I have been in the Bowling Green shop just once. I am a personnel man finally, only an absentee landlord, a silent owner in the sound trade. They rip me off, my managers, my hired help. They aren’t to be trusted. They skim. I know that. I’ve taken bartenders and put them in charge of my franchises. I’ve turned vice-squad detectives into bosses. Clerks in liquor stores, ticket sellers, head-waiters, gas-station attendants — all those technicians in larceny. My gray-collar guys of good judgment who know just where to draw the line and just when to stop. What can it cost me in the long run? Less than fringe benefits, less than Blue Cross, pension plans. I tell them up front what I’ll stand for. They appreciate that. If they take advantage I send the auditors in or go myself. But that’s rare. The rule of thumb is, they work their asses off in order to increase the profits from which they are allowed to steal. In the long run I’m probably even, maybe a dollar or two ahead.
I came to the Radio Shack bash to buy. Chelton should have come. He knows the stock better, the clientele. I’m his operative really, just following orders.
It’s just that I’ve got to do something.
We were all in our seats. They dimmed the lights in the Century Ballroom. The great collar of equipment from the display booths that lined three sides of the ballroom glowed like electric Crayolas. It was really rather pretty. The franchisers applauded. Even I started to applaud but it hurt my hand. Then someone yelled, “Bravo, bravo,” and this was taken up and soon everyone was clapping and cheering, giving a standing ovation to a lot of colored dials. It was like applauding dessert, the waiters’ parade of cherries jubilee at a catered dinner, luminous baked Alaska at a golden wedding anniversary. Businessmen are so dumb.
Then — I don’t know how they did this, some linked rheostat arrangement or something — they brought down the lights on the equipment until the ballroom was pitch black. A white pin spot flared on some Fort Worth guy on the dais and we sat back down.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “there’s to be a demonstration.”
The pin spot, round as a pancake, large as his face, reduced itself, burned briefly on the tip of his nose, and went out. The Century Ballroom was bereft of light, blackness so final it was void, a vacuum of light. We could have been locked in the subterranean on the backside of moons. I thought of the brownouts I’d fled, but this was darker, melanistic, the doused universe and the pitch of death.
And they applauded this, applauded darkness. So dumb. And I thought — the Wharton Old Boy — it’s a miracle Dow Jones has an average, a miracle that there’s trade at all. The dollar’s a miracle, the dime a wonder, America astonishing, all organization a wondrous serendipity. Higher the handicapped and Excelsior to all. Applauded darkness!
Self-consciously — oh, the demands of level good will — I thought perhaps I should join them. Even in the darkness — who could have seen me? — I felt this pressure to join in, to add my two-cent increment of invisible loyalty, pressured like men at ball parks to stand with their fellows for the anthem, to move their lips over the words flashed on the scoreboard, and make a noise here and another there when the song descends to their key. But it hurt my hand to applaud and I kept still. And then, the oddest thing.
A man called, “Bravo, bravo.” Then the chant was taken up, and through the sound of applause and cheers I could hear chairs scraping all about me as they were pushed back and the Radio Shack people stood. It was ludicrous. Cheer darkness! As well applaud lawns, crabgrass, hurrah the sky and clap for rain. The givens are given. I wouldn’t move. I hadn’t the excuse of my game hand but I wouldn’t move, would not rise with my clamorous colleagues.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Fort Worth man said, “there’s to be a demonstration.”
The lights came on in the Century Ballroom. The Fort Worth man was not on the dais. No one was standing. The chairs were just where I had remembered their being when we had sat down after applauding the new line of equipment. We looked at each other.
“What happened?” my neighbor asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What was all that clapping? Why did you get up when the lights went out?”
“I didn’t. Why did you?”
“I never moved.”
All around me people were asking the same questions of each other. It seemed that no one had applauded, no one had stood.
“Where’d what’s-his-name, Fort Worth, go?”
“I don’t know.”
“There he is.”
“Where?”
“By that console. There. Beside the dais.”
The man from Fort Worth, his arms folded across his chest, stood smiling at us. He moved toward the microphone stand again.
“How did you like the demonstration? We played a little joke on you. We played a little joke on you and you’ve just heard the future.”
“What’s this all about, Sam?” This was called out by a man in my row.
Sam, the Fort Worth guy, nodded and smiled. He shaded his eyes, pretending to look where the question had come from. “We recorded your initial response and played it back for you.”
“Was that some kind of quadraphonics?”
“Quadraphonics? Honey, it was decaphonics. It was quinquagintaphonics. It was centophonics. Myriaphonics. It was the whole-kit-and-caboodlaphonics! The system’s perfected. It’s on line now. Well, there’s nothing to it from an engineering standpoint, or even from a recording standpoint. All they have to do is plant a mike wherever they want. The technology’s been licked since stereo. We could do that all along, make as many tracks as we wanted. It’s just multiplex. It was at the other end, the delivery system, where the trouble came in. Now we’ve got these miniaturized speakers that we can plant anywhere. Well, you just heard.”
“Is it expensive?” I had the impression there were shills in the audience.
“Initially. Initially the customer buys the receiver. That’s that console over there. That one’s professional of course and costs about four grand, but we can give him something almost as good, at least for his home entertainment purposes, starting at about eleven hundred and fifty dollars and going up to about eighteen or nineteen hundred. About the same price as professional-quality stereo equipment.”
“It’s high, Sam. These are kids, newlyweds.”
“They’ll go crazy for it,” Sam said. “You still haven’t caught on, have you? Anybody here with the vision to see what we’ve done?”
“I have.” Ben spoke. He rose and stood beside his chair.
“Pardner?” Sam said.
“I have. The vision. I have. It’s the Barbie Doll principle gone sound. It’s Mattel. Mattelio ad absurdum in spadessum. We kill them with accessory. They start with three speakers, four, and build toward infinity. Like model railroading — all the crap you could get. The station and stationmaster and a little signalman waving his tiny lantern with the teensy light inside. The gates and the bridges, the tunnels and tracks. The switches and couplers, the toy towns and trees. The Rockies and billboards and whistles that blew. The smoke. The freight cars and passenger. Cabooses. The observation car where the weensy President stood. The refrigerator cars cold to the touch. The flatcars with their lumber and perfume of evergreen. All the specialized carriers for oil, gas (non-flammable, nontoxic), natural resources. I have. I do.”