A Foot in the Door

When he was Thirty-four years old and about to buy a house in Short Hills, Mr. Gordon found out he could get anything he wanted in life from an insurance agent named Merz. Merz specialized in small, cheap policies, thousand-dollar endowments, and put his feet in your door. Mr. Gordon had succeeded in putting Merz off and one night shouted at him, "I don't like people who put their feet in doors. That's no way to sell me."

"It's something I do and I can't help it," said Merz, wedging his foot in Gordon's apartment door and trying to force it back. "It isn't important and you'll soon see why. You'll see it's foolish to make anything over my feet in the door."

Gordon finally let Merz in, a thin man who got bad shaves and was always out of breath. Merz sold him a quick thousand-dollar endowment and when Mr. Gordon showed him out, said, "I've got something else you'll want. It's a way for you to have anything in the world. I haven't figured out whether it's insurance or not, but I have it for you and we can start it off tonight."

"I have plenty," said Gordon. "Everything I want. I'm going to buy a home in Short Hills next week, something I've always wanted."

"There'll be no nonsense and fooling around," said Merz. "What you want is a home nearby in Tall Hills and one thing you'd better learn is that it's a waste of time to be coy on this thing. Now I can get you this. What we do is make a bargain. Some of these are going to sound strange, but they're made up that way and, frankly, 1 don't make them up."

"I can't afford Tall Hills," said Mr. Gordon, "but all right, I'll admit I'd like to get in there."

"All right then, now listen," said Mr. Merz, blowing his thin nose. "I don't do any paper work on these so remember it and don't come around to me and say that isn't the way it is. Tall Hills is yours, if ... Let me rephrase that. When you don't use paper work, you've got to get them straight in the talking. A house in Tall Hills is yours, but your baby will have to be born with a slightly bent nose. I know you, your wife and your little girl have straight ones, but that's the way these things are made up. Sometimes a real winner comes along, but most are on this order."

"I'm not going to ask you for any guarantee, because I can tell from the whole way this has happened that it's on the level," said Mr. Gordon. "If you're wondering why I don't act astonished, it's just that I always expected something like this to happen. The only thing is I always thought there would be ethereal music in the background. Let's see, if it's a boy it won't matter so much and would give him character. The odds are slightly in favor of its being a boy. I don't know."

"Can we close?" said Merz. "It isn't that I go dff and sell others when I'm finished with you. There aren't any others. I'm just tired and I get colds when I'm out late."

"Even if it were a girl," said Mr. Gordon, "it might just be the little imperfection that would make her appealing. I once saw a girl who was married to an archaeologist and she had a slight limp and it made her the most fragile and pathetic thing, and I could have eaten her up. Maybe this would be like a limp on her nose. Look, is it bent quite a bit or just slightly? Do I get to know that?"

"We don't know how they come out. It's more the spirit of the thing that counts and if it came out small, there wouldn't be any objection."

"All right then," said Mr. Gordon. "Get me into Tall Hills."

Merz said, "I can't always let you have this much time," and disappeared.

The Gordons' second child was born a month later, a boy with a cute but slightly bent little nose, and Mr. Gordon did not suddenly inherit a fortune. Nor did he suddenly receive a giant bonus from his firm or win a cash prize in a lottery. What happened is that he received a small inheritance from an uncle of his who had once spent a weekend hunting, with Pancho Villa, his agency came through at Christmas with a slightly (continued on page 82) Foot in the Door(continued from page 79) larger bonus than it had before, and Mrs. Gordon won a motorcycle in a raffle which they cashed in for four hundred dollars. The total, along with the money Mr. Gordon had set aside for a house in Short Hills, gave them the down payment for one in Tall Hills. And in they went with their new, cute, but bent-nosed little baby.

A month after the Gordons settled into their home Merz stuck his foot in the door late one night and Mr. Gordon said, "For Christ's sake, you don't have to put it in there now, you know."

"I just put it in there and don't really care to change the thing," said Merz. "Don't you open the door either. Let me force my way in."

Mr. Gordon put his shoulder against the door and finally let Merz, breathing hard, shove his way in. "OK now," said Merz. "I think you should have another thousand-dollar endowment. Now look, I don't want that other thing to color your decision. I'm talking straight insurance now, and if I found out you were taking a policy just because of that other thing I do, I'd be sore. Do you want one? Remember, it's important to keep these things separate."

