“It’s so incredible—you just met her. That night. This must be what you read about in stories.” She paused to stifle a giggle; at the other end of the phone a commotion interrupted her. He endured it, having no choice. “Listen now,” Peg said, “you two will have to drop by together, and we’ll have a party for you, a celebration.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you.”
Again the stifled giggles. He said good-bye and cut her off in the middle of a sentence by hanging up the receiver.
Goddamn stupid individual, he said to himself. It put him in a black mood, but he managed to work himself out of it. That’s one thing I don’t have to put up with, he decided. The innuendos of ignorant secretaries with their foul minds and their vicious, empty heads. Their dinky claques and foolishness to while away the work-day.
What a difference between them and Susan … the contrast that he had been so conscious of that first night. The babbling infantile clerks, and then Susan, self-contained and grave, even a little dire-looking in her black sweater. But completely a woman. Completely remote from them all. Off on her own, brooding, but someone he could respect. Someone worthy of attention. And the deepest possible love.
Now, at this moment, Susan labored away on a manuscript at the best of the several electric typewriters; she was putting something into stencil form.
The time has come to get down to work, he said to himself.
“Can you manage for awhile?” he said to her. “I want to go out.”
“Yes,” she said, with a forced smile.
He crossed the sidewalk to the Merc and drove off to visit a couple of contacts.
Not much later he was back, with the car loaded full of Underwood and Royal portables and a vast mass of display material, including electric motor operated whirling platforms.
“What I want to do,” he said to Susan, “is make this look like a place where a person can buy a typewriter. A new typewriter.” He began lugging the stuff into the store.
After that he cleared the second-hand machines from the display window, scrubbed the window clean with Dutch cleanser and hot water, dried it with rags, and then produced cans of quick-drying enamel and began to paint the wood a bright, pastel color.
“Tomorrow morning I’ll set up a display,” he told Susan.
On the phone he got in touch with a painting outfit and rented a paint sprayer, power-operated paint-removing equipment, ladder, and in addition he contracted to buy paint. He drove over and picked it all up himself. Wearing old clothes he began to scour off the old paint from the ceiling and walls. Flakes of old paint poured down on the floor and desks and second-hand machines. It did not matter, since he intended to modernize with the new plastic surfacing materials.
“Can I help?” Susan asked.
“No,” he said. “You keep on mimeographing.”
“If I can,” she said, retiring to a corner out of sight.
“I want to get hold of a sign,” he said.
With nervousness she said, “Did you buy all these portables?”
“No,” he said. “They’re on consignment. I don’t expect to sell very many; I just want to show people that we’re in the business of selling typewriters.”
While resting up from the paint-removing, he phoned around and got estimates on neon signs. In the end he decided to wait until he had gotten hold of a franchise or two; possibly he could split the cost with a manufacturer. And in that fashion he would get a bigger sign.
After they closed up at six, both he and Susan painted. He drove out to the house and picked up Taffy, and she hung around while the two of them worked. They knocked off at eight o’clock for dinner, and then they resumed. Susan began gradually to gain vigor.
“This is fun,” she told him, wearing an old torn smock that had belonged to Zoe. Paint streaked her face; she had tied her hair up in a dishtowel, but paint had gotten onto her arms and neck. “It’s very creative.”
“It’ll make the place newer,” he said.
With a small camel’s hair brush Taffy did the fine edging. In school she had picked up experience along that line. The idea of staying up late appealed to her; they let her help them until ten o’clock and then Bruce drove her and Susan home and returned, alone, to resume work. He kept at it until two-thirty.
It makes a difference, he said to himself, surveying what he had accomplished.
The next morning he drove down early and began on the display. By nine o’clock, when Susan appeared, he had finished it.
“How does it look?” he said.
“Just wonderful,” she said, standing in her coat and gazing around the place, entranced and wide-eyed.
Having finished the window display he set off in the Merc to shop for the counter material. He picked up a synthetic knotty pine; the material came in rolls, like veneer, to be glued on. Then he took a long look at cash registers. Too expensive. But he compromised on a receipt-writer that made three copies. Money would have to continue to be kept in their change-drawer.
All afternoon he glued and tacked away at the counters. When he finished, they had before them a new counter.
“I can’t believe it,” Susan said.
“These new plastic synthetic wood veneers are great stuff,” he said. He then figured out how much it would cost to glue the veneer to the entire interior walls. Too expensive. So he got out his paint brushes and resumed the painting of the walls.
The last item that day consisted of buying and setting up an all-night spotlight for the window. It lit up one gold-colored portable. That, and the whirling platform, remained on all night.
“Costs money to keep it on,” he admitted to Susan, “but it acts as a night light. It casts a glow into the store, so if anybody’s inside robbing us, the police can see him.”
The new colors that he had painted the walls and ceiling made the store much lighter. And they gave the illusion of greater size. The walls and ceiling appeared to recede.
“We just got ourselves some free space,” he told Susan.
As they walked out to the car he told her that tomorrow he wanted to lay nylon tile on the floor. He knew where he could pick it up wholesale.
“Isn’t that—and all this other—going to set us back a lot?” Susan asked.
“No,” he said.
“What else do you intend to do?”
“I want to make changes in the front,” he said. “But that’ll take professional carpenters. “I’ll let that go until we’re wealthy. Maybe later on this year. And I’m going to dump all the junky old dogs. The used machines. Those damn old Underwood 5 models that you’re trying to sell for fifteen dollars. They’re not worth the space they occupy. You have to figure the value of the space. In a store this small, space is worth quite a bit. You can plaster and paint and buy new fixtures, but you can’t create space.” That reminded him that he wanted to see about new overhead lights, the soft fluorescent kind.
“I hope we don’t go bankrupt,” she said. “Just buying paint.”
“We’ll go bankrupt buying things to sell,” he told her. That was the big thing. Something to sell.
God damn it, he thought, I’ve got to get something I can sell!
Armed with the store’s books—he affirmed it to be a store, now, and not an office—he showed up at the Idaho Central Bank, Boise Branch, and opened discussions about a loan.
After several hours of discussion the bank informed him that all things considered, they possibly could advance the store a long-term loan of two thousand dollars. It would take at least a week to approve it. But very possibly it would eventually go through.
He left the bank in a happy frame of mind.