A Salesman's City

 A Salesman’s City

I remember the day we took down the doors. First in our apartment, then the building, and then the whole block. Next we took down the doors of the neighborhood. We had a quick peanut butter sandwich and then we finished up with the doors of the entire city.

It was quite a few doors, Audra said, after we had removed the final door. I agreed with her, but Lillian, standing off to the side, looking at the end product of our hard day’s labor, didn’t say anything. The massive mound of wooden doors, some still equipped with knobs and hinges, filled the ravine on the city’s outer limits, making it possible to walk across into the next county. Lillian had been the most enthusiastic, had even come up with the idea in the first place. We started with the swinging door, the one that connected our little kitchen to that room with all the natural sunlight. The room with the good table in it, and those damned adequate chairs.

Lillian never cared for that door. It was always in the way, and the squeal of its hinges resembled the blaring of either abnormally petite, or somewhat distant elephants. Lillian was small but not weak. Muscled in the places it served to be muscled and soft where softness better fit the bill. She owned a cute face, too. She’d look at me with such sincerity that I actually believed she was listening to me, even though the things I would say were mostly nonsense, my mind distracted by the fact that such a lovely face could actually be listening to me.

The girls, women by the time we took the doors down, had been best friends since childhood. That’s what happens when you grow up on the same block. Geographic convenience decides friendships when neighborhood mothers need last minute babysitters and little girls want to go out and play but aren’t yet allowed to cross the street. Like sisters, they shared an intimacy and comfort that connected them despite an underlying competitiveness. I came into their lives inauspiciously, run out of my hometown for trying to sell one of our most beloved public landmarks to a visiting Saudi Arabian dignitary. Back then I was addicted to selling. Some people are kleptomaniacs, stealing things that don’t belong to them. The lord saw fit to wire me differently. The antithesis of a kleptomaniac, I was addicted to selling things that didn’t belong to me. I was about to ink the deal with the Sheik when the police arrived and I ran off, hitching my way to a new city and a fresh start. Audra and Lillian were looking for a roommate and I needed a place to sleep. I sold them on the idea of bringing me in. They’ve been a great influence on me since then. Until we took the doors down I thought I’d kicked the habit.

Lillian wanted that swinging door gone, so we each grabbed a power drill and we took that sucker down. The rest of the doors followed. Afterwards Lillian didn’t say a word for hours, not until halfway through the drive home. It was a long trip, since the city is pretty big and a lot of people were wandering about the streets creating traffic jams, wondering what happened to their doors.  One would think all the buildings in the city were bursting with water and we had taken down the floodgates, people streamed out like dense logs and other large, saturated chunks of debris. Lillian turned in the front seat to face Audra in the back, but she directed the question to me. David, she said, What are we going to do with all these doors?

•  

The day we took down the doors was about two years ago. Since then things have changed quite a bit. First of all, without doors, I mean with no doors at all, none whatsoever, there’s an awful lot more noise. The additional noise inherent to all doorless civilizations, as evidenced by much of the animal kingdom, brings about a severe increase in voice volume. Everyone was forced to speak up above the folks across the hall, and the folks across the hall were speaking up over the rumble of the train and the meowing of the stray cats that invariably invaded through the newly unblocked entranceways of the buildings. People were speaking up with such magnitude that they actually began hearing the things they themselves were speaking. Horrible experience, it turned out to be, hearing one’s own speaking up. It wasn’t long before people became afraid of what they might say, now that they were aware of what they were saying. Folks became aggressively polite. Nobody was saying the things they weren’t supposed to, instead focusing on only the correct things, the polite things. The whole city shouting about the weather, smiling and shouting about the weather that was yesterday’s weather, that which was today’s weather, and the weather to be expected in the morning the following day.

It became so boring, so torturous and intolerable that the people started purchasing earplugs by the barrelful. Everyone needed earplugs to avoid listening to others, much worse themselves. This marked my first miniature relapse into salesmanship. I couldn’t shut it off any longer. If earplug salesman were going to make money, I needed to be one of them. And not just any one of them. I would be the best. What a challenge!  Amassing money went a long way toward building up my self-image when I was in salesman mode. I liked the way money made me feel powerful and in control. Nowadays money makes me feel forceful and in command, a difference one must experience to comprehend. I got in on the ground floor of the earplug business. I sold standard earplugs in the beginning. Plain, practical, one size fits all white plugs that people stuffed in their ears. I made a little money, but not enough to push the business forward. I felt powerful and in control. So much so that Audra even asked if I had been doing isometric exercises. I had not been doing isometric exercises, at least no more than usual. Just selling earplugs.

