The Silence on the Shore. Hugh Garner
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down the stairs one morning with the polisher in his hand. She hadn’t said anything about it, but she had smirked a little, in the way he thought a spider would smirk at a fly that was approaching its web. If he had to pay his room rent in trade, that was all right with him: he was full of a superabundance of that commodity.
The apartment house he chose as his first calling place of the day was just run down enough for some of its tenants to need floor polishers. He walked into its old-fashioned foyer and rang the buzzer of an apartment on the top floor. When the answering buzz sounded in the door lock he scurried inside, walked to the back of the building, and climbed the rear stairs to the second floor. During June he had had some good days, but too many sales had trailed off into disappointments marked by finance company cancellations and turned-down orders. Most of his sales had been to people whom even the finance companies wouldn’t trust, members of a new substratum of society: the dé classé installment purchaser, who can no longer buy anything at all without cash.
He chose an apartment door at random and knocked. He was sure it would be another turndown and was prepared for it. Mr. Cartwright, the district sales manager, had stressed the selling points of the polisher on his blackboard the previous Saturday, but hadn’t intimated what a glut on the market polishers had become. Clark had memorized the sales pitch, but usually he had not got past the opening sentence: “Good morning, ma’am, I represent the Household Aid Corporation —”
From inside the apartment came the sound of women’s voices, one fairly young and hoarse and the other older and pitched in a querulous key. He had learned there was no use trying to make a sale to two women together, for if one showed an interest the other was bound to take the contrary view.
He was ready to move on down the hall when the door suddenly opened and he found himself face to face with a woman in her early thirties, holding a thin housecoat to her throat.
“Yes?” she asked, in a deep hoarse contralto.
“Good morning, ma’am, I represent the Household Aid Corporation,” he began automatically, then stopped.
“Yes?” she asked again, waiting for him to go on.
He had almost forgotten how to continue. Her pretty face, blonde hair, and the hungover look on her sleep-creased face didn’t help. “We are distributing — to certain chosen clients in selected neighbourhoods — and at twenty dollars less than the retail price, one of our famous Household Aid floor polishers. All we ask is that you use it for —”
“Is that it?” the young woman asked, leaning against the door frame and pointing at the polisher. She smiled at him openly, and the handle of the polisher grew damp beneath his hand.
As she continued to stare into his face, he brought the appliance around in front of him and placed the brushes flat on the floor, stepping back until the handle was held at a suitable angle.
“You’ll notice the ease of handling,” he said. “We claim that this machine — with its own oil-sealed motor — will take the drudgery out of all your floor cleaning. It works equally well on hardwood, tile, linoleum and —”
“Bring it in, Buster,” she invited, stepping back from the doorway. She led him through an inside hallway, and he spied a blown-up photograph of a young girl on the wall above a telephone table. The girl was leaning against a concert grand piano, and he recognized her now as the woman who had invited him in. Now he realized that he had begun the day in a neighbourhood in which theatrical and radio and television performers lived.
The woman led him into a living room that was furnished in several variant styles, as if from the property room of a theatre. In a corner stood an upright piano bearing along its top a row of empty and near-empty highball glasses. In an easy chair sat a fully dressed fat woman of about fifty, holding a half-empty glass in her hand.
The younger woman sat down on a large puce-coloured sofa and said, “This is Buster, Rita. He’s a representative of the Housewives’ —”
“The Household Aid Corporation,” he corrected her, smiling at the older woman.
“Buster, this is my good friend Rita.”
He nodded and said, “My name’s Clark. That’s my first name. My last name’s Cronin.”
“That’s a lousy name,” the young woman said. “I like Buster better, don’t you, Rita?”
“Sure, Buster’s better.” She laughed an unpleasant high-pitched laugh.
Clark noticed that both of them were drunk; this should be a cinch as soon as he got a signature on the sales order sheet. Pointing to the rubber shock absorber around the polisher he said, “It’s guaranteed not to harm —”
“Listen, Buster, save all that for later, will you?” the young woman interrupted. She took a bill from her purse that was lying on an end table and carried it across the room to her companion.
“Hurry it up, Rita, will you, hon. I’m gonna have the shakes if you don’t get back soon.”
Rita got up and shoved the money into a pocket of her trench coat. “Be back in half an hour,” she said as she left.
When they were alone the young woman stretched out on the sofa and stared at Clark, “You make much money on this job, Buster?”
He laughed. “I’ve only had it a week.”
“What did you do before you got this job?”
He decided to make a play for her sympathy. “I was in hospital,” he said.
“That’s too bad. What was wrong, Buster?”
“It was — well, you could call it a breakdown.”
“Nerves, eh? Is this your home town?”
“No, I’m from the country, ma’am.”
“A farmer?”
“My father is, ma’am.”
“Jee-sus! And don’t keep calling me ma’am, it makes me feel about a hundred. Call me Kitty. And for God’s sake sit down somewhere.”
He sat down in an overstuffed leather chair.
“That’s better,” she said. Pushing herself up on an elbow she asked, “How much did you say that thing costs?”
“Forty-two fifty.” He just had to make this sale. “We don’t even ask you to pay a down payment, only six small monthly payments of seven dollars and nine cents. I pick up the first payment when you’ve had the polisher for a few days trial, then our collector picks up the others every month.”
“No down payment, you say?” She laughed bitterly, stretching back on the sofa. “Who’re you trying to kid, Buster! There’s always a down payment in this world.” She sat up straight again and said, “You know, Buster, you’re not a bad-looking guy.”
This sounded like the come-on, but he hesitated to move in.
“You got a girl?”
He gave a small laugh. “Not right now.”
“That five dollars I gave to Rita for a bottle was all the money I got” she said. She hunched along the sofa so that her movements opened her housecoat. “You got any money, Buster?”
“No,” he answered, staring at her.
“Maybe you’re smarter than I took you for,” she said, adjusting her housecoat.
He asked, “Say, Kitty, are you an actress?”
“I don’t know what I am anymore, Buster.”
“Are you out of work?”
“No. You wouldn’t exactly call it being out of work.”
“Is that your picture in the hall, standing against a piano?”
“That used to be me, a million years ago,”