Rose VanDusenberg, parts 974 - 977

974. The price range for gift items in the store was from fifteen to thirty dollars, and so the resort patrons gravitated to Coromo's paintings, not just because of the price, but because they were somehow more representative of their tropical resort experience. Over time he began to see a pattern emerging in these sales, they happened always on a couple's last day at the resort, when they were trying at the last minute to decide on gifts to take home. 

975. He began to expect to be able to sell at least two paintings a week, and he immediately replaced the sold pictures with new ones he would paint in the evening.  He had to involve himself in a little deception however; he changed his waiter name tag to read Koromo, instead of Coromo, and claimed that the painter was a friend from his village. "Coromo is an illiterate old man with no teeth who suffers from dementia," he might say.

976. Little by little, without his really knowing it, Coromo developed the consummate skills of a picture salesman, skills impossible to learn except over a long time in the perfect conditions. They were not exactly skills so much as a flowering of dormant aspects of his personality. First of all was the most important attribute; a complete indifference to any possibility of a sale.

977. The second necessary attribute of the picture salesman was the actual love of the item being considered for sale and his real reluctance to part with it. The third attribute he developed over time was a playful disregard of the truth, an a propensity to make up on the spot, far fetched explanations to the client's questions.