by Kevin Shay
And I’m off and running. First I harp on the hospital for a while, peppering my aunt and uncle with questions to illustrate the complexity of the problem. What about contingency plans in case their shipments of medicines are delayed? Extra fuel for the generators if the power goes out for a long time? Longer term, never mind the hospital’s own billing systems, what’ll happen to cash flow if the insurance companies’ mainframes go down, or Medicare’s? Then I backtrack and tell the tale of TEOTWAWKI from square one, making sure to tie it back to the health-care industry at every step.
“So no offense to you guys,” I conclude, “but I definitely wouldn’t want to be an inpatient on New Year’s Eve 2000. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t really want to be in a populated area at all. But no matter what ends up happening, the one thing everyone agrees on is that the clock is ticking. I just think all of you ought to consider whether it makes sense to take some steps to prepare for this.”
Silence. They stare at me. Shaken to the core? Ready to call the men in white? Yearning for another English muffin?
“Honey,” Marcie says, “can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Sure, babe.” Derek and Marcie get up and disappear into the living room. Holy shit, we might be on to something here. Thought it was a lost cause given their acute Amwayitis, went through the speech as a formality, but you never know. Of course, she could be telling him, Get your wack-job cousin out of here.
“I’m so computer illiterate,” Aunt Lela says, to fill the dead air. “I never know what to make of these things you hear about, the viruses and all that.”
“Well, this isn’t a virus, per se…”
“Don’t be so modest, Lee. You look up medical stuff all the time.”
“Oh, well, but at work, where it’s all set up for me.”
“I guess that’s a different kind of viruses,” Frank says, and we share a hearty laugh.
Derek and Marcie finish their conference and reappear. “Hey, cuz,” Derek says.
“What’s up?”
“We just couldn’t help, um, when you were talking just now…”
“Randall, the way you presented that was amazing.” Marcie beams at me.
“Oh. Ah, thanks.”
“Really,” Derek says. “I’ll be honest, you’re at least as good as most of the speakers they had up at that function. Just…the way you developed it, you made it personal.”
“So engaging,” Lela chimes in.
“He’s always had a gift for that,” Uncle Frank says with a touch of pride.
“And it sounded totally unscripted,” Marcie says.
“Yeah, but you had all the facts at your fingertips too.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say,” I say, and I truly don’t. If I was that convincing, why aren’t they convinced?
“Anyway, Marcie and me were wondering. You know, we’ve been telling a lot of people about this business opportunity. With varying degrees of success.”
“That’s for sure,” Lela says, wrinkling her nose.
“So Marcie had the idea, what if we could show you the plan—”
“Derek.”
“No, no, not to sign him up, Dad, I know! But if we could show you how we show the plan.”
“We all have, like, different ways of approaching it,” Marcie says.
“So if you’d be willing, maybe we could each try our presentation out on you and you could give us, I don’t know, a critique.”
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Frank says. “What do you think, Lee?”
“Well, I suppose if Randall’s willing. God knows I could use the most help of all. I think I was born without the salesperson gene.”
“So what do you say?” Derek says. “We’d owe you one!”
Astounding. Not a ripple of fear, not a hint of understanding that I’ve just told them about a clear and present danger. I can’t help but be flattered at how much they liked my delivery. Yet I might as well have held forth on the perils of dry rot or the benefits of leafy greens. Well, what can I do? Family is family.
“Sure,” I say. “Lay it on me.”
So after the table is cleared, I finally See The Plan. Four times in a row.
