To Live and Love In L.A.

by Ben Peller

  Fuck jumping from the frying pan and into the fire. I was about to plunge headlong into an inferno.

  The association I went to temp for next was suspect from the get-go, given their company’s name: Mortgage Capitol. “Mortgage” in its very definition deals with a temporary pledge of property to a creditor, or even more specifically, betting on a very uncertain outcome as in mortgaged their political careers by taking an unpopular stand. “Capitol” defines a place or complex of buildings where a State Legislature meets. “Capital,” which is the word I believe the founders of my latest temp gig were looking for when they named their company, relates to existent material wealth so as to make more wealth. Either way, neither title ended up having anything to do with reality.

  But when I came in for my first day on the job at Mortgage Capitol, the mortgage industry had hurled reality out the window, then pissed on it from thirty stories up. Everybody was getting rich off the mortgage game. A guy I knew at Cal State Northridge had dropped out his Junior year, gotten a loan, bought two houses in Simi Valley. Proper shitholes, complete with unfinished kitchens and roofs that looked ready to cave in at the slightest drop of rainfall. Fortunately, it had been a dry year for California, and he’d ended up flipping the houses for something like a hundred thousand apiece only eight months later. Meanwhile, while America had turned into a game of Monopoly gone mad (Buy, buy, buy, Build, Build, Build,) and people were swept into that tidal wave of the American Dream, I sat down at the table and took my place as a switchboard operator.

  Switchboard operator. Sounded simple enough for eighteen dollars an hour. Answer calls and put them through to their proper extensions while wishing people a nice day.

  My first day at work I quickly discovered my job description entailed quite a bit more than that.

  I found the reception desk empty except for two ringing phones and a sea of lights that showed at least seven calls were coming in.

  “Are you the new receptionist?” a woman barked at me. She held a steaming cup of coffee in her hand and from her jerky walk and clipped tone it seemed as though she hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “My name’s-“

  “Then why don’t you answer the phone?”

  “But,” I responded. “I don’t know how.”

  She sighed heavily, then pointed at the switchboard that had so many red lights going on and off it looked like a telecommunicative9 accident scene. “Press one of the lines that’s flashing, and say ‘Mortgage Capitol’ without sounding like a complete moron. Then transfer the stupid call.”

  “And you are…” I asked.

  “Raq-que-line,” she said, parceling the name out into three separate sections. “Your supervisor.” Supervisor was stretched into four acts.

  “I was told I’d have a fellow receptionist,” I ventured. “Someone to kind of show me the ropes.”

  “Oh, Luisa,” she said airily. “Who knows where the hell she is. But you’re here. And I don’t see you answering phones.” She took a sip of her coffee, and cringed a bit.

  “Not enough sugar?” I asked, hoping humor might help slant this encounter to a lighter note.

  “Are you going to answer that phone or aren’t you?” she shouted.

  I sat down. “Mortgage Capitol,” I answered as cheerfully as possible under the circumstances, putting on my headset.

  “Get me a loan officer NOW and don’t you put me on hold!”

  I gulped. I desperately scanned a scrap of paper thumb-tacked to the space between the phones. In what appeared to be hastily scribbled letters was the heading LOAN OFFICERS, and beneath were barely discernable names, extension numbers, along with what type of loan they handled. Some of them only handled loans of half a million or above. Some two hundred and fifty thousand to half a million. Others, “the puppies” as I would learn they were termed, handled the hundred thousand dollar to quarter of a million dollar loans.

  “One moment, ma’am.” I said, then stared at the blazing board before me. Names and numbers were side by side, but being that I’d only been there about two minutes it may as well have been the console of a 747. I hit a number with a name that sounded reassuring – Weiner.

  “Mister Weiner,” I said hesitantly. “Hi, I have a loan call on line-“

  “Tell them to suck my ass!” he bellowed. The headset, which I foolishly had at top volume, amplified every word. “I’ve got three fucking loans processing right now and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna not be available for their closings just because some asshole wants a marble countertop and Jacuzzi he can’t fucking afford!”

  I was stunned. “Should I take their number and tell them you’ll-“

  “Tell them to take a long walk off a short pier and hug a fucking octopus!” Mr. Weiner shouted, then clicked off in my ear.

  I turned around for a bit of help from my supervisor, but she’d vanished. So I tried another loan officer. He snorted in my ear. “I’ll bet they want a loan. Tell ‘em to take a number and I’ll get back to them as soon as I get half a worthless second.”

  Too intimidated to recognize sarcasm, I said, “Great, so I’ll get their number and-“

  “Kid,” he said. “How long have you worked here?”

  “About ten minutes.”

  “Figures. Get a clue, dork.” Another click, and he too was gone.

  I stared at the flickering HOLD button on my phone. Where the hell was my fellow receptionist? I hesitantly clicked back on and told the person, “I’m sorry, I can’t seem to locate anyone right now, ma’am,” I began. “But if you’d like to leave your number I can-“

  “I told you to get me a loan officer!” she screamed. “And I remember specifically telling you not to put me on hold! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  That her voice was being transmitted through a headset made it sound like one of the many voices I’d been hearing in my head lately, whenever I contemplated if my life was going to add up to nothing more than one big temp job. It lent a kinship of sorts, if only that it seemed like in the game of life, we were both in severely over our heads. What could I do with someone who was as clearly drowning as I was? Be honest with her, I thought.