•  

Sitting at the good table, on a damned adequate chair, I counted my profits by powerfully slamming bills into controlled piles. I saw Audra and Lillian approaching from the kitchen, concerned looks on their faces. They wanted to know how I managed to become the city’s premiere earplug salesman without any industry experience. I told them everything, from the first time I sold another child’s lunchbox on the playground all the way up to the Sheik. I assured them I was in control, even powerfully so. Audra held my hand, believing me. Lillian shook her head, wanting to.

Oh David, Audra said, It’s not so bad. You aren’t really hurting anybody.

Yet, Lillian said, How long until you’ve got us all on the run?

•  

Earplug sales were steady. The women weren’t thrilled with my ongoing salesmanship, but they didn’t mind the extra cash. Soon, the earplug boom’s effects were felt in other areas. Mainly, people’s senses. Mass earplug insertion rendered the ear a useless, vestigial facial appendage, allowing peoples’ brains to allocate resources away from the ears and towards the noses. The city was hard of hearing but people could smell with great acuity. Again, horrible experience, smelling ones own smells as well as those of the city. As much as the earplug salesman in me wanted to expand my business to the nose plug market, I saw a better opportunity. Two birds with one stone, that’s what I always said.

•  

Remember what you said the day we took down the doors? I asked Audra and Lillian.

Yes.

I do.

About how it was an awful lot of doors? And how we didn’t know what to do with them?

Yes.

We remember.

The women sat in the well-lit dining room on our damned adequate chairs. I was standing in our small kitchen. There was no swinging door between us so I didn’t have to go anywhere to tell them about my recent stroke of genius.  The chairs were damned adequate because they were sturdy, solidly built and decently comfortable. But they weren’t aesthetically pleasing at all, and not really all that comfortable, to be honest. They weren’t bad enough to replace, not good enough to enjoy. Just plain old, damned adequate chairs.

It was early and the city hadn’t woken up yet, so we didn’t have our earplugs in.

I said, thinking aloud, really, All these people don’t like the new smells they’re smelling. We need to get rid of the things that smell bad. What destroys smelly things better than fire? And what fuels a fire? Wood. We have a city’s worth of wooden doors piled up and people need to buy firewood. We’ll put out a press release and sell the doors for a huge profit. Here I held up two fingers. Two Birds! And then lowered one. One Stone!

Audra lit up, though I don’t recall if it was about the prospect of profits or the idea of a city engulfed in flames. She could get carried away with things like that. She was artistic. Lillian didn’t like the idea one bit. She sat, stroking her hair with her legs crossed tightly on that damned adequate chair, her benthic blue tights stretched out at the knee and in the toes, exposing pale islets of skin. Audra rose up and hugged me, calling me “inspired” or some such rot. I recall the sweet smell of her dark hair pressed against my nose, overwhelming the urine stench left by the stray cats.

Lillian provided the voice of reason. You can’t do this, she said, Remember what you told us about control? How powerfully you were in control?

I shrugged. The physical manifestation of powerlessness.

Hush, Audra said, He’ll be fine. She then winked at me, and I believe I blushed.

•  

Word traveled fast throughout the city. Once people heard that they could solve their smell issues with just one easy payment of $39.99 per door (I up-sold by painting a sign in dripping red letters: “Retailers suggest 2 doors per household. 3 for kids/pets”) they were lining up down the block. It didn’t seem to bother them that they had to buy doors back from me, after I had so recently sold them on the idea of letting me take them down. In fact, many relished the opportunity to pick out their least favorite doors for burning. I did the heavy lifting, Audra worked the register, and Lillian sat in the damned adequate chair we’d brought along smoking cigarettes. I suppose she was taking it all in, but who’s to say? We cleared a pretty penny that day, and later that night the fires burned.

The streets were lined with makeshift campfires. Doors burned, people yelled politely, complimenting the size of their neighbors’ fires, afraid to say the wrong thing but unable to hear their neighbors’ responses over the crackling flames and the stuffed ears I had generously provided plugs for at such reasonable rates. From above, the city was a rash of smoldering red specks, freckling the landscape like acne on the face of a teenaged demon. Once the fires were burning high and strong the people raced in and out of their homes, grabbing everything that offended the olfactory sense. Old bath towels, the Tupperware from the back of the refrigerator, their high school football jerseys, dusty sofa cushions, the baby’s clothes. One by one they tossed their memories and their cherished antiques into the blaze. Their lives up in the smoke. They breathed deeply, through their noses, and exhaled with smiling faces, watching the odorous offenders vanish into ash.

