Like Every Day
Something in the break room at PC Pro Group, the computer
retail and repair store I worked at, reminded me that I didn't feel like going
back to the sales floor. My lunch break had ended earlier, but to me the bright
red door leading to the rest of the store was a shield nestling me from the
demands of the sales floor. At noon, when I took lunch every day, the only
stations available on our TV (the rabbit ears had broken) were the Spanish
channel and home shopping. The company's fridge and soda and chip machines in
the corner hummed, buzzed, whirred, or shook at the same time every day.
Nothing excited the machines. The sink dripped at random intervals.
Just over eight years before that I had been on a three week
trip out west, visiting parks and taking pictures. At Zion National Park
the rain started my last night there as a simple, random, intoxicating pattern
beginning with a drop on my lips. A brochure said "thunderstorms are
likely from mid-July through mid-September." It hadn't mentioned anything
about flash floods, violent mule deer, or mountain lions (all of which I
encountered In my three days there.) In eight years nothing had been as
exciting as my trip out west visiting national parks, hiking, sleeping on
picnic tables under the stars; it was the sort of thing meant to never end.
I opened the bottled water in the lunch my wife Meggy (which
she preferred being called
instead of Meghan) had packed for me the night before. She
made the best ham sandwiches, once saying everything tastes better when it's made
with love, yeah, she was sappy like that. Ham and cheese with a bottle of water
and chips, it was Wednesday alright.
I pushed the chips across the folding table where I sat and
put my feet on the chair across from me then tossed the bottle cap behind me at
the trash can; it bounced off the wall and rolled next to the door. The water
never tasted like a stream of melted snow, the way the ads said. The door to
the sales floor opened and my work-friend George poked his head in. The sticker
on the bottom of the oval mirror to the left of the door read ‟Check Your
Smile!" Dirt covered the mirror like a thin cloth. I saw my short brown
hair and my shoulders' shape. My face looked like a dizzy blur. The mirror
showed a vague reflection of George's infant bald spot. I didn't smile.
‟Hey,
man, your break ended like twenty-five minutes ago and I was kinda hopin' to go
next. Everything okay, Merak?" George said.
Things should have been good, in four days I would leave to
go to PC Pro Group's annual executive conference. Not because I was an
executive, but because I would be awarded a paid- vacation to England. PPG,
the company nickname for itself, would send me there for a full week, first-
class, to stay in London,
in a five-star hotel, and I would only pay for souvenirs, but I told George the
truth, that I was ‟just kinda bored."
George looked at the TV. ‟No shit," he said. ‟Maybe
it's ‘cause you're
watchin' home
shopping."
‟It's more than that. Everything is boring."
George walked in and closed the door. He was the only
salesman I knew who could look good
in an off-the-rack suit. He put a finger to his forehead and
scratched. ‟Are you sure everything is okay, man? You don't sound so good."
‟It's just that nothing exciting ever happens to me."
George unbuttoned his suit-coat, used his foot to push a
chair opposite of me, then sat in it.
‟You gonna eat those?" he said taking the chips.
‟Thanks. So, why do you think life is boring anyway? I'd give either one of my nuts to have your life for a day.
Well, maybe a week, a day of being you isn't really worth a nut."
‟Neither is a week, but what ever happens to me? I wake up
at six each morning. Meggy drops
me off at work at eight, sometimes ten after, work till six,
go home, make dinner for Meggy and me; she tells me all about her day; some nights we watch Leno, then
we go to bed and start it over the next day."
George took it upon himself to spend the next ten minutes
reminding me of my impending
week-long trip to the executive conference, in Clearwater, Florida and
also of the trip to England.
I drank my water and watched the TV over George's
shoulder all while thinking: yeah, it will all be exciting at the time, but when it's over the excitement of
it will be gone, too.
I knew everything he told me. Currently I was the best
salesman in the company, moreover in
the company's history. The previous year I had sold a million and a
half dollars in hardware, repairs, and extended warranties. This year I would break two
million. I had outsold thirteen percent of PPG's stores, eighty-three of six-hundred and fifty – if you want
to be exact.
The door opened and Pat – our good boss – stepped in. He
tried to appear gruff but could
never pull it off. Pat walked a bit like a penguin, even
though he stood six feet and change. His goatee had gray in it, which came with sales management. ‟When did
the company stop requiring at least one salesman to be on the floor at all times?"
‟Merak, PPG's best salesman, is having a personal crisis, Pat, about
how bad a life he has.
