What's in It for Me? by Jerome Weidman Page A

you going to call her back?”
    â€œTeddy,” I said, looking up and shaking my head at him, “didn’t I ever teach you how to handle women? You gotta remind me some day I should give you a coupla lessons.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “I just thought—”
    â€œAll this red hot jumping through the hoop every time they snap their fingers, Teddy, hell, that don’t get you anywheres. They think you’re a dope or something. Pots like Martha Mills, Teddy, they can always wait. But money can’t. So let’s get started on these orders.”
    As he wheeled the rack of dresses in front of me and I jotted down the numbers of the ones I wanted, I glanced at the open copy of the Daily News Record again. Closing in six weeks. That was enough time. She wouldn’t be grabbing her satchels and running. She’d wait.
    â€œYou want this number, Harry? It’s an odd shade of green, but it’s got this bias flare to the skirt and it—”
    I looked up quickly.
    â€œYeah, well, all right. It looks okay. What’s the number?”
    â€œEleven ten.”
    â€œEleven ten,” I said as I jotted it down. “I got enough greens, Teddy. Now something in blue and a coupla more beige, maybe. Peoria, here, wants beige.”
    â€œHow many more you want?” Teddy asked.
    â€œI could use one more evening gown,” I said. “Blue taffeta, it says, with a high neckline in front. What the hell they’re gonna do with that in Altoona, don’t ask me. I just buy it for them.”
    He shuffled through the dresses on the rack and held one up.
    â€œHow’s this?”
    I glanced at it.
    â€œIt stinks, but I’ll take it. Number?”
    â€œEleven forty-two. By you it stinks, eh? I sold—”
    â€œEleven forty-two,” I repeated as I marked it on the order. “All right, Teddy. You’ll tell me how many you sold some other time. Charge them all out three bucks higher.”
    â€œListen, Harry,” he said slowly, “I don’t know if I’m gonna keep on jacking your charges like that.”
    I raised my eyebrows at him. Didn’t I have enough problems already?
    â€œWhat’s the matter now? You been getting religion all of a sudden? We gotta go into that all over again?”
    He kept fussing with the dresses as he talked.
    â€œNo, it ain’t that. It’s just that—”
    What the hell was this, anyway? I had to go around coaxing him?
    â€œListen, Teddy,” I said in a hard voice. “Just don’t start getting so moral on me all of a sudden. I know you from the old days. Try and remember that it’s to your advantage to keep jacking up these charges for me.”
    He furrowed his nose at me like a collapsible telescope.
    â€œTo my advantage? Where the hell you ever figure that out?”
    â€œYou don’t think I’m going to stay in the resident buying racket for commissions only, do you?” I stood up and lit a cigarette. “If I don’t get enough guys like you to work with me on jacking up charges, why, I’ll just have to go back into the dress business. And you wouldn’t want me for a competitor, would you?”
    He let out the first healthy laugh of the day.
    â€œGo on,” he said. “Who do you think you’re kidding? After that fancy bust you pulled six months ago, a fat chance you’ve got to get a nickel’s worth of credit for going in the dress business. After Apex Modes, Harry, you’re marked lousy with every credit man and every commission house in the business, and you know it.”
    The things I knew would surprise him.
    â€œI can’t get back into the dress business, eh?”
    Even as I said it I was seeing the answer to all my problems.
    â€œDamn right, you can’t.”
    I shrugged. To my list of unfinished business I would now have to add an item called “The Education of Theodore Ast.”
    â€œMaybe