Where he collected his strength and doodled messages in his head for the answering machine.
Hi, he thought, this is Jack Schiff. Sorry to have missed your call, but I’ve stepped out for five minutes to run out to the store for some milk for my coffee. Just leave your et cetera, et cetera, and I’ll get right back to you.
That wasn’t bad, Schiff thought, but what would people who knew him make of it, of his “stepped out” and “run out” locutions? Of the swiftness and fluency of movement — so unlike him — he implied in that “get right back to you” trope? Unless they read it as the code that it was, they would think they’d reached some other Jack Schiff. Also, what if the thieves waited five minutes and called back? Or ten? Or fifteen? Or a whole hour and then heard the same damn message? After they robbed him they’d probably trash the place, maybe even torch it.
Hi, et cetera, et cetera, he revised, but — WOULD YOU CUT THAT OUT, PLEASE? DOWN, DAMN IT DOWN! Sorry, my pit bull’s acting up again. Look, just leave your name at the sound of the — oh, my God, BEEEEP!
Well, Schiff thought, pleased with the new composition and his invention of the pit bull. But there was a problem of verisimilitude. Wouldn’t there have to be growls, the sound of snarls and vicious barking? Probably he could manage a fairly convincing growl, or even a snarl, particularly over a telephone with its gift of enhanced, electronic sibilance, but he was an academic not an actor, he’d never be able to handle the rough barking. (A pit bull went on the wish list. Then, thinking of the effort it would be to care for, came right back off again.)
Et cetera, et cetera, he began over, I’m too depressed to come to the phone right now. Thieves cleaned me out. I called the cops. They tell me it looks like the work of professionals. Like that’s supposed to be a comfort? Leave your name, if I ever cheer up I’ll try to get back to you.
There were people at his front door. From where he sat on the sofa he could see the S.O.S. van through the French windows. Well, thought Schiff, thank God for small favors.
It was good he was downstairs. If he’d gone up — he had the wrong temperament for someone with his disease; really, he thought, he wasn’t laidback enough; not trying to get to the phone earlier before it stopped ringing was the exception not the rule — he could have had an accident in an effort to rush down to them before his visitors gave up and left. Even now, knowing what he knew about himself, and no more than twenty feet from the door, he scampered to it. The bank statements were still in his mouth.
“No no,” Bill, who was in the business, who knew a rotten hand when he saw one, who’d told him as much, said, waving off the hand Schiff extended, “let’s wait, why don’t we, until you sit down before we try to shake hands?”
In the living room Bill introduced him to the technician he’d brought with him, a woman. For a fellow with a quiet libido, it was astonishing to Schiff how much at ease women could put him, even women like this one, got up in gray coveralls like a repairman’s, moving man’s, or delivery man’s jumpsuit, a person’s who worked basements. It was generally true what Claire had said. Workmen tended to frighten him. At something like the ambassadorial level Claire handled the workmen, though Schiff began to wonder if he hadn’t been missing something. After some initial small talk—“Have any trouble finding the place?” ““Yes, it is a nice neighborhood, St. Louis’s best-kept secret”—which he quite enjoyed but wouldn’t have guessed he had in him, Bill presented him with some brochures about the equipment and service. Schiff accepted and started to read them before Bill interrupted. “Those are just to give you an idea of the colors that are available.”
“Oh, I don’t care about the color,” Schiff said.
“Well, good for you,” said Bill.
“The olive would have to be special-ordered anyway,” Jenny Simmons said. “So would the teal.”
“We don’t have the teal?” Bill said.
“I don’t think Indianapolis even makes it anymore. When was the last time you saw a teal?”
“Come to think of it,” Bill admitted.
“I really don’t care about the color,” Schiff said.
“Most clients don’t,” Bill said.
“Hey,” Schiff said, “I’m far gone, but I’m not that far gone. I still get a kick out of life. It’s not all monochromatic. All I meant was, it ticks me off when a company tries to make a profit off the paint it splashes over its products. I can remember when the Princess telephone first came out and Ma Bell charged you extra for any piece of equipment that wasn’t black.”
“That’s what I thought you meant,” Bill said, “Wasn’t it Henry Ford who said you could get the Model T in any color you wanted so long as it was black? Some clients are a little fussy is all. It actually matters to them whether the unit they wear around their neck and that could save their life is green or gray. Though don’t get me wrong. The S.O.S. Corporation isn’t Ma Bell. We don’t charge extra for the color.”