One of us will be back on the floor in a few minutes. Are
there any customers out there?"
‟Nah. I was just checking to see if everything was alright
back here. I'll
let ya know if anyone comes in."
Pat pulled the door
shut with his foot.
I finished the water and tossed the bottle at the trash can
and missed, again. ‟Life is just tedious. Look at work. It's dead until eleven,
there are tons of customers for two hours, then it's dead again until three or
so. Repairs and on-site installations are the only things I enjoy but there are
only so many repairs a guy can do before they all look the same."
‟You bitch an awful lot. Man, one day you'll realize just
how exciting your life is and when you do you're gonna fall down under your
happiness."
No, I decided, I wouldn't.
‟Life is not a twenty-four-seven adrenaline rush. If it were
we'd
all have heart attacks at age, seven." George sighed and rubbed his eyes a
bit.
Nothing excited me then, life was on auto-pilot. ‟Thanks,
man." I stood, hitting my knees on the under-side of the table. ‟ Ow. You
know, I'd
check my smile if I could see it." I got some Windex and paper
towels and cleaned the mirror. ‟Much better." I tightened my tie, the
blue-black and white power tie I tried to wear once a week. I straightened my
suit. I could only wear custom-tailored suits because I had wide shoulders and
a broad chest remnant of my college rugby days. I'd gotten that suit from a shop in Northbrook, twenty minutes south on I-94.
The rest of that afternoon went as expected. I sold a few
computers without trying – boring. Repaired three printers, two faxes, and a
tower – interesting. Two ladies from my Karlton Kennels account came in with a
monitor which needed repair. They looked at me for a few seconds longer than
most customers. George told me they thought I was cute. I told him they weren't used
to seeing dogs outside of cages, and he ought to get back into his.
It took me half an hour to open the unit, find the shot
resistor, and order a new one. In addition to sales and repairs I also
installed systems for office purchases over fifty thousand. People without PPG
warranties paid a hundred an hour – plus a minimum twenty dollars for parts –
so I would fix or set up their computers. George wasn't under as much demand
and, as such, charged only fifty an hour. PPG repairmen set their own rates.
Repairs paid anything we could charge beyond $35 an hour. I had spent five
years in college learning how to sell and fix computers only to find out my
career was not as exciting as expected.
Even though PC Pro Group was a good job (they paid a salary
of thirty thousand a year plus a three percent commission on hardware sales,
the repairs fee, and fifteen percent for warranty sales) and after taxes I had
brought in just over sixty-five the previous year, Meggy and I still had only
one car, a purple Pontiac she had gotten six years beforehand during our sophomore
year in college. Meggy would pick me up each evening after work and we would
drive to our home in Gurnee,
Illinois. She had a job with a
small Marketing company in Libertyville, the town north of Vernon Hills, which
brought our total income to just under a hundred thousand, but between our mortgage
and property taxes we had enough money to eat well, cover our bills, and pay
for any emergencies which would come up, nothing more.
When Meggy picked me up I set my briefcase in the backseat
and sat next to her. November air tingled my lips and cheeks. ‟We need to have
the heater fixed," I said to her. She said yes, but in a way which
meant ‟Hon, I'm
listening to the radio we'll talk later."
Our house was in a traditionally blue-collar development
which had recently become more yuppie in composition, just like most of Gurnee.
We lived behind a Piggly Wiggly, away from the interstate a bit, away from the
mall, and away from the Great America theme park. We were still close enough to
the park, however, to see their annual July Fourth fireworks display from our
bedroom. Our neighbors were mostly middle managers at Baxter or Abbott, one worked
for United, two were high school administrators and across from us lived a
grade school teacher and her husband, a local policeman.
The house was a brick façade home with wood shingles, a two
car garage, a few trees in the front and back, and a half acre of mowable lawn.
Off the kitchen, seven feet above the ground, our rear porch overlooked the
football-field-sized flood retention basin. In the summer the neighborhood held
the annual picnic in it, kids also used it for frisbee and baseball.
Inside our home was nicer. New carpeting, ceramic tile in
the kitchen, three bedrooms, full basement, amenities that should have taken us
longer to afford.
Meggy pulled into the garage and closed it with her remote.
‟Meggy, remember I need to be at work at six tomorrow
morning,"
I said after it closed.
‟Why?"
‟George and I have an installation at eight and gotta load
the U-Haul trailer Pat rented."
‟Is this that sale you gave George?"
