“I’m on my way to Connecticut Avenue,” I lied, not wanting to get the boys in trouble. None of them had arrived yet to open the store.
“What for?”
“Listen, Ric. All of last night I thought about our discussion yesterday in your office. I think one of the reasons I don’t have that team spirit is that I’ve lost touch with what’s going on out in the stores, out on the firing line.” I stopped speaking so as not to make myself sick.
“I understand.” Since he had never been on the “firing line,” that imaginary, danger-filled zone that lowly salesmen are so keen on referring to, he could not have understood. But I had counted on that.
“What I figure is, I’ll get back on the floor for a few weeks, see what’s going on again, talk to some customers and find out what they do and don’t respond to in our ads.”
“What about your regular duties?”
“What I can’t do here, I’ll finish up at night. I have a key to the office, and my Post contacts can do pickups here at the store. As for any important meetings or appointments, you call me here, I can be back in the office in fifteen minutes.”
“I can see the merit in this,” he said, adding, “if you apply yourself. Understand that I’d like you to report to Gary Fisher every day as to the merchandising and advertising plans.”
“Sure, Ric. Transfer me over to Fisher then, will you?”
The phone rang several times, then Fisher picked up. In contrast to the dead calm of Brandon’s office, I could hear people laughing, typewriters clacking, and unanswered phones ringing in the background. I imagined a cigarette lodged above Fisher’s ear.
“Fish, it’s Nick.”
“Where the fuck are you?”
“The Avenue. I’m going to be working out of here for a while. I had to get away from the office, man. You know what I mean?”
“Not really. You worked your way up from stockboy to sales to management, now you want to go backwards. Besides, I need you here.”
“I’ll still do my job, only I’ll do it from the store.”
“You see Electro-World’s ad today?” he asked, changing the subject as if to ignore it.
“I haven’t seen the paper yet.”
“They ran a TP400 for two ninety-nine, the lousy giveaway artists. Tell the fellas not to match that price, hear? If we have to take a bath, we can wait till Black Friday.”
“You’re going to wait till the Friday after Thanksgiving to run a piece that everyone’s in the p
“I’m not worried,” he said. “There’s gonna be a shortage of low-end goods this Christmas. The Japs and the Koreans are holding back, trying to drive up the costs to the distributors. My guess is, the longer we hold back on the bait, we’ll be the only ones in town with the plunder come D-Day. We bring ’em through the door, pass a few out, lose our asses-we’ll make it up on add-ons and service policies.”
Fisher was a typical merch manager, a sloppy, chain-smoking, audiophilic post-smoking salesman who had grudgingly been promoted to management. He was built low to the ground, had an unfashionably long Prince Valiant haircut, and motored around the office pitched forward, his fists clenched like some driven cartoon villain. He would never advance beyond his current position-the image wasn’t there, and neither was the will-but he was unequaled at Nathan’s in his knowledge of retail.
“What else?”
“That bitch Fein called again from Montgomery County Consumer Affairs,” he said. “Said we’ve got to stop using the word sale in the head of our ads if we’re not lowering our everyday prices.”
“So I’ll call this next ad a blowout.”
“Perfect.”
“Do me one favor, Fish. Keep Brandon away from me as much as you can, will you?”
“Yeah, sure. But, Nick, why does the guy spell his name R-i-c?”
“I guess R-o-c-k was already taken.”
“Talk to you later.” He hung up.
I walked around the building to the front of the store and looked in the plate-glass display window. Louie Bates, the store manager, had arrived. He ambled along the left wall, switching on television sets.
I pushed on the door and entered. The layout of the floor had changed very little. Up front was a glass case that surrounded a desk and register and contained small electronics and accessories. This was also the cashiers’ station and the area where the salesman closed, TO’d to the manager, and wrote deals.
The left half of the store contained televisions of all varieties, portable to widescreen. An aisle in the middle of the store was wide enough to handtruck merchandise from the stockroom to the front door. The right half of the store contained low-end rack stereos, boom boxes, clock radios, auto sound, microwave ovens, small appliances, and other low-commission goods. The entire rear of the showroom housed high-end audio, a “room” that was simply a thinly carpeted part of the store where the lights had been dimmed. A banner hung across its entrance, grandly announcing this area as “The Sound Explosion.”
Gold and red, Nutty Nathan’s official colors, dominated in the form of signage, tags, and “accent striping.” Salesmen were at one time required to wear gold sportcoats with a red coat-of-arms sewn across the breast pocket, consisting of a triumvirate depicting a television, stereo, and microwave oven. Salesforce rebellion in the form of filthy jackets forced management to end this dress cos ahis drede. The day this requirement was lifted McGinnes and I had poured lighter fluid on ours and burned them ceremoniously in the parking lot.
The outright tackiness and near-vulgar ambience of Nathan Plavin’s stores were intentional. Plavin had picked the colors, as well as the jackets. On slow Saturdays he’d call managers and instruct them to scatter empty cartons in the aisles, to make it appear as if the salesmen were too busy writing up bargains to bother with keeping the place clean. But that had been in the past, when Nathan was more on top of the day-to-day operations of his company.
Louie was surprised to see me in his store. He was a short, barrel-chested guy in his fifties with a wide, flat nose that appeared to have been smashed in by a shovel. As he walked towards me, I noticed that his gut had swelled, his neck had all but disappeared, and there was much more gray salted into his hair. He looked somewhat like a cinderblock with legs.
“You lost, Youngblood?” he asked.
“Could be,” I said, shaking his hand. “I’ll be working here for a couple of weeks. Management wants me to get back in touch with the business.”
“You wouldn’t be spying on your old boss, would you, buddy?”
I didn’t answer that but said, “I’ll stay out of your way, Louie.”
“Whatever.” He threw up his arms in a gesture of surrender. “Listen, your boys are late as usual, and I got to get this place open. I’ll talk to you later, hear?”
Louie returned to the television section. As the manager of the highest volume store, he knew what his priorities were: to put out fires and to protect his salesmen from the main office. In turn, he was covered by his employees during his daily afternoon visits to his girlfriend across the street in the Van Ness apartments, and on those mornings when his hangovers kept him paralyzed with his head on the desk in the “employee lounge” at the rear of the store.
A small bell sounded as the front door opened, and I turned to see Andre Malone flowing towards me. He was tall, reedy, and elegant in his no-vent sportcoat, silk shirt and tie, reverse pleated trousers, and Italian loafers. Though he’d come out of one of the most hopelessly dangerous sections of the city, there was something of the aristocrat in his bearing and in the way he held his head. He saw me and widened his eyes in mock amazement.
“What’s goin’ on, Country?” he said. I touched the sharp crease on his trousers and pulled my hand away quickly as if I had been cut.
“You may be the prettiest person I’ve ever known.”
He smiled and revealed a perfect row of teeth below his Wyatt Earp mustache. “I see you’re doin’ all right yourself. Finally wearin’ some cotton. Used to be I was afraid to light a match around your polyester ass.”
“I’m on the fast track, Andre. I had to upgrade.”
“What you doin’ here, man?” His forehead wrinkled as he found a Newport in his breast pocket and lit it in