"Then I don't think so," said Mr. Gordon. "I've got enough coverage for now."

"You don't," said Merz. "I'm going to keep hounding you until you buy more endowments. You don't have half enough and ought to be ashamed of yourself for carrying so little. But if you. dare buy one because of that other arrangement we have, I'll kick you in the chops."

"I was wondering how often you come around," said Mr. Gordon. "That other thing really worked out. He's going to have a certain American Indian appeal and I don't think it'll bother him."

"I don't get into whether it'll bother him or not," said Merz. "All right then, you want Simms transferred and wall-to-wall carpeting, some of it covering the staircase to the second floor. This is going to make you laugh so you might as well get in the snickers right now. You get a wool or cotton option on the carpeting, any shade."

"That is funny," said Mr. Gordon. "Why do I want Simms transferred?"

"I told you I wouldn't settle for any coy stuff!" said Merz, rising in anger. He sat again, regaining his composure.

"Because we're neck and neck and because he has a slightly better personality and at one point or another will be quietly eased in as a senior executive, that's why," said Mr. Gordon.

"All right then," said Merz. "Now I want your Uncle Lester."

"What do you mean you want him?" asked Mr. Gordon. "Don't tell me be-cause 1 know."

"That's right," said Merz, "he goes. Don't pin me down as to how, but I do know it won't be pretty."

"I didn't know that anyone had to go," said Gordon. "I thought what it would probably be is just doing things to people but not actually having them go. Anyway, it's amazing the way you work these things out. If you'd said Aunt Clara or Cousin Lars I'd have thrown you out of here. These people are old and beat up and I don't see them more than once in a blue moon, but when I hug them to me I get a feeling of kinship and camaraderie. I don't get that at all from Uncle Lester and don't like the way he smells. He works on those prescriptions twelve hours a day and I never did understand him. He's seventy-six or something and it won't be long now for him anyway. All right then, he goes, but it's amazing how you knew to say Uncle Lester and not Aunt Clara. I'd have fought the hell out of you on her."

"They're made up cleverly all right," said Merz, blowing his nose, "but I don't want to stay here and get friendly with you. All I really care about is that you buy more endowments, but purely on an insurance basis, and not because of this other arrangement of ours. Do you want cotton or wool carpeting?"

"Which do you think?" asked Mr. Gordon.

"If I was allowed to I'd kick your chops," said Mr. Merz angrily. "Don't ask me any idiotic things."

"All right then, wool," said Mr. Gordon. "Beige wool," and Merz flew out the door.

Within a week, a love affair between Simms and a bookkeeping girl came out in the open. The agency head called in Simms and said, "I don't care how creative you are, what you're doing is Hollywood and is a definite stink." Simms went to Dubuque, and Mr. Gordon sat back and waited to be told he'd been promoted and given an increase, one that worked out to $1437 a year, the exact amount he'd need for carpeting the downstairs and the steps.

No promotion came and at the end of a month Merz drove up at night in a truck, and put his foot in Mr. Gordon's door.

"I don't see why you have to go through this each time," said Mr. Gordon, holding the door.

"I don't ask you questions," said Merz, his nose red, finally elbowing his way in. "I brought the carpeting. There was no way to have it just get to you so we're just handing it over. That happens sometimes and this is the one receipt I'll need." Mr. Gordon signed a piece of paper and Merz said, "Caught you.

I didn't really need a receipt for the carpeting. I told you there's no paper work on the bargains we make. What you just signed is for an endowment policy."

Merz left the carpeting on Mr. Gordon's porch and shot away.

Over the weekend, police caught Mr. Gordon's Uncle Lester accepting a case of stolen and tainted penicillin. A grand jury hearing was scheduled, but later that week Uncle Lester, out on bail, drove to the state line, turned on Gabriel Heatter and shot himself in the temple, leaving a garbled note that said, roughly, "Middle-class embarrassment. Old enough. Bang bang with Heatter. Get it?" When Mr. Gordon read about the note, he told Mrs. Gordon, "It's odd I should get a feeling of camaraderie for Uncle Lester now – after reading the note. I never had one before."

