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