Bruce said, “You sound as if you had been expecting me.”
“Your wife called,” von Scharf said. “She told us the situation. How much did you pay for them?”
Chagrined, he murmured, “Fifty bucks apiece.”
“I want to get somebody from the typewriter department in here.” Von Scharf excused himself. When he returned he had with him the buyer from the typewriter department and Vince Pareti, one of the Pareti brothers. The three of them huddled together over me Mithrias that Bruce had brought into the building with him.
“We can get a standard keyboard out of it,” the typewriter buyer said finally. “With a couple of minor differences. Not enough to matter. All the letters and numbers will be right. That’s what does it.” He nodded to Pareti and von Scharf and started out.
“How much?” Pareti asked him. “Figure the labor.”
“At our cost,” the expert said, computing. “Say, at the most five bucks a machine.”
After he had left, von Scharf retired to the rear of the office while Pareti conducted the negotiations. “We’ll take them off your hands,” Pareti said to Bruce. “We’ll pay you forty-five dollars apiece, and we want all sixty plus the name of your supplier. How many more does he have, according to your knowledge?”
“About three hundred and forty more,” Bruce said.
“And how much would he want?”
“I don’t know,” he said, feeling the futility of the thing fall onto him. “You can probably haggle him down below fifty bucks apiece. Which is what I paid.”
“Yes,” Pareti said. “That’s what your wife told us. We just wanted to be sure. We don’t want you to take a loss, but you can see that it’s going to cost us to get them into shape where we can sell them. What do you say to forty-five apiece? That means you take a loss of only three hundred bucks; that’s chicken feed.”
“To you, maybe,” Bruce said.
“I’d just as soon give him the full fifty he paid,” von Scharf said.
“Oh no,” Pareti answered, with finality.
“He got them down here for us. And he scouted them up in the first place; that ought to be worth something. His wife says he was on the road a week. We’re going to be listing them for almost two hundred.”
“I’m against it,” Pareti said, “but if you want, go ahead and make out a check for three thousand.” To Bruce he said, “How does that make you feel? You’re out from under them and you didn’t lose a nickel.”
Feebly, Bruce said, “I think they’re worth more than fifty bucks.”
The two men grinned.
“Flip a coin,” von Scharf said. He dug out a fifty-cent piece and spun it up into the air. “Heads you sell, tails you don’t.” The coin missed his hand and fell to the floor. “Tails,” he said. “You don’t sell.” He picked up the coin and put it back in his pocket.
Bruce said, “Give me an hour or so to decide. Okay?”
They both nodded.
As he left the office, von Scharf clapped him on the back and then walked along with him, to the exit door. “You know,” he said, “I’m a little surprised at you. You didn’t accept them sight unseen, did you?”
“No,” Bruce said. “I looked at them.”
“If you’d been working for us, you wouldn’t be now.”
“I’ll see you in an hour,” Bruce said. Turning his back he walked outside to the parking lot and his car.
For an hour he drove around and then he stopped at a drive-in ice cream stand and bought a pineapple malt. On long dry trips he found that a pineapple malt tasted least like the countryside; it made him think of girls and beaches and blue water, portable radios and dances, the happiness of his high school days. What there had been of it.
In most of the cars near his he saw teen-agers. Kids with their girls, parked in Mercury coupes, listening to their car radios, eating hamburgers and sipping malts.
I wonder if I ought to sell them the machines, he asked himself. If they can put them in shape for five bucks apiece, so could I. No, he realized. That’s their price; they have benches in the back and mechanically-inclined flunkies to do the job.
Yet it occurred to him, as a sort of last-resort possibility, that he might make an attempt to have the work done himself. It would cost at least three hundred dollars. Probably more. But he wouldn’t need all sixty machines altered at once; he could start with a few, sell them, and with the money get more changed, and so forth…
Finishing his malt he drove until he saw a typewriter repair shop. He parked and got out and carried a Mithrias inside. Showing it to the repairman he asked him what it would cost to have the keyboard changed.
The man, a short little solemn fellow, neatly-dressed in a white shirt, tie, and pressed sharkskin trousers, poked around inside the machine and then quoted a figure of twenty to twenty-five dollars.
“That much?” Bruce said, with a sinking heart.
The man explained that for some of the changes the type slugs would be unsoldered. Or the typebars could be cut, exchanged, and rewelded in a different sequence. But some of the keys would have to be split, and that was tricky work.
“Is there any chance,” Bruce said, “that I could do the work myself?”
The man said, “Depends on how good you are.”
“What about tools?”
“Yes, you’d need tools. But for one machine.”
“I have sixty of them,” he said.
“The man said, “What you ought to do is make an arrangement with some fellow who’s in the business. Who has a shop, tools, and knows how to do it. If you try on your own you’ll damage a couple of letters, and that’ll finish the machine. Because I’ll bet you can’t get parts for these.”
Thanking the man he left the shop.
That was that. Unless, of course, he could make a deal with some repairman. Maybe cut him in.
And who did he know? Nobody. At least, nobody qualified.
They’ve got me, he told himself. They’ll buy the machines from me, make the changes, and roll up a hell of a big profit. All my work and all my driving and planning and farting around … and, he thought, the R & J Mimeographing Service or whatever we’d be eventually calling it. We’d have our money back—most of it—but I doubt very much if we’d go on from there. In fact, I know we wouldn’t go on from there. How could we? Where would we go?
Here I have the machines, he thought, and I can’t do anything with them. I can’t fix them and I can’t sell them. All I need is money. Money. A few hundred dollars. A thousand. Better yet, two thousand. But anyhow something. And where can I get it? We owe the bank fifteen hundred plus interest; I’ve hit my family, and Milt Lumky, and that does it. Nothing to sell, rent, exchange, put up for security.
