"Spider Robinson - The Magnificent Conspiracy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

"The customer. What he needs, how bad he needs it, how much he's got."
This of course is classic sales doctrineтАФbut you're not supposed to tell the
customer. You're supposed to go through the quaint charade of an asking price, then
knock off a hastily com-puted amount because "I can see you're in a jam and I like
your face."
"Well then," I said, trying to get this script back on the track, "maybe I'd better
tell you about my situation."
"Sure," he agreed. "Come on in the office. More comfortable there. Got the air
conditioning"
I saw him notice my purple sneakers as I got out of the convertibleтАФwhich
pleased me. You can't buy them that garish you have to dye them yourself.
And halfway to the office, my subconscious identified the specific tape being
played over the sound system. Just a hair too late; the song hit me before I was
braced for it. I barely had time to put my legs on automatic pilot. Fortunately, the
salesman was walking ahead of me, and could not see my face. Album 1700, side
one, track six: "The Great Mandella (The Wheel of Life)."
"So I told him
"That he'd better
"Shut his mouth And do his job like a man And he answered Listen (father
didn't even come to the funeral and the face in the coffin was my own but oh God
so thin and drawn like collapsed around the skull and the skin like gray paper
and the eyes dear Jesus Christ the eyes he looked so content so hideously content
didn't he understand that he'd blown it blown it bl)own it very long, Mr. Uh?"
He was standing, no, squatting by my Dodge, peering up the tailpipe. The hood
was up.
If you're good enough, you can put face and mouth on automatic pilot, too. I told
him I was Bob Campbell and that I had owned the Dodge for three years. I told him
I was a clerk in a supermarket. I told him I had a wife and two children and an MA in
Business Administration.
I told him I needed a newer model car to try for a better job. It was a plausible
story; he didn't seem to find anything odd about my facial expressions, and I'm sure
he believed every word. By the time I had finished sketching my income and outgo,
we were in the office and the door was closing on the song:
"Take your place on
"The Great Mandalla
"As it moves through your brief moment of (click) time that Dodge of yours
had a ring job, too, Bob."
I came fully aware again, remembered my purpose.
"Ring job? Look, uh ... " We seated ourselves.
"Arden Larsen."
"Look, Arden, that car had a complete engine overhaul not five thousand miles
ago. It'sтАФ"
"Stow it, Bob. From the inside of your exhaust pipe alone my best professional
estimate is that you are getting about forty or fifty miles to a quart of oil. Nobody
can overhaul a slant-six that bad." I began to protest. "If that engine was even so
much as steam cleaned less'n ten thousand mile ago I'll eat my socks."
"Just a damned minute, LarsenтАФ"
"Don't ever try to bamboozle a used-car man my age, sonтАФit just humiliates the
both of us. Now, it's hard to tell for sure without jackin' up the front end or drivin'
her, but I'd guess the actual value of that Dodge to be about a hun-dred dollars.