Hell of a Book

by Jason Mott

  In high school, I was the skinny kid with bad acne that didn’t talk and that no one talked to. I never fell in love. Or, rather, I fell in love but it was never returned. Friday and Saturday nights were spent in my bedroom with a bowl of Cheetos and a plot so complicated, I needed three dry-erase boards just to keep up with it. On senior prom night, while everyone else my age was out learning the geometry of the opposite sex in the back seats of cars and the bedrooms of parentless homes, I was lying on the floor of my living room with an ink pen between my teeth and a Boyz II Men cassette crooning at a low roar while I tried to figure out why the main character in my third novel—a detective named “D.T.”—was a man who had never gotten a fair shake in life and had suffered because of it and, oddly, could never remember how to tie his shoes. I wanted it to be an endearing personality quirk, but it just wound up reading like he had Alzheimer’s. Later in life, as I kept writing him, D.T. the Detective would come to remind me of my father, but for different reasons.

  When I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with my daydreaming problem. I saw things. I saw dragons in sunsets and rainbow skies at midnight. I had friends that only I could see and my dog spoke to me. It was a wild time. And it was a bit too much for the small life my country upbringing had room for. I think I scared my parents pretty well in those first few months. We tried doctors and medicines but, in the end, I just learned to keep my mouth shut and, eventually, I began to get a sense of what was real and what was mine alone to see and experience.

  Learning that difference made my parents feel like their son was sane again—being the Baptists that they were, they promptly offered up the glory to God—and it wound up being the greatest gift I ever had. Entire worlds were mine and mine alone. People, creatures, and sights unimagined by most people were a place where I lived.

  It went this way for years. Just an era of dreams, delusions, and the usual social awkwardness mantled on the shoulders of all teenagers.

  Before I wrote Hell of a Book, I worked in Customer Service Hell. I’ve ridden cash registers at Walmart, peddled pots and pans at Bed Bath & Beyond, slung soggy spaghetti noodles and endless breadsticks at Olive Garden. The list goes on. If there’s a customer out there in need, chances are I’ve serviced them. But the job I held just before my life changed was at a certain internationally known cell phone provider that, for the sake of litigation avoidance, we’ll just call “Major Cell Phone Company.” As Sharon, my agent, likes to say: “Don’t get sued unless you can guarantee it’ll be good publicity for your book.”

  Let’s take a little moment to backtrack a bit. Bask in a few memories of the way things used to be. In this context, the rules dictate that when memory is put on a page it’s called backstory.

  So picture me in a cubicle on the second floor of a three-floor call center in the sweaty underarm of southeastern North Carolina. I’m sitting there at my desk with a pair of headphones on, chatting with someone I’ll never meet but who, in her own way, was a damned fine dame.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I tell the woman on the phone. She’s in Brooklyn and I’m in North Carolina. She’s got one of those splendid New York accents—all demand and immediacy—but she seems swell enough. She laughs at my jokes and she’s one of the saner customers I’ve had today.

  “So what do you think?” she asks.

  “Well, I don’t think he’s cheating,” I say. Which is only a partial lie. The truth is that I don’t think her husband’s cheating on her, but the fact that she felt the need to call in and have me sift through six months of phone records shows me that there’s definitely some issue with their marriage.

  “What do you think it is?” she asks.

  “I just think maybe the two of you need to learn to communicate a little better,” I say. “The fact is, you’re pretty great—at least, from this side of the phone—and, from what I’ve heard, he seems like the type of Joe who’s doing right by you. So I think the two of you should get a room somewhere for the weekend. You know, trip the light fantastic until nobody can breathe and all you can do is feel. When’s the last time you did that?”

  “Nineteen ninety-four,” she says.

  “Ninety-four was a good year,” I say.

  “It was a wonderful year,” she replies.

  “Jean-Claude Van Damme was king of the world back then.”

  “And let’s not forget Seagal.”

  “Let’s never forget Seagal.”

  Then she sighs and it’s one of those long, relaxing sighs that says she’s finally letting go of whatever she’s been holding on to. She’s finally clawing her way out of her relationship and back to herself. We all get lost in one another. And sometimes it takes a total stranger who just happens to work at our cell phone company to help us find our way out of that kind of forest. It’s nobody’s fault.

  So the woman from New York and I don’t forget Seagal for the rest of that conversation—which doesn’t last much longer. She’s gotten what she came for. I’ve applied a tourniquet to her marriage and saved her fifteen bucks on her monthly cell phone plan. A win for me. A win for her. A loss for Major Cell Phone Company.

  I let her go with one of my classic lines: “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  She starts to say something but my finger is already on the End Call button. The last thing I hear is something along the lines of “Did you hear about the shoot—”

  And then she’s gone.

  That’s essentially what the job is: meet someone, form a bond, help them, let them go when the time comes.

  Immediately after Ms. 1994 is gone, my buddy Sean comes walking over from his cubicle to mine. Sean’s a good guy. The type of guy you’d be proud to go off to war with if the opportunity arose. He’s a straight shooter, as some people are apt to say.

  “So how goes the morning?” Sean asks.

  “Met a woman who was in love back in ninety-four,” I say.

  “Ninety-four was a good year.”

  “That’s what I told her.”

  “I could go for someone cool like that. I just spent the last hour talking to a pilot.”

  “Fuck.”

