“What’s that mean?”
“A touch-typist can’t use them. I brought in ten of them.” She pointed, and he saw that she had carried ten cartons in, opened them, and gone over the ten machines. “They’re probably all the same.”
“Explain it to me,” he said. But he understood. “I thought keyboards were standard everywhere.”
“No,” she said. “It’s different in different countries. This is a Spanish keyboard. See. The upside down question mark. The special n with the tilde over it. The acute mark.” She typed the marks. He had paid no more attention to them than he had to the percent sign or the etc sign. “Some of the letters are in the same position as English keyboards, but some aren’t. Even in this country there used to be several different keyboards; just in this one country alone.”
Both of them were silent, for a time.
“Would any typist know that?” he said finally.
“Yes,” she said. “As soon as they started to touch-type.”
“Would that mean almost anybody?”
She said, “We couldn’t sell them unless they had a standard keyboard. There aren’t any machines sold any more without standard keyboards. There haven’t been in years. It’s implied. It’s taken for granted. What did the man who sold them to you say? I want to see the contract.”
He got out the contract and they examined it. Naturally it said nothing about the keyboard.
“Has the check had time to go through?” she said. “Anyhow it was a cashier’s check, wasn’t it? So that’s out. We can go to Fancourt and see what he says. I thought you’d want me to wake you up and tell you.”
“I guess so,” he said, numbed.
“Do you have any money left?”
“No,” he said.
“How were you going to advertise them, then?”
“Sell a couple,” he said. “Then buy space.”
“I’m going to get dressed,” she said. She returned to the bedroom and presently she reappeared wearing a dress, her hair tied back. “Do you have a cigarette?” she said, searching around in the living room.
“Here,” he said, handing her his pack. “I wonder if Milt knew,” he said.
“Of course he didn’t know,” she said.
“I think he did,” he said.
“Milt would never have let you buy them if he had known, she said. “I’ve known Milt Lumky for years.”
“Don’t you think it’s possible that he was sore and getting back at us?”
“For what?”
“For getting married.”
“Why?”
He said, “Because of his interest in you.”
“I suppose,” she said, “now you want to drive back up there and ask him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. In his own mind he was convinced that Milt had known. “I guess we’ll have to get rid of them,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “If we can.”
“It’s possible to sell anything,” he said. “It all depends on the price. Maybe they could be worked over. Keys changed around.”
“We don’t have any money,” she said. “If you had saved some money out, maybe we could do that.”
“If I had saved any money out,” he said, “I wouldn’t have been able to get the typewriters.”
With fury she said, “Wouldn’t that have been a shame.”
“I spent two days looking over the thing,” he said.
“And you never noticed the keyboard.”
“I don’t touch-type,” he said.
“But it never occurred to you.”
“No,” he said. “It never did. Well, these things happen.”
“I’m not used to it,” she said in an almost unrecognizable voice. “I never worked for a discount house that buys up things that are being dumped for one reason or another.”
“The trouble is,” he said, trying not to pay attention to what she was saying, “that we don’t have enough working capital to write this off. That’s the part that gets me. It’s too bad.” He did not look at her because he was unable to stand the expression on her face. The grim, hard look that he remembered back into the past, the anxiety and impatience. “Let’s go to bed,” he said. “We’ll take a look at the rest of them tomorrow. Maybe they’re not all like that.”
Susan said, “This is why I wanted to get out of owning a business. Dreadful things like this, when somebody swindles you.”
Shrugging, he said, “Well, there had to be some reason why they were selling so cheap. Now we found out. But we can probably do something. Don’t—” He broke off. “We’ll fix it up,” he said.
“More deals?” she said.
“Something,” he murmured.
“I feel so strange,” she said in a thin, shrill voice that shook. “It’s my own fault for getting mixed up in this kind of way of doing things. I’m not blaming you.”
“There’s no issue about blame,” he said.
“True,” she said, clasping her hands together. “I mean, it’s my own fault. I wanted somebody who could talk this kind of language. I got what I wanted, so why dwell on it?” She began to pace about the living room, straightening things on the mantel, rearranging the magazines on the coffee table. “This is my punishment. I should simply have gotten out of it entirely. Sold my share to Zoe.”
He said nothing.
“After all,” she said, “I ought to know how discount houses operate.”
He said, “We can get rid of them.”
“How?”
“In a group,” he said. “At what we paid. To somebody who can afford to work them over. If we had the captial we could probably do it ourselves.”
“Of course,” Susan said, “you could try to do what that man did to us. You could see if possibly someone wouldn’t notice. If you didn’t notice, maybe there’s somebody else.”
“That’s right,” he said. His mind began to tangle with it. “I might drive down to Reno,” he said. “It’s just a thought. I’ll talk to my former boss. It’s perfectly possible that I can interest him in them. It would make a good deal for them.”
“Would you tell him?” she asked. “About the keyboard.”
He said, “Well, as they say—Buyer beware.”
“If you do that,” she said, “don’t think about coming back here.”
“What?” he said.
She said, “If you drive down there I will call him on the phone; I know his name. I’ll tell him about the keyboard.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“I don’t want to pass them along to somebody else. I’ve never done business that way. I’d rather take the loss.”
“We can’t take the loss,” he said.
“You mean I can’t take the loss. It’s my place, not yours. I can take the loss. I’ll go out of business before I’ll stick somebody else with them. If anybody wants them knowing what’s the matter with them that’s fine. You don’t understand that, do you?”
“I understand that you’re sore and both of us need our sleep,” he said. “Let’s go to bed, for Christ’s sake! I’ve been on the road for a week.” Turning, he walked down the hall and back into the bedroom. Sitting down on the bed he unfastened his pants, stood up and stepped out of them and crawled into the bed. .
Susan appeared at the door. “Listen,” she said. “I’ve had enough. I’ve had all I can stand.”
Getting out of bed he dressed once more, this time completely. He put on his shirt, his tie, his shoes and socks, and then his coat. “I’ll see you,” he said.
“Where are you going?” she said, following him down the hall to the living room.
“Who gives a damn?” he said. He opened the front door. “I’ll see you,” he said, starting down the steps toward his car.
Behind him she slammed the door so loudly that the sound echoed for miles, up and down the dark deserted street. Dogs, a long distance off, began to bark.