"I know the offshore drilling is ruining the coast, but my Exxon shares have split twice in two years, so I said to my analyst…"

"Susan and the kids went to Tahoe, so I thought it was the perfect chance to show Marie the house. The bitch spilled a whole bottle of massage oil in the hot tub and…"

"I don't give a damn whether they needed it or not. If you do your job right you can sell air conditioners to Eskimos; need has nothing to do with it. Remember the three m's: mesmerize, motivate, and manipulate. You're not selling a need, you're selling…"

"Dreams," Samson said, coming out of his shell to finish the sentence of a young insurance sales manager who had taken his agents to lunch so he could chew their ass. Samson surprised even himself by speaking up, but the man at the table seemed to be giving the same speech that he had heard from the powder-blue dream salesman. He couldn't resist.

"Come here, kid," the man said. He was wearing a wash-and-wear suit, as were the other five men at the table. A half-dozen acrid aftershaves clashed among them. "What's your name?"

Samson looked around the table at the men's faces. They were all white. He decided at that moment to use a new name, not the Mexican name he had taken, Jose Cuervo. "Sam," Samson said. "Sam Hunter."

"Well, Sam" — he extended his hand — "my name is Aaron Aaron. And I'll bet with some training you could outsell every man at this table." He put his arm around Samson's shoulders and spoke to the rest of the group. "What do you say, guys? I'll bet you each a hundred bucks that I can take a busboy with the right attitude and turn him into a better salesman than any of you hotshots inside of a month."

"That's bullshit, Aaron, the kid's not even old enough to get a license."

"He can work on my license. I'll sign his applications. C'mon, hotshots, do I have a bet?"

The men fidgeted in their seats, laughing nervously and trying to avoid Aaron's gaze, knowing from Aaron's training that the first one to speak would lose. Finally one of them broke. "All right, a hundred bucks, but the kid has to do his own selling."

Aaron looked at Samson. "So, kid, are you ready to start a new job?"

Samson tried to imagine himself wearing a suit and smelling of after-shave, and the idea appealed to him. "I don't have a place to stay," he said. "I've been saving so I can get an apartment."

"I've got it covered," Aaron said. "Welcome aboard."

"I guess I could give my notice."

"Fuck giving notice. You only give notice if you're planning to come back. You're not planning on moving backwards, are you, Sam?"

"I guess not," Samson said.

At twenty-five, Aaron Aaron had already accumulated fifteen years of experience in the art of deception. From the time he skimped on the sugar at his first lemonade stand to the time he doubled the profits on his paper route by canceling his customers' subscriptions, then stealing the papers out of a vending machine to continue the deliveries, Aaron showed a near-genius ability for working in the gray areas between business and crime. And by balancing dark desires with white lies he was able to sidestep the plague of Catholic conscience that kept him from pursuing an honest career as a pirate, which would have been his first choice. Aaron Aaron was a salesman.

At first, Aaron's only interest in Samson was to use the boy as an instrument of embarrassment to the other salesmen, but once he dressed the boy in a suit and had him trailing along on sales calls like a dutiful native gun bearer, Aaron found that he actually enjoyed the boy's company. The boy's curiosity seemed boundless, and answering his questions as they drove between calls allowed Aaron to bask in the sound of his own voice while extolling the brilliance of his last successful presentation. And too, the rejection of a slammed door or a pointed «no» seemed softened in the sharing. Teaching the boy made him feel good, and with this improvement in attitude he worked more, sold more, and allowed the boy to share in the prosperity, buying him clothes and food, finding him an apartment, and cosigning for a loan on a used Volvo.

For Samson, working under the tutelage of Aaron was perfect. Aaron's assumption that no one beside himself had the foggiest idea of how the universe worked allowed Samson the opportunity to hear lectures on even the most minuscule details of society, information he used to build himself into the image that Aaron wanted to see. Samson delighted in Aaron's self-obsession, for while the older man waxed eloquent on the virtues of being Aaron, it never occurred to him to ask Samson about his past, and the boy was able to surround himself in a chrysalis of questions and cheap suits until he was ready to emerge as a full-grown salesman.

As the years passed and his memories of home were stowed and forgotten, learning to sell became Samson's paramount interest. And Aaron, fascinated with seeing his own image mirrored and his own words repeated, failed to notice that Samson had become a better salesman than himself until other companies began approaching the boy with offers. Only then did Aaron realize that most of his income was coming from the override commission on Sam's sales, and that for five years Sam had trained all the new salesmen. To avoid losing his golden goose, Aaron offered Sam a fifty-fifty partnership in the agency, and with this added security, the business became Sam's shelter.

Now, after twenty years with the business as his only security, Sam was going to Aaron to sell his shares. As he entered Aaron's office he felt a deep soul-sickness that he had not felt since he had left the reservation.

"Aaron, I'll take forty cents on the dollar for my shares. And I keep my office."

Aaron turned slowly in the big executive chair and faced Sam. "You know I couldn't come up with that kind of cash, Sam. It's a good move, though. I'd have to keep paying you out of override, and with interest you wouldn't even take a cut in pay. I don't think you're in a position to negotiate, though. In fact, after the call I got this morning, I think twenty cents on the dollar would be more than fair."

Sam resisted the urge to dive over the desk and slap his partner's bare scalp until it bled. He had to take his fallback position sooner than he wanted to. "You're thinking that because Spagnola can put me with the Indian I have to sell, right?"

Aaron nodded.

"But just imagine that I ride this through, Aaron. Imagine that I don't sign off, that the insurance commission suspends my license, that criminal charges are filed and my name is in the paper every day. Guess whose name is going to be right next to mine? And what happens if I maintain my association with the agency and the insurance commission starts looking into your files? How many signatures have you traced over the years, Aaron? How many people thought they were buying one policy, only to find out that their signature showed up on a different one — one that paid you a higher commission?"

A sheen of sweat was appearing on Aaron's forehead. "You've done that as often as I have. You'd be hanging yourself."

"That's the point, Aaron. When I walked in here you were convinced that I was hung anyway. I'm just making room for you on the gallows."

"You ungrateful prick. I took you in when you-"

"I know, Aaron. That's why I'm giving you a chance to stay clean. Actually, you've got more to lose than I do. Once your files are open, then your income is going to become public knowledge."

"Oh!" Aaron stood and paced around to the front of the desk.

"Oh!" He waved a finger under Sam's nose, then turned and walked to the water cooler.

"Oh!" He kicked the cooler, then returned to his chair, sat down, then stood up again.

"Oh!" he said. It was as if the single syllable had stuck in his mouth. He looked as if he were going to launch into a tirade; blood rose in his face and veins bulged on his forehead.