‟Harper Sales and Research, yeah. Nearly a hundred grand in
that sale. We'll
be all day and part of the night with it, George said he'd drive me home."
Meggy set the remote in a console cup holder, gout out of
the car and slammed the door. ‟Why'd you give it to him? That commission'd be
like four grand, that's three months' mortgage, or next year's
taxes, or, God forbid, Merak, enough for a half-way-decent used car."
I stood and shut the door, the seatbelt sticking out the
bottom. ‟Don't
I have to help George when I can? If it weren't for this sale he'd not
have made his annual draw and been fired. This sale kept him employed."
I helped George stay employed over the next three years, only I never again
told Meggy about it – she couldn't understand the bond of friendship
between men, the sense of brotherhood, that is.
‟Whatever." Meggy didn't like debating moral duty. ‟I'll
just go in to work real early tomorrow." She opened the door to the
house, a rush of cold air came into the garage.
‟Did you turn the heat off? No? Okay, stay here I'll be
right back,"
I said. Meggy pulled her purse in close to her and cast a few nervous glances
around the garage.
To my left a crescent of shattered glass, which had been our
sliding door, lay at the base of the doorframe and under the kitchen table.
Across from me the bathroom door was closed, a thin trail of broken glass lead
into the foyer to the right. I handed my suit-coat and tie to Meggy. A man
sneezed in the bathroom. Seemed her scented candles had a use after all.
At the time, I imagine, I was a bit more nervous about the
break-in, but nothing awful happened, so I remember being calm, I guess. I
walked to the foyer and then into the living room to get the fireplace poker.
The fireplace was half the height of the wall, inside a beveled three-tiered
brass frame, and then surrounded by brick. I grabbed the poker.
The TV, stereo, and video game console were all where they
should be. The étagère with our wedding crystal hadn't been touched, I
returned to the bathroom and tested the knob. Locked. The man in my bathroom
had heard me test the knob, he'd heard me walking around – he knew I was there and that I
knew he knew it.
From a kitchen drawer, right of the shattered door, I got an
icepick. The bathroom lock had a safety hole – push the icepick in and the door
unlocks.
I held the poker with my chin and slid the tip of the
icepick into the hole and put my free hand on the knob, pushed until the lock
clicked then tossed the icepick off to the side, twisted the knob, grabbed the
poker and opened the door. I brought the poker up above my head and prepared to
bring it down on the man crouched in the corner of my bathroom. What stopped me
was that there was only a boy no older than a high school sophomore there.
That was Bill. He looked at me and begged that I not hit
him. I lowered the poker. Something about how powerless he was, crouched in a
stranger's bathroom, made me pity him. I knew by his
look that life had treated him as second class. Like an old neighbor's dog
which crouched or hid when the owner would come near, a reflex of years of
being kicked and hit. Bill crouched likewise with his arms shielding his head and
his back towards me.
‟Who are you?"
‟My name's Bill, sir – please don't hurt me."
‟Well, Bill." I tossed the poker down the hall. ‟Why is it you're in
my home today?"
‟I just needed some food, and a little money."
‟Stand up."
He stood and took his red cap off. His bloodshot eyes were circled
by dark rings. The Hard Rock Café (Albuquerque) shirt he wore had holes under
the collar, an armpit, and over his ribs. His left arm had a needle trail. Not
long, he could have donated blood regularly, but I doubted that. He had jeans,
threadbare at the knees, and held a green windbreaker in front of him.
‟What you need is some damn clothes, man. Come here, I'm not
gonna hurt you. Meggy, go to the hardware store, I need twenty linear feet of
six foot wide heavy plastic for the door.
‟Merak?" she said
‟Just go get the damn plastic, Meggy." Bill was small enough
he could have curled up inside me, if I were hollow, but he might have had a
weapon. I didn't
want Meggy getting involved in violence, if any happened. None did, in fact
Bill was nice, almost charming, though very lonely.
Meggy's look told me I'd be on the couch that night, then
she slammed the door and left.
‟Are you gonna hurt me?" Bill said
‟No, I'm not." I got my wallet and gave Bill all the money in it –
forty-eight dollars. ‟Sit at the table, I'll make you dinner."
‟Sir?"
‟If you need food and money so badly as to break into my house
this is the least I can do. Do you need clothes, too? You're a
bit smaller than me, but I have a few pairs of jeans and some shirts that I don't wear
anymore. They're
yours if you want them."
‟Thank you, sir." Bill went over to the table.
