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1 | --- | ||
2 | title: Telemarketer | ||
3 | genre: prose | ||
4 | |||
5 | project: | ||
6 | title: Elegies for alternate selves | ||
7 | css: elegies | ||
8 | order: 25 | ||
9 | prev: | ||
10 | title: Swan song | ||
11 | link: swansong | ||
12 | next: | ||
13 | title: We played those games too | ||
14 | link: weplayedthosegamestoo | ||
15 | ... | ||
16 | |||
17 | It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the | ||
18 | street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had, | ||
19 | of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only | ||
20 | tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about | ||
21 | it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was | ||
22 | now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to | ||
23 | and from work in gritty blue buses. | ||
24 | |||
25 | Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made | ||
26 | Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the | ||
27 | [ocean][], or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell | ||
28 | listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes | ||
29 | when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs | ||
30 | overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor, | ||
31 | a favorite of Larry's. | ||
32 | |||
33 | His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles | ||
34 | are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to | ||
35 | think an [eagle perched][] on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was | ||
36 | his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few | ||
37 | tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made | ||
38 | a call to a potential customer it always went the same way: | ||
39 | |||
40 | "Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's | ||
41 | name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?" | ||
42 | |||
43 | "Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer | ||
44 | terminates call). | ||
45 | |||
46 | Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall. | ||
47 | Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer | ||
48 | expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something | ||
49 | in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it | ||
50 | was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept | ||
51 | him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I | ||
52 | have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard. | ||
53 | |||
54 | "Um, alright Mrs ... Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---" | ||
55 | |||
56 | "It's Ms, not Mrs. Em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as | ||
57 | if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her | ||
58 | title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly | ||
59 | deeply confused. | ||
60 | |||
61 | "Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd like to, | ||
62 | ah, buy some..." Larry put his head in his hand and started twirling his hair | ||
63 | in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood, and closed his eyes | ||
64 | tightly. "Why don't you have anything better to do?" | ||
65 | |||
66 | Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence | ||
67 | on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a | ||
68 | mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer | ||
69 | service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would | ||
70 | send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action, | ||
71 | and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor, | ||
72 | David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the | ||
73 | next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like | ||
74 | crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to | ||
75 | call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour | ||
76 | of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in | ||
77 | for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his | ||
78 | office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The | ||
79 | world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it. | ||
80 | |||
81 | Quietly, with the same patience but with a [bigger pain][], Jane said, "My | ||
82 | husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for | ||
83 | just a minute," and hung up. | ||
84 | |||
85 | [ocean]: theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html | ||
86 | [eagle perched]: mountain.html | ||
87 | [bigger pain]: arspoetica.html | ||