Djelloul Marbrook

Bill, It’s Del Marbrook. Her tone reminds me why I could never be a salesman. Now, Honey, it’s Del—that might offer some hope this relationship will survive the winter. But her tone suggests that heavy-of-foot Ole Bill is approaching that phone as if it were medicine, and God only knows what facial expressions are passing between the man and woman who have been importuned by my call.

A good salesman would push through all this and sell Bill something bad for him. He’d become Bill’s new best friend. What do wives know? Now me, I know what wives know, and I know Bill and I are not destined for camaraderie. But I’ve never been one to suck it up without giving it another shot, and sometimes even another one after that. This has never bode well for me. One should listen to that certain tone in the wife’s voice. She’s on to something. She may not be on to your deficiency as a person, because you may be a lovely person, but she knows you and Bill are not a good match if she can help it.

Bill may hold the keys to the kingdom: a job, a job recommendation, a loan, a contact, something you want and think you need him to help get it. Or you may be trying to convince him he needs something from you.

It has taken me a lifetime to reach this point. Not much of an achievement, but it has not come cheaply. Nowadays I listen to that tone, I make my excuses, and I do not call again. Some men win prizes or make fortunes or both, but this is my achievement: I do not call again. I have come to the conclusion that I want to be the sort of man who hears the demeanor of others’ speech and respects it, the way you either respect a poem or not. I don’t want to be the sort of man who hears the demeanor and ignores it because he thinks he can finagle his way around it. I expect the world to get a lot scarier if I stick to this decision, but I suspect the world is a lot scarier than we admit anyway, and God knows what will happen if we face up to it. I think we should, but nobody will pin any medals on us for it.

Granted this is not the material of Nobel prizes, but I am firmly convinced the human race evolves by the accumulation of just such recognitions. It’s true we change people’s minds about us, but we shouldn’t attempt it out of contempt. We should respect what we hear even when what we hear is disguised in nicey-nice.  If someone says, Y’all come back, hear, and we hear something else behind the words, we should respect both the speaker and the listener and reserve the right to say to ourselves, Yeah, right. —DM

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