In
1977 I was a newlywed in New York City and desperate
for employment. I spent my days crisscrossing
Manhattan with an eye out for opportunity or ideas. I
was also looking for a bottle of my favorite Croft
Original (Fine Old) Pale Cream Sherry to bring home
and console me at the day's end. Despite Manhattan
being Manhattan, no one was carrying my sherry.
Everywhere instead was to be found the ubiquitous
Harveys Bristol Cream, which I regarded as inferior.
Determined to have my sherry, if not employment, I
had contacted Croft's importer/distributor and
learned they carried it at Pauillac's Spirits - which
is really not the name, but I am withholding the name
for reason that will become apparent.
While I was in the shop, complimenting them on their
selection and for being the only folks in town to
sell my sherry, I got to talking with Mr Pauillac's
sister - not her real name - a very vivacious and
pleasant looking young woman. We talked wine and she
was impressed with my knowledge and manners. I said I
would have enjoyed working in a place like theirs and
she said there was very likely a job opening. I came
back another day and met and shook hands with Mr
Pauillac himself. He stood rigid, offering a limp
hand to shake as if mine was dirty. I found myself
employed as a wine salesman at $3.00 an hour. At the
end of my first day of work I went home with a bottle
of Saint-Julien, 1971 Chateau Glana La Rose, priced
$3.99 before my 20% discount.
Mr Pauillac was a tall man of elegant appearance, a
pretentious man given to frequent bursts of frightful
temper regardless of his store being crowded with
customers. He could present himself with considerable
dignity, yet in private he was a vulgar man. He hated
his brother-in-law whom he had working for him. The
brother-in-law was a pompous ass who shirked work and
acted as if he owned the business. I quickly learned
to dislike them both.
I did not like Mr Pauillac's mother. She made no
secret of thinking me distrustful. Whenever I was
assigned to the cash register, if she made an
appearance, she'd vociferate for all the shoppers to
hear how I was not to be trusted near the cash
register. She would chase me away. I once made the
mistake of calling her by her first name, to which
she berated me in front of customers not to do again
for we were not friends. She was right to correct me
because I, too, felt we were not friends, but she was
wrong to correct me in that manner.
Happily, Mr Pauillac's sister was not my only friend
in this family business. There was also Mr Pauillac's
father, a short rotund man with a cigar always in his
face. He was more interested in the television behind
the counter than the customers, continually mumbling,
full of complaints, yet with me he was ever generous
with compliments. He thought I did very good, and
that I would work out extremely well. He kept telling
his wife to leave me alone, but it was to no avail.
Because I was fond of Mr Pauillac's sister, because
she trusted me and was gentle and kind, I detested
her husband's lechery. He was always applying extra
attention to the young ladies who entered the shop.
One day Mr Pauillac was instructing me in how to
properly bag bottles. He had observed me doing it
wrong. It was the brother-in-law who had taught me
differently. In an instant the two were at
loggerheads. "You're fired! Get the hell
out!" Mr Pauillac shouted. His command could not
have escaped the notice of every customer. It didn't
make any difference. The prig, his brother-in-law,
still hung around the shop when Mr Pauillac wasn't
there, doing no more or less work than before.
I was not as happy with Mr Pauillac's treatment of
his father. Papa Pauillac was to turn eighty in June.
He worked from nine to nine, Monday through Saturday,
but he was making some costly errors. Mr Pauillac
complained, "Father, you're too old. I don't
want you making these mistakes. You're so difficult.
You must stop working these long hours. You can't
work every day of the week." His father, whose
business it was before he gave it to his son, was
made to feel ashamed, was visibly hurt. Still, he
would ignore his son and the next day he had
forgotten it all. He was always telling his son he
would quit the shop early that day when his son
insisted, but he'd never get around to it and was
always the last one out the door.
I enjoyed the job when Mr Pauillac or his mother
weren't screaming at someone. I had customers who
sought me out for advice.
