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-title: Telemarketer
-genre: prose
-
-project:
-    title: Elegies for alternate selves
-    css: elegies
-    order: 25
-    prev:
-        title: Swan song
-        link: swansong
-    next:
-        title: We played those games too
-        link: weplayedthosegamestoo
-...
-
-It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the
-street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical.  He never had,
-of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only
-tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so.  He'd never thought about
-it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was
-now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to
-and from work in gritty blue buses.
-
-Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made
-Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the
-[ocean][], or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell
-listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes
-when he holds it up to his ear.  The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs
-overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor,
-a favorite of Larry's.
-
-His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles
-are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to
-think an [eagle perched][] on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was
-his desktop wallpaper.  The walls were unadorned except for a few
-tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script.  When Larry made
-a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
-
-"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name).  My name is Larry and I'm with (client's
-name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?"
-
-"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling."  (customer
-terminates call).
-
-Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall.
-Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer
-expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something
-in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it
-was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept
-him from reading further into the script.  So when Jane said, "Sure, I
-have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard.
-
-"Um, alright Mrs ... Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---"
-
-"It's Ms, not Mrs.  Em ess.  Miz.  No ‘r,' Larry."  She sounded patient, as
-if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her
-title.  But how often can that happen?  Larry thought, and he was suddenly
-deeply confused.
-
-"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd like to,
-ah, buy some..." Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair
-in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood, and closed his eyes
-tightly.  "Why don't you have anything better to do?"
-
-Immediately he knew it was the wrong question.  Even before the silence
-on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a
-mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer
-service and complain loudly into the representative's ear.  The rep would
-send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action,
-and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor,
-David.  David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the
-next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like
-crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to
-call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures.  After about half an hour
-of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in
-for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his
-office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way.  The
-world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
-
-Quietly, with the same patience but with a [bigger pain][], Jane said, "My
-husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for
-just a minute," and hung up.
-
-[ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html
-[eagle perched]: mountain.html
-[bigger pain]: arspoetica.html