I Can Get It for You Wholesale (16 page)

He turned his worried squash in my direction, but there was no change in the way it looked. So I was willing to consider it a step forward. After all, Einstein says everything is relative.

“You really think we’ll have enough to go into business?” he asked doubtfully.

“Do I
think
we’ll have enough?” I said. “Look. Let’s see what we’ve got. First there’s you. You said six last time, didn’t you?”

He nodded slowly.

“All right, then, we have six. Then there’s Ast. I think he said something about thirty-five hundred or four, wasn’t it? Well, all right, it doesn’t matter. Let’s say four. So your six and his four makes ten. After all, we can’t expect him to have more. You know how those things are. He’s a salesman. They can’t save any money. If it isn’t clothes it’s entertainment and this and that and God alone knows what. They spend twice as much as they make. Every cent they make is on their backs. Every one of them has twenty-seven suits and twenty-seven cents. It’s yet a wonder to me, Meyer, that he’s got the four. But anyway, that’s the way it is. So far we have ten. And me, last time I said seven, didn’t I? Well, I’m gonna borrow three or four extra, like I just told you. That’ll make ten or eleven from me. So what’ve we got? We’ve got twenty thousand dollars or over. Why, for God’s sakes, Meyer, you know what we can do with twenty thousand dollars? We can start
three
dress houses not one. I’ll bet three-quarters of the dress houses in the neighborhood start with a capital of less than ten. And plenty of them start with five, too. But what’s the sense of my telling you things like that? You’ve been in the dress business too long for me to tell you these things. You know all about these things.” I certainly was taking a lot for granted. “Of
course
we’ve got enough. We’ve got enough to not only start, but to start off with a
bang
.”

Suddenly I heard the front door open and close and then I heard Mother’s footsteps walking back through the foyer to the kitchen. And all at once I had it. I knew what it was in that girl’s face that had puzzled and attracted me and had kept going around and around in my mind all the time I had been talking. I saw, too, the resemblance between them that I had missed because of the difference in their ages. She had that same way of making you feel rested just by looking at her that Mother had. I could sit there, in the same room with a dope like Babushkin, and think of that girl’s face as it had looked across the table from me in the kitchen, and I got that same feeling of having reached a place where I could drop my guard and draw my breath after having gone through something tough.

I didn’t like the idea of Mother’s footsteps having gone back to the kitchen alone. I wanted to see that girl again and talk to her. But I couldn’t until I got rid of Babushkin.

“So don’t worry about it, Meyer,” I said, talking quickly. “We’re as good as in right now.”

He waved that worried face of his up and down in front of me a few times. It was the best thing he did.

“So what do you say, Meyer?” I said, getting up and coming toward him. “Are we in this thing together?”

He nodded slowly, but that didn’t mean anything to me any more. For all I knew he might have been saying no.

“I think so,” he said, and I was surprised that his voice didn’t break. “Just give me a little more time to think it over, give me a chance I should talk it over with my wife, and I’ll let you know,” he said.

Suddenly I had an idea. Maybe I ought to meet his wife. I wanted to hurry this along a little. If he couldn’t make up his mind, she’d make it up for him soon enough. And if he could talk her into marrying him, I could talk her into anything.

“I’ll tell you what, Meyer,” I began, and stopped. Maybe it would be better if I didn’t go around looking for trouble. She might not be as dumb as he was. And anyway, I didn’t want to spend any more time with him just then. I wanted to get back into that kitchen.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said, giving him his hat and walking him toward the door. “You think it over and I’ll get in touch with you in a couple of days.” It was better not to get him nervous by trying to clinch it right then and there. Besides which, it was faster, too. “Okay, Meyer?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding a little. “I guess that’ll be best.”

“Good night, then,” I said.

“Good night,” he said.

I closed the door behind him and hurried toward the kitchen.

M
OTHER WAS ALONE IN
the kitchen, darning socks, when I got there.

“Hello, Mom,” I said, “where’s your company?”

“What do you mean, where’s my company?” she said. “What are you, anxious or afraid? Take a look at the clock.”

I did. It was a quarter to eleven.

“Holy smoke,” I said, “was I in there that long?”

“Well,” she said with a shrug, “you wasn’t out here, so you must’ve been in there, no?”

