The Glove Salesman
/AJ Atwater
I slip inconspicuously into a hardware store on a summer morning. Look fondly at bags of #10 flat-head screws used for sheet metal work then I tread in my shiny patent leather shoes into the Tupperware aisle admiring there each and every piece. Loud, bold packaging shows sets nested perfectly in colors of pink, salmon, light blue and the green of iceberg lettuce. I picture my wife Aggie storing my healthy breakfast leftovers: Oatmeal with cinnamon and cloves in blue, fruit cocktail from the can in pink, white bread toast with Skippy peanut butter and grape jelly would go in the salmon and remaining eggs easy over with liberal salt and pepper in the green then stacked in ascending order in our refrigerator. Being in sales is about sharpness and paying attention to ascending order. Being in sales is about being on top of the latest confab. That’s why I study Tupperware this morning before striding nonchalantly into the sanctity of the glove aisle where leather gloves emanate strong velvety scents. Where rough cotton gloves emanate crisp under-odors. I eye up rubberized gloves made for construction work. They are fully formed and hang on hooks as if a hand is in them. I look at nubby ones with leather palms. Glove shoppers come into the aisle behind me. I take up a pair of gloves and snap the fastener that tethers them. The shoppers move away I’m delighted to see. Good. Then they can, in private, snap fasteners on their own. Run fingers around the cuffs. Test the elasticity. Test the untethered glove’s abilities to be steadfast on their hands. I model for shoppers the further value of gloves by holding them under my nose like a dying lover in an opera, head thrown back, eyes closed dramatically. When I open my eyes again, I see the aisle is oddly empty of shoppers.
Back in my Chevy I make reminder phone calls. No one remembers I’m due at their office except the grinning Mr. Columbus at Acme Construction. I reschedule appointments then jot notes, as I do every morning, about the How-to I’m writing. The scripture for glove salesman. Not that I walk on water. But success begets success. Do cold calls, I advise in the notes I’m jotting. Cold calls keep your senses sharp, I write. They dilate your pupils. You see more. You feel more. You breathe deeper. You present a united front to your Constituency with your body, nostrils, and eyes in high gear. One shoulder should thrust forward when making a cold call as if you’re ready to batten down a door in a smoke-filled six-story building. There you are on the sixth floor at the last door down a long hallway. Paint is peeling from the heat. You put your shoulder against that door. You batter your way in. You make the sale. Tell your Constituent you appreciate their Constituteness. It’s a new buzzword. My How-to will have a chapter on buzzwords and a chapter on secret sales techniques like: Give gifts. Wrap the gift in gold foil with a bow. Hold the gift nonchalantly. Twist and turn the box in your Constituent’s office. Make a show of giving. Chat up the weather. Cock your head to-and-fro. You must work on timing every word and gesture. You must develop excellent peripheral vision. Twist your eyeballs to the extreme left for a count of fifty. This is hard, but do it with your chin parallel to the floor. Then tip your chin and shoot your eyeballs to the left again. Feel the difference in tension. Whip your eyeballs to the right. Repeat. Then shift your eyeballs up for five minutes, chin parallel to the floor. Shift them down. You’ll be amazed how flexible your eyes become. Another secret technique is always find a stare-spot above the Constituent’s head. Don’t look them straight in the eye during the sell, for pity’s sake. After setting out the gift, arrange #10 flat-head screws used for sheet metal work in neat rows on their desk to impress them with your organizational skills. A note on screws: They’re a thing of beauty on those lumbering, monster desks of your Constituents. Screws roll, so you have to play pony and corral them. Look for admiration in the Constituent’s eyes. Check your suit pocket flaps for neatness. Then and only then find that stare-spot above their head. Talk Tupperware to warm your Constituent to the sell. Talk how lids snap on with one press of the thumb. No leakage. What an amazing invention. They will be transfixed with your knowledge and skills as a glove salesman, guaranteed.
Being in sales is about being on top of the latest confab. That’s why I study Tupperware this morning before striding nonchalantly into the sanctity of the glove aisle where leather gloves emanate strong velvety scents.
