“Truly, All The Way Down” by Clancy Martin
--page 7

        I watched her walk out into the cold morning. When I started to help another seller—I was young so I hoped that would be the end of it—Jim caught me by the elbow and dragged me in back. He pulled me into the closet where we kept the ring boxes.
        “What the hell just happened out there?” he said.
        “She changed her mind. She said she was going to think about it.”
        “I heard what you said, Billy. I heard what you told her.” I had never seen him wearing an expression anything like the expression he was wearing. “I heard the whole thing.”
        “This is my job too, godammit,” he said. “You are fucking with two jobs here, Billy. Do you get that? Do you fucking understand that?”
        He had certainly never sworn at me before. He wasn’t the type to swear at a person. In fact most Canadians are not.
        It was the only time in my whole life, in the sixteen years I had studied, loved and imitated him, that he yelled at me like a parent will berate a child, like a mother will yell at night when her baby wakes her from sleep. Saleswomen and salesmen came into the box room and left again without their boxes. By the time he was finished there was a short line of salespeople standing outside the small, open-doored room waiting for boxes with freshly soaked and steamed, sparkly jewelry in their hands.

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