As the night wore on, the flames receded, burning low and steady and warm. The scene on the streets throughout the city became intimate, heated and romantic. I’m probably only imagining this, but I remember hearing an acoustic guitar softly strumming as the people of the city settled into one another amid the waning firelight. And then they made love. This part I’m sure I remember: Audra’s hand rested on my thigh. I looked up into her dark green eyes, reflecting the dancing flames, and knew the heat of the fires and the excitement of the door sales had woken something within her. At that moment, whatever I was selling, she was buying. Audra was always one for the dramatic, being artistic and all. As I leaned in to kiss her I felt another hand on my opposite shoulder. Lillian, not to be outdone, light and sweet and muscled where it was best to be muscled, soft where softness better fit the bill. I wasn’t ready for that. The two women lowered me onto my back.

•  

The three of us had a tenuous living situation. I was half in love with both of them and they were each three fifths in love with me. Nobody was happy more than 30% of the time. And these rarely overlapped, so mostly one of us was happy while the other two were either angry or sad. And often drinking. The Night of Flaming Doors, as it became known throughout the city, was the perfect storm of happiness. That rarest of occasions in which we found ourselves at peace, where our fractious love worked as a sum instead of a division. We each shared, as one entity, more than a whole, in fact, if you crunch the numbers, more than two whole loves. There would be no night like the Night of Flaming Doors again, for any of us.

•  

In the morning we rose among the ashes of the doors and the panic of the city. Copulating! They called out. What were we thinking? Too Much! Too Soon! One man yelled, although they were all yelling on account of the noise and earplugs, What about the issues?

The fireside intimacy that swept through the city on the Night of Flaming Doors wouldn’t be without consequence. The citizens worried about the issues. They worried about overpopulation. They worried about abortion. They worried about the ozone. All these people shouting about the ozone, panicking and shouting about the ozone that was yesterday’s ozone, that which was today’s ozone, and the ozone to be expected the following morning. People were so fired up over the issues, and yelling so politely about them, that our city must have been within earshot of nearby planets. I remember briefly considering the potential logistics of interstellar earplug sales before disregarding the notion as preposterous.

Politicians flew into the city like vultures. Nobody knew where from, but they arrived so quickly after the issues arose it was as though they were already in flight, circling the country in search of debate. They wanted to debate the issues and they strove to find solutions for the issues. When the politicians arrived, pulling up in their limousines, helicopters, and private jets I was the first one in line to greet them. After all, I was a good salesman, and politicians need to appeal to their constituents. What better way to appeal to the people of our city than to be the very first seen wearing the all-new earplug 2.0 I developed with the money from the door sales? The next phase of my business plan was underway. I was selling earplugs to the most important people in the city, and the whole city would see the new earplugs when they watched the debates. Audra told me I was a genius. David, she said, You are one hell of salesman. The two of us were happy, so I’m guessing, playing the percentages, really, that Lillian was in the other room, feeling either angry or sad on a damned adequate chair with a glass of warm gin dangling from her lithe, muscular fingers.

Audra, had the two women truly been sisters, would have been the older one. Not that she possessed greater maturity, just the opposite in fact, she just carried herself with a “you can’t stop me” sort of freedom. Pretty, with welcoming curves, her straight black hair, wild smile, and wilder eyes made it easy to dress as a witch come Halloween each year. In fact, that was the reason she refused to sweep up the apartment. She didn’t want a broom in her hands lest she scare any children or accidentally cast a spell. Again, she could be a little artistic. Lillian did most of the housecleaning anyway, like a younger sister looking for mom’s approval. She found it cathartic, she claimed.

It wasn’t long after the politicians arrived that the reporters followed. Many a polite, extremely loud interview was given among the windswept ashes of the city streets. The removal of the ashes was one of the more important issues. Once the reports came out about the politicians working on the issues, the lobbyists showed up. Within a month of the Night of Flaming Doors the city was overrun with politicians, reporters and lobbyists. It looked as though democracy was going to hum along without any problem and the lobbyists would lobby the politicians and the politicians would make informed decisions in the best interest of the constituents and the reporters would report those decisions to the constituents and we, the constituents, would all be happy. Only the reporters didn’t think to bring an editor with them. This brought about an unfortunate typo in one of the stories, in which ‘lobbyists’ was misprinted as ‘lobbies.’

Most people assumed, within the context of the story and its various mentions of the issues that the reporter had meant to say ‘lobbyists.’ The concierge population, however, didn’t want to take that risk. When concierges hear about an excess of lobbies they seek to fill that space with their informed recommendations and helpful local connections. Only a week after the misprinted report went out we found our city teeming with concierges. Lillian was always intellectual, introverted, and insightful. After the politicians showed up she became involved, too. She had a stance on every issue. I don’t know how she kept track of it all. She predicted the flood of concierges would be the hot button issue for the politicians in the upcoming election. She was right.

