Carl was a great salesman. Carl was a lousy salesman. It depended on what he was selling. He was a decent man, the kind that had to believe. "It has to have value, or it isn't worth my time," he would say while thumping his large puffed fist into his thick hand, lecturing any apprentice who would feign an ear. He was really reminding himself.

He worked for thirty-four years selling everything from hats door-to-door to life insurance, home computers, in-home AIDS tests and used cars. A lousy salesman with some pitches, but cars, he loved cars. He believed in cars. He occasionally tried to lie to himself, wanting to be convinced he was offering something of value, even though a huge percentage of the take was commission, like the AIDS test. He sold those strong for a while, and made a good chunk of change, then found out the tests were not very reliable. At first, it was just a rumor floating in the company wind, but Carl feared it was a truth he had always suspected. Once he heard the rumor on the radio he was unable to sell another test. He went back to cars, again. Carl selling cars, that was the great salesman.

Automobiles were glorious. He loved everything about them. He sold used cars early on in his career, but his favorite jobs (the ones that brought him home with a smile for the wife and kids without the aid of intoxication) were the ones at new car dealerships. Nearly twenty of his sober selling years were at new car dealerships, which makes it even more amazing that drinking destroyed him. He would probably be alive and happy today if he stayed with selling Cadillacs. Perhaps.

Before his final sale, Carl had been working the best job of his life. He was selling shimmering, flaunting symbols of luxury, new Cadillacs. He preferred American cars, and "What car typifies America more than a big, roomy, powerful Cadillac?" Carl would say. He had been working the job for four wonderfully peaceful years. Like most car salesmen, he was not making a lot of money, but he was doing well enough to enjoy a bit of life and pay the bills, and he drove a different Cadillac every week. With a new Cadillac every week Carl did not care if he was ever paid, as the wide grin he found behind the wheel was payment enough.

"They're freedom," he often bellowed. Freedom was why he could sell cars. He believed in cars because they gave people the mobility to be free, to pursue opportunity, to seize the world at its edges. Cars were cheap, no matter what the price, freedom and paved adventure resting under the ball of an antsy foot. When a young man dated, he was often at the whim of a parent's car. "How many people had their first time in a car?" Carl would ask in fond memory, sharing a smile. "When a couple gets married, the car is their journey out into the world to forage, and their return to family. When a man goes out to see his mistress, he does not bring the family, but a car and a condom are necessary, and the condom an option," he would pitch in giggly delight. The car, that was freedom, that was life, that was what made Carl happy. He loved their raw power so much he could sell them for a million bucks without a blink of guilt. He cherished the dreams they delivered so dearly he would give them away without remorse. Living took a car. Living well took a Cadillac, and to get one of those you wanted to see Carl.

It wasn't the first time, but it seemed somewhat strange that Carl began to drink heavily shortly after he turned fifty. His wife, Judy, never said anything about his drinking, just cut him a wide path and steered the kids clear. She had always before believed she understood his reasoning. This time she was confused. There were no longer any kids at home to protect so she stood by and watched, wondering what was wrong with her fragile husband. She knew they were not in financial trouble, at least no more than usual, and things had seemed to be going well between them. She thought it might have been because he had just turned fifty, but immediately dismissed the idea. "He's just relaxing," she unsettled with, only because she never heard what Jerry had said at Carl's fiftieth. She never heard the trigger.

Jerry, an overbearing man, was Carl's older brother by a couple of years. He too was a salesman, but unlike Carl he boasted of selling anything to anyone at any price. He did not take as much pleasure in selling people what they needed as in selling something that someone would not or could not use. "It is the mark of a true salesman," he often taunted Carl. "Any idiot can sell what they wants, what someone needs. Creating customers, that is art," he would challenge. Carl did his best to shrug off his brother, but Jerry always worked the sale, trying to turn Carl into something not Carl.

It was at the birthday party, standing around the barbecue. Jerry was a heavy drinker, but he never seemed to be drunk, or maybe never sober, no one knew. Carl was a happy Cadillac salesman, so he sipped soda and slowly barbecued the sweet ribs. Jerry eyed his mark, waiting until his little brother looked like he might be alone at the grill for a few moments, then sidled over and slapped his brother violently on the back. Pointing the one finger not clenched to his drinking glass, Jerry chiseled the pitch on his toughest sale, still trying to close.

"You've got beautiful kids, little brother," he paused. "They're doin' a good job of putting themselves through school. I bet you wish you could help them a bit more."

Carl smiled. He knew his brother's jabs, but he did wish he could help his kids a bit more, they were the first generation of his family to go to college. "They're goin' to be more than salesmen," Carl smirked in thought.

Jerry had given Carl silence to think, to find doubt, to bite, then continued. "When are you going to do that pool? Those stakes have been there, what, two, three years? You've got to be pretty close?"

Carl did not need to look toward the orange stakes in the ground connected by a dirtied white rope outlining the pool the family had dreamed about for a dozen years, and staked out to build three hopeful years prior. Every time they seemed to get close enough to build, a call would be made to the savings; the boy's car wreck; the little extra one of the girls needed for tuition; or, the funds Judy needed for her radical hysterectomy. Carl wondered what was next, dreading. "Perhaps it wouldn't get done," he pondered anxiously, turning the calendar fifty complete.

"You're a lucky man though, Carl. Look at that beautiful wife. She's been so supportive and patient. She really does love you," Jerry smiled, approaching an old close.
Every day. That was how often Carl noticed Judy's beauty. He looked to where Jerry was admiring and noticed again the warming, bright smile, one of the little things that made her more beautiful with every passing moment. Over thirty years of marriage, and she was more beautiful every day, and so patient. Carl felt guilty.

