The man held the packet out with one hand. The other hand he kept behind his back. He flexed his knees and looked out at the street trees with their pretty red-dotted lichen-encrusted leaves and their hairy, mossy trunks. They were side by side. Benny could feel the space between them.
‘A present? Just for nothing?’
‘For good luck,’ said Sarkis, ‘on my first day here.’
‘First day?’
‘I’m sorry …’ Sarkis said, suddenly confused.
‘First day? Come on, what are you saying to me. What are you proposing?’
‘Working here,’ said Sarkis. ‘I’m sorry. I was hired to work here. She said someone would come and fill me in.’
‘Got it,’ said Benny. He felt a pain in his stomach. He watched his father nurse the Commodore slowly out along the brown-puddled service road. All the fibreglass splinters in his arms began to itch. ‘Who hired you? Mrs McPherson?’
‘The owner hired me,’ said Sarkis. ‘The old lady.’
This was exactly how Howie got into Catchprice Motors and it made Benny get a freezing feeling behind his eyes. ‘Oh shit,’ he laughed. ‘You got hired by Grandma.’ He tapped his forehead and rolled his eyes.
‘She’s got the keys,’ Sarkis said. ‘I saw her.’
‘She’s got the keys because she’s got the keys – she doesn’t own the business.’
‘She told me that she did.’
‘Well she doesn’t. It’s owned by my auntie and my Dad and me. Not even my uncle Jack has got shares. He’s a property developer in town, but he doesn’t work here so he can’t have shares. Even my brother,’ Benny said, ‘could have had a future here …’
Then he saw the Tax Inspector’s Colt making a right-hand turn across the traffic to come into Catchprice Motors.
‘I’ve got to tell you,’ Sarkis said, ‘I never sold cars before.’
Benny groaned.
‘So if you can help me …’ Sarkis rubbed his fingers together, indicating money passing hands.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You help me, I’ll split my commission.’
‘We don’t have commissions,’ Benny said. ‘This is a family business.’ But he was mollified by the offer. ‘This is a fucking minefield,’ he said. ‘It’s a snake-pit. They all hate each other. None of them can sell a car. If you work here, you’d have to work for me.’
‘Sure,’ said Sarkis. ‘Sure, O.K.’
‘We’ve got a lot of stock to move,’ Benny explained. ‘We’ve got a fucking enormous tax bill.’ He looked at Sarkis. ‘What makes you think you can sell cars … what’s your name?’
‘Sarkis.’ He hesitated. ‘They call me Sam,’ he told this kid. He hated how it sounded. The kid must be seven years younger and he was saying, ‘Call me Sam’.
‘Sam? Listen Sam. The first thing you’ve got to know is that the car is not the issue. The car is only the excuse. It’s the F&I you make the money from. No one understands that. The kings of this business are the F&I men. There’s no one in Catchprice Motors knows an F&I man from their arsehole. Someone says to my old man, “I need insurance,” he picks up the fucking phone and dials the fucking insurance company for them and it costs us thirty cents and makes us nothing. You want to work here, you got to go away for five days and learn about F&I …’
‘Sorry … what’s F&I?’
‘I’ve been telling you,’ said Benny. ‘Finance and Insurance. F&I. You stay here now, all this week, but next Monday you get on an F&I course. You learn how to use the computer, how to do the paper work. You don’t need to know shit about cars. You don’t need to know the difference between an Audi Quattro and a washing machine. A week from now you’ll know how to sell them comprehensive insurance, disability cover, extended warranty. If that’s impossible …’
‘I’m Armenian,’ said Sarkis. ‘We’re the best salesmen in the world.’
‘Yeah, well don’t go round giving people silk ties. You get people mad with you. Forget it now. Listen to me – I’ve got a hundred bucks and I want to buy a car from you, how are you going to do it? I mean, I come in here with a blue mohawk and a leopard-skin vest and a ring through my nose and when I’ve finished jerking off all I can get together is a hundred bucks …’
‘You can’t afford a car, sorry …’
‘You know as much as the directors of this business.’ Benny could see Cathy standing at the top of Grandma Catchprice’s landing. She was waving her arms around and waving at Benny and Sarkis. ‘You want to sell a car, you’ve got to understand finance, O.K. Listen to me,’ Benny said, ‘not her. You’ve got a hundred bucks, you want a nice car. I say to you, see that old F.J. Holden over there. I’ll sell you that for a hundred bucks.’
‘You call that a nice car?’
‘No, I don’t. Just be patient. O.K. You buy it from me for a hundred. O.K.?’
‘O.K.’ said Sarkis.
‘O.K., now I buy it back from you at five hundred. Car hasn’t even moved. What’s happened?’
‘You’ve lost money.’
‘No, now you have five hundred bucks – you can afford to do business with me. You’ve got enough money for a deposit on a $3,500 car. I can finance it to you. I’ll make good money on the sale, I’ll keep on making money on the F&I. You understand me?’
‘I think so,’ said Sarkis.
‘It takes time, don’t worry,’ Benny said. ‘They think I’m dumb round here, I’ll tell you now.’ He could see Cathy lurching awkwardly down the stairs. ‘But none of them appreciates this. You’re getting it faster than they are. You can make two hundred grand a year in this dump, really. You believe me.’
‘You want to know? I think it’s a great opportunity.’
‘You get this F&I under your belt, we can set this town on fire.’ He turned to face Cathy who was weaving towards them. ‘Just ignore this,’ he told Sarkis. ‘This doesn’t count.’
31
Sarkis watched the chunky blonde woman in the gingham dress walk down the staircase. Her eyes were on him, he knew, and he was optimistic about the effect her presence would have on the conversation she was so obviously about to enter. At a certain distance – from the top of the fire escape to the bottom, and a metre or two onwards from there – she gave an impression of a bright blonde Kellogg’s kind of normality and he hoped that she might, somehow, save him from this sleaze. But then she passed the point where there could be conjecture and he saw, even before he smelt her, that her face was puffy and her mascara was running. The smell was not the smell, as subtle as the aroma of Holy Communion, you get from a drink or two, but the deep, sour aura that comes from a long night of drinking, and it explained more readily than her high-heeled knee-high boots, the careful way she walked across the gravel.
‘Who are you?’ she asked Sarkis. She looked both hurt and hostile and Sarkis’s strongest desire was to turn away from all this poison and walk to the sane, cloves-sweet environment of his home.
Instead he said something he had promised never to say again: ‘Hi, I’m Sam Alaverdian.’
The ‘Sam’ did not make her like him any better. She sighed, and put her finger on the small crease at the top of her nose. ‘So you’re the latest candidate,’ she said. ‘Tell me, honey, what experience do you have?’
‘He’s Armenian.’
‘What’s that got to do with it, Benny?’
‘They’re the best salesmen in the world.’