Part 2: Chapter 6 Summary

Bart Pollock, general sales manager for the electronics division of Knox Business Machines, takes Frank out to lunch at a nearby hotel and Frank immediately recognizes it as the same hotel where, years earlier, he had lunch with his father and Oat Fields. Pollock wines and dines Frank, flatters him, and when he learns of Frank's plans to leave the company, seeks to lure him into a high-paying position. The chapter unfolds in a series of flashforwards/flashbacks in which the conversation between Frank and Pollock is juxtaposed with his account that he later gives to April and her reactions. Pollock praises the direct and clear style of Frank's sales brochure, then orates at length on his philosophy of salesmanship. As Frank becomes more inebriated listening to Pollock, he interrupts to ask whether Pollock perhaps remembers his father, Earl Wheeler.

As...