The next day I wore khakis and a blue polo shirt for the
installation. Company policy said
‟professional casual wear is permissible for installations"
due to us needing to crawl behind desks, lie on the floor, and a suit simply
wouldn't
allow the needed mobility.
Mobility wasn't really a problem for me. I was big
but as a child and in college I'd caved and climbed trees and cliffs. In Arizona,
at Antelope Canyon
– a long and deep crevice carved in sandstone by water – I had hiked and
crawled through the winding corridor of the canyon, a course which looked more
like a Hollywood sci-fi movie set than a
terrestrial cavern. Down, up, left down, up, along the cave walls until the
end, a boarded off pit leading to an underground lake. The longest downward
glance of my life.
I always walked a little faster when I wore casual pants,
but that day I walked as if I shared a level with the dizziest of clouds. The
parking lot in front of PPG was empty except for the cars of the early crews at
Old Country Buffet to PPG's right and Silbourne's Bakery to the left. George held an empty
Silbourne's
box; he was an addict of their cinnamon rolls. He licked icing off the flap of
the box. It reminded me of the way a mountain lion I saw in Utah licked her cub.
‟ ‘Bout time you showed up. It's nearly six-thirty, man. We're
gonna be there all day settin' this shit up. And we still gotta drive down to Northbrook after we load up the trailer. There's the construction
at Lake Cook Road
which'll
set us back a bit and the network guys are going over tomorrow, so we gotta get
it done today."
‟I know, sorry," I said. ‟Hey, you gotta hear
what happened last night." I told George the story about how Meggy sat through
dinner with Bill and me and didn't look at me twice. ‟Bill ate two heaping
plates of chicken stir-fry."
‟Why didn't you just cook some kinda microwave dinner?"
‟That woulda taken like ten minutes. It took me a good hour
just to prep and cook the stir-fry. That's fifty minutes longer inside instead
of outside for that kid, even if the only thing keeping the cold out of the
kitchen were two layers of plastic. He'd been sleeping in freight train box
cars for the last six months. He's from Santa
Barbara and has seen every state except Hawaii,
Alaska, and Maine. Man, that's great."
I unlocked the front set of automatic doors, the gate, then the second set of
automatic doors. The door chime rang twice as we passed. I closed the gate and
locked the second set of doors.
I entered my ten-digit code for the alarm. ‟He's seen
forty-seven states at seventeen. He told me all about how his father kicked him
out at fourteen for being gay and that he'd sold his body so he could buy
heroin and other drugs. He ended up trying to get away from it by riding
freight trains. Take out the horrible stuff he's been through and he's got
a pretty exciting life."
‟Man, that's fucked up. Listen to you, PPG's number one salesman
sayin'
bein'
a hobo's
exciting. Man, you need to check yourself into a group home or some shit. How'd you
keep from freakin' out when you found your door broken? Why didn't you
just call the police?"
‟Man, I saw this kid crouched in the corner of the bathroom
and I couldn't
bring myself to not help him and how would the police have helped Bill?"
George and I walked back to the loading dock. Past four
aisles of computers, past the printers then faxes, scanners, copiers, software,
the locked peripherals case and finally past the furniture. The left wall of
the store shelved toner, ink, and paper. The right wall of the store was the
repair counter with, front to back, the register, repair equipment and tables,
break room, then the offices and bathrooms. The aisles were set up so we could
look down them from the counter, where we spent most of our days. When
customers entered the first thing they saw were our best computers sitting on a
blue velour cloth. Forty horizontal feet of top-of-the-line systems. Signs hung
from the ceiling over them and advertised the model and make of the PC.
Full-page tags with every specification of the machine they were under hung in
plastic sleeves from grommets in the velour.
Pat kept much of the store tidy but in the backroom his
anal-retentive nature flourished. I found myself quite at home with it's
organization and cleanliness. Furniture on the left and back, electronics on the
right. Ceiling-height industrial shelves held the merchandise. Five
shrink-wrapped skids of computers and peripherals sat by the loading docks.
‟Where's the sixth?" George said.
I looked at the received goods manifest. ‟Didn't
arrive. I'll
check the computer."
‟Craptacular. Man, the fucking warehouse is gonna cost me a
repeat customer."
‟Not the warehouse. Look here, the vendor, it's
gonna be two weeks," I said.
‟Shit, okay, we can deal with this. How are we gonna deal
with this?"
‟What all is missing?"
George looked over the manifest. ‟Five blades, a monitor,
and one big laser printer."
