He got a job demonstrating a new kind of pressure cooker in the kitchens of homes.
The salesman gave him piles of samples and pamphlets.
The first day Dean was a hurricane of energy.
I drove all over town with him as he made appointments.
The idea was to get invited socially to a dinner party and then leap up and start demonstrating the pressure cooker.
"Man," cried Dean excitedly, "this is even crazier than the time I worked for Sinah.
Sinah sold encyclopedias in Oakland.
Nobody could turn him down.
He made long speeches, he jumped up and down, he laughed, he cried.
One time we broke into an Okie house where everybody was getting ready to go to a funeral.
Sinah got down on his knees and prayed for the deliverance of the deceased soul.
All the Okies started crying.
He sold a complete set of encyclopedias.
He was the maddest guy in the world.
I wonder where he is.
We used to get next to pretty young daughters and feel them up in the kitchen.
This afternoon I had the gonest housewife in her little kitchen – arm around her, demonstrating.
Ah!
Hmm!
Wow!"
"Keep it up, Dean," I said.
"Maybe someday you'll be mayor of San Francisco."
He had the whole cookpot spiel worked out; he practiced on Camille and me in the evenings.
One morning he stood naked, looking at all San Francisco out the window as the sun came up.
He looked like someday he'd be the pagan mayor of San Francisco.
But his energies ran out.
One rainy afternoon the salesman came around to find out what Dean was doing.
Dean was sprawled on the couch.
"Have you been trying to sell these?"
"No," said Dean, "I have another job coming up."
"Well, what are you going to do about all these samples?"
"I don't know."
In a dead silence the salesman gathered up his sad pots and left.
I was sick and tired of everything and so was Dean.
But one night we suddenly went mad together again; we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub.
Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who's always saying, "Right-orooni" and "How about a little bourbon-orooni.
In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar, and bongo drums.
When he gets up warmed up he gets off his shirt and undershirt and really goes.
He does and says anything that comes into his head.
He'll sing
"Cement Mixer, Put-ti, Put-ti," and suddenly slows down the beat and broods over his bongos with fingertips barely tapping the skin as everybody leans forward breathlessly to hear; you think he'll do this for a minute or so, but he goes right on, for as long as an hour, making an imperceptible little noise with the tips of his fingernails, smaller and smaller all the time till you can't hear it any more and sounds of traffic come in the open door.
Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, " Great-oroooni… fine-ovauti… hello-orooni… bourbon-orooni… all-orooni… how are the boys in the front row making out with their grils-orooni… vauti… oroonirooni… " He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can't hear.
His great sad eyes scan the audience.
Dean stands in the back, saying,
"God!
Yes!" – and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. " Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time."
Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two Cs, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim in playing
"C-Jam Blues " and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks up just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows, and he knows innumerable languages.
Finally the set is over; each set takes two hours.
Slim Gaillard goes and stands against a post, looking sadly over everybody's head as people come to talk to him.