equal intensity about good grooming. Life was wild.
"Hey, death of a salesman!" Maurice gave out a horselaugh that would embarrass a horse and flipped a cream sachet foil into my lap.
When I dropped out of college all I had was twenty-five credits to go. I always wound up thinking about that on mornings like this.
"Let's go, head 'em out!" Al got up from the table with an exaggerated groan, lugged his green alligator case from under the table and we all followed him down the aisle like an executive road gang.
"George"—I flipped a cream sachet foil onto the grill—"you look like shit."
When we hit the street I was not in an up-and-at-'em mood. I didn't even think I could sell a blood clot to a hemophiliac but I lucked out on my first shot—scored for a twenty-dollar sale on Bask Street to a kind-faced old German lady in a faded floral housedress. She had sandbag breasts and big red hands. Those hands looked as if they were in raw meat all day. She lived in a long, dimly lit apartment with clunky dark wooden furniture, brocade covers over everything and about six thousand prowling cats. We sat on facing sofas, me with the case and her with those huge meathooks folded calmly in her lap and a ruddy creased smile on her refugee face. She bought everything I showed her—hand lotion, room spray, an ironing board protector. She never said a word, just nodded for "one" when I asked, "Now how many should I put you down for, one or two?" When she bought a Car-Vac, my portable car rug vacuum cleaner in a can, I knew she was just buying all that shit so I would stick around and keep making human noises. That stuff always tore me up. I would always get those lonely older ladies who would buy anything I had to sell just to have my company. If they ordered something, not only would I have to sit there to sell it, but I would have to come back the end of the week and deliver it And they would always have cats. Millions of cats. I was allergic to cats, too. I hated them. I'd sit there on some overstuffed cat-hair couch running my bullshit, sneezing my brains out, eyes like red stars, and these poor ladies would be holding their own hands nodding nodding nodding, smiling smiling smiling, sometimes silent like the German lady, sometimes gushing out the spew of their sad sad lives, getting up, bustling around with their bookcase bebinds, offering me tea, coffee, sponge cake, cheesecake, pound cake, cupcake, kugel, babka—you name it. And half of them couldn't even speak English.
Anyway, after she bought the Car-Vac and introduced me to seven or eight cats—and you have no idea what an absolute schmuck you feel like nodding hello to a cat—I had to split. I felt as if there was a big hairy angora stuffed comfortably inside -each lung and I wasn't so much breathing as leaking air. I even started sneezing blood.
But I made her day. Every day on the job I made somebody's day. Made that human connection. There were more lonely people in New York than in entire European countries. And every day I found at least one and pulled her back into the real world for thirty minutes. As much as I bitched about cats and crazies, making that connection hit the spot with me. I got a nice little high every time I scored a lonely. Without getting grandiose about it, it was a side benefit that sometimes made my work tolerable. But there was an element of half-assed compromise in that aspect of my life too. Because, despite the good moments, the bottom line was that I still had to sell them some bullshit ironing board cover or hand cream. And I spent a lot of time knocking on empty apartment doors or spieling to jerk-offs.
The German lady was followed by a half-hour of nothing, then two back-to-back sales on Greenwich Avenue and then I totally lucked out. I caught three housewives kibitzing in the home of a fourth. When I announced through the locked door that I was the Bluecastle Housewares man I heard one broad say, "I don't know about Bluecastle
"Hey, death of a salesman!" Maurice gave out a horselaugh that would embarrass a horse and flipped a cream sachet foil into my lap.
When I dropped out of college all I had was twenty-five credits to go. I always wound up thinking about that on mornings like this.
"Let's go, head 'em out!" Al got up from the table with an exaggerated groan, lugged his green alligator case from under the table and we all followed him down the aisle like an executive road gang.
"George"—I flipped a cream sachet foil onto the grill—"you look like shit."
When we hit the street I was not in an up-and-at-'em mood. I didn't even think I could sell a blood clot to a hemophiliac but I lucked out on my first shot—scored for a twenty-dollar sale on Bask Street to a kind-faced old German lady in a faded floral housedress. She had sandbag breasts and big red hands. Those hands looked as if they were in raw meat all day. She lived in a long, dimly lit apartment with clunky dark wooden furniture, brocade covers over everything and about six thousand prowling cats. We sat on facing sofas, me with the case and her with those huge meathooks folded calmly in her lap and a ruddy creased smile on her refugee face. She bought everything I showed her—hand lotion, room spray, an ironing board protector. She never said a word, just nodded for "one" when I asked, "Now how many should I put you down for, one or two?" When she bought a Car-Vac, my portable car rug vacuum cleaner in a can, I knew she was just buying all that shit so I would stick around and keep making human noises. That stuff always tore me up. I would always get those lonely older ladies who would buy anything I had to sell just to have my company. If they ordered something, not only would I have to sit there to sell it, but I would have to come back the end of the week and deliver it And they would always have cats. Millions of cats. I was allergic to cats, too. I hated them. I'd sit there on some overstuffed cat-hair couch running my bullshit, sneezing my brains out, eyes like red stars, and these poor ladies would be holding their own hands nodding nodding nodding, smiling smiling smiling, sometimes silent like the German lady, sometimes gushing out the spew of their sad sad lives, getting up, bustling around with their bookcase bebinds, offering me tea, coffee, sponge cake, cheesecake, pound cake, cupcake, kugel, babka—you name it. And half of them couldn't even speak English.
Anyway, after she bought the Car-Vac and introduced me to seven or eight cats—and you have no idea what an absolute schmuck you feel like nodding hello to a cat—I had to split. I felt as if there was a big hairy angora stuffed comfortably inside -each lung and I wasn't so much breathing as leaking air. I even started sneezing blood.
But I made her day. Every day on the job I made somebody's day. Made that human connection. There were more lonely people in New York than in entire European countries. And every day I found at least one and pulled her back into the real world for thirty minutes. As much as I bitched about cats and crazies, making that connection hit the spot with me. I got a nice little high every time I scored a lonely. Without getting grandiose about it, it was a side benefit that sometimes made my work tolerable. But there was an element of half-assed compromise in that aspect of my life too. Because, despite the good moments, the bottom line was that I still had to sell them some bullshit ironing board cover or hand cream. And I spent a lot of time knocking on empty apartment doors or spieling to jerk-offs.
The German lady was followed by a half-hour of nothing, then two back-to-back sales on Greenwich Avenue and then I totally lucked out. I caught three housewives kibitzing in the home of a fourth. When I announced through the locked door that I was the Bluecastle Housewares man I heard one broad say, "I don't know about Bluecastle
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