. “If something breaks?”
“No,” she said, without concern. “You have to take it over to this repair place …” She dipped down behind the counter for a much-creased folder. “They don’t do any service here. It’s out on the highway to Pocatello.”
He asked, “Do you know if there’s any place around here that I can get professioal typing done?”
“I think there’s a place down the street,” the girl said.
Thanking her, he left the drugstore.
Obviously they had not gone heavily into typewriters. They aimed mostly at high school students and businessmen who needed some sort of machine around the house for occasional typing. His knowledge of the franchise system came into play; he recalled that often a franchise was let that permitted a dealer to sell only the low-priced items in a line, not the complete line. He could easily find out if the drugstore had a franchise to sell larger machines, were they to want to. Possibly they did not.
He recrossed the street to the office.
Standing in the middle of the office behind the counter was a short, swarthy, round-shouldered man wearing a natty gray single-breasted suit and bow tie. A cloud of cigarette smoke surrounded him as he puffed away. Noticing Bruce he squinted at him through horn-rimmed glasses, grimaced, spat out a bit of cigarette paper, and said in a hoarse but friendly voice, “I can’t wait of you. I don’t work here.”
Near the man Bruce saw a leather briefcase, a satchel with handles. The man evidently was a salesman from some manufacturer. He watched Bruce with an ironic brusqueness, as if he wanted to wait on him but considered himself incompetent and certainly out of place. As if, by being behind the counter but not working there, he was flying false colors. He seemed apologetic.
“That’s okay,” Bruce said, going past him.
The man’s eyes opened wide. “Ha,” he groaned. “A slave.”
“That’s right,” Bruce said. He saw no sign of Susan, nor even of Zoe. “Where are they?” he asked the man.
Shrugging, the man said, “Zoe went to the bathroom. Susan isn’t here. My name’s Milt Lumky.” He stuck out his hand, and Bruce saw that the man had short arms, short legs, and a wide, flat hand, gnarled but absolutely spick and span, with the nails professionally manicured. The skin of his face was pocked. But he had well cared for teeth. His shoes, black and imported-looking, were scuffed but polished.
“Who do you represent?” Bruce said, as they shook hands.
“Christian Brothers Brandy,” Lumky said in his gravelly voice. And then he ducked his head in a grimace and muttered, “Isn’t that a stupid thing to say? This is one of my off-days. It gets me to come in and find nobody around. No wonder there’s a recession. I’m from Whalen Paper Supplies. But imagine, a liquor company named ‘Christian Brothers.’ Sort of like the Jesus Christ Firearms Works. I noticed the display in the grog shop across the street. It had never struck me before.”
He told Lumky his name.
“How long have you been working here?” Lumky said. “I don’t get in here more than once every second month.”
He told him that he had just started.
“Are you going to manage the place?” Lumky said, with resignation if not approval. “That’s what they need, someone who can come in and take over. Otherwise they make no decisions. Everything slides. Where were you before?”
He told him that he had been with C.B.B.
“For that you get a kick in the crotch from me,” Lumky said.
“Don’t you approve of discount houses?”
“Not when they sell stale candy.”
That was an argument that he had never heard. It struck him as funny and he laughed, thinking that Lumky was kidding. But the man drew himself up with hauteur and a determination to convince him.
“I got a carton of Mounds at a discount house in Oakland, California,” Lumky said, coughing through his cigarette smoke in his insistence to make his point. He waved the smoke aside. “It tasted like soap. They must have found some left-over stock from old World War Two PXs.”
“It’s not all like that,” he said.
“It’s your word against mine,” Lumky said. He put out his cigarette and extended a pack of Parliaments to Bruce. “I think it’s going to fail because you discount people don’t do a job of selling. It’s a craze, like home freezers. You have to sell people.” He said it gloomily, as if it was a fact that he did not necessarily approve of but which he accepted. His hands trembled as he lit a fresh cigarette; the end of the cigarette waggled away from the man’s leather-bottomed Ronson lighter and he had to push it back with his thumb. “Anyhow, you stick with your story,” he said, out of the side of his mouth. He had gotten smoke in his left eye, and it began to turn red and water. He grinned wryly at Bruce.
Entering the office, Susan said, “Oh, hi, Milt.”
Milt Lumky put his lighter away in the pocket of his coat; it made a bulge that destroyed the proper line of his suit. “Where have you been? I helped myself to money from the till, just to teach you a lesson.”
“Isn’t Zoe around?”
“Down using the can,” Lumky said. “You want to go out and have a cup of coffee?”
Susan said, “I just ate; that’s where I was. I don’t think there’s anything we want to buy this time. I’m sorry. Unless you have something new you want to show us.”
“How about a line of cheap adding machines?”
“No,” she said.
“Digital computers.”
“No.”
“Home-model Univacs for $17.95. That’s your cost. Lists for I think $49.95. What a profit. Ideal Easter gift.”
She put her arm around him and patted him on the back. “No,” she said. “Some other time. We have a lot of reorganization to worry about. Lots of plans.”
Twisting his head to look at Bruce, Lumky said to him, “How about you having a cup of coffee with me?”
“That would be a good idea,” Susan said. “Milt, this is Bruce Stevens. He’s going to do the buying.” She lowered her voice. “Zoe is leaving.”
“Come on,” Lumky said, tilting his head toward the door to wag Bruce along with him. “I’ll leave my crud here,” he said to Susan, meaning his leather satchel. “You can look through it if you want to be infantile.”
He and Bruce soon seated themselves at the counter of the coffee shop a few doors down.
“So Zoe de Lima is leaving,” Lumky said, lighting a third cigarette and sitting with his elbows on the counter and his hands in front of his nose, his thumbs hooked into his nostrils. “Susan is doing a smart thing. She should have got out from under that two years ago. Susan is erratic and Zoe is pure chicken about everything. What a combination.”
Their coffee arrived.
“You can reason with Susan, at least,” Milt said. “But you could never get through to Zoe de Lima. She’s rotten clean through, like an old pine plank. All Susan needs is somebody to tell her what to do.” He slurped at this coffee, his napkin wadded beneath his chin.