“What happened to Ruthie?”

“She went home. What do you think happened to her? To sit here and wait for you to get finished with the business in there, a person could have a hemorrhage, God forbid. The girl has to go to work to-morrow. She can’t sit around a half a night with an old woman like me while you’re inside with those high-class friends of yours.”

“What’s the matter with my friends?” I said.

“Nothing is the matter with your friends,” she said. “Did I say something was the matter with your friends? Only tell me, Heshie,” she said, cocking her head to one side, “is that gonna be your new partner, the one you were telling me about?”

“That’s
one
of them,” I said. “What do you think of him?”

“He’s all right, I suppose,” she said, biting off the thread from a freshly darned sock. “He’s
your
partner, not mine.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, sitting down at the table with her and grinning, “let’s have it. What do you think of him?”

“Of course, it’s none of
my
business—” she began.

“I know,” I said, “but since when does that stop you?”

She flicked a sock at me and I ducked.

“Well, to me,” she said, “if you really want to know—”

“Yeah, I want to know.”

“To me,” she said, “he looks like a high-class dope.”

“Good,” I said, slapping the table. “That’s all I wanted to hear. Now I’m positive I’m going into business with him.”

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Can’t you find any smart people in this world, you gotta go around picking out such
schlemiels
like that—?”

“I don’t need smart people,” I said. “I’m smart enough for three. But dopes, the right kind of dopes, they’re hard to find.”

“Remember only one thing, Heshie,” she said. “To be entirely smart is to be half a fool.”

“Yeah, I know, Ma,” I said. “Papa used to tell me that, too.”

“Well Papa was right, Heshie.”

“Let’s not go into that now, Ma,” I said. “Let’s stick to my dope of a partner, Meyer Babushkin.”

“I don’t know why a person with a little smartness in him should even want to
talk
about a dumbbell like that. Let’s talk better about smart people. How do you like Ruthie?”

“Not Ruthie, Ma,” I said, raising my hand with the thumb and forefinger forming a circle, “
Betty
, Ma. She doesn’t want to be called Ruthie. She wants to be called Betty.”

“All right, so it’s Betty. Betty, Ruthie, what’s something the difference? How do you like her, that’s the question?”

“How should I know how I like her?” I said with a shrug. “Before I even got a chance to take a good look at her, she ran away home.”

“Well, she didn’t run away to Europe. You know where she lives. I got the telephone number. Maybe you don’t want to call from here,” she said slyly. “You want to take a good look at her, you want to see what she looks like, so you take a nickel, you go into the drugstore, you call her up, and then you go over to her house on Fox Street and you take a look at her. Is that so hard to do?”

It wouldn’t be hard. It would be crazy.

“It’s not hard,” I said, “but it takes too much time. I’m too busy. I can’t bother with those things.”

“What’s the matter, the whole world business fell all of a sudden on your head? One night a week to call up a nice girl like that you haven’t got?”

I wouldn’t even spend a whole night on the
right
kind of girl. So what chance did a
nice
girl have?

“It’s not that, Ma,” I said. “I’m planning a new business, too, you know. I’ve got to see my partners. I’ve got to arrange for capital. You know, Ma, all that—”

“Who says that by calling up Ruthie—?”

“Betty,” I interrupted, smiling.

“All right—Betty. Who says that by calling up Ruthie you’ll be wasting time?”

Nobody had to say it. I could tell by looking at her.

“I didn’t say I’d be wasting time, Ma,” I said. “She’s a nice girl and all that, and I got nothing against her.”

Not yet, anyway.

“You got something against her!” Mother cried, shaking her head from side to side. “She’ll gain ten pounds when I tell her that my Heshie said he’s got nothing against her! Since when, Heshie, since when you think you’re yourself Count Itufski’s son? He’s got nothing against her!”

I laughed and lit a cigarette.

“All right, all right, Ma,” I said, “I didn’t mean it that way. I only meant that I can’t spare the time now. I have to look after my new business, that’s all.”

“All right,” Mother said. “Now that you’re so smart, and you talked so much, so I’ll tell you something. It wouldn’t hurt you or that new business of yours if you should go out with Ruthie Rivkin. Now what do you think of that?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Mother said with exaggerated casualness. “Only Mrs. Rivkin told me that the boy that marries her Ruthie, that boy gets ten thousand dollars to go in business with, that’s all.”