  “Ma’am,” I said. “I don’t want to blow smoke up your ass, but it’s early on a Monday morning and these loan officers seem to be pretty busy-“

  “What did you say you little prick?” she shrieked, and I knew then this wasn’t one of my voices. They would

  never speak to me in that manner. “I have your company’s website right in front of me, and I have your boss’ email right here. You’re going to be fired by the end of the day!”

  With that blessing she hung up.

  There was suddenly a warm hand on my chin. I jumped. Next to me was a well proportioned dark-skinned woman wearing a gorgeously dimpled face, a beautiful smile, and an amused expression.

  “Another satisfied customer, huh?” she said. “Don’t sweat it. I’m Luisa, your partner in crime.”

  “My God, am I glad to see you,” I blurted. “I think I just screwed up—“

  Luisa pressed her pinky to my lips playfully. “Ssh,” she whispered. “We don’t like to use those terms around here. The environment is stressful enough as is. A few tips. Learn where the ‘hold’ button is. It’s your best friend. Don’t ever take any shit from loan officers, because most of them are stupid and don’t deserve to be making half the money they are. And finally, don’t drink the coffee in the staff kitchen. People tend to piss in it.”

  Luisa laughed. Though she looked a few years younger than me, she seemed to know a great deal more, so I laughed along. Then I spent the next couple hours pushing the HOLD button a lot, while not taking shit off any loan officers by telling them to take this loan call or I’d come back there and kick the hell out of them.

  Within a few hours I’d grown accustomed to calls of all kinds. People frantically protesting “hidden closing costs,” irate funders, an agent from the F.B.I., and a bomb threat
from a crazed individual who stated that if someone didn’t get back to her by three in the afternoon she’d blow Mortgage Capitol “higher than hell.”

  “Honey, we’re already there,” I told her with a calm I was proud to have acquired in just a morning’s time. “We’re looking down and feeling sorry for you all.”

  Luisa guffawed, and we exchanged the sly beam soldiers trapped in a foxhole together learn. We’d spent the scant seconds between incoming calls swapping bits about our lives, and darting out for bathroom breaks while asking the other to “cover me.” We were at war against the suicide borrowers that were ready to mortgage every red cent of their homes. Restraint was not an option, and the abuse they peppered us with made that clear. They wanted money and they wanted it now, and do not put them on hold.

  Luisa had absolutely no business being a temp, being that she’d graduated from USC with a dual Masters in English and History. As we placed calls on hold with liberal abandon, I discovered she’d grown up in the migrant fields just north of Los Angeles, near Ventura County.

  “How’d you get into USC?” I asked her.

  “Scholarship,” she shrugged.

  “You must be really smart,” I said stupidly, imagining what it would be like to kiss her.

  “I’m here doing research,” she leaned closer. “For an article on sociological discrimination on those deemed predetermined for a self-prophesizing trail which will entail subservient positions.”

  I nodded seriously, wishing like hell I didn’t know exactly what she was talking about. “I’d be a pretty good subject,” I admitted.

  She guided her glasses down just a bit. “I’ll just bet you would,” she nodded.

  “Seriously,” I went on. “Sometimes I feel like my whole life is someone else’s research project. And they’re on the edge of failing.”

  “What did you just say?” she asked slowly.

  Truth was, I couldn’t quite remember. One of my more self-annoying quirks is saying, on rare occasions, something that I or someone else might think quite profound, and then within a breath I promptly forget whatever it was I said.

  “Something about, I don’t know…” I groped. “Failing.”

  “Sure,” Luisa smiled.

  By this time I’d already met most of the loan officers; they’d come up to the front desk and introduced themselves hesitantly. After threatening to beat them up most of the morning, I was pleased to find I liked most of them. Alan was East Coast all the way, complete with an accent so Brooklyn that it was enough to intimidate most customers into asking for him politely. Gennifer was a very attractive Asian American who looked weary but seemed to have a hint of mischief to her. Jamie seemed like a good sort who had worked his way up from being a copyboy into the position of loan officer; an admirable feat but he had a look in his eyes that he’d rather be at home watching soap operas. On the lower end of the scale there was Morton, a fat slob with greasy hair and a swagger that seemed totally unwarranted. His first words as he strode up to me were, “I don’t need to take any more loan calls today. So don’t you send me any, boy. I don’t work for nobody but Dave Stein.”

  I recognized him as the one who’d called me a dork earlier.

  Dave Stein was the President of the company, and I certainly respected that. What I didn’t respect was Morton’s demeanor. I stood up, ignoring the phones shrilling behind me. “Hey,” I said. “I’m not your boy.”

  I was 5’9”, 177 pounds to his 6’3” and what looked to be excess of 300 pounds. I didn’t give a damn. “Give me an excuse,” I growled. “Give me an excuse to rip your fucking head off.”