First Derek, then Marcie, then Frank, then Lela. I take notes, ask and answer questions in the role of a potential distributor, and reserve my comments until they’ve each taken their turn. I can tell they’ve been at this for a while. All of them have the basic too-good-to-be-true outline down to a science. Market a line of superior, affordable products. Buy the products from yourself and earn money while you get your shopping done from the convenience of your own home. Then all you have to do is sign up nine people, they each sign up six, those six each sign up three, and the money starts rolling in month after month! Of course the flaws in the business opportunity itself are too many and glaring to mention, but the flaws in their pitches are mostly fixable. Derek’s a little slick-talking and pat for my taste, and needs to spend less time jerking off over the lavish opulence enjoyed by the organization’s “big pins,” more time teasing out the prospect’s own vision of financial freedom, which might not include nine-course meals and private jets. And while Derek’s at it, he could stand to ditch the “big pins” and other alienating jargon. Marcie comes across as trustworthier than her husband, with an appealing guilelessness, but she leans too heavily on the quality of the products, going on and on about the cosmetics in particular. That won’t seal the deal for anyone who only wants to earn money, not upgrade his vitamins. Uncle Frank surprises me and does a nice job. I’d assumed his skepticism about the business would hamper his ability to sell it, but he turns it to his advantage by talking about all the doubts he had when he was first Shown The Plan, answering a half-dozen objections before I even raise them. His version of the story, though, gets bogged down in numbers and calculations, maybe his administrative background showing through—if you buy X a month and your downline buys Y, then you’ll earn Z. If you sponsor eleven people instead of nine, look how much bigger your monthly check will get. I advise him to dumb it down unless his target happens to be an accountant.
Then there’s Aunt Lela. She was right, she does need more help than the other three. Because she tries to tell the truth. The first year or two in the business can be tough going, she says, and a lot of people do drop out, but if you stick with it and work hard you can eventually see some profits. And along the way you do have to invest in a lot of support materials, the tapes and books and functions, but they really help out. Compared with the easy-money, minimal-outlay, can’t-miss system Frank and the kids described, Lela’s opportunity sounds unenticing in the extreme. I gently suggest she might do better to hold back certain day-to-day details of the business-building process and focus more on the long-term potential, the big picture. I recite some of her points back to her, then rephrase them more diplomatically. It strikes me as I do this that I’m pretty much coaching her in how to lie, giving her a crash course in the bait-and-switch, the foot-in-the-door. But hey, they asked for it. “You don’t want to scare people off before they experience firsthand what the business has to offer,” I say.
“That’s what I keep telling her,” Derek says.
“It’s true, he does. I just can’t help wanting, especially if it’s a friend of mine, I want them to know what they’re getting into before they start spending money.”
Derek gives his mother an affectionate kiss on the head. “See, Randall? She’s hopeless.”
“Guess I should start to think about heading out,” I say when lunch is over.
“Randall, I’m making some extra sandwiches,” Lela calls from the kitchen. “For you to take along, in case you don’t want to stop for dinner tonight.”
“Hold on for a second.” Frank goes into the other room and comes back with a small black box.
“What’s that?”
“Your grandfather, we could never really get him to write out a will. You know, his savings, what there was of it, we burned through it on his medical expenses toward
the end. And there wasn’t much in the house anyone would want.”
“The newest appliance was from about 1971,” Derek says.
“I remember.” And the wallpaper, probably older than that. Although it was the man himself, not the decor, that made visits to Granddad’s vaguely depressing. Was the vibe different when Grandma was alive? I have only a few faint memories of her. The condition of Granddad’s house after he became a widower sort of expressed his character. A skinny guy with a complete indifference to food, not only to what he ate but to whether he ate or not. Because he missed his wife and her cooking? Or a symptom of his general lack of appetite for life? From as early as I can remember, he had a quality to him that I eventually came to think of as halfway. Did his job well, but retired as soon as he could. And filled his golden years with no hobbies, or even enthusiasms, that I could see. He read magazines, not books; took walks, not trips; followed sports, not teams. Doted on Nicole and me whenever we were with him, but never appeared especially sad when we left and didn’t beg us to stay longer or come more often. I used to imagine some secret life for him, a special cupboard he’d unlock as soon as his family drove off, revealing—what? Philately, correspondence chess, gay leather porn?
Or, apparently, arrowheads. Frank opens the box to reveal eight of them, mounted on red velvet. “Anyway, I don’t know where he got these, but he had ’em forever.”