A Texan, who looked like a professional football
player, came to me needing advice one day. He wanted
to impress a woman he was meeting that night. The
woman loved Champagne and he wanted to bring her the
Champagne that would most impress. In 1977 Dom
Perignon was regarded most highly. I asked how
serious was the woman about her Champagne? If she
really knew her Champagnes, she would better
appreciate Louis Roederer Cristal, even though in
those days it was less known and less expensive than
the Dom Perignon. He bought two bottles of the
Cristal. The next day he was back in the shop eager
to thank me with a hardy handshake, which I accepted,
and a hundred dollar bill, which I declined.
Snobs were the funniest. They were caricatures of the
snobs that appeared on television's situation
comedies. Didn't they ever watch television and see
themselves ridiculed? They were the easiest to sell
the most expensive wines to; I would sell them the
Dom Perignon.
One evening, cold and wet, Mr Pauillac's father asked
me to do him a favor and I said certainly. I made a
delivery of Champagne to - well, let's just say a
ritzy apartment community. The particular apartment I
visited was beautifully decorated. The theme was
Chinese. On the walls were hung fans and scroll
paintings. Behind the low couch carved from cherry
wood was an immense Chinese screen. On black
lacquered chests were objets d'art, small jade and
ivory figurines, and a pair of Chinese funerary
horses. To look across the living room through a wall
of glass smeared with raindrops, beyond the balcony I
saw the sparkling Queensborough Bridge. This
beautiful apartment's occupant was a young woman
expensively dressed in a lacey white gown that hugged
her too plump body. Her carefully coiffured hair, the
excessive makeup on her inflated model's face, the
perfume that permeated the apartment and made it hard
to breathe, she was a Cosmopolitan cover-girl stuffed
with pillows. She didn't trust me, eyed me as if I
was about to pounce on her and rape her. When I asked
about the art that surrounded her, she knew nothing
about it, not even that it was Chinese. She counted
out the bill to the last penny and gave no tip.
Then there was the old lady who lived at the
Waldorf-Astoria. I delivered seven bottles of Harveys
Bristol Cream to her, an order she received once a
week from Pauillac's. She answered the door in her
bathrobe. Pauillac's father told me she never left
that room, never dressed, had retired to that room in
the hotel and had everything delivered, including her
bottles of sherry. She gave a very good tip. On the
way out someone approached me from the
Waldorf-Astoria staff. They informed me that there
was a side entrance and service elevator that I was
to use next time.
Another delivery was to a jazz pianist, an elderly,
slender African-American who stood in contrast to his
living room, which was filled with white furniture,
white rug, white walls, everywhere crystal, and at
the room's center a grand piano, white. There were
also photographs throughout the room of his career in
Europe. I recognized famous faces and he started
stories, forget where they were going, and gave them
up. He was trembling. He also appeared to fear me, as
if I might beat and rob him, until he had opened the
bottle I brought and tasted it. That very first drink
calmed him. He became friendlier and gave me a fair
tip.
Just how many years did I work for Pauillac's
Spirits? I turned to my notebooks and discovered I
worked for them a mere two months. It was bad enough
I was taking home too much of my pay in discounted
bottles, but then I was cheated out of overtime. I
approached Mr Pauillac to complain. It was hard
enough to catch him at an unbusy moment. I said,
"I want to talk to you about money." I got
no further as he interrupted, "Yes, you're
getting paid too much. I want it to be arranged that
you get a day off in the week." The loss of that
sixth day would of course cost me my overtime, an
extra $36 that made my income barely enough. That was
the turning point at which I decided to quit. The
next day I gave them a week's notice.
Suddenly Mr Pauillac had the time for me. He sat me
down facing his desk and began with, "I happen
to like you." He tried to sell me on the future
of the business, but said nothing about my future in
that business. He made it sound like my advantage was
just to hang around his growing success, yet would
not explicate how I could share in that success.
On the 3rd December 2004, I had my twenty-fifth
anniversary with AT&T. Twenty-five years have not
brought me the wealth of memories I had working two
months for the Pauillacs. Today Mr Pauillac is
perhaps Manhattan's biggest name in the wine
business, and I don't drink wine as often as I used
to. It's too expensive.
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