A month later, Merz got Mr. Gordon into the Tall Hills Golf Club. The arrangement put Gordon's father-in-law in a new job, one that sent the elderly, nearsighted man driving along precipitous mountain passes in southern Wyoming selling educational training aids to out-of-the-way prisons and mental hospitals. The final deal shipped Mr. Gordon, his wife and one of the children off on a long-dreamed-of one-month vacation to Sark and gave Mr. Gordon's mother a permanent toe fungus, one that was relatively harmless but maddeningly irritating. Mr. Gordon could have gotten two months in Majorca but balked when Merz insisted he would have to "take" Mr. Gordon's mother. The Sark weather was bad, and the Gordons got back a few days early. On the night of their arrival, Mr. Gordon got a call from a sultry-voiced female who said, "This is to inform you that Mr. Merz is dead and won't be selling you any further endowments." The woman hung up, and Mr. Gordon, feeling a little bit alone, thought, "I wonder if this is all there is to it? Whether I -get to go on as though nothing had ever happened?" Being a realistic thinker, Mr. Gordon could not figure out any reason why he should not go ahead and live his life as he had always lived it.

Several weeks later Mr. Gordon lost a cuff link and went into a charming little out-of-the-way boutique to replace it. The girl behind the counter had dark hair covering her shoulders, melting brown eyes and breasts that were impressive in that they were perfectly separated and elevated. She wore an intriguing scent and Mr. Gordon said, "You know, I came in here to buy cuff links, but your perfume is enchanting. You're damned appealing, too. What is it called?"

"Pizzanie," the girl said, in a husky (continued on page 118) Foot in the Door(continued from page 82) voice. "Accent on the second syllable. But too many people call it Pizzanee."

"It bowls me over," said Mr. Gordon. "Are you allowed to have lunch with people?"

"Mr. Lopez will sell you the cuff links," the girl said, lowering her lovely melting eyes.

A young man wearing a pinched suit in the style of a foppish Londoner came out with a tray of twisted metal cuff links and said, "I'm Lopez. These are from Mexico." Mr. Gordon selected a pair and Mr. Lopez said, "I've made a lunch reservation for the three of us." Mr. Gordon felt excited over the spontaneity of the adventure that seemed to be unfolding and with a strange thrill fluttering at the base of his spine went along with his two new friends. The scent of the girl kept him bewildered through the first course and then it occurred to him that he had heard her voice before. "Didn't you call and tell me Merz was dead?" he asked.

She lowered her eyes and Mr. Lopez, eating with exquisite manners, said, "I asked her to call. Now look, I'm doing them with you from now on, only they'll be slightly different. Not really in spirit, but the ante goes up quite a bit. Now here's the first. You can have Lisa here any weekend you like, on into the interminable future, and we get your hair."

Mr. Gordon's hand instinctively passed up to his forehead and he asked, "All of it?"

"You get a fringe around the ears and the crescent on the back of the head, you know the way it sets up. We give you a premature gray speckling if you like, to soften the contrast. It's better if you keep it short and, for whatever it's worth, we do foot all haircut bills from then on. Your wife doesn't ever get to know about Lisa."

"Look," said Mr. Gordon, "I don't want to act the prude and say the idea is horrible and 1 don't want any girl I have to pay for. The only thing that irritates me is how you can set it up right in front of her that way."

"I don't care about her," said Mr. Lopez. "She helps me sell cuff links."

The air was full of Lisa, and Mr. Gordon said, "Do you mean one weekend or all weekends forever?"

"As many as you like."

"I should probably be figuring this out to myself, but I have to talk to someone," said Mr. Gordon. "What do I need my hair for if I can have her anytime I want automatically? Now look, Lopez, there is one thing. I'm sorry about asking this, Lisa, but I'll just get it in and then I'll never do anything as crude as this again. There's nothing wrong with her? I mean, she doesn't get epileptic fits or anything I should know about? or limp? That's silly. Actually I don't mind a limp in a girl, and it's funny I should bring that in here. All right, I'll go along."

"I don't write them down either," said Lopez. "Would you like some other cuff links?"