“Oh, arrowheads.”
“Not much of an inheritance, I know. Just wanted you to have something to remember him by.”
“That’s great, Uncle Frank. Thank you.”
His eyes have misted over. “Better go get that dishwasher loaded.” He flees to the kitchen.
“Aww, that’s nice,” Marcie says. “Be right back.” She gets up to use the bathroom. When she’s gone, Derek edges his chair closer to mine.
“Hey, bud, I wanted to apologize for all the tension in this place.”
“No need to, Derek. I understand.”
“It’s frustrating, you know? I mean, I’m gonna be a dad. Isn’t that crazy? But I always sort of thought I’d be pretty well off by the time we had kids, at least own a house. That’s part of the reason we jumped on the Opportunity. Now, though, it’s like—I really want to have a steady income to provide for the baby, and I know my folks weren’t exactly delighted to have us move back here. But if I go back to work now, I feel like I’m giving up on the business and letting everyone down and abandoning the dream. You know?”
“Yeah, it’s tough.” First my visit somehow morphed into a Toastmasters meeting, now it’s becoming a therapy session. I have to get out of here.
“Don’t mean to bend your ear, dude. Just thought you should know what’s behind some of the strangeness around here.”
“Hey Derek, do me a favor?”
“Anything. What is it?”
I’m about to dump some URLs on him, make him promise to check them out for the sake of his family, his unborn child. But then I don’t. I’ve said my piece. And these guys will have to extricate themselves from their multilevel morass before they can begin to cope with anything else. So I ask for a different favor instead.
“Listen, I don’t think I’m quite ready to be a distributor myself,” I say. “But I do have a few supplies I’m running low on. Maybe you guys could save me a trip to the drugstore.”
And with every appearance of enthusiasm I follow Derek into the merchandise-stuffed garage. The rest of the family joins us there. And I proceed to let my aunt and uncle and cousin and cousin-in-law, independent business operators, sell me a lovely selection of bizarro-brand toothpaste, mouthwash, hair gel, lotion, and vitamins, plus some crackers and chips and pretzels to munch on during my drive, and energy drinks to wash it all down. Which makes them very happy, which makes me want to cry.
chapter 5
444
Days
Something is horribly wrong at Pine Point Elementary.
I’ve been in a good mood all morning, despite twelve hours on the road yesterday and a night of fractured stuporous sleep at a motel in Mountain View. What is it about the atmosphere in northern California? Ever since I walked out the door and took my first eyeful of sunshine and lungful of fresh sixty-degree air, my spirits have been unaccountably high. Until I pulled into this parking lot.
Fifty yards away, twenty or so people march up and down outside the school, waving signs and occasionally shouting. At least two television crews hover nearby to document their ire. A protest. Against what? Not me, certainly. Best to stay in the car until I size things up.
I could try to place a call to someone inside the school and ask for an explanation, but I’d have to drive around and hunt for a pay phone—won’t find any in this neighborhood. The school is set back from a well-traveled road and occupies its own little block. Los Altos, as Gene described it to me, is a bedroom community where Silicon Valley workers bring the money they’ve earned wiring the world and pour it into property taxes. So even though this is a public school, it probably has a hell of a bottom line. And what would people protest at such a school? If these are teachers or staffers on strike, I certainly don’t want to cross any picket lines. I can’t read the signs from this distance, but they’re hand-lettered, none of the glossy printed placards you see at a union action. Angry parents, then. A few hold young children by the hand as they pace. Not really marching, but sort of aggressively milling, walking back and forth haphazardly by twos and threes. I roll down my window but can’t quite make out their intermittent shouts.
A car turns into the lot and parks a few spaces down from me. A young father gets out and retrieves his daughter from the backseat. On his way to work, and recently rolled out of bed and into his pressed jeans and untucked shirt—hair mussed, wire-rimmed glasses emphasizing the dark circles under his eyes. Maybe he can give me the lowdown. I climb out as he adjusts his little girl’s hair bands. She’s maybe six, a bundle of pigtailed extroversion. She sees me before Dad does. “Hello!” she chirps.