  For the record: pilots are horrible people. Just horrible, horrible people—at least, when it comes to the world of customer service. Maybe it’s all that flight school bravado they get from watching reruns of Top Gun just before they take to the skies in what’s basically a giant steel elephant. I think they imagine being pursued by Russian MiGs and all that.

  Whatever the reason, when pilots become customers, they show up on the other end of the phone line barking orders. You always know a pilot when they call in because they always tell you they’re pilots. “I’m a pilot!” they shout. And then they say: “If I make mistakes, people can die! Do you understand what that means?”

  Apparently, it means that they’re allowed to yell at you and call you a stupid buffoon, an idiot, a moron, a pussy, a bitch, a cunt, and whatever else comes to mind.

  “Pilots,” I say to Sean. “Goddamn pilots.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “How many fuck yous did he lay on you?”

  “I lost count at seventeen.” Sean shakes his head. “Hey, did you hear about that boy?”

  “What boy?” I ask.

  “The boy who—”

  Just then, an alarm goes off nearby. It’s one of those rapid, irritating buzzers that makes you think of electricity arcing through fingertips.

  “Hell,” Sean says, pinching his nose in frustration.

  “Surprised we made it this long before it happened,” I say.

  From somewhere in the sea of cubicles, like a tidal wave of obnoxiousness, they come . . . the Culture Crew. The Culture Crew are the people Major Cell Phone Company tasks with saving our sanity at a job steeped in insanity.

  Working in customer service sucks. And working customer service at Major Cell Phone Company—or any cell phon
e company—sucks even more. The fact is, no one calls their cell provider’s customer service number because they’re happy. Nobody calls to say “Hey, guy or gal. I’m having a great day. Just wanted to let you know.”

  Oh no.

  They call in with problems. And nine times out of ten, the problem is something that I or my coworkers had absolutely nothing to do with.

  Your call got dropped? The cell tower did that. Not me.

  Your kids ran up your phone bill? Little Johnny or Little Susie did that. Not me.

  Your phone fell in a puddle of water? Gravity did that. Not me.

  Your phone got eaten by your pet raccoon? Randy the Raccoon did that—true story. Not me.

  You were traveling in Europe and your phone told you that you were roaming but you still used it anyway and now you’ve got a five-thousand-dollar phone bill? You and whatever network you were roaming on did that. Not me.

  But when you called in, I’m the guy who got the call. I or one of my beloved coworkers. Eight hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year: we’re the people you blame.

  Try sitting through that for four years and not going off the deep end. Few people are built for it. Fewer and fewer each and every day. Half the people working at Major Cell Phone Company are on antianxiety pills or antidepressants. And a significant number of them are gun owners.

  So with that going on, people got in the habit of quitting the job. They quit it frequently and in style. Our office had the highest turnover rate in the whole damn city. More than the police force. More than the local paper mill where at least twice a year somebody lost an extremity on a saw blade. So once the higher-ups got wind of how everyone was quitting the job, they came up with the Culture Crew.

  The Culture Crew smiles too much. The Culture Crew laughs too much. The Culture Crew is too damned excited about any and every thing that happens in the course of an average day. But that’s their job. They exist to keep you from quitting, to keep you from yelling at Mr. Asshole who has just called in and reminded you that he’s not the kind of loser to ever work a job like yours. They exist to keep you from coming into the building one day with an anger that could get you in trouble.

  So when the buzzer goes off, we know they’re coming. It’s like the blowing of some ancient war horn. You gird your loins and await the horde.

  Sean and I watch as the Culture Crew emerges from the wasteland of corporate inculcation. Their smiles fly ahead of them like military banners. They carry baskets filled with miniature candies that sometimes spill out onto the floor, leaving behind a trail of sugary goodness, marking their sacred path for others to follow.

  After a quick look around, I see where they’re headed. A few rows over in Cubicle Hell, a young blonde woman—too young and too optimistic-looking to have been working here very long—has just bolted up from her desk with a grin on her face. She puts a hand over her headset and declares, “I just saved a customer!”

  Major Cell Phone Company loves it when you keep people from disconnecting lines of service. They love it more than anything else in the world.

  She looks around for someone to high-five her. She gets one taker. It’s a pretty limp endorsement. Only new people who have yet to have their spirit broken actually care about saving customers. Veterans just want to survive.

  But the Culture Crew more than makes up for that when they finally reach her. They pull the cover off of one of their baskets to reveal an assortment of doughnuts. They reach in and pull out two chocolate-covered ones and place them on the desk in front of her. Then they grab a fistful of miniature candies and toss them at her like confetti.

  “Congratulations!” the Culture Crew leader shouts. She is a tall blonde woman who is perpetually too thin and perpetually wearing too much makeup. She looks like Barbie came to life and couldn’t find anything better to do with her time. So she aged a little and married someone other than Ken and came to work for the corporate machine.

  Having buried the excited, line-saving woman in doughnuts and candies, the Culture Crew disappears into the hive of cubicles like steam. One moment they’re there, the next moment they’re gone. So, in my imagination, they are everywhere. Always ready to pounce. Always ready to smile at me, and cheer, and give me doughnuts because I saved the company thirty-two cents or something.

  “Just wait for it,” Sean says.

  “I know,” I reply.

  “So, the boy,” Sean begins. “He—”

  But no sooner do the words leave his mouth than the Culture Crew buzzer crackles the air again. It sounds like