George and I substituted what we could and upgraded the rest
without charge. By the time we got the product from the shelves and loaded in
the bed of George's F150 and the U-haul, eight a.m. had come and gone. Pat's
assistant, Ron – our bad boss – came to see about the hold up. Ron was thin,
boney, tendoney, ugly. His girlfriend had two sons, five and seven – neither
were his but he loved them as if they were. Once he told George the only reason
he stayed with her was for the kids. Ron was, in the strictest sense of the
word, a pervert. Twice he had been brought up on sexual harassment charges and
would never progress further than assistant manager. It was a miracle he still
had a job. I swore to him that the first time his behavior cost me a sale or
customer I'd
see him fired. As such we were not always on good terms.
‟You guys like draggin' ass on the company's
time?"
‟Ron, bitch to the warehouse, okay, they didn't tell
us part of our order wasn't being delivered. We had to pull some stuff right outta
thin air this morning." Ron rarely brought a positive attitude with him. I took
it upon myself, on that occasion, to give Ron a heated lesson in customer
service and point out his lack of knowledge in the area.
‟Merak, I'm your boss, you show me some deference."
Ron turned, caught the toe of his shoe on the floor, stumbled a bit and left.
‟Ron's pissed at you, man," George said. ‟Don't you
worry about being fired?"
‟He knows what deference means. I'm nearly impressed. But
no, I don't
worry about it. Are they gonna fire their best salesman and keep a pervert
assistant manager? Not likely."
We arrived at Harper Sales and Research by ten thirty. The installation
took ten hours. Mr. Harper stayed, hoping to be home by six. He checked on our progress
every fifteen minutes.
At nine we finished loading the empty computer boxes into the
trailer. We drove past the Lake
Cook construction with no
indication of any problems. A half mile later the trailer fell off the hitch.
At first George thought he'd busted a tie rod end and swore because he still had two
more years of payments. We pulled onto the shoulder to investigate.
‟Man, all I want to do is go to bed," George said, before
shutting his door. The trailer had
stayed on by one chain hooked to the bumper, which had half
torn off the right side.
‟Fuck. U-Haul's gonna pay me back for that shit."
A truck passed at nearly eighty and blared its horn. We had our hazards on,
later I found the trailer's electrical cable had been cut in the accident and we had
no lights. Trucks couldn't see us until they got dangerously close. The clouds of a
snow storm two days away blocked each star, Venus, and the International Space
Station. The moon was a diffuse disc. A small flashlight on my key chain, one
of the safety flares from George's bed box, and the passing trucks
were the only lights we had.
‟The spring on the compression brake is gone,"
I said pushing the popped brake lever back to the off position. ‟If this thing
falls off again there'll be no brakes. Go behind the trailer and push it when I
give you the word." Another truck blared its horn. I yelled for George
to push but he didn't hear me over the convoy which passed closer then I felt
comfortable with. The trailer rocked in the wind off the semis. George and I
got it forward five feet and onto the hitch while trucks kept passing, honking,
and rocking the trailer in my hands. Grease from the tongue of the U-haul
coated my fingers and stung where I'd gotten a cut while setting the hitch on the ball. I
tightened the lock on the trailer by hand as far as it would go, got under the
truck a bit and hooked the other two safety chains to the frame of the pickup.
‟I can't find the cord to plug in the lights with,"
George said.
I found the three ripped electrical cables. ‟Here, it got
cut when it fell off."
I duct taped a flare to each side of the trailer. Back at
the store, even in the amber light of the receiving dock, we saw that the
flares had burned large circles in the orange and white paint.
‟Fuck," said George. ‟You know, this is the most excitement
I've
had in a long time."
‟I guess," I said. ‟It was exciting at the time, but now it's
kinda like, enh."
‟What's your problem? Life's not a spy novel, you won't be
in mortal peril every hour of the day. Until tonight the most excitement I'd had
this year was in last week's snow storm."
‟Flurries." I unlocked the back door, went in and entered my ten
digit alarm code. ‟Let's get these boxes unloaded and we'll call it a night."
‟Anyway, last week I went outside and tried to catch
snowflakes on my tongue. That, my
friend, was the highlight of my year up until tonight."
‟Sure, I know, my life is exciting, everyone wants my life."
‟Remember that trip you took out west in college? Tell me
that story while we unload."
I told him of the three week trip I went on to the western
plateau states: Arizona, Utah,
New Mexico
and Colorado.