"I'll take one more pair," said Mr. Gordon, tremulously taking the girl's hand.

The hair came out gradually in Mr. Gordon's comb and was gone within a month. Not until the last few dropped out did Mr. Gordon think of exercising his option, and on that day he bought a Homburg and dropped around the boutique. He had a horrible fear, for one second, that Lisa would no longer be there and that he would have to travel the earth, hairless, to find his booty. But she was there, warm and siveet, with the scent of Pizanie floating about her ears, her bosoms high and impeccably separated.

Lopez came out with a tray from India and Mr. Gordon gave him two-fifty. Lopez asked him into a private office then and said, "Today's involves getting away from it all, leaving your job and doing whatever you want to do. Freedom. It's the only thing you don't have, not a fortune, but enough income to be able to thumb your nose at it all."

"As it stands I'll have to go into that stinking office right to my grave," said Mr. Gordon. "I make a good living but I need to have every nickel to do what I'm doing. All right, what do you take? Paralysis for my sister? A nervous breakdown for Dad? Shoot. This is going to be good."

"A single evening with your wife."

"You can't have a single evening with my wife. Who gets it, you?"

"No," said Lopez.

"What do I care who gets it? That's beside the point. I can't let you have that. I know, I know, I'm a hypocrite. I'll sell out my Uncle Lester and throw away my kid's nose and yet I make a big fuss over a single, meaningless act of the flesh. I'm not going along, that's all. That's one deal I won't make and I'm not even going to explain it."

"You'll never have to do a day's work in your life."

"You mean just one time with one man?" said Mr. Gordon.

"That's all," said Mr. Lopez.

"When?" asked Gordon.

"You bring her to a Twenties party Saturday night. You can have her as a flapper and you as a Harard cheerleader. Lisa and I will be there as a Twenties gangster and his moll."

"This is one I don't feel happy about at all," said Mr. Gordon.

"Do we have an agreement?" asked Lopez.

"Yes," said Gordon.

During the week Mr. Gordon rented a costume for his wife. She said it was beautiful and maybe he could buy it for her after the party. The party itself was dimly lit and all of the people were in costume, although some of them had spoiled the theme by showing up in flamenco dress. It was thick and loud and wild and Mrs. Gordon was immediately snapped up for the dance floor, leaving Mr. Gordon standing alone in his cheerleader uniform. Lisa and Lopez came over then. She made a lovely moll, one with perfectly separated bosoms and the scent of Pizanie about her throat. "Look, I'm not going along," said Mr. Gordon, glancing over at his wife on the dance floor. She was dancing with one of the flamenco fellows. "I can't even stand it when she dances with someone. Look, I can't go through with it. Who's the one she has to be with?"

"I told you lhat wasn't important," said Lopez.

"Will you point him out?" asked Mr. Gordon.

"Yes," said Lopez, and Mr. Gordon put his arms around Lisa and led her to the dance floor. Fifteen minutes later. Lopez tapped him on the shoulder and said, "She's with him now." Mr. Gordon looked up and saw his wife dancing with a slender, muscular man in a Twenties tank suit. They spun around. It was Merz. He seemed a trifle younger and somewhat better looking.

"Von said he was dead," Mr. Gordon said to Lisa.

"Under my orders," said Lopez. "Don't blame her."

"Well that settles it." said Mr. Gordon. "Now I'm definitely not going' through with it. Not till Hell freezes over."

"We have an agreement," said Lopez through thin lips.

"I don't care," said Mr. Gordon. "Not Merz. Maybe someone else, but not him. That's where I draw the line. I don't care what I said."

"It has to be Merz," said Lopez. "It's all arranged."

"Now look." said Mr. Gordon, running his hands over his bare dome. "I don't know whether I have the strength to argue with you or what, but I am not going through with this and that's that. I knew I shouldn't have started on this one. Now look. I'll give you this much. Inside of blouse, upper thigh, and heavv necking, but that's it. Not the whole deal. Never the whole deal. Not with Merz."

"I can't account for what happens when you change them," said Lopez.

"Well, I don't care," said Mr. Gordon, folding his arms. "That's it and that's the way it's going to be."

"All right," said Lopez. "But I can't guarantee what's going to happen when you fool around with the packages. They're packaged one way for a reason."