“Hi there,” I say, waving at her.
Her father whirls to give me the evil eye. “Can I help you?” he says, clearly wanting to do anything but. He instinctively pulls her against his leg, interposing himself between her and me.
OK, tread carefully. Whatever they’re complaining about over there must have everyone on edge, and even in the calmest of times a male stranger in an elementary school parking lot is a molester until proven innocent.
“Hi! I’m Randall.” It’s in situations like this that I’m proudest of never having let “Randy” catch on. “Randall Knight, I’m supposed to sing here for the kids today?”
“Keep witchcraft out of the classroom!” a woman yells piercingly from the crowd.
Oh boy. Witchcraft? If only I could read those damn picket signs, it might clear things up. Meanwhile, this guy has me all wrong. His scowl deepens, turns hostile. “Sing? So you’re with those wingnuts?” He jerks a thumb toward the hubbub.
This is going poorly. I try a disarming smile that comes out a wince. “No! No, no, no, I don’t know anything about that. Pine Point hired me, I’m a guest performer? I sing and do puppets?” I flap my fingers and thumb in a half-assed puppet-mouth gesture.
“Puppets, Dad!” says the girl.
“Yep! Lots of puppets,” I say.
He computes this for a while. “You’re not here to picket,” he concludes.
“Nope. In fact, I was about to ask you. What’s all the fuss about?”
He lowers his voice to prevent his daughter from hearing, but she takes in every word. “These idiots have been trying to get the school board to cancel Halloween for the past five years. So this semester one of the third-grade teachers decides to read her class Harry Potter, and of course the lunatics want to ban that too.”
Harry Potter! Of course. Now the pieces are starting to come together.
“Look, I’ve gotta go drop her off inside,” the girl’s father says. “Good luck with all this.”
“Thanks,” I
tell him. “See you later!” I tell the girl.
“Bye!” She stares back ruefully toward the putative puppets as her dad leads her up the driveway. All right, might as well go see what’s what. I grab a guitar from the car as protective coloration, lock up, and head for the building.
Nearing the protesters, I can finally read some of the signs. An older woman has a big one made of lavender construction paper, not quite stiff enough and drooping at the corners, that reads:
H
ALLOWEEN
+
H
ARRY POTTER
=
H
EATHENISM
The H’s are right on top of each other so it looks like a little ladder—descending into the depths of iniquity, I presume, though isn’t it the chute that takes you down and the ladder that takes you up? Excuse me, ma’am, but “Hell” would be a punchier solution to your equation.
One of the TV crews is setting up a shot. I pause twenty feet away and watch the cameraman fine-tune an angle on a tall man, expensive suit, well-coiffed silver hair. This guy seems like a focal point, the leader of the rally, definitely not a Pine Point parent. Probably doesn’t even live around here. An outside agitator. And he’s done this before, judging from the way he plays to the camera, waiting for someone to yell Action! before he expends any energy. He clutches a Bible in one hand and a Harry Potter novel in the other and casually holds them aloft, keeping one eye on the camera to make sure the books don’t block his face.
“Len, I need a level,” the sound guy says, adjusting his boom. Len is apparently the dapper book-holding man, who obliges by shouting toward the school: “Halloween is a tool of the Devil!” Full volume but zero passion—the camera’s not rolling yet. Testing, one, two, three.
I’m not quite up to speed on this whole Harry Potter craze. I seem to recall one girl last year at Ogden bringing in a couple of imported copies of some British novels about a prepubescent wizard, and she and her friends occasionally huddling around them. But this year, ever since I started my little tour, I can’t walk into a school without tripping over three copies of that Sorcerer’s Stone book. No doubt if I were still teaching I would’ve had to read the thing by now. Somehow, though, I’m skeptical that young Harry is really turning third-grade hearts toward the dark side.