Galluping a short story Read online

Galluping

  a short story

  by Angus Brownfield

  ***

  Published By

  Copyright © 2015 by Angus Brownfield

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  Galluping

  He must have been standing behind the door, possibly eyeing me through the peephole as I stood in the corridor with my papers. I knocked—usually I knock three times: knock knock knock, not too loudly, but smartly, as if I have an important mission—and the door swung open on the third rap. The man standing in the doorway was middle-aged, trim, wearing a worsted suit in gray, a burgundy tie, sunglasses and black leather driving gloves. He had severe creases—parentheses—framing his mouth.

  “Come in; I've been expecting you,” he said.

  I was to canvas a large apartment building in a very precise pattern. When you are canvassing for an outfit like the Gallup Poll, you must stick to the pattern described in your instruction booklet. This was the first door I'd knocked on. I was to work my way down from the top floor, starting in the southeast corner of the building, the odd numbered apartments, working my way around until I finished that floor.

  So, since it was the dwelling and not the occupant that was essential, how could he be expecting me? It was a trifle alarming, like maybe he was clairvoyant or, more likely, crazy.

  “I'm sorry,” I said, “you were expecting me?”

  The man stepped back, motioning me into his apartment. “Benny said you would be coming.”

  “Benny?”

  The man said, “Oh heck, it doesn’t matter. How do you like your coffee?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to drink coffee with this man. What I was supposed to do was give him a pitch, get him to acquiesce to answering my questions for forty-five minutes. I don’t announce that it’s going to take forty-five minutes unless asked. I'm selling the idea of giving the respondent a chance to influence . . . you name it. Usually it’s a manufacturer of some household product, from riding lawn mowers to drain cleaners. As a warm-up there are a few questions about current events, usually political in nature. People like that. In today’s survey were questions about Donald Trump’s appeal but mainly men’s cosmetics. (When interviewing male respondents I wasn’t to use the word, cosmetics, but that’s what it was about.) Preferences. Buying habits. Trusted brands. Women I would ask about men who use certain products once considered strictly feminine—like facial toner or pore cleansing masque. Did using them affect how they felt about a man’s manliness?

  I started in on my pitch, he held up a finger, dashed into the kitchen and in a moment came back with a tray, a carafe, two mugs, bowl of sugar, creamer. He set it on the coffee table between the couch he was sitting on and the chair he’d directed me to. Dressed as he was, this waiter routine was entirely out of character.

  “What’s the topic of the day?” he asked. Before I could answer he said, “I'm Howard, by the way.”

  “I'm Jarvis,” I said.

  “First name or last?” he asked.

  “First. It’s an old family name.”

  That was when I noticed the revolver.

  When asked to participate in a study, three out of four possible respondents say ‘no.’ To be a good interviewer you have to accept rejection, which is a funny turn of phrase, accepting rejection, but I wasn’t thinking about turns of phrase, other than one that would get me out of this man’s apartment without finding out anything more about the gun.

  “Were you perhaps expecting someone else?” I asked. “If you were, I'll understand, perhaps catch you on another study.”

  Howard said, “Oh no, it’s you I was expecting.”

  I wished he would take off the glasses so that I could see his eyes. I can usually tell a lot about the state of a person’s psyche by looking into his eyes. The problem was, I felt that this Howard was looking into my eyes and sizing me up. Like, how far he could go in scaring me before I bolted.

  His expression, minus his hidden eyes, was just a little warmer than neutral. His body language was definitely neutral. His right hand held his coffee mug (sugar and cream both). His left hand, the one closest the revolver, lay limply in his lap. His left leg was crossed over the right, the dainty kind of crossing a woman might use, not the cowboy in a bull session kind of crossing.

  He said, “You are older than you look, I can tell. How long have you been doing this kind of work?”

  He was interviewing me. I said, “About a year.”

  “Do you meet lots of interesting people?” He shifted slightly and took a sip of coffee. I was trying to decide, if the hand went for the gun, should I jump him or throw my clip board at him and bolt?

  I couldn’t not answer him. I was getting more and more alarmed, and I couldn’t think of an innocent-sounding segue into the first question in the survey instrument.

  I said, “I've met my share of interesting people.”

  “For example . . .”

  “Well, there was the man who’d been kept at bay all morning by a possum.”

  “Kept at bay by a possum: how rare.”

  “I knocked on his door one Sunday morning and he had just been released by the possum, who exited the way he or she entered. He had awakened to find this possum sitting at the foot of his bed, staring at him.”

  Howard chuckled and wiggled his shoulders slightly. The parentheses around his mouth went north and south, giving him an expression not unlike The Joker in Batman comics, which did not quell my anxiety, quite the contrary.

  “Though the man didn’t currently own a cat, there was a cat entrance in the back door, and he’s never bothered to secure it, never thinking it might be used by a wild animal.”

  Howard chuckled again, without wiggling his shoulders. “I hear possum is good to eat. He should have brained it.”

  I said, “He was afraid it might be rabid.”

  “Ah.”

  I sipped some coffee, rustled my papers and said, “Well, let’s begin.”

  “Tell me about another interesting client.”

  I had never thought of respondents as ‘clients.’ I had thought of them as ‘subjects.’ But I wasn’t going to quibble. My eye kept straying to the gun, which was blued steel and the largest revolver I'd ever seen in the flesh, so to speak. I'm not taking about caliber—I had no idea of that—I'm talking about the frame. I was sure Howard would notice my eye movement, but I couldn’t help it. It was an old gun, it wasn’t configured like the six-guns of the Old West, definitely not a Colt (how did I know?). I saw Michael Caine in Zulu, a lanyard attached to the butt of a gun like that. I saw Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King. For king and country and all that.

  I said, “Interesting; well there was the very elderly lady who had two portable television sets, stacked one atop the other, watching pro football on two different channels. She was happy to answer my questions as long as she could keep watching her two games.”

  “American football,” he said.

/>   “Yes.”

  “One more,” he said.

  “One more?”

  “One more interesting client.”

  I said, “It could be the ancient Wobbly, a card-carrying Communist right here in River City, or the elderly woman, old enough to be my mother, who wanted to seduce me.”

  “Oh, do tell me about her. Communists I'm acquainted with.”

  It was another large apartment building, but this one was a “retirement center,” and I had come at nap time. I explained to Howard, who continued to sip his coffee but uncrossed his legs and now crossed the right over the left, that it just seemed to happen that way, all the old folk in the building—I interviewed one couple in their nineties—took naps at the same time.

  “Fascinating,” Howard said. “But the seduction.”

  “I explained to her that I was only interviewing men, but she motioned me into her apartment. She said she would tell me which apartments had male tenants. Like a fool I went in.”

  “Was she withered and gray?” he asked.

  “Gray, but with a permanent that suited her. Not so withered, either.”

  “Well preserved.”

  “Actually prettier than well preserved.”

  “But post-menopausal.”

  I hadn’t categorized her as such, but it was obviously true. I nodded.

  “And still on the prowl. Wonderful. Was she successful?”

  “Come again?”

  He said, “Did she seduce you?”

  I said, “I managed to get away unscathed.”

  He said, “Quaint choice of words, unscathed. How would an old lady scathe a virile young man like you?”

  “Merely a figure of speech. I could have said, ‘I escaped with my virtue intact’ or some such.”

  He laughed out loud.

  I said, “I'm afraid I'm on a bit of a schedule . . .”

  “And I'm putting you behind. Fire away, Jarvis—if that’s really your name.” He had put his left hand on the couch, inches from the very large revolver. I looked up from the answer sheet and took in his hand in proximity to the gun.

  “It’s a Webley Mark IV, in case you’re interested.”

  I said, trying to sound cool, “Sam Spade’s partner was shot with a Webley in The Maltese Falcon.”

  Howard said, “But not necessarily a Mark IV. Remember, Brigid O’Shaughnessy was presumably carrying it around at one point. Would not have fit a dainty woman—neither pocket nor purse. This one is the big boy, the four-five-five caliber daddy.”

  I had to dive in. “What is your opinion of Donald Trump’s rhetoric: too extreme, expressive of a majority of voters’ attitudes or typical of political cant?”

  “My my my. If Donald Trump were sitting where you are, my friend, I would . . .”

  He picked up the revolver and pointed at me, appearing to sight down the barrel, although I couldn’t tell, with the sunglasses on. He imitated the report of a gun.

  I flinched. I dropped my pencil. I brought my knees together, to keep my papers from falling to the floor.

  “Sorry,” Howard said. “I get carried away on the subject of Mr. Combover.”

  I chuckled. It was a totally nervous, girlish giggle, to be truthful.

  Just then a phone rang. It was a cell phone in Howard’s pocket. He set the pistol down and reached inside his jacket. He flipped the phone open and listened. After a short interval he said one word, “Rhodesia,” then closed the phone.

  He bounced to his feet, his knees bumping the coffee table. “I'm sorry, Jarvis, this has been wonderful, but I must go. That was Benny. Things are heating up.”

  I stood. He motioned me towards the door. The Webley remained on the couch. I glanced at it.

  “Don’t worry, my friend. I have a more practical weapon in here.” He opened his jacket to show an automatic in a holster, presented butt first, under his left arm. “Walther PPK, like Bond in Dr. No.”

  I preceded him into the hall, more numb than relieved. Was I in someone’s movie, playing a part I hadn’t rehearsed? Was I under the spell of a wizard in gray worsted?

  “Until next time. Duty calls.” He saluted me and walked rapidly to the stairs and disappeared.

  I did not continue interviewing that day, I went down to Duffy’s Tavern and ordered two fingers of George Dickel with a water back.

  —30—