I drive to Acme Construction for my appointment with the grinning Mr. Columbus. I double-check my attaché: gift, glove samples, screws. Check my lapels for straightness. My tie for the perfect knot. Then go inside. I’ve brought a variety of gloves from samples in my home office where they hang on hooks or are spread out on shelves. My son, Dean, is constantly bugging me to go in my office and handle the glove samples. Once a week I allow it. He puts gloves on his ears. Where would he get such an idea? I wonder about him. He seems odd, how he digs in his pockets and comes out with acorns from our big oak in the front yard. Lines them up on my desk, carefully, one next to the other, him giggling and trying to keep them from rolling as he shows me his treasure. On my desk are rows of other things: Pencils lined up straight as arrows, paper pads in uniform, severe and perfect stacks. Then there are the #10 flat-head screws used for sheet metal work I practice with. But Dean with his acorns? I don’t get it. I spoke to Aggie about it one day and she told me to go sit at my desk and look. At what? I asked. She clammed up then. Rolled her eyes. I went and looked at my desk and saw nothing that reminded me of Dean’s acorns. Everything was straight and perfectly lined up, I observed. Observation. I write about observation in my How-to. What items does a Constituent have on their desk? What clues do these items give as to the Constituent’s personality? Are there spaces between items like a scotch tape dispenser and stapler? If so, they prefer new ideas. Do they have an electric stapler instead of a hand-operated? If so, they work fast-paced. Is there overhead lighting? If so, they are expansive. A tiny desk lamp instead? If so, they need your very best gloves. In my home office as I sat at my desk, I learned this: I like seeing a precise lay of the land.
The grinning Mr. Columbus comes in his office door. He wears a yellow hard hat. Gray tuffs of hair stick out. His white T-shirt is filthy and torn by the left shoulder. His belly is enormous and hangs over his unbelted jeans that are wide at the ankle, boots big as tubs on his feet, a humongous watch crouches on one hairy arm. I set out his gift with a little pat. He sits down at his desk. I impressively line up my #10 flat-head screws used for sheet metal work. I mention the weather. Then I find my stare-spot, the usual nail, in the wall above his head. I’m nail-watching. I talk about the benefits of Tupperware as I look at the nail steadily, cleanly and professionally. I take a glove sample from my attaché case and set it in the grinning Mr. Columbus’s outstretched hand. He tears it in two. Stands and moves to the back wall behind his desk. He hangs the halves on the nail in my stare-spot.
What do you see now? he asks.
A nail.
The nail is hidden behind the halves, he says.
The nail is still there.
But can you see it?
Yes.
How?
Because I know the halves can’t be suspended on their own.
Can you see the metal of the nail? he asks.
The metal of the nail is the hidden force holding the halves.
Look at me, the grinning Mr. Columbus says.
Advice: Once you have a glove order, you can gaze happily into your Constituent’s eyes. Give a full-face smile. You have come and you have conquered. Until then, firmly and decisively avoid distraction and fixate on your stare-spot. The grinning Mr. Columbus sits down again. He looks at me across his giant dusty desk waiting for my next move. I hand him a construction glove laced with metal ribs. He reaches into a drawer. Comes up with a pair of snips. Snips the glove in two. Leaps up like big men can do from his desk. Hangs the halves on the nail in my stare-spot. I’ll take six cartons of the ribbed gloves, he says, turning. Then looks at his humongous watch. I look him straight in the eye. How many minutes? I ask.
Sixteen minutes you stared at the nail, the grinning Mr. Columbus says. How were my theatrics?
Snappy as a Tupperware container, I say. Brilliant with the snips. You’ve rightly so and prosperously secured a mention in my How-to chapter on nail-watching.
Back home, I tell Aggie and Dean about staring at a nail for sixteen minutes at Acme Construction with the grinning Mr. Columbus and how it broke my previous record of twelve minutes and how I’m going for twenty minutes next month. My chapter on nail-watching will be a big hit, I tell them. Aggie dances to the kitchen. Whips up a celebratory chocolate cake the remains of which will go in our brand new snappy orange Tupperware container.
Author’s Commentary: "The Glove Salesman" is a story of a gentle, odd microcosm of a man, an uncommon hero really, who has chosen without knowledge of naivety how to live a good life, one lined with pleasure and singular belief.
AJ Atwater’s fiction is published or forthcoming in LitroNY, Blood Tree Literature, Gargoyle, Gravel, Green Mountains Review, Vestal Review, PANK and others.