The concierges didn’t really know what to do when they found there weren’t any extra lobbies in the city. Ironically, thanks to the inflow of politicos and reporters, there weren’t any hotel rooms left for them either. Luckily, there also weren’t any doors, and the concierges found shelter just about anywhere they wanted. One night Lillian and I were standing in the kitchen discussing the issues when I presented a sales scheme I had thought up to take advantage of the concierge issue. The discussion turned into a reprimand. A series of weepy pleadings for me to stop and complicated ultimatums concerning what’d happen if I didn’t. I didn’t know what to say, so I watched her standing with her head down, realizing that she’d become sadder each day since we took down the doors, and put a hand on her muscular yet soft shoulder.

In the next room, the one with all the natural light, we heard Audra and a concierge playing with some stray cats. They were holding them upright beneath their forelegs, pretending that they were dancing together. Shoo Shoo, I said, entering the room without needing to push any swinging door. The concierge took off with a start. I appealed to Audra, turning up my palms and saying, I was only talking about the cats. When I turned around Lillian had left. Of course, we didn’t hear her slam the door.

Utterly at the whim of my disease at this point, and taking advantage of the confused state of civic affairs in the city, I found myself selling permits to concierges to set up desks at every corner of every intersection in the city. People could hardly cross the street without making a reservation at a great restaurant that a concierge assured them they’d be taken care of properly at. And then the people would yell, Thank you, and borrow one of the concierge desk’s free customer appreciation clicking pens and move on to the next corner, where it’d happen all over again. Only before walking off they would purchase the latest customizable earplug 3.0 that I had contracted with the concierges’ union to sell at every street corner in the city.

It turned out that people with restaurant reservations and clicking pens were dangerously at risk of becoming food critics. Soon after the concierge surge people were so busy posting their restaurant reviews in the new restaurant review magazine, which I had founded and accepted articles for, at only $15 per submission, that they completely forgot about the issues. Lillian was furious. First of all, she said, you have no right to sell people their own written opinions of restaurants. Lillian didn’t like how people were forgetting about the issues, either. She still cared about the issues. Audra didn’t miss the issues. Audra would just sit at our good table on one of our damned adequate chairs feeling happy that I gave her a discount on her article submission fee.  I think I gave her a piece of the inaugural issue’s cover, but I might be mistaken. She didn’t have bad taste in food or in words, and she’d become rather popular among the food critic crowd.

•  

Election day arrived but the people of the city were too busy eating and receiving new restaurant recommendations from the concierges to remember to vote. Candidate Johnson won by default, because he was the tallest, and proclaimed as his first act of office that any concierge caught recommending restaurants in public would be subject to immediate deportation. I didn’t hear him proclaim it himself, but the reporters filled me in. The concierges didn’t take it well. They picketed outside City Hall. Then, they realized there wasn’t a door stopping them from entering City Hall, so they picketed inside City Hall. The concierges entered, wiped the door ash from their shoes and yelled politely about how unreasonable their forced removal was. Then they stopped to smell the potpourri in the halls of City Hall. The concierges met the lobbyists in the lobby of City Hall and lobbied them to lobby on their behalf. The lobbyists weren’t interested, although they did accept a few quick tips on where to eat that night and borrowed some clicking pens in case they were inspired to write a review.

The reporters got wind of the concierge riot and rushed to City Hall to report on it. Mayor Elect Johnson sat in his office behind his desk as the concierges shoved the remaining lobbyists ahead of them and were shoved from the rear by the late arriving reporters. Everyone was yelling the correct, appropriate, polite things at one another, judging one another by the quality of one’s earplugs (anyone still wearing standard whites wouldn’t be given the time of day) and trying to either report on the issues or grab a quote from the mayor regarding the small plate of sweet potato fries that sat on his desk.

•  

Audra, Lillian and I followed the commotion. We sat on the curb, after wiping the door ash off it, and absorbed the chaos playing out at city hall. Lillian said, Do you see what you’ve done?

Let me make it up to you, I said. Do you two remember the day we took down the doors?

Yes.

I do.

Do you remember why we started?

Lillian didn’t like the swinging door.

That’s right. I hated it.

I said, I know, but I kept it. I didn’t sell it for burning. We still have one door.

Audra grinned. Lillian looked at me with such sincerity that I couldn’t believe a face that lovely could honestly consider forgiving me. An hour later we had each grabbed a power drill and we put that sucker up. The rabble of the politicians, lobbyists, reporters, concierges and food critics petered out with each graceful swing of the door until it settled shut. We took out our earplugs and went home, knowing it’d be the last time.

•  

We each packed a suitcase. I met Lillian at the good table and we waited for Audra.  She took a few extra minutes because she had to wrangle one of her favorite strays to take along as a pet.

            Now we live in a new city with plenty of doors. I put the money I’d earned into real estate and bought us a three-flat. Audra got a job writing restaurant reviews for the local paper, Lillian is running for city council, and I got a gig as a late night concierge. Yesterday we took down the doors in the three-flat. We knew better than to keep going.