"He wasn't even supposed to be alive," said Mr. Gordon, encircling Lisa's waist with his arms and picking up the music.

In a short while, he saw Mrs. Gordon and Merz pick up their coats and slip out the door. He kept dancing and at the end of the evening Mrs. Gordon came back alone and went into the powder room. Lopez came over and slipped a piece of paper into Mr. Gordon's cheer-leading blazer. "It's a check that comes to sixteen hundred dollars, which is the store's gross weekly income. That's the way we have it set up, only you'll get it from now on in monthly payments. It's fairly steady and of course if the store should fail, we're in supermarkets, clothing, and you should have no cause for anxiety. I'm taking Lisa now, but of course you can pick her up any weekend, beginning Friday nights at 6:45 and ending at the dinner hour Sunday, let's say eight."

Mr. Gordon was quite anxious for the following week and neither quit his job nor picked up Lisa. The following Saturday morning Mrs. Gordon came to the breakfast table fully dressed and said, "I've got to go away and I don't think I'm coming back, and there's no need for you to talk patiently with me. It's going to be for always with this man and there isn't a thing in the world anyone can say to me to stop me. I don't know about the children. I just know I have to go. There was a brief time when it seemed if we could only get it out of our systems we could have forgotten each other, but it wasn't possible and now we have to go away together and take a lifetime because it isn't ever going to get out of our systems."

"Merz?" said Mr. Gordon.

"That's his name," said Mrs. Gordon, "but there isn't any use in your saying it a funny way or trying to cut him down because I need him and must have him."

Mr. Gordon's face went cold and after his wife left, the shock carried him through the day and he remained rigid, like a sliding pond, as the children played all over him. What he was certain was going to hit him never did, somehow, and he got through the following week with only occasional spasms of nausea. On Friday evening at 6:45 he went to Lisa's apartment and the second she opened the door he bit her earlobe and inhaled her and undressed her and had her before the clock said seven. There had been a moment at the door, when he had feared a kind of quiet resignation on her part, but such was not the case and she made love to him with frenzy and hunger and they stayed together through the night. In the morning she sat up and stretched in a nightgown and yawned and the nausea came back to him. "That Pizanie stays right on :ill through the night," he said.

"So many people call it Pizzanee," she said languorously.

"I don't like it in the morning when I want eggs," he said. "I'm not even sure I want it in the afternoon or any time before 6:45. And even then, I'm not sure any more," he said. Dressing quickly, he hollered, "PIZZANEE, PIZZANEE, PIZZANEE, IT SHOULD BE CALLED PIZZANEE," and then flew out the door.

He went to a private detective's office and told the man he wanted to find his wife and Merz. After twelve minutes of phone calls the detective traced the pair to Las Vegas and said to Mr. Gordon, "You owe me forty-three dollars."

"How do you get that?" asked Mr. Gordon.

"I just do," said the detective.

"All right," said Mr. Gordon, paying the man. "I have unlimited funds."

A jet liner took Mr. Gordon to Las Vegas the same evening. He felt very giddy traveling without luggage, without preparation. In Las Vegas he checked the rosters of the big hotels for Merz' name and couldn't find it. Then he went to the smaller hotels that weren't on the Strip and found a listing for a couple named Merzedes. Taking the stairs two at a time he pounded on the door of the room until Merz opened it up, wearing a pair of BVDs. He had grown a goatee in the beatnik style and his hair was unruly. The room was sultry and had no air conditioning. Inside, Mr. Gordon could see his wife in a pair of panties he recognized and a monogrammed blouse.

"Look Merz," said Mr. Gordon, "my foot is in your door. The whole thing's off. I have got to have her back. I don't care whether she wants to come or not. She'll get used to me again and forget you, even if it takes fifty-two years. But she's my wife and I've got to have her back and there's no power on earth can stop me, I dan't'eare who's behind this."

"I can't do it," said Merz.

"Why not?" said Mr. Gordon, with fists clenched.

"Because I took asthma, a bleeding ulcer and let a Long Island train wreck have six of my grandchildren for your wife, that's why. It was under a special incentive plan for us employees."

Mr. Gordon understood perfectly and went away.