The Size Of Need

Always the lugging. Up goes his samples case off the floor to the only window, a vast rectangle that faces the street. Scarlet neon buzzes there. Blinds halfway up mince light over silver rods where hot dogs roll as they cook. If the rods form the prow, then the bar is the whole ship. Admiring its dark walnut grain, Lenny Kindred thinks it a shame the franchise climate is erasing such places.
Lenny’s parked his wingtips in more brass-rail joints than he cares to number. Looking up at stamped tin painted black, he sees a pair of dead ceiling fans and no sign of air conditioning. At least there aren’t security cameras. Onion fumes remind him of the hallway in his condo building.
His face in the bar mirror shows acne scars and hazel eyes that look weepy. The small pleasures of the trail don’t hold him hostage the way they once did. He caresses the bar. Heaves his case on top of it. Loosens his paisley tie and smoothes his red hair. Amazing -- he’s still afloat. He nods at a few customers that occupy one booth. They don’t nod back. The booths have high backs, varnished wainscoting between them, red vinyl seats. He sees an X-shaped scar where duct tape once covered a slash. There’s a ticket: selling duct tape by the ton.
Light through the window crawls up his back and spreads down the bar to revive the amber of dusty bottles and labels. He surveys his choices from three tiers. Light dims. The room becomes murky again. Can’t read those labels. Better that way. Drinks too much, as it is.
Maybe he’s just lousy. Ran out of business cards that morning. Lost two leads that should have been butter. Can’t bear the thought of the traffic and the night ahead – another lo mein to go on his lap when he wakes at four a.m. to shut off his TV.
Lenny thinks of his car radiator lined with plastic. If it leaks, replace it. Farewell backyard wrench, the culture of obsolescence is here to stay. Tomorrow, he’ll drop off the rental and pick up his sedan with a new radiator and hefty bill. Can’t win. Slow burn of market tyranny. He’d tell a shrink he feels sun-deprived. He’s the office geezer now – a bible of frontline yarns from factory burgs once coal-fired and dependent on the railroad. They made tools, upholstery and mattresses. Gone now -- as if anyone cares.
Along huffs the barman. Maybe he cares, but Lenny doubts it. He watches him shut a louvered door at the bar’s end. A wooden sign above it with chiseled letters: Spindles. Next to it, same door, but different sign: Spools. The barman, kettle-shaped through the middle, wears white pants, T-shirt, and apron. A white towel covers his head. He removes it. His horsy features don’t match his small blue eyes. He pats dry his hair, oiled back in silver tines off high widow’s peaks. After dabbing the loose flesh of his jowls, he returns the towel to his head.
People fear any response they’re not conditioned to accept. Silence works best. Lenny appraises the barman’s tired nipples and the liver stain marking his forehead. Such a man needs a sense of humor to get along in these airbrushed times, yet like a steel-cored radiator built to last, like the lumber of the bar, he’s doomed.
“What you want?” he asks Lenny.
“Just a sec. I been rushed all day. Need to think.”
“Don’t we all.”
The barman turns to face a brass cash register that’s a mammoth centerpiece from a bygone era. Taped to its side are a few oily business cards, a typed price list peeling at its corners and a yellowed newspaper clipping of a young man with a buzz cut, in apron and T-shirt, holding a hot dog in one hand, tongs in the other.
“When you’re ready, let me know.”
Lenny squints, reading the newspaper caption: Clement Most Knows Wieners.
"Ho, I’m ready. I’m liking that picture, too.” Lenny slaps the bar. His smile reveals dogteeth turned dingy from a cigar habit. “That you, Mr. Most, back in the day?"
Clement Most elbows shut his cash drawer. “Everybody’s a comedian.”
Good. Most is a smart aleck. He’ll make a game of it. Lenny shifts his eyes to his samples case. He watches Most do the same. Sucker born every minute.
"Beer please, Mr. Most. A draft.”
“Been a long day, then, has it?” Most smacks his lips together.
“Yeah, whatever.” Lenny blows a sigh. “Long life, for that matter. For what it’s worth.”
Most fills a mug. Lenny waves off a fly and sneers at it. He leans blue shirtsleeves against the bar. Now, to break the ice. “It sure feels good to plant both feet.”
Most blinks, but doesn’t reply.
Lenny runs through his rules of thumb: never talk weather, never give up, and use every angle in the book to open the proceedings. Could take two beers, could take four. Quit at six or until you start slurring.
