12
UNCLE HENRY STOOD in the garage, eating a doughnut out of the box on the bench. He held out the box. “I helped myself. Hope you don’t mind.”
“They’re probably a little dry by now.” There was only one left, so Henry must have eaten two of them. That didn’t surprise Walt any; last winter Henry had developed a habit, and he was probably anxious to take it up again.
“They’re just right,” Henry said. “Dryness improves the roughage.” He winked.
Walt took the last doughnut, realizing that he was famished.
“Been out for a walk?”
“Yes,” Walt replied. “I had to run something over to a neighbor’s house, and the rain started up on me. Caught me on the way home.” He noticed that the sleeve of his jacket was streaked with dirt from leaning against the wet wall of Argyle’s house. He’d leave it in the garage when he went in. There was no use trying to explain it to Ivy.
“Quite a setup you’ve got here,” Henry said, looking around.
“It’s cramped,” Walt said, “but it’ll have to do till I can find a bigger place.”
Henry shrugged. “There’s a lot of overhead in a bigger place. You can deduct overhead from your profits. Pretty soon you’re hiring help, buying trucks. Insurance goes through the roof. What’s wrong with this?”
“Nothing,” Walt said. “It’s a little small-time, that’s all. And I’m not zoned commercial either. I get away with it because there’s no customers coming around—just UPS trucks, and they come through the neighborhood twice a day anyway.”
Henry nodded, looking around at the stacked cartons, ordered and numbered, their contents listed on the sides in felt pen—rubber chickens, false noses, glow-in-the-dark fish, garden elves…. “Quite an inventory.”
“Yeah, I’m cramped for storage. I just bought a jumbo tin shed from Sears and Roebuck for overflow. It’s all set up, but I don’t think I’ll get around to shifting stock till after the Christmas rush.” There was nothing in Henry’s attitude to suggest that he found any of this stuff laughable, as if to him it was merchandise to be bought and sold, and might as well have been shoes or automobile parts. Well, that was all right. Walt was content to let the customers do the laughing. The world needed more laughing.
“To tell you the truth,” Henry said, “I came out here tonight because I’ve got a small proposition for you. I’ve been thinking along a different line altogether—a way to make this business of yours fly without leaving home. No trucks. No warehouse. You hire all that out to someone else and take a profit right off the top.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought …”
“That’s the future, you know—electronics, the information highway. Everything out of your house with the push of a button. Are you willing to listen?” He squinted his eyes a little bit, as if Walt was going to have to make an effort here, but that it would be worth it.
This was exactly what Walt had feared—that Henry was going to try to rope him in on some kind of business deal. Last winter it had been asphalt and roof paint, sold door-to-door, but somehow it had never quite got going because the company had gone broke at the last moment, and Henry’s sample kits and sales-pitch brochures were suddenly worthless. To Henry it made no difference; you win some and you lose some. Walt couldn’t afford to lose any. He hadn’t ever leveled with Henry about it, though. Walt and Henry got along on a level of gentlemanly good humor and mutual support, and there wasn’t much room for truth in it, not any kind of practical truth, anyway.
“Has it occurred to you that the real money might be in design?” Henry asked. “Right now you’re on the distribution end, the narrow end of the funnel. Have you read any of Dr. Hefernin’s books? Aaron Hefernin?”
Walt shook his head. He could hear the rain coming down. Out toward the street, the motor home was nearly invisible through the downpour. He switched on the space heater, listening doubtfully as Henry talked and wondering what the sales pitch would finally amount to.
“The man’s a genius,” Henry said. “He developed what he calls the ‘Funnel Analogy’ to explain business from the inside out. Look here.”
Henry picked up a manila envelope that lay on the bench and carefully shook out four or five stapled pamphlets. There was an illustration on the first one of a funnel, upside down, like the Tin Man’s hat. Arrows went in one way and came out another, along with words and sentences and phrases. Below it was a paragraph that began, “Welcome to the world of money, real money.”
“Eh?” Henry said, slapping the pamphlet. “What do you think?”
Walt nodded.
“It’s fascinating. Rock solid. I read this introductory pamphlet and subscribed to the entire series—nearly ten volumes so far. Each one clarifies another aspect of what Dr. Hefernin calls ‘the business of business.’ Remember that phrase, because it’s the key to this entire method. You see, most people fail for a simple reason: they don’t understand the business of business. They understand food, let’s say, so they open a restaurant. In six weeks it’s kaput. Why?”
“Because they don’t understand the business of business?” Walt said.
“Bingo! That’s it! There’s a dynamic that they don’t see. They don’t see the big picture.”
“Aah,” Walt said, nodding as if he were only now seeing the big picture himself. He picked up the pamphlet and looked at it closely, making out the words “profit margin” alongside the arrow that moved up the funnel toward the top of the page. The word “overhead” was contained within the loops of a spiral that looked almost like a snail crawling toward the margin. The caption at the bottom of the page read, “When opportunity knocks, answer the door dressed to go out!”
“This is … something,” Walt said. “Where do you get these?”
“Subscription. The first pamphlet doesn’t cost one red cent. It lays everything out on the page, take it or leave it. If you want to take it, the second pamphlet is fourteen dollars, but the information is priceless.”
“What does Dr. Hefernin do, exactly? Is he a publisher?”
“Oh, my goodness, no. Publishing is only one of his ventures, but I’d warrant he’s made a fortune on it.”
“I guess so,” Walt said. “That’s good money for a six-page pamphlet.”
“And worth every cent. How do you put a price on that kind of knowledge? Apply it, and it’ll return a thousandfold. Here.” He held out another pamphlet entitled “The Thousandfold Return,” this one illustrated with a picture of hundred-dollar bills, fanned out like a hand of cards. “Think about this,” Henry said, nodding profoundly. “Dr. Hefernin is a wealthy man.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Walt said.
“He’s gotten a lot of my money, hasn’t he?”
“Sure.” Walt gestured at the pamphlets. Nearly a hundred and fifty bucks for a few scraps of paper. You could shove all of them into your back pocket and not feel them when you sat down.
“Try this on for size: the more of my money he takes, the more I ought to send him. Do you know why?”
Walt shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
“Because you can’t argue with success. Hefernin calls it ‘the miracle of the self-fulfilling prophecy.’”
“Gosh,” Walt said. “That … is hard to argue with.”
“I mean to say that the proof is in the pudding. Put your faith in a man who warrants your faith.”
“Makes sense,” Walt said. He looked into the doughnut box, but of course it was empty. He’d already eaten the last one. He wondered suddenly if Henry was soliciting subscriptions for Dr. Hefernin, if that was his “small proposition.”
“I just want you to read these,” he said. “That’s all for now. They’re brief, but I think they’re convincing.”
“All right,” Walt said, taking the pamphlets and laying them on the bench. Things were working out pretty much like he had feared: first a salad full of garbanzo beans and carrot coins, now an envelope full of “advice” that was actually part of an infinite come-on for more advice. And the come-on worked, which was proof that the amazing Dr. Hefernin understood the business of business, and so you sent him more money to provide further evidence. It was like a school for pickpockets where they pick your pocket going in the door and then convince you that they’d done it to illustrate a point, and that you ought to pay them for it. Maybe the man was a genius.
“I’d like your opinion tomorrow,” Henry said.
“You’ll have it.”
“Good, because there’s more to it than I can tell you right now. I’m going to turn in. Driving wears me out. Jinx thinks I’m already in bed.” He started toward the door, then turned and said, “There’s no need to talk to the ladies about any of this, is there?”
“No,” Walt said. “Not at all. Whatever you say.”
“They don’t have much of a head for business sometimes.”
Walt thought about Ivy’s last commission check, which had actually been very nice. In fact, along with everything else it was financing Christmas. He nodded shamelessly. “I’ve never believed in operating by committee anyway,” he said, shifting things around to something he was comfortable with, but realizing when he said it that he was already entering into some kind of agreement with Henry. And it occurred to him at the same time that Aunt Jinx probably wasn’t as crazy about all these Hefernin pamphlets as Henry was—if she even knew about them.
Uncle Henry went off down the carport, carrying his envelope. He heard the back door open, and then Ivy’s voice: “Are you staying out there all night?”
“No!” he shouted. “Just locking up.” There was the sound of the back door shutting. He took off his jacket and hung it over the chair, then switched off the heater and the lights. He thought about the bird in the jar, buried out in the garden, and suddenly felt a little foolish about it—more than foolish. Apprehensive was the word. It was probably a bad idea to antagonize a man like Argyle, especially over something like a grudge that was nearly twenty years old.
The conversation he’d overheard an hour ago returned to him. There was something sinister in all that guarded talk, and for a moment he thought about retrieving the jar and running it over there. It wouldn’t take half a minute, and he could be rid of Argyle for good and all.
“You out there in the dark?” Ivy shouted through the open door again.
To hell with the jar. He stepped out of the garage and started to close up. Ivy stood inside the back door, already dressed for bed despite it being early. She was wearing her kimono, loosely tied, the one he’d bought her in the Japanese antiques store in Seattle, and the red and black silk against her fair skin suggested something exotic to him tonight, something he didn’t need to define. Her dark hair was pulled back loosely, into some kind of knot fixed with two glittery chopsticks.
He hunched through the rain, and Ivy kissed him as he came through the door. He could see that she was carrying two glasses and a bottle of champagne. The rest of the house was dark. Jinx must already have gone out to the motor home.
“Congratulate me,” Ivy said as they moved together toward the stairs. “We’ve got a lot to celebrate.”