  Morton’s mouth dropped open a bit; it occurred to me that after so much time spent speaking with people willing to kiss his ass in desperation that their loan might go through, it had been a while since someone had called him on his shit. Without taking my eyes off him I pressed a random line and said pleasantly, “Mortgage Capitol.”

  “Hi, I’m calling from the Los Angeles Times regarding classified ads-“

  “Yeah, you want Morton? He’s right here. But he doesn’t want your call. He doesn’t want your business. He doesn’t give a damn about you. Bye.”

  I pressed the release button then tore my headset off. “Well!” I screamed. “What the hell are you gonna do about that, man?!”

  What he did was back off quickly. He made a beeline for the corner office, which was undoubtedly where Dave Stein resided. Well, I mused. Not everyone manages to get fired from a temp job on the very first day. Surely that ranked as an obscure achievement of some sort.

  Luisa was snorting laughter.

  “What?” I asked, smiling.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell that fat sonofabitch off for weeks now,” she chortled. “But I always keep telling myself that as a researcher, I have certain analytically moralistic boundaries to maintain.”

  Now I had no idea what the hell those terms added up to, except that being a writer and not a researcher, I was pretty sure I was immune from them.

  The rest of the day consisted of phone calls, a quick very late lunch gulped in the community kitchen, and gradually increasing sexual innuendos between me and Luisa. In the interest of analytically moralistic boundaries, whatever they are, I won’t reveal exactly how we got into the subject of sexual organs. But get there we did, and she confessed to never having seen a white person’s penis in her life. “All mine have been café,” she mentioned.

  “Café?” I said.

  “Yes,” she smiled dryly. “Brown. But never blanco.”

  “White,” I nodded, proud to be just a bit bilingual.

  “Right,” she smiled. “Although I hear they can be multicolored.”

  Two-toned was a more accurate description. I knew this from the experience of holding and looking at my own member in a variety of scenarios.

  “I’ve got one right here for you,” I said jokingly.

  “Let’s see it,” she said quickly.

  “Right here?” I exclaimed.

  “Sure,” she said with disarming aloofness. “Nobody’s gonna notice. They’re too busy screwing clients.”

  I looked around. Behind a sea of cubicles were ringing phones and chattering voices galore. But none of the other employees in this den of loans, fundings, and a seemingly endless exchange of paper money had a clear view of the receptionist area Luisa and I shared.

  Anyone can expose themselves at a bar around one in the morning (believe me, I know). But at 3:30 on a Monday afternoon amidst a busy office full of people making the “American Dream” a reality, it takes some cojones.

  So I stood up, unzipped my pants as quick as you please, pulled my penis out, and wagged it at Luisa.

  She whooped.

  “It’s pink!” she cried. Then unexpectedly reached out and took me in hand. “And it feels so warm!”

  It was also rapidly getting so hard. Against my baser instincts I disengaged Luisa’s fingers from my member and tucked myself back into my pants.

  I sat myself back down and, out of a sense of misguided guilt, began answering calls at a rapid rate.

  Racqueline took this moment to come stomping past. She eyed us both venomously. “Why the hell aren’t my calls getting forwarded?” she demanded. “My husband just called me on my cell and says he’d been put on hold three times indeterminably.”

  Too flustered by my seconds-ago contact with Luisa to bother asking Racqueline why her husband didn’t just call her on her damn cell phone in the first place instead of wasting our time when we were busy pitching clients into the abyss, I was ready to apologize when Luisa spoke up: “You just used ‘indeterminably’ in the wrong sense, Raquel.”

  “My name is Rac-quel-ine …” she fumbled the last part of her name before asking, “What do you mean in the wrong sense?”

  “Indeterminably implies finality. The word you were searching for was inexcusably, which relates to an impossibility to justify.”

  Racqueline stared at Luisa with a stoicism that nonetheles
s showed a certain horror at being corrected by a temp, not to mention having so many polysyllabic words hurled at her at once. Finally, Racqueline marched off.

  “Can’t believe she’s pregnant,” Luisa muttered.

  Many surveys have been conducted regarding how many sexual thoughts males have through the course of a day. Numbers differ, but a constant seems to be that when men first encounter a woman, one of the judgments that flicker through a male’s temporal lobes is how said female would be in bed. It’s just one of those things. But now, hearing of Racqueline’s case, I realized that upon meeting her I’d had zero thoughts about her potential sexual appetite. She just seemed like the type of creature who wouldn’t give herself over to an act any more passionate than the opening a car door.

  Now here Luisa was telling me this thing was carrying a child. I felt like calling a tabloid and telling them aliens were here on Earth spawning children.

  Luisa apparently shared my sentiment. “She confided it to me last week in the ladies room,” Luisa went on, as we tapped our respective HOLD buttons repeatedly. “I can’t believe her husband was able to even get it up, much less come inside her.”

  “She’s wound pretty tight,” I allowed. “That’s like the sixth cup of coffee she’s had today.”

  Luisa just raised her eyebrows at me. I got it; I knew who pissed in the coffee.