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1 | --- | ||
2 | title: 'Telemarketer' | ||
3 | project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves' | ||
4 | project-order: 38 | ||
5 | genre: 'prose' | ||
6 | ... | ||
7 | |||
8 | It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the | ||
9 | street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had, | ||
10 | of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only | ||
11 | tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about | ||
12 | it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was | ||
13 | now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to | ||
14 | and from work in gritty blue buses. | ||
15 | |||
16 | Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made | ||
17 | Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the | ||
18 | [ocean][], or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell | ||
19 | listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes | ||
20 | when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs | ||
21 | overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor, | ||
22 | a favorite of Larry's. | ||
23 | |||
24 | His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles | ||
25 | are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to | ||
26 | think an [eagle perched][] on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was | ||
27 | his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few | ||
28 | tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made | ||
29 | a call to a potential customer it always went the same way: | ||
30 | |||
31 | "Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's | ||
32 | name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?" | ||
33 | |||
34 | "Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer | ||
35 | terminates call). | ||
36 | |||
37 | Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall. | ||
38 | Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer | ||
39 | expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something | ||
40 | in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it | ||
41 | was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept | ||
42 | him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I | ||
43 | have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard. | ||
44 | |||
45 | "Um, alright Mrs ... Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---" | ||
46 | |||
47 | "It's Ms, not Mrs. Em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as | ||
48 | if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her | ||
49 | title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly | ||
50 | deeply confused. | ||
51 | |||
52 | "Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd like to, | ||
53 | ah, buy some..." Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair | ||
54 | in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood, and closed his eyes | ||
55 | tightly. "Why don't you have anything better to do?" | ||
56 | |||
57 | Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence | ||
58 | on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a | ||
59 | mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer | ||
60 | service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would | ||
61 | send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action, | ||
62 | and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor, | ||
63 | David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the | ||
64 | next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like | ||
65 | crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to | ||
66 | call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour | ||
67 | of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in | ||
68 | for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his | ||
69 | office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The | ||
70 | world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it. | ||
71 | |||
72 | Quietly, with the same patience but with a [bigger pain][], Jane said, "My | ||
73 | husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for | ||
74 | just a minute," and hung up. | ||
75 | |||
76 | [ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html | ||
77 | [eagle perched]: mountain.html | ||
78 | [bigger pain]: arspoetica.html | ||