He ought to get a medal, too.

“Stop kidding me, Ma,” I said. “No grocer on Fox Street is giving away ten thousand dollars with a daughter.”

“So maybe you know better than the whole world,” she said. “But I’m telling you one thing. The boy that marries Ruthie—”

“Betty,” I said.

“All right—Betty. The boy who marries Ruthie Rivkin, he gets ten thousand dollars to go in business. Now what do you think of that?”

She’d never forgive me, if I told her.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Is she so hard to get rid of?”

“What do you mean, hard to get rid of? You saw her, didn’t you?”

“Well, I sort of did get a quick look at her before she breezed out of here,” I admitted.

“Never mind,” Mother said, “don’t get so smart. If you didn’t see her for long enough, it was your own fault, you were so busy with that big lemon of yours, that Babushkin. But you saw her. And you know there’s plenty boys they would thank God seven days a week for the rest of their lives if they could only get a nice girl like that even
without
ten thousand dollars. And
with
ten thousand dollars, don’t worry, there’s plenty boys in the Bronx, so smart like you any day, Heshalle, that they figure it’s worth while they should spend a couple nights a week in the parlor there by the Rivkins on Fox Street.”

She probably had a younger sister that was a knockout.

“Then how come nobody grabbed her off yet?” I said.

“What’s the matter? She looks like a cripple to you, maybe? She’s got a glass eye? One leg is by her shorter than the other? She’s a good-looking girl, dope.
She’s
particular, too, you dope, you!”

“Ma, please,” I said, “don’t call me a dope.”

“Why not?” she said. “Maybe you’re something better?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But don’t call me a dope.”

“If you had any sense in that head of yours—that head that you think is the smartest one the Above One ever made—instead of wasting your time on
lemishkes
like Meyer Babushkin, you’d make a try for that ten thousand dollars, and you could go into business the way you want to and you wouldn’t need any stupid partners they should get in the way of your feet when you walk.”

“I don’t need Babushkin for his money only, Ma,” I said. “I need him because he’s a designer, a factory man. Don’t you understand that?”

“Anything
you
understand,” she said acidly, “you can be sure
I
understand, too. Don’t think the whole world smartness settled all of a sudden in your head, Heshie. What do you think, it’s going to hurt that business of yours if you have an extra ten thousand dollars in it?”

“Of course not, Ma. Ten thousand dollars—”

“—Is ten thousand dollars,” she finished. “And it isn’t every day in the week a young boy your age gets a chance to put his hands on so much money and at the same time get a nice girl like that Ruthie—”

I started to correct her again, but stopped. I liked the idea of Mother’s not being able to talk of her in any way but as Ruthie.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” Mother said, leaning across the table to poke her finger with the thimble on it at me. “She
likes
you.”

“Yeah, she likes me,” I said. “What did you do, show her a picture of me? She hardly even saw me. How do you know she likes me?”

That was one to stop the presses for. Harry Bogen reaching for a compliment!

“She told me,” Mother said.

“Yeah, she told you! When?”

“After supper, when I was teaching her how to make blintzes,” she said.

“Oh, boy, Ma,” I said, grinning suddenly and shaking my head, “if I told you before, I’ll tell you again—would
you
make a marriage broker! Oh, boy!”

“Never mind with that talk,” she said. “I’m not a marriage broker. But for my own son, I want he should get a nice girl. Is there anything wrong in that?”

“Not if she’s got ten thousand dollars, too,” I said, “there isn’t.”

“So what do you say, Heshie?”

“Well, all right,” I said, “give me her phone number. For
you
, Ma, I’ll do it.”

She grinned at me.

“You should live so, you little tramp, you,” she said, the grin turning into a laugh. “For
me
you’ll do it!”

I
WAS SITTING THERE,
looking at the phone on my desk. When I finally made up my mind to put the call through I glanced at the clock. It was six-thirty. That meant Miss Marmelstein was gone and I’d have to go out to the switchboard to dial the number myself. I opened the door from my private office and walked out into the large room. She was still sitting behind the switchboard, toying with the plugs and staring at her hands. She looked up as I came into the room.