I remembered how, the day after I left the Grand Canyon,
flash floods forced the evacuation of hikers and Indians. About Antelope Canyon, twenty-four hours after I was there,
almost to the minute, a flash flood swept through and drowned about a dozen
hikers. How, at Zion
National Park, a mule
deer attacked me. I was in front of it when it went to hit me. The day after I
left seven campers drowned in the campsite from a flash flood. ‟At a rest stop
in Kansas I
woke up at four a.m. with a hundred or so frogs sleeping on me."
George said: ‟No one else has ever had frogs sleep on them,
man, you've
had all these
adventures and complain about how boring life is. It makes
me ill."
I never told George, or anyone, that I pushed the trip up a
day due to a camping conflict at Zion.
I couldn't
sleep when I heard about the floods. Not from fear, from grasping
invincibility. It would be fifty years and two heart attacks later before I remembered
I was, indeed, mortal.
We talked, some, about the forecast for snow, and
predictions from two to twenty inches.
The next morning George and I showed up at the normal time,
right before eight. He was tired so was I. We only worked half a day. I spent
much of it repairing Karlton Kennel's monitor. I removed the shot
resistor and was about to solder in a new one when Ron approached. Ron didn't like
me doing repairs. He felt I should work the floor: Windex display pieces, face
the aisles, sweep; the stuff the high school student employees did each night.
‟How much are we getting for that repair?"
Ron said.
‟Two twenty."
‟How long is it gonna take you?"
‟It's been about three and a half hours, yesterday and today
so far; gimme like twenty more minutes."
‟How much was that part?"
‟Nine cents."
‟. . . Keep up the good work."
I snipped the exploded resistor from the monitor while Ron
watched. I used a small X-acto knife to clear solder from the anchor holes. The
chimes on the second set of doors rang. One of our regular customers, Mrs.
Linda Armstrong, a secretary for Ross Chiropractic, entered.
Ron nudged me. ‟I'd shave her legs,"
he said. ‟Does her husband get her juices going."
‟Ron, please. How are you, Linda?" I finished loudly.
‟Oh, fine, I guess. Doctor Ross needs some toner for his
printer and some tax software."
‟George," I yelled to the rear aisle, ‟can you help Linda get
some tax software?"
‟Sure thing," George yelled back.
"I'll grab the toner," I said.
‟You remember which printer he has?" she said.
‟I know all my best customer's setups. Toner'll be
at the front when you're ready."
I got them a toner cartridge and returned to the monitor. I
put the new resistor in place and tinned the soldering iron while Ron fluxed
the board.
‟That is one hot secretary. She could take my dictations."
‟Thanks, Ron, for that image. That's too much flux, wipe
some off."
‟You know we sell those really long desks here, if she were
my secretary– "
‟Thanks, Ron, really. Does your girlfriend know you talk
like this? No, don't answer that. Do me a favor, though, please at least wait
until she's
in the bathroom to talk about her."
‟Good idea, she just went in. So about that desk."
I tuned him out and soldered the resistor in place. After
the solder cooled I plugged the monitor into the wall and a computer, it all
worked just fine. Linda came out of the bathroom and Ron stopped talking, but
he watched her very closely as she walked to the cash register. I watched her
leave, but not in the same way Ron did.
‟Hey, watch this," Ron said. He went into the
women's
restroom and stayed there a while.
‟What's Ron doing?" said George.
‟I don't even want to know. Call up Karlton, their monitor is
ready."
‟I typed your number in for that sale,"
George said.
‟George, come one, I don't need the sales. You should have
taken it."
‟Look, Merak, we all know you're gonna break two million this year,
and that last year you alone outsold thirteen percent of this company's
stores. You're
the best salesman PPG has ever had, you deserve the credit, besides, Linda's your
customer."
‟Whatever, man. But thanks." George and I left about an hour
after that. Just like the night before, he gave me a ride home. He always
listened to WLS AM. Always.
‟This afternoon a high of around thirty with clouds
remaining. Gusts from the south at ten miles per hour. Tonight lows around
twenty, Friday snow likely. Temperatures in the low thirties, snow continuing
past midnight with nighttime lows around twenty-five. Now back to Rush."
‟You like Rush?"
‟Never got much into their music, nah, a few years before
me."
‟No, Limbaugh."
I looked at him and blinked twice.
George turned the radio off and we drove with the hum of tires
on pavement as a background for our debate on who PPG's hottest regular
customer was. I thanked him for the ride then went into my house to take a hot
shower. That morning repairmen had replaced the sliding glass door. Meggy had
left some forms on the kitchen table for me to sign. I took care of them then
lay down on the couch to watch a movie. I fell asleep before choosing one.
