The Spiked Heel

It would have been impossible to count the number of calls that came from Chrysler the week before Guild Week. The phone seemed to ring every ten seconds. While he was taking one call, another would be waiting on the extension. While he answered the one on the extension, Marge would be taking down the name of a caller he had to phone back. He tried to think about McQuade clearly, but there was too much to be done. He worked like an automaton, getting the information for Chrysler, collating it with the facts Aaron had, running from department to department, trying to see that Cost did its share in the preparations for Guild Week.

The preparations were enormous. It was as if the company were planning an all-out offensive. He had to admit that the fall line was something spectacular, and he silently congratulated the designers Titanic had brought in, and he also congratulated the men at Chrysler who were in charge of thinking up names for some of the concoctions that flowed from the drawing boards. At the same time, he did not discount the part he and Aaron played in the scheme of things. He had had tussles with designers before, but never so many as he had in that week preceding Guild Week. He had spotted many of the designs as being unfeasible from the moment Chrysler showed him the specifications. From a cost angle, it did not pay to make a shoe which would be prohibitive in price to the retailer. But try to tell that to a designer! Try to say, “Honey, this shoe will cost us sixty bucks to make. Forget it!” Try to tell that to a woman with a pencil stuck behind one ear, a woman who wore thong sandals and a wide blue smock, a woman who gave birth to shoes whenever her pencil touched drawing board. Try to tell her that the impossible twistings of different-colored leathers on a sandal she’d designed was out of the question, that the men and women in Fitting would take fits if they had to figure out her labyrinthine design. Try to tell her that her happy embryo would cause a delightful bottleneck in both Prefitting and Fitting. Try to tell her that on the phone, and then listen to her rave about her fetus, about wanting that shoe in the showing, about simply having to have that shoe in the showing, about killing herself if they could not make a sample of that shoe.

Or try to straighten out the mess that came from a faulty listing of the type of leather on one of the style sheets. Try to straighten out that goddamned mess, with the publicity director yelling he had it listed as bronze calf, and the Production Department yelling the shoe was listed as brown kid, and the people in charge of Programing yelling they’d already written it up as bronze calf and how could they show a brown kid shoe in its place, and the people in charge of Costumes and Models yelling that the whole damned costume setup was geared for a bronze calf shoe, and how could it possibly, ever possibly, blend well with a brown kid?

Or try to explain to some egghead from Chrysler that Morrison had been taken off the Colorado-Iowa-etc. territory and that invitations for his accounts had been erroneously sent to him in Alabama-Arkansas-etc. and that new invitations would have to be sent in a hurry, and then listen to all the screaming about there being only so many invitations and how in hell could they possibly, ever possibly, have made such an error? Quentin, where the hell is Quentin? Quentin, get in here right this minute and talk to this blathering idiot from the factory!

Or try to explain how a 3½-B last had accidentally been pulled for a 4-B sample, and how the shoe had somehow miraculously gone through the factory and come out an unholy mess, and how the model had screamed and fretted when the shoe was put onto her foot, and how the shoe had pinched in eighteen places, and how the whole damned sample had to be made all over again, and all before Guild Week, all before that big monster of a competitive ax descended on their heads.

And try to explain Cost, just to explain Cost, when Hengman was yelling that his whole “guddem fec’try” was being put in an “oproar” because of a few lousy samples. “Dun’t I got orders to warry abott? What’s so ’mportant abott Gild Wikk, anyhow?” What’s so important, indeed? But try to tell that to Chrysler, and try to tell it to everyone concerned with the gala event, just try to tell them when they all behaved as if it were a dozen Coronation Balls.

Said the queen!

She told him about it on the Friday before Guild Week. He had just had a terrific fight with Stiegman at Chrysler, a fight involving the fact that one of the samples still did not fit the model well, and it would look like hell on the foot, and who was going to buy a shoe that looked like hell on a model’s foot, no less?