What about my car?
His equity wasn’t large enough. That was out.
Maybe Susan’s house. Borrow against it. Long enough to get these goddamn machines in shape to peddle.
And then he thought, She did phone. She did call them and tell them about the keyboard. So perhaps, he thought, I don’t want to go on with it any further. Maybe this is a good place to stop.
What an immoral thing to do, he said to himself. Although of course it wouldn’t seem like that to her. In fact, to her it was virtuous.
That was the worst part. She had done it out of moral duty.
But to him it was lousy; it had put him in a terrible spot. Your wife called us, Ed von Scharf had said. Your wife told us. She tripped you up, you ridiculous bugger. You clown. In the name of what? To help the C.B.B discount house, which she has never seen and clearly doesn’t like?
I will never know, he thought. I don’t understand her. So the heck with it.
At a payphone in a drugstore he called her. “They’ll take them off our hands,” he said.
“Oh thank god,” Susan said fervently. “At how much?”
“Forty-five apiece,” he said.
“Oh what a relief.” She sighed. “Bruce, that’s wonderful. That means we get almost all our money back. How much do we lose? Three hundred dollars? I’m too excited to figure it. We could call that Milt’s money; part of the five hundred he gave us as a wedding present. I called him, incidently. I got hold of him at Pocatello, at a friend’s place. You met her—Cathy Hermes.”
“How is he?” he said.
“Much better. He’s back on the road again. He asked me if we got the typewriters and I told him—” She hesitated. “I told him we decided not to.”
“Why?” he said.
“Because—well, I thought perhaps it would worry him.”
“Why should it worry him?”
“I got to thinking about it and I decided that maybe you’re right. He might have known subconsciously. And then if he knew we’d gone ahead and bought them he’d have guilt to wrestle with. I think that’s why he gave us the five hundred dollars; to appease his conscience. I was wondering about that… it’s an awful lot of money.”
“I just assumed it was for old times’ sake,” he said. “Because you and he used to be such friends.”
“No,” she said. “What gave you that idea? I probably don’t know him any better then you do.”
He said, “Shall I sell the machines to them, then?”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “By all means. Before they change their minds.”
“They won’t change their minds,” he said. “They’re going to make something like nine thousand dollars out of this, give or take a few man-hours of repairwork.”
Susan said, “Did Mr. von Scharf say anything to you about your job?”
“Why?” he said, chilled.
“I wondered if he had. If we’re going to close up the office you’ll have to give some thought to that. I mean to close it, Bruce. I talked to Fancourt after you left and he said he thought it would be a good idea. Then I can be home with Taffy.”
He said, “Did you say anything to von Scharf about it?”
“I—told him that I thought we might be moving down to Reno.”
“What did he say?”
“He said your job is open.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you.” He started to hang up.
“You’ll be home tomorrow?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. He hung up.
By god, he thought, she did talk to them about my job. They probably arranged it among them. Time, salary, duties.
He returned to his car. For a few minutes he sat, and then he started the motor and drove back to the typewriter repair shop where the short little neatly-dressed man had given him the estimate.
“I see you’re back,” the man said in his severe, quiet manner, as he entered with the Mithrias.
Bruce said, “I want you to go ahead and do the work. Can you do it right now?”
“I suppose I can,” the man said. “Set it down here.” He took the machine and placed it on his work table. “It’s certainly not very heavy,” he said.
“I’d like to watch,” Bruce said. “It won’t make you nervous, will it?” He got out a ball point pen and paper and placed himself nearby.
The man said, “You’re going to see how it’s done, right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Let’s be honest about this. If this is going to help you any, you’re going to have to know more about it than you’ll get by watching me work.” The man considered. “Are you in a hurry? For instance, can you manage to hold your water until tonight?”
“I guess so,” he said.
The man said, “Come by here after dinner. Around seven o’clock. I’ll go over it step by step for you, show you what tools you’ll need. And you can do it here on my bench until I’m satisfied you know what you’re doing. Otherwise you’ll wreck your sixty typewriters.”
“Can I learn, do you think?” he asked.
“Undoubtedly. It’ll cost you about thirty bucks for my labor. I’ll let you do as much of it as possible. I’ll break about even.” The man put the Mithrias off to one side. “See you at seven, then.”
Feeling a little better, Bruce left the shop. Behind him, at the bench, the unemotional, ordinary-looking man, his necktie dangling out and in his way, resumed his work on an old IBM electric.
A person I never saw before, he thought to himself.
That evening he returned to the shop. The man let him in and then began work on the typewriter. It did not look hard. When he had finished he supervised while Bruce tackled a second machine. By ten o’clock he had learned the soldering part, the cutting and rewelding part, and was on the business of splitting a key in half. After that the man showed him how to align the keys, using special tools that pinched and bent the typebars.
“You’ll have to buy the tools,” the man said. He methodically wrote out the trade names and sizes for him in an old-fashioned formal hand. “Here’s the names of a couple of places you might try; if they don’t have them then you can send out to the Coast or back East. You can use them later on for certain other kinds of service. You know, if you’re going to be selling typewriters you ought to work out your own service. Get a man, set up a bench. Otherwise it’ll cost you too much.”
He paid the man, thanked him, and left.
I know I can make the changes myself, he said to himself as he got back into his car. All I need is the tools. He had written everything down, step by step, and then gone over it from the written instructions. A week or a month from now he could pick it up again. According to the man the tools wouldn’t set him back more than fifteen dollars, if he could get a good buy on the alcohol torch. And he knew where he could get that: in the hardware department at C.B.B.
That night, with the sixty typewriters still in the car, he started the drive back to Boise.