Friday was the day before I flew to Clearwater to
PPG's
annual executive conference. All the guests had reservations at the Clearwater
Hampton Inn, where the conference would be held. I couldn't wait
to get away from the tedium of sales. Just me, Meggy, and a week to ourselves.
I would only appear at one meeting. The rest of the week was mine to spend as I
wanted. I hadn't
told Meggy about the trip to England.
She would be excited to find out at the announcement.
Even in the dawn light I could see it would a gray day. The
new sliding glass door had condensation on it. I cheaped out with it since I
planned to install nicer ones in the summer anyhow. I thought of Bill, and what
he was doing. Maybe he was stowed on a freight in the Rockies going home to Santa Barbara, maybe he'd
patch things up with his parents. I pictured the Rockies
as green, year- round, with snow caps. Elk and Dall Rams on the fields and
slopes. A mountain lion, too. Would Bill notice the hawks watching for rodents
scared by the train?
Meggy drove me to work, like every day. My best suit was at
the cleaners, we'd
pick it up after work. I don't know why, but I wanted to wear it that day. Instead I
wore my dark gray suit – to match the weather. I had on an iridescent dark blue
shirt and a tie which matched the suit.
I kissed Meggy on the cheek, closed the door, and watched
her drive onto Milwaukee Avenue.
She'd
be at work late due to traffic, but that was understandable. Two police cars
were parked in front of PPG with their lights off. A silver Mercedes pulled
into a handicapped spot. The man who got out wore a tan suit and jogged to
Silbourne's.
I shook my head, sighed at how lazy people were that they would rather take a
handicapped spot three rows from the store they wanted to go to than a regular spot
three back in the row closest. I entered PPG.
Pat, Ron, George and three police officers were in the
store. Ron was handcuffed. I rolled my eyes and walked to the break room and
stashed my lunch in the fridge, slicked my hair back in the sink, checked my
smile in the mirror, then went out to the floor. Ron and the police had left.
‟Ron hurt his girlfriend last night," Pat said. ‟Told me
about it before the police got here."
‟What happened?" I said.
‟Said she got mad about how he wanted to have a three way
with her and her sister, so she hit him in the head with the plate from a
waffle iron."
‟Ow."
‟After that Ron picked her up from behind and tossed her on
the bed so he could get some gauze. She bounced and cut her head open on the
night stand. Later his girlfriend lied to the police, saying he hit her with
the mattress, so that he would be arrested." Pat griped a short time about
having to work all day then went into his office and closed the door.
‟Any stuff need fixin' today?" I said. George handed me a list
of the broken machines, there were twenty of them, most belonged to my
customers. Most of anything that came into the store, though, had to do with my
customers on some level.
For about fifteen minutes George and I debated the Ron
situation. I felt Ron's side was right. George thought they both lied. He
decided that neither Ron nor his girlfriend could admit the five-year-old did
it, in the study, with a candlestick.
‟So, feed any hobo burglars last night?"
George said.
‟Funny, no. I fell asleep on the couch. Meggy got me to bed,
but I don't
remember it."
‟Look, man, it's snowing. If it keeps up like that
they'll
be ten inches come quittin' time. Your plane leaves tomorrow, right? Man, you better
hope it doesn't
get canceled, be a shame to miss being honored for your sales."
‟Yeah, you know what, sales is easy. Give a lab monkey
product knowledge and customer skills and he could sell a million in computers
each year."
‟That's such a crock, do you believe that? Come on. You get
customers to buy better systems, printers, faxes, you sell them more than they
come in for. That's God-given skill, no one learns that. You can do anything
on this floor, you own this floor, you're king when you're
here. This company's deified you. Twenty years in sales and I've never
seen anyone who sells like you."
‟Sales is easy. Let the customer know you're an
expert. Then tell them what they need. This computer is faster and could last a
year longer and is only a hundred dollars more than that one. Want an extended
service plan? Three more years of repairs after the warranty runs out; and I do
the work so if I don't do it right you tell me, not some big company – and I
make it right... That, George, is the skin of a sales pitch. Are they using old
printers, if so then there's another sale to tack on. While they're here
did they want to look at fax machines, or scanners, or even surge suppressors
so that their brand new computers won't fry next time the power goes. Man,
you can sell one computer then easily add four hundred dollars in extras,
multiply that by twenty for an office order and that can run into thirty grand
for one sale. It's
that simple."