She noticed their stare. Carl smiled. She smiled back, always wanting to tell her husband about the times Jerry had propositioned her, but also wanting to keep peace with Carl's only brother, only family, a man her husband admired for a reason she could not fathom. Her smile lifted his spirits.

"Go fuck yourself," Carl whispered calmly, clearly, while reaching to baste the ribs again.

Standing back in feigned stun, Jerry tried to evoke guilt from his brother. "I'm just sayin', Carl, you are a lucky man." He put his hand back on his brother's shoulder and tried to close again. "Like I've told you before, I'm into something big, something that could set you up for life with only a few sales. Hell, one turn if you pick your mark right." He leaned around to look his brother in the eyes and whispered, "Stop fucking around, Carl. You're fifty, and your family is tired of waiting while you cruise around like a kid in your goddamn Cadillacs. Grow up, little brother, and accept the responsibility! You goin' to have her out there working when she's 70?" Jerry whispered in challenge, then paused for a moment, hoping this time, this day, the lifelong sale would be finalized. "Call me when you're tired of screwin' around, so you can retire and take care of your wife and kids the way they deserve before you're eighty."

A few minutes later Carl had a drink in his hand. No one noticed, not even Carl. He drank a bit more each day, until he got around to calling his brother, then he drank a lot.

"What do I know about selling medical services?" Carl repeatedly asked himself. Something about this just did not sound right, but he could see there was a ton of money to be made - quickly. "Just a few sales," he thought. "One, if I do it right." He had to keep the drinking up, as he always did when he tried to sell himself. "Jerry is my brother."

He did not say anything to Judy, who just watched in confusion. He fought indecision about Jerry's job offer. Then one day an old woman came to the dealership to buy a Cadillac for her husband. She sought out Carl, who had sold her friend a car.

The hunched, tired woman told of her husband's illness, and said that he had always wanted a Cadillac, but regarded it as a frivolous luxury. "He's a miser," she complained with a proud smile. That was when it happened, instinctively. Maybe it was the drinking at lunch or the mortgage check that had just bounced, but without thinking Carl steered her away from the car and asked if she would allow him to meet her somewhere to discuss a medical services company he represented. The two left the lot together, neither ever returned.

Before he died, Carl would talk about when she came to the lot, boastfully proud that another customer had sought him out specifically, Cadillac Carl. The story lost a chunk of time, as he did not talk about anything between the meeting on the lot and the night he left the miser's modest house a week later with a briefcase full of documents, video and voice recordings, all necessary to ensure the "medical procedure" would stand up in court. The week, a quick week, was a time he would never talk much about, but the most documented period of his usually jovial life.

He did not make it home under his own power when he left the miser's with his briefcase. He stopped at a bar for a drink and knew once he sat on the tattered red leather barstool with the squeaky swivel he would not let himself lift, and he did not. He drank until he hit the floor with a silent thud. By the time he was fifty-one he had managed to drink himself gently into the grave. His family watched, no one knew what to say. No one expected he would drink himself to his customers.

He was not shy about what he had finally sold, hoping, somehow, someone would give him absolution. No one did, as he would not. Even his wife was stunned when she found out he had sold euthanasia - a politely evil term for execution, Carl had come to believe - to an old miser and a lonely wife. It was perfectly legal, the investigation determined that, and the money he received from the old miser's estate as per the service agreement was enough to keep his family comfortable and in Cadillacs for life. The sale was supposed to make things better, but suddenly no one needed any money.

Carl spent his waking hours drinking to sleep. Judy found a job, something Carl had always been adamantly against, but no longer fought, and the kids did not ask for another penny. Every time he thought about having the pool built, he saw it filled with blood. The only one who was happy for him was his big brother, who Carl avoided for the rest of his short life. Carl did not know how to deal with the deception he learned: Jerry had never actually sold a "euthanasia service contract" himself, but made a cut from the executing company for salesmen recruited. Carl was the biggest payday yet.

When Carl quietly surrendered to the comfort of his coffin, the family mourned, though Carl looked content, having taken the only way to suicide socially acceptable, and ignorable. He had occasionally wondered aloud, in a bumbling stupor, whether the old woman and her miser had made a safe journey, and how he would follow-up, as was proper sales etiquette. He looked peaceful lying in his forever bed, like he did when he was cruising in a Cadillac.

They all understood why he had to go. They all understood he could never make that final sale. No matter how hard he tried, he could not sell the lie to himself or his family. He hoped they would learn something from him, anything. For but a brief moment, it appeared sadness was his greatest legacy, but time would bring back the good, the honest, the proud man enjoying a car, enjoying freedom.

After Carl had been six feet under for a few months, Judy quit her job. Somehow, the money Carl earned sending the old couple on a journey to the white light had been cleansed by his death. Apparently the kids felt the same way, because they began to accept their mother's generous handouts on their father's behalf. They were not going to let him die in vain, and privately they all blamed uncle Jerry anyway.

Guilt was something Jerry would not buy from his brother or anyone else. Jerry had made the ultimate sale, something he knew his brother really should not have had, but the thrill of the close dies too. There had to be another sale, another close around the corner. Beautiful Judy was alone now, and Jerry knew what she did not want, or need, and that was all he had to offer.

"Hi, Jude, how do you feel...," Jerry began. "Click," he heard through the receiver. "Again, tomorrow," he promised himself with a smile.