Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [20]
The touch seems to move him. “I could take you with me,” he says. She watches him ponder the idea as if it were his, as if he had just thought it up. “You could be my assistant. You know how to type, don’t you?”
“I had to learn for my job at the courthouse.”
“You could sit down at the machine and demonstrate,” he says, musing. “No one could resist those hands.” He thinks a minute. “I certainly didn’t,” he says.
“You didn’t?”
“The day I met you. When I walked into the bank. It was your hands I noticed first. Under the grille.”
As if to prove the truth of this assertion, he takes her hand and holds it above his empty plate. Her skin is only slightly roughened from the laundry soap. “You could use some Jergens,” he says.
Sexton likes to say he covers the three P’s — Portland, Portsmouth, and Providence — and everything in between. He shows her on the map exactly where they will go, and she traces the route with her finger. From Ely, they will drive to Portsmouth, then travel out Route 4 to Dover and to South Berwick and to Sanford. From there, they will take the 111 to Saco and then stay on Route 1 all the way to Portland. On the return south, they will head west by way of Hollis Center and Shapleigh and swing by Nashua and Lowell and Worcester. They’ll go to Boston and to Woonsocket and to Pawtucket and finally to Providence. After that, they’ll see.
“You can keep me in clean shirts,” he says.
“Where will we stay?”
“Cabins.”
Honora knows all about cabins. The one-room buildings with counters for kitchens and communal bathrooms out back are popular destinations with tourists visiting the lakes near Taft.
Still, though, it’s an adventure.
Sexton passes her off as Miss Willard, his assistant. She wears her butter yellow wedding suit and removes her ring. In a routine that takes shape as the days unfold, she shakes the client’s hand and very slowly draws off her gloves, finger by finger. She sits in front of the typewriter and feels the tiny ovals with their silver rings. She can type nearly as fast as Sexton can speak, and her hands are a blur over the keys. Her husband keeps up a running sales pitch with the customer, and when he is done, Honora offers up the beautifully typed page like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. She will have typed a verbatim transcript of the conversation that has just taken place.
A thing worth having is worth having now, she will have typed.
The sooner you get it, the sooner it will start earning you money, Sexton will have said.
Putting it off is like paying more for it.
Decide now, when it will cost you the least.
Honora watches the customer’s face begin to work its way toward a purchase. No client fails to be impressed by the transcript.
“Which carriage would you prefer?” Sexton asks. “The wide or the narrow? Which stand do you think would be best — the high or the low?”
The customer chews the inside of his cheek, all the while watching Honora’s flying hands.
“Would you prefer to take a discount?” Sexton asks. “Or divide the amount into four monthly installments?”
Perhaps thinking about the uses of dictation for himself, or a pretty assistant of his own, the client is silent for a moment.
“This is a description of what you want,” Sexton says, moving in for the kill. “May I take your order now?”
Sometimes, however, a customer is recalcitrant. “Yes, but . . . ,” the customer says.
“That’s the very reason why . . . ,” Sexton counters.
“I’m not sure about . . . ,” the client adds, waffling.
“I’m coming to that,” Sexton says. And then, with precisely calibrated insistence, Sexton asks, “What’s the real reason for hesitating?”
As soon as the client puts pen to paper, Honora rises and slips her gloves back on. The most important part of a sale, Sexton has impressed upon her, is to get out of the room once the deal has been made. Nothing is to be gained by lingering. The customer might change his mind.
Occasionally, Honora worries about Sexton’s sales pitch. Is it true, for example, that a thing worth having is worth having