What I didn't know then, what no one knew then, was that PPG planned
to ask me to film five training videos explaining and demonstrating that
concept with actual customers.
‟Why do you want my life, anyway?" I said.
‟Look, you have all this exciting stuff happen. Mule deer
attack you, a trailer falling off a truck, bosses getting arrested when you
walk into work. Crazy customers running towards the store in hysterics, what's
that?"
It was the guy with the Mercedes – he ran towards the store
looking hysterical.
‟Wonder what he's yelling," George said.
The man ran into the store and the second door chimed as he
passed. ‟Call the fire department, my car's on fire."
‟George, you got it? Thanks, I'll go have a look."
Outside the Mercedes burned. Flames and black smoke rose from the engine and
front seat. ‟Fire department'll be here soon, I'm sure."
George joined us. ‟Wow. Don't see that everyday."
‟My briefcase is in there, and it has my presentation, oh
crap, what am I gonna do."
I thought he might cry. A man walked out of the Old Country
Buffet next door. ‟Yo, someone call the fire department about that?"
‟Yup," said George.
‟Well, I am the fire department. They just paged me."
The moment when a car's gas tank explodes is never expected.
The silver Mercedes with its smoldering roof and burned briefcase exploded from
underneath sending the car ten feet into the air and then upside down. I
remember the man crying out in horror when that happened.
The fire department arrived and put out the fire, which had
mostly petered on its own. A few hundred people had gathered to watch the car.
I overheard one lady say she needed a new one and the Mercedes was right next
to her's.
I imagined she hoped to see another explosion. After the whole thing ended
George asked me if, in light of the last four days, I was still bored with
life.
‟Mostly. Yeah, some exciting stuff's happened, but life's not
exciting like it should be."
‟Has life ever been exciting like it should be?"
‟Sure."
‟When?" George said.
I stammered a bit but couldn't give him an answer.
‟Life is not a James Bond movie, man. You have to be able to
be excited by everything that happens. The challenge of selling should excite
you. Going to Florida
should excite you. You should even be excited at the prospect of catching a
puffy snow flake on your tongue just to see how the coldness feels. You want
excitement, learn to like every day you're here, as in living."
‟Yeah, I know."
‟But that's just it, man, you don't know. You say you do, but if it
were the case you wouldn't be so depressed and looking for excitement to add a
momentary and artificial joy to your life in hopes of giving it long-term
validation or meaning," George said.
‟Look, I'm gonna go finish some repairs. I just need some time to
think, alright?"
‟No prob, man."
Snow kept falling and by quitting time ten inches had accumulated.
The weather said we were being hit with a super storm and the snow wouldn't stop
until Saturday. It had overwhelmed the county and there were no clear roads.
Snow rubbed the Pontiac
as we drove through the ruts.
‟What time is the limo getting here tomorrow to take us to
the airport, Meggy?" I said.
‟Noon."
‟Flight's at three?"
She nodded in her way which meant: ‟Babe, radio."
The snow did not let up that night. I couldn't get
my suit from the cleaners and would wear my navy-blue pinstriped one instead. I
packed for the trip and set the luggage by the front door, Meggy planned to
pack in the morning after calling to make sure our flight wasn't
canceled.
At nine the next morning it still snowed. Over twenty inches
had fallen and the news said eighty-five percent of the flights from O'Hare
were canceled. I called United to see if ours' was one of them. It was delayed two
hours but would still take off. I leaned up against the new sliding glass door
and watched the snow fall. Normally I could see the retention ditch. That day I
saw only white. I went to the garage and snow blowed the driveway and
sidewalks. I used a shovel on the porch and finished shortly after eleven. The
limo driver called to say he would be on time. I ate a bowl of soup and a
sandwich.
‟Meggy," I hollered upstairs.
‟Yeah?"
‟Nevermind." I zipped my parka and stepped onto the porch. Snow
had already accumulated again and I left footprints. I walked down the stairs
to the ground and out into the retention ditch. I looked up at the sky, stuck
my tongue out, and tried to catch a snowflake in my mouth. I spun, chased them,
fell into the snow. Meggy called me from the back porch; the limo had arrived.
I looked up, stuck out my tongue, and a flake landed on it. It tasted clean,
without flavor, how companies want you to believe their bottled water tastes.
It was a lonely spot of cold and then
was gone, melted. I waved to Meggy then dropped backward into the snow, looking
only at the vertical columns of white stretching beyond where my eyes could
reach.
