His meal was cold, and he did not feel much like finishing. He paid his check and walked outside, across Geary Street, and back to the station. The impression of Art and Rachael persisted, and he stopped in the front office, marking time before he returned to his job. Over the past years it had been his custom to bring his preoccupations to Pat; he now approached her desk. But all the small objects on her desk were away in the drawers. Her desk was neat and barren. Pat had left the station and gone home.
Was it that late? he wondered.
Going into one of the back rooms, he spread out his records. He continued putting them in order for the evening program. With the records was the Looney Luke copy, and clipped to the copy were sixteen-inch transcription discs which the Looney Luke people had sent over. The discs were canned commercials. He put one of them on a turntable and started the first band playing.
The speaker beneath the turntable said, “Ho-ho-ho-ha-ha-ha-ha-whee-hee-hee-ho-ho-ho-haw-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!” Jim put his hands to his ears.
“Yes sir, friends,” the speaker declared, “I’m telling you one and all to come down to Looney Luke’s, where you’ll get yourself not only one square deal like you never heard of before, but, my friends, you’ll be getting yourself a real all-around clean car you can take out on the highway, friends, and you can drive that car, my friends, all the way to Chicago . . .”
In his mind he saw the Kansas City announcer with his wide empty smile, the witless smile with its hanging chin and loose lips. The tone of sincerity . . . faith in the overblown nonsense, in the rotgut. The giggling, vacant, fun-house face that drooled and believed, drooled and believed. He reached to lift the tone arm from the disc.
“Ha-ha-ha, folks,” the speaker blubbered, “yes, that’s right, ha-ha, Looney Luke’ll take that old ho-ho in and give you hee-hee on the line, ha-ha!”
Ha-ha, he thought, stopping the disc. His fingers slipped, and the tone arm swept across the soft plastic surface; the diamond stylus cut a path from the outer rim to the label. Now he had done it. The disc was ruined. Occupational hazard, he thought, listening to the fierce racket as the stylus scored and rescored the label. The label disintegrated and bits of it shredded away and were tossed at him, white particles that were flung out in all directions.
3
That night Bob Posin celebrated the Looney Luke account by giving away a valuable phonograph record from the record library of station KOIF. He had it at home, at his apartment.
“I’ll be happy to pay you ten bucks for it,” Tony Vacuhhi said, comparing the number on the record label with the slip of paper he had brought with him. “I mean, you know it isn’t for me anyhow; what would I want with classical stuff like this? It’s for a client. So I’m just going to sell it anyhow; I mean, that isn’t right.”
Tony, an agent, solicitor, man about town, wore a respectable pinstripe suit; the night hours were his business hours. His hair was greased back and combed in place. His chin was blue with talcum powder, and the glint of his chitinlike eyes had faded and mellowed at this fine acquisition.
Bob Posin said, “It didn’t cost me anything. Take it.” He put the record in a sleeve and then into a bag. The record was dusty and worn; it was played every week or so on the Italian-language program Sunday night. The record was Gigli’s ‘Che Gelida Manina,’ an ancient Victor pressing.
“Just so it’s the right one,” Vacuhhi said.
“It’s the right one.” He was in a good humor. “How’s Thisbe?”
“Now there’s a girl,” Tony said.
Bob Posin was tempted to expand his celebration to include Thisbe. “Is she doing anything tonight, to your knowledge?”
“Well, she’s down at the Peachbowl, singing. You want to drop down? We could drop by. But I got business; I’ll have to let you off. I mean, can’t stick around.”
“Wait’ll I change my shirt.” He took off his shirt and got a clean one from the dresser drawer, a brand-new pink shirt that he had never worn. This was a special occasion.
While he was changing, he turned on the Magnavox combination in the living room. Symphonic music came from the twin speakers; the dinner music program was in progress.
Tony Vacuhhi, reading a magazine he had picked up from the coffee table, said, “You know Thisbe cut a couple of records for Sundial; that outfit over on Columbus. Snappy tunes but nothing right out that might start trouble, if you get my point. How about if I bring them around, you maybe using them on that disc jockey show?”
“Ask Briskin,” he said, fixing his tie.
“Maybe she could personally appear,” Tony Vacuhhi said. “You ever do things like that? Where she ought to be is on television. Boy, that’s no lie, you know?”
“That’s where we all ought to be,” Posin said energetically. “That’s where the money’s going; if you wonder why people aren’t sitting in bars listening to song stylists, It’s the same thing as we’ve up against with an independent AM radio station. What do people do? They turn on ‘I Love Lucy,’ the mass morons. Sometimes eighty million people at once watch that kind of escapist trash. I wouldn’t have a TV set around.”
The music from the radio ended. Jim Briskin’s professional announcer’s voice took its place. “The Romeo and Juliet Overture, played by Edward van Beinum and the London Philharmonic.” For an interval the radio was silent.
“I know what you mean,” Tony Vacuhhi said. “All them people at once—”
“Shut up a second,” Posin said, smoothing his hair.
Now, from the radio, Jim Briskin’s voice continued, “The car you buy today from Looney Luke will be a clean car. And it will stay clean.”
Good, Bob Posin thought. He’s doing it good.
“Looney Luke guarantees it,” Briskin went on, in a firm, clipped voice, a spirited delivery. “Clean! Clean! Clean!” he said. And then, in a reflective voice, he said, “No, I can’t give this. I gave it during the afternoon, and that’s enough.” As if he was speaking to himself.
He said, “And now we’ll hear Richard Strauss’s tone poem Till Eulenspiegel.”
Tony Vacuhhi laughed nervously. “That’s funny.”
Symphonic music began again. Posin felt the back of his head heat by degrees until it was scorching red. He felt as if his scalp was shriveling under waves of blasting intensity. And all the time he went on fixing his tie, smoothing his hair. He could not believe it.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “What did he say—did he say he wasn’t going to give it?”
“I don’t know,” Vacuhhi said uneasily, sensing that something was wrong.
“Of course you know; you heard it, didn’t you? What did you hear him say? Did he say he wasn’t going to give it, isn’t that what he said?”
“Something like that,” Vacuhhi muttered.
Posin put on his coat. “I have to go.”
“You don’t want to go over to the Peachbowl and—”
“No, I don’t want to go over to the Peachbowl.” He pushed Tony Vacuhhi and his record out of the apartment and slammed the door. “How do you like that?” he said. As the two of them went down the hall, Tony several steps behind, he repeated, “How do you like that? What do you think of a thing like that?”
At the sidewalk he left Tony Yacuhhi and began walking aimlessly. “I can’t believe it,” he said to himself. “What do you think of a thing like that? Can a man openly do a thing like that?”
To his right was a drugstore. He entered the public phone booth in the rear and dialed the station. Naturally there was no answer. At night the announcer was alone; he worked the board himself, without an engineer. It was hopeless trying to get Briskin at night.