Rowley says. He puts the catalog, description unread, down on the desk. “What’s this thing going to cost me?”
“I’ve got one in the car,” Sexton says, evading the money question. “Why don’t you let me bring it in and demonstrate it for you?”
Rowley is silent, as if he’s just remembered an important appointment.
“A thing worth having is worth having now,” Sexton says.
Rowley pushes himself away from his desk on his roll-away chair. The chair seems to travel pretty far, putting some distance between him and Sexton.
“Putting it off is like paying more for it,” Sexton says, trying to relax his shoulders. “I’ve got that new Copiograph machine I was telling you about in my car too. Which would you prefer I bring in? Should I bring in both?”
Sexton makes as if to rise from the chair.
The bank president wheels himself back to the desk. He studies Sexton for a moment. From a drawer, he takes out two shot glasses and a bottle. “What do you say we chase that coffee?” Rowley says.
Honora
In Portland, Honora and Sexton have a bathroom with hot water in the room. They flip a coin to see who will get the first bath. When steam clouds the mirror, Honora rubs a spot clear with the end of her fist. Her hair is matted to her head, and her skin is pink from the nearly scalding water. She cannot discern any physical differences between her married state and her single state — no obvious contentment or niggling unease. Her eyes are still wide and biscuit brown, and her eyebrows definitely need plucking. Possibly her mouth looks looser than it was, and she thinks, on balance, that this is a good sign. Unhappy women, she’s observed from her years spent behind the grille at the bank, often have pinched mouths with vertical lines shooting upward to the nose.
On the road, Honora washes the stains from the butter yellow suit and rinses out underwear, which she hangs discreetly from the bottom rungs of wooden chairs. Sexton likes to eat in diners or in cheap restaurants, explaining to Honora the mathematics of expense accounts and commissions. If a man is allowed fifty cents a day for food and spends more than that (or if he
and his wife
spend more than that), then the $5.20 he’s made in commissions that day might only be $4.70, correct?
If there’s a client who has direct ties to the home office, Sexton goes alone to the appointment. Honora stays behind in the cabin and reads, propped up against the quilt-thin pillows. The headboards sometimes jiggle, and the smell of mildew rises up from the woolen blankets. She reads magazines —
Woman’s Home Companion
and
The Saturday Evening Post
— and books she has bought on the road at filling stations or near the diners where they eat.
Dark Laughter. An American Tragedy. Point Counter Point.
If it is cold, she reads in her pink sweater; if it’s hot and the cabin doesn’t have a fan, she sits by a window. She imagines she can almost hear Sexton’s pitch several miles away, and she wonders how he is faring without her. Sometimes she stands at the window of the cabin, a semicircle of other cabins spreading out to either side of her, and watches for the Buick to turn down the drive.
If the weather is fine, Honora goes for a walk. She strolls through towns that seem little more than a school, a church, a town hall, and a bank, which she passes trying to catch a glimpse of Sexton. She has household money in her purse, and if the town has a fiveand-dime she buys a rubber-coated dish drainer or a juice glass with oranges and green leaves painted on it. Once she buys a recipe book and spends a day in a cabin composing menus on the back of one of Sexton’s triplicate forms. In the cities, she walks the streets until her feet hurt. She makes her way down to the harbor and climbs back up to a city square and rests on the benches in the parks with other women in hats and gloves. She walks faster in the cities than she does in the towns, a mantle of anxiety
“I’ve got one in the car,” Sexton says, evading the money question. “Why don’t you let me bring it in and demonstrate it for you?”
Rowley is silent, as if he’s just remembered an important appointment.
“A thing worth having is worth having now,” Sexton says.
Rowley pushes himself away from his desk on his roll-away chair. The chair seems to travel pretty far, putting some distance between him and Sexton.
“Putting it off is like paying more for it,” Sexton says, trying to relax his shoulders. “I’ve got that new Copiograph machine I was telling you about in my car too. Which would you prefer I bring in? Should I bring in both?”
Sexton makes as if to rise from the chair.
The bank president wheels himself back to the desk. He studies Sexton for a moment. From a drawer, he takes out two shot glasses and a bottle. “What do you say we chase that coffee?” Rowley says.
Honora
In Portland, Honora and Sexton have a bathroom with hot water in the room. They flip a coin to see who will get the first bath. When steam clouds the mirror, Honora rubs a spot clear with the end of her fist. Her hair is matted to her head, and her skin is pink from the nearly scalding water. She cannot discern any physical differences between her married state and her single state — no obvious contentment or niggling unease. Her eyes are still wide and biscuit brown, and her eyebrows definitely need plucking. Possibly her mouth looks looser than it was, and she thinks, on balance, that this is a good sign. Unhappy women, she’s observed from her years spent behind the grille at the bank, often have pinched mouths with vertical lines shooting upward to the nose.
On the road, Honora washes the stains from the butter yellow suit and rinses out underwear, which she hangs discreetly from the bottom rungs of wooden chairs. Sexton likes to eat in diners or in cheap restaurants, explaining to Honora the mathematics of expense accounts and commissions. If a man is allowed fifty cents a day for food and spends more than that (or if he
and his wife
spend more than that), then the $5.20 he’s made in commissions that day might only be $4.70, correct?
If there’s a client who has direct ties to the home office, Sexton goes alone to the appointment. Honora stays behind in the cabin and reads, propped up against the quilt-thin pillows. The headboards sometimes jiggle, and the smell of mildew rises up from the woolen blankets. She reads magazines —
Woman’s Home Companion
and
The Saturday Evening Post
— and books she has bought on the road at filling stations or near the diners where they eat.
Dark Laughter. An American Tragedy. Point Counter Point.
If it is cold, she reads in her pink sweater; if it’s hot and the cabin doesn’t have a fan, she sits by a window. She imagines she can almost hear Sexton’s pitch several miles away, and she wonders how he is faring without her. Sometimes she stands at the window of the cabin, a semicircle of other cabins spreading out to either side of her, and watches for the Buick to turn down the drive.
If the weather is fine, Honora goes for a walk. She strolls through towns that seem little more than a school, a church, a town hall, and a bank, which she passes trying to catch a glimpse of Sexton. She has household money in her purse, and if the town has a fiveand-dime she buys a rubber-coated dish drainer or a juice glass with oranges and green leaves painted on it. Once she buys a recipe book and spends a day in a cabin composing menus on the back of one of Sexton’s triplicate forms. In the cities, she walks the streets until her feet hurt. She makes her way down to the harbor and climbs back up to a city square and rests on the benches in the parks with other women in hats and gloves. She walks faster in the cities than she does in the towns, a mantle of anxiety
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