And yet old W-M was really very powerful. He owned controlling interests in a variety of enterprises, speculations, real estate. As well as the W-M Corporation factory.
Following after the old man, Frink pushed open the big metal door to the main work area. The rumble of machinery, which he had heard around him every day for so long—sight of men at the machines, air filled with flash of light, waste dust, movement. There went the old man. Frink increased his pace.
“Hey, Mr. W-M!” he called.
The old man had stopped by the hairy-armed shop foreman, Ed McCarthy. Both of them glanced up as Frink came toward them.
Moistening his lips nervously, Wyndam-Matson said, “I’m sorry, Frank; I can’t do anything about taking you back. I’ve already gone ahead and hired someone to take your place, thinking you weren’t coming back. After what you said.” His small round eyes flickered with what Frink knew to be an almost hereditary evasiveness. It was in the old man’s blood.
Frink said, “I came for my tools. Nothing else.” His own voice, he was glad to hear, was firm, even harsh.
“Well, let’s see,” W-M mumbled, obviously hazy in his own mind as to the status of Frink’s tools. To Ed McCarthy he said, “I think that would be in your department, Ed. Maybe you can fix Frank here up. I have other business.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “Listen, Ed. I’ll discuss that invoice later; I have to run along.” He patted Ed McCarthy on the arm and then trotted off, not looking back.
Ed McCarthy and Frink stood together.
“You came to get your job back,” McCarthy said after a time.
“Yes,” Frink said.
“I was proud of what you said yesterday.”
“So was I,” Frink said. “But—Christ, I can’t work it out anywhere else.” He felt defeated and hopeless. “You know that.” The two of them had, in the past, often talked over their problems.
McCarthy said, “I don’t know that. You”re as good with that flex-cable machine as anybody on the Coast. I’ve seen you whip out a piece in five minutes, including the rouge polishing. All the way from the rough Cratex. And except for the welding—”
“I never said I could weld,” Frink said.
“Did you ever think of going into business on your own?”
Frink, taken by surprise, stammered, “What doing?”
“Jewelry.”
“Aw, for Christ’s sake!”
“Custom, original pieces, not commercial.” McCarthy beckoned him over to a corner of the shop, away from the noise. “For about two thousand bucks you could set up a little basement or garage shop. One time I drew up designs for women’s earrings and pendants. You remember—real modern contemporary.” Taking scratch paper, he began to draw, slowly, grimly.
Peering over his shoulder, Frink saw a bracelet design, an abstract with flowing lines. “Is there a market?” All he had ever seen were the traditional—even antique—objects from the past. “Nobody wants contemporary American; there isn’t any such thing, not since the war.”
“Create a market,” McCarthy said, with an angry grimace.
“You mean sell it myself?”
“Take it into retail shops. Like that—what’s it called? On Montgomery Street, that big ritzy art object place.”
“American Artistic Handcrafts,” Frink said. He never went into fashionable, expensive stores such as that. Few Americans did; it was the Japanese who had the money to buy from such places.
“You know what retailers like that are selling?” McCarthy said. “And getting a fortune for? Those goddam silver belt buckles from New Mexico that the Indians make. Those goddam tourist trash pieces, all alike. Supposedly native art.”
For a long time Frink regarded McCarthy. “I know what else they sell,” he said finally. “And so do you.”