Rolling his eyes, Lenny whistles and sips his beer until satisfied he’s found his first angle. “Mr. Most, you wouldn't happen to know if Millie’s Kitchen is still in business? I like going there for pecan pie. Used to go all the time.”
Most pauses, rubbing his chin. “Pecan pie, you say? Millie’s Kitchen?”
Lenny chuckles. “Yeah, that’s right. I passed her place on the way through downtown.”
Most frowns as if disappointed. “Hmm…guess nowadays everybody knows Millie’s.”
Knowledge plus imagination equals power. Lenny beams at Most. “Love that pecan pie.”
“Sure you do. I knew Millie before she passed. Ran a tight ship. Her daughter-in-law runs it now. Ain't bad, but ain’t the same.”
“Nothing is.” He’s opened a lonely geezer. He can sell anyone, anywhere, any time.
As he pays for his beer and quaffs from his mug, Lenny shifts his eyes to his case. Again, he watches Most, and sure enough his eyes go right to the case. He’ll sell this drone and make all the lugging worthwhile. He should remember it wasn’t really a bad day. Sure, he screwed up two leads, but he landed two closings: Charisma first, and then Light Eternal. Both are posting better numbers. A war’s on. Faith sells.
Get back to the angles. Don’t rush. Work each pause. Save the hook for the kill moment. He looks at Most as if he’s shy, and lowers his voice, remarking, “You’ve been here a long time, Mr. Most. You must be doing something right.” He offers his hand and spells out a lie he’s used at least a hundred times. “My name is Bertrand Kindred. My crazy old man named me after the philosopher, Bertrand Russell. They call me Piker. You know, because I get around.”
Most doesn’t shake. He clicks a set of tongs against his thigh. Tick-tack, tick-tack. Slow and heavy, he moves to his hot dogs rolling on silver rods. Then he moves to the window, where the neon bleeds across his apron. He puts down his tongs, slips on a pair of oven mitts and lifts a pot of chili sauce from a gas burner.
The smell of chili converges with sauerkraut in a rising twist of steam. Butter sizzles off the rods. A shelf fan, its blades caked in dirt, pushes steam against the window. Most appraises the condensation there as if it’s abstract art. He picks up his tongs and works his dogs, rolling and jabbing them. Tick-tack – tick-tack.
Lenny takes inventory. Each bit of info he can glean will help him. He sees no ring on Most’s fingers. No young worker to help him. No photos of children. No pennants, schedules or promotional references to sport teams. No TV, jukebox or radio. Old Most lives to avoid; he’s loved and lost, and plays with hot dogs all day as the stink passes by his galley.
Customers at the booth make their exit. They’ve left a mess. Most doesn’t smile or wave goodbye. Nor do they.
Lenny slides a few bills across the bar. “Whip up a couple of dogs, Most. I’m starved.”
Tick-tick-tack. “Works?”
“Everything.” Lenny fakes a laugh. “And more suds while you’re at it.”
Most sets a pair of steaming buns on wax paper. His tongs launch a limp dog into each bun. He adds chili, sauerkraut, crystals of onion. Spice tins and condiment jars line a shelf. Most struggles to reach them.
Lenny watches. Don’t be soft. Murder this guy. “Nuts out there, Most. I’ve been calling you Most. I mean, you don’t mind, do you?”
Most doesn’t turn around. “I’ll call you Piker. Since you said it’s your name.”
Lenny can taste him now. “But I may not be telling the truth. Not that it matters. I tell you Most, I keep asking, but I don't find any answers.”
Most mutters as he keeps his eyes on his dogs. Lenny doesn’t envy his turtle-like efficiency. He’s got to keep the small talk going, keep it lively.
“Gimme, gimme – that’s all it is these days.”
Clank. Most drops a pair of longnecks into a bin. He towels off the bar. Pours and sets down a fresh mug of beer.
“Gimme, gimme.” Put the buyer in a trance. Repetition tends to hypnotize. “You hear that all the time? I know I do.”
Most cradles wax paper around each seasoned dog. Pushes them across the bar.
Lenny tucks a napkin into his collar. “Heartburn here I come.” He bites into a dog, washing it down with beer.
“Like?”
Lenny nods and sniffles and wipes his nose. “It’s the chili. Got a kick.”
“Good for what ails you. Make it myself. It was my father’s recipe.”
“That’s something, Most. I’m glad I stopped in.”
Most, humming, runs water over dirty mugs.
Lenny eats quickly, but he’s careful not to stain his shirt. It’s time for his hook. “I got this affliction, Most. Common enough, I suppose. See, my affliction is faith.”
Most faces him. Lenny puts down his hot dog, swallows his mouthful, and opens his samples case. Tiny statues of the Pieta line its purple interior. Plastic packets of angels made of colored glass. Packets of medallions, rosary beads, refrigerator magnets, bumper stickers. Samples of wedding, sympathy, baptism, and confirmation cards. Bar Mitzvah, Christmas, Easter, Hanukah, Kwanza, christening, Get Well, birthday and anniversary. Book marks. Jesus Loves You. Mini psalm books. Pray For Peace. An abridged children’s bible. More angels – never enough angels – and all contents tied down with crimson satin ribbons.
“Take a gander. Go to town.” Lenny bites into his hot dog and speaks while chewing. “Tip of the iceberg of what we offer at A Joyful Noise. Feel no compulsion to buy.”
Pursing his lips, Most adjusts the towel on his head. “What you say about noise?”
“Right. A Joyful Noise. We’re a leading distributor to the religious goods market.”
This is where Lenny would usually slap a business card into Most’s hand, but he’s run out. Chitchat will have to suffice. His eyes wince as he swallows chili sauce.
“Talking faith in myself. I look at the pantheon. Sam Walton, Lee Iacocca, Donald Trump. You know these boys. Are they too good for me? Nope. My faith says I’ll share a wing with them in the Hall of Fame Of Sales. My faith. My joyful noise -- and we all have our own -- doesn’t say no to any dream of success. And neither should yours.”
Lenny forces a cross into Most’s palm and makes sure he takes it from him. He watches him study it. “Plated with gold. My chains are plated, too. Won’t give you a rash.” He could sell this tool his own shadow. From his shirt pocket, he lifts a laminated orange card. Walks it across the bar. “I sell a lot of these babies. People love ‘em.”
Most returns the cross and Lenny accepts it, grinning all the while. Most then lifts the card with two hands, brings it close to his eyes, and squints as he reads out loud, “Christ is the head of this house, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation.”
“Beautiful, Most.”
A semi truck passes on the street, rattling blinds in the window. Diesel fumes blossom and pass. The quiet expands. Lenny fidgets and tugs at his tie as Most stares at him with a look of menacing skepticism.
“Go on,” says Lenny. He doesn’t like this look on Most’s face. “Read the other side.”
Most reads aloud, “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect, for I shall not pass this way again.”
“Sweet,” says Lenny.
“It sounds meaningful.”
Lenny flinches, pleasantly startled by the answer. He’s lucked out, happened upon a sucker. Why not? He deserves a little gravy. “Think so? I do, too. Could even tack one up in here.”
“That I could,” says Most. “But let me show you something in back.”
Lenny looks around. He points to his chest. “You’re gonna show something to me?”
“If you got the time. It’s my special room. I think you’d appreciate what I keep there.”
Lenny chuckles. “But if we troop off, who’s gonna mind the store?”
“Always slow this time of day. I know my customers.” Most shows Lenny the card and runs his finger under one printed line. “Says right here. Let me not defer or neglect.”
“You got me there.” Lenny hikes up his slacks. “But it’s all about time.” He checks his watch. It’s rush hour, the traffic will be brutal, but too late now. He checks his phone. Four messages. None urgent. Eva didn’t call back, but she will. She’s as hard up as he is.
“Most, lead the way.”
Lenny follows him down the bar. They pass through saloon doors and walk a hallway where a lack of windows keeps stale air smelling of cleaning solvents. They stop in front of a wooden door in need of paint. Most holds up the card. “Here you go, Piker, you take it. It’s yours.”
“No, no, I insist. I got plenty more where that came from.”
“Suit yourself.” Most slides the card into his apron pocket. He opens the door, flips on a light switch and guides Lenny into a room where a low calcimine ceiling has crumbled to expose wooden lath. The room smells swampy, its linoleum stained with rings where puddles have evaporated.
A cot in the room’s center lies open next to a metal folding chair. The cot holds a pillow. In the pillow’s center lies a framed 8 by 10 of a young man. His hair shaved close to his head, he looks eager and a little fearful, his chin tucked back, lips sealed, as if he’s been ordered to pose this way. He wears a necktie, his starched collar tight.
Lenny clucks his tongue as he studies the picture and thinks back to his years of service in the Army. Back when he was married with kids and learned the hard way, like so many others, what heroism, marriage and duty really are. How he once spouted words like freedom, honor, liberty and sacrifice. But that was an eon ago, another life, before he lost the house and had to file for bankruptcy because of his divorce. Before his parents and his sister died, before the manufacturing firm he’d been loyal to for fifteen years dumped him without a pension and moved their operations to Mexico. Before he understood that there are no best dreams and plans, only the ones that you don’t abandon.
“You’re looking at Clement Junior,” says Most. “My son.”
Lenny whistles softly. “For a minute there, I swear I was looking at myself.”
Most doesn’t touch the picture. He clasps his hands together and bows his head over it. “I know what you mean.” His breath shortens and he sounds a small gasp as if he’s just swallowed too much air. “He was a Guardsman. In for a career.”
“They get him?” asks Lenny.
“He turned 35 in that God-damned desert. A few days later, he and two other boys got blown to bits by one of them IUDs. Them roadside bombs. Know how big? Size of a beer can.”
Lenny shakes his head in a show of genuine sorrow. He lost guys in his platoon. He ran amok in Vietnamese rice paddies with an M-14, shooting at whatever moved. He was a teenager. Out of his mind. No doubt, Most has his own war stories, too. “You said, thirty-five. A lot of guys are married by then.”
“He was divorced. She couldn’t take it. I don’t blame her.”
“Plenty of that going around.”
“You have kids?” asks Most.
Lenny puts up two fingers and realizes he’s making a peace sign. “Brenda and Brian.”
Most purses his lips. His big hands drop to the back of the chair. They redden as he leans, the chair holding his weight.
Unable to look at Most, Lenny studies the contents on the chair’s seat: a bible, rosary beads, a palm frond, a red candle and a framed photo of a woman.
“Your wife?”
Most stares at him and says not a word. His thick body emits a gleaming sweat as he breathes through his nose, smelling like steamed sauerkraut. He breathes with difficulty, halting now and then. Then he removes the sample card from his apron and lays it on the chair. His eyes moisten. He picks up the photo and strokes its frame as sunlight emerges from behind a cloud. The sunlight rises up the walls and whitens them. Most, with a sigh, puts down the photo. He takes the towel from his head and pats dry a big red ear silky with white hair.
“After thirty years a man gets to become part of his woman,” he says. “I can’t explain it.” He returns the towel to his head. “She told me you’d come. Not my son, no, he was never a talker. Not like you are, Piker. You talk a blue streak, but them in sales always do. No, my son, my wife, they were doers. They knew sacrifice.”
Lenny looks away, burrowing into the foxhole of passive resistance, a place he visits when he needs to, where it’s too dark to see and too noisy to hear. He’s already forgotten what Most has told him -- something about his son and blue streaks. As if he cares. What he needs is a way to get back to his kill. He spots it hanging on the wall. He moves toward it with a feigned enthusiasm. It’s the only object on the wall. He can’t make eye contact. He won’t. This is a kill moment. A sale.
“Most, this cross. It’s nothing like the crosses we carry. I really like it.”
“Then look at it,” gripes Most. He squeezes Lenny’s elbow and shoves him closer to the cross. With a span under three feet, it shines like silvery volcanic lava, a round mirror in its center catching sunlight whenever clouds sprint past the window.
Lenny yanks his arm away from Most. He’ll prove what he has to. He won’t be taken for a sucker. He looks closely at the cross. Thousands of fishhooks used in its construction were heated, softened and formed into shape, congealed in thick wavy clusters like peanut brittle. Coated with varnish, it smells like his father’s basement workroom.
Lenny touches the fishhooks. Fused, rippled, one indistinguishable from another. He touches his acne scars. A little crusty, warm, but also rippled and pointy. Like touching a topographical map. Like touching time and truths that fuse to disgust him each morning as he shaves. His slack, sinking cheeks, the eroding line of his chin, how entropy brings awareness of time, but only when it’s too late. How each day the weight of need drives him into a lust for plunder. His two kids, his ex, payments, expectations, the job, how so many his age, empty-handed in mid-life, are starting over, re-inventing themselves as wheels within the wheel.
No, he doesn’t like this cross and its mirror. They speak too much of gravity, something he cannot sell. He pulls his face away. He can sense Most behind him. He feels a jab against his spine like a finger poking him. He suspects what it is – a gun, but how big? How sick is Most and how desperate? Well, it’s his fault. He thought the man was a sucker, but he was wrong.
Looking at the floor, Lenny doesn’t turn around. He can taste chili sauce repeating in his throat. He sounds a small belch as the gun barrel stabs into his spine. He studies the shine of his cordovan wingtips and thinks of Brenda and Brian, late teens now, more expensive than ever. The gadgets and the cars they live for, their teeth, their indoor lives, their cynical lack of idealism.
Most says, “Tell me, Piker. How much is enough worth living for?”
He could turn and launch a wingtip into Most’s crotch. “What kind of gun is that?”
“A big one. I keep it in the corner behind the door. You missed it. You were too busy talking. Now if you’re smart you won’t try anything. You’ll just turn around, nice and slow.”
Lenny turns around. His shoulders drop as he lets out a sigh. Most leers at him with an old broom in his hands, at the ready. The white towel on his head like a dish rag over a kitchen faucet.
“So that’s what you were going to shoot me with?”
“I wanted to scare you,” says Most. He stands up the broom. “It worked.”
“You proved your point.”
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
He must be clever; this is another kill moment. Most played his hand, now it’s his turn. He won’t be taken for a sap. He studies the photos, the pious shrine of old man Most – all he has. If Most bought anything, what would it be? A medal perhaps, or another cross. As if a purchase would change anything, but for some people it can.
“Most, let’s get back to business. The card you read, they’re sold fifty to a pack. A nice assortment. I know you’re itching to buy.”
“No cards,” says Most. “I want the case.”
Lenny’s eyes bloom. “My samples? Not for sale. No way.”
Most staggers a little as if he’s been lanced. Stands the broom in the corner. “Why ain’t your case for sale?” He sounds angry and irritated. “Ain’t everything? Ain’t that how it works?”
Lenny shakes his head no.
Sulking, Most scuffs his shoes against the floor. He moves to the cross. Stares at his reflection in the little mirror. “They say Bev died of breast cancer. I think she died of grief. You know what grief is, Piker? Got any idea?”
“In my own way, yeah, think I do.”
“Then give me the case. For Bev. For my son. Look what they gave you.”
“Nobody gives or receives, Most. It’s buy and sell, take and maneuver.”
“In your world maybe, but not mine.”
“Did she make that cross?”
“It was a gift. Them things on the chair are all gifts. Red was her favorite color. They say the cancer got deep in her breast, stayed there. It’s an awful way to go.”
“I’m sure she was a saint. But I’m not in business to give things away. Just like you’re not in business to shoot people with broomsticks.”
Most sounds a snort of disgust. His face reddens. “You asked about Millie. She and Bev were friends. Millie never made no pecan pie. Strawberry rhubarb, but no pecan. She shipped her pies to the Armory for the Guardsmen. All of which means I guess you’re used to lying, Piker.”
“You can’t call me a liar. I don’t lie. I sell. It’s what we both do. It’s a free country.”
Using two hands, Most adjusts the towel so it will stay on his head. “C’mon. Enough of your bull.” He takes Lenny by the elbow and guides him out.
Returning to the bar, Lenny asks himself if there’s an angle or a hook left. The cardinal rule is not to walk away empty-handed. He sees over the bar slats of neon-infused light that pass like wands through the window. They stain and finger the dimples and cracks of his brown vinyl case. So many degrees of brown and neon, of sweat, faith, loss and risk. Degrees of change, prevarication and truth. He can see them in the light as it widens down the bar. Light that will dissolve, eventually, to the size of his case with its shiny plastic handle that he can hold and lug the way he lugged his M-14, and then later his M-16, just as Most probably lugged a Browning Automatic. Just as he and Most once lugged their children.
He doesn’t blame Most for trying to scare him a little. He respects him for it, and smiles at him, but his smile can’t conceal his colossal resentment and confusion, mingled with shreds of hope and desire. He could sell Most the case and report it stolen and bring home the cash, but the company would fine him and he’d lose face at the office, possibly his job.
Most behind the bar clicks his tongs. Lenny glares at him until he puts them down.
“Most, let’s get real here.”
Most turns around, paintbrush in hand dripping melted butter. “Sell me your case.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“I said I can’t. They’d fire me.”
“You don’t live it, Piker. Take and maneuver. Them are your words, not mine.”
Lenny smirks and looks away. Screw this windbag and his insights. If he wants a sermon he’ll go to church. “So no deal on anything?”
“The deal with my son or with my wife? Or you traipsing in here to suck me clean of my last dime. There a deal in that?”
Another sales call, another missed opportunity, one more need unmet. He won’t have the last word. Neither of them will.
Most blinks for a moment while staring at the neon in the window. He lets out a sigh and starts to hum a whimsical melody. Leaning over his dogs, he butters them one stroke at a time.
Lenny, grunting, lugs his case off the bar.

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