Of course, it was true as she said; you had to watch what you ate, but if you kept off the native foods you were okay.
At the stove, Susan Faine put on a pot of water to boil for the coffee. So he said, “Better late than never.”
“What?” she said.
“Boiling the water,” he said.
“This is for the coffee,” she said, in a serious voice.
“I know that,” he said. “I was just kidding. I guess I shouldn’t kid anybody who doesn’t feel well.”
She seated herself at the table, rested her arms on the table, and then laid her head on her arms. “Do you live here in town?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m up from Reno.”
“You know what I’m going to do?” she said. “I’m going to put some cognac in the coffee. I saw a bottle up in the upper shelf of the cupboard. Would you get it down for me? It’s pushed back so nobody’ll find it who just happens to be wandering through.”
Obligingly, he got the cognac bottle down for her. It had not been opened. She examined it at great length, reading the label, holding the bottle up to the light. On the stove the water boiled.
“It looks good,” she said. “Peg won’t care. Somebody probably gave it to her. Anyhow I’ll probably throw it up.” She handed it back to him, and he understood that he was expected to open it.
The bottle had a cork for a stopper, and it gave him trouble. He had to clasp the bottle between his knees, stoop down like an animal, and, running a knife through the opener, get grip enough to pull with all his might. The cork traveled up by degrees, and at last out of the bottle entirely, expanding at once. To him it seemed offensive, and he stood holding the opener only, not touching the cork.
All the time, Susan watched critically. Then, when he had gotten the cork out, she poured the boiling water into the cup, stirred the instant coffee in, and added some of the cognac.
“Please have some,” she said.
“No thanks.” He did not care for brandy, especially French brandy. Standing to one side, he rearranged his sleeves, which had become wrinkled; the tugging and straining had done it.
“Aren’t you old enough?”
“Sure,” he grumbled. “It’s just too sweet for me. Scotch is my drink.”
Nodding, she sat down her café royal. At the first taste she pushed it aside and shuddered. “I can’t drink it,” she said.
“You ought to see a doctor,” he said. “Find out if it’s serious.”
“I hate doctors,” she said. “I know it’s not serious. It’s just psychosomatic. Because I’m worried and full of anxiety, because of my marriage breaking up. I got so dependent on Walt. That was part of the trouble. I was just like a child with him; I let him make all the decisions and that wasn’t right. If anything went wrong I blamed him. It was a vicious circle. Then finally we both realized I had to get free and try living on my own again. I don’t think I was ready for marriage. You have to be able to reach a certain stage before you’re ready for it. I wasn’t. I just thought I was.”
“How long were you married?” he asked.
“Two years.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Not long enough,” she said. “We were still getting acquainted. Are you married, Mr.—” His name did not materialize.
“Stevens,” he said. “Bruce.”
“Mr. Stevens?” she finished.
“No,” he said. “I’ve given it some thought, but I’d like to wait until I’m absolutely positive. I don’t want to make any mistakes on something that serious.”
“Weren’t you going steady with Peg Googer?”
“For awhile,” he said. “Last year or so.”
“Did you live up here?”
“Yes,” he said vaguely, not wishing to spoil the deception that he came from Reno.
“Did you drive up to see Peg?”
“No,” he said. “I came up this way on business.” He told her, then, about Consumers’ Buying Bureau, what he did and what it did. He told her that it sold goods at an average of twenty-five percent off, that it didn’t have to advertise, that its overhead was low because it had no windows to dress and few fixtures to maintain, only one vast long single-story building, like a factory, with counters, and with clerks who did not even need to wear ties. He explained that a discount house never stocked complete lines of anything, only those items that it could get hold of cheaply enough. The items came and went, according to what the buyers could lay their hands on.
Right now, he told her, he had driven up here to Boise to scout out a warehouse of car wax.
That seemed to intrigue her. “Car wax,” she said. “Really? Five hundred miles for car wax?”
“It’s good stuff,” he said. “A paste wax.” The thing was, he explained, that paste wax did not sell well any more because it was so much work to apply. Now there were new silicates that could be dabbed on and then wiped without rubbing. But nothing gave a finish like good old paste wax, out of a can and not a bottle or spout, and every car owner deep down inside knew that, or thought he knew that. And at a discount sale-price of about ninety cents a can, the wax would move. A man would spend an entire Saturday rubbing it on his car to save a dollar off what he knew to be the retail price.
She listened intently. “And how much will you have to pay?”
“We’ll make an offer on the lot,” he said. His boss had authorized him to start at forty cents a can, and to go up to sixty at most. There was some doubt as to how many cans there were. And of course, if the wax was too old, if it had gotten dry, then the deal was off.
“And you go all over looking for buys like that?” Susan said.
“Everywhere. As far east as Denver and all the way out to the Coast. Down to L.A.” He basked in his grandeur.
“How fascinating,” she said. “And nobody knows where you get the things you sell. I imagine regular retailers come to you very angry and wanting to know if their suppliers sold to you at more of a discount than they get.”
“That’s right,” he said. “But we never disclose our sources of supply.” Now he found himself passing out information ordinarily kept quiet. “Sometimes naturally we do get hold of stuff directly from the local jobbers, at a price. And a really good deal is to drive to the manufacturer—we have our own big trucks—and pick it up direct, at what the wholesaler pays or even less. And then sometimes when a retail outlet goes bust, we get stuff that way. Or overstock that doesn’t move. Or even old stock.”
At the table, Susan Faine stirred her cup of coffee and brandy at so slow and depressed a tempo that he realized his talk had adversely affected her. “And these deals go on all the time?” she murmured. “No wonder I can’t get anywhere.”
“You’re not in retail selling,” he said. “Are you?”
“Oh,” she said listlessly, “I sell a couple of typewriter ribbons and a few sheets of carbon paper now and then.”
She got to her feet and wandered off to stand facing him, her arms folded just beneath her breasts. Her belt, still undone, allowed the top of her skirt to separate where it was intended to fit together, two edges of fabric unconnected and hanging loose. She had narrow, modern-looking hips, and he got the impression that unless she fastened her belt something would presently slip gradually off. But she remained unconscious of herself; she had a frowning, introverted expression on her face. He noticed that she had rubbed off her lipstick; it left her lips straw-colored, with countless radiating lines, a dry mouth. Her skin, too, had a dryness, but it was stretched smooth. In spite of her stark black hair, her skin was light. And her eyes, he saw, were blue. Looking more intently at her hair, he discovered that at the roots it became reddish brown. So evidently she had dyed it. That explained its lack of luster.