She shook her head and took another sip of whiskey.
“It’s like a compulsion,” Bradley said. “I’m in it and I can’t get out of it, because I’m so damned good. People know they’re being suckered and they let me do it anyway. They come in here, they’ve made a solemn vow to themselves, they’re going to be strong, they’re going to drive a hard bargain. But they only buy a car once a year, or once a decade, or maybe they’ve never bought a car, and here’s me who sells cars day in and day out. They have no chance! I’m going to make them weak, and they’re going to go home and lie to their wife. They’re going to tell her they got a great deal. There’s only one red car on the lot, and the guy’s got to have it because it’s red and, goddamn it, there’s only one of them, and what are we going to do tomorrow morning? Get another red car out there. I swear this job is killing my soul.”
Marion set her cup on his desk, intending to drink no more. She wondered if she should mention food, or simply go home to bed hungry, but the words kept pouring out of Bradley. In college, in Michigan, he said, he’d written plays and published poems in the college magazine, and then he’d come to Los Angeles to break into the movies as a writer. His soul was still alive then, but he’d met a girl who had dreams of her own, and one thing led to another, and now he was just another member of the goddamned middle class, suckering people for a living. Ideas came to him in the night, original script ideas—like, during the Spanish Civil War, the daughter of Hitler’s ambassador to Spain is secretly in love with a Republican intelligence officer, the Fascists are holding the officer’s wife and children hostage, he asks the daughter to help them escape from Spain, and she can’t be sure if he really loves her or if he’s only using her to save his family—he had a million ideas, but when was he supposed to work on them? At the end of a day, his soul was too deadened. The only shred of human decency still left in him, the only way he knew he wasn’t the worst person in the world, was how much he loved his boys. They were a weight on him, yeah, a drain on his creative energy, but the responsibility was the only thing standing between him and perdition. Did Marion understand what he was saying? The boys weren’t negotiable. His marriage wasn’t negotiable. He was never leaving Isabelle.
There was an upsurge in Marion’s dread. “Your wife is named Isabel?”
The woman in the studio portrait actually looked a little like Isabelle Washburn. She was older and thicker but similarly blond and small-nosed. Marion stared at the picture, and Bradley stood up and came around his desk and crouched at her feet.
“There’s so much soul in your eyes,” he said. “Your soul is so alive, I see you and I feel like I’m dying. I’m—God! Do you have any idea how much soul there is in you? I look at you and I think I can’t live if I don’t have you, but I know I can’t have you … because … Or unless. Because. Unless. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
No amount of whiskey could have overcome her dread, but she drank what was left in her cup. The view from the street was obstructed by shiny floor models, but there were angles from which a person walking by could see Bradley at her feet in the showroom lights.
“Say something,” he whispered. “Say anything.”
“I think I should go home.”
“Okay.”
“And maybe find someplace else to work.”
“God, no. Marion. I’d die if I couldn’t see your face anymore. Please don’t do that. I swear I won’t pester you.”
It was strange to think that the man crouched at her feet had been having such thoughts about her. He was a fascinating person, but in the end, even if one discounted that he was married, he was just a car salesman. She’d weathered the upwelling of dread with her good sense intact. She made a move to stand up, but Bradley caught one of her hands and held her in place. “I wrote something about you,” he said. “Can I tell you what I wrote?”
Taking her silence as consent, he recited a poem.
A woman walks, her name is Marion
Her hair is dark but smells of bright
Sun piercing clouds with clarion splendor
Her eyes downcast but full of light
And darkness both, her mind a wide sky
Both serene and threatening: untouchable
“Who wrote that?” she said.
“I did.”
“You wrote that.”
“It’s the first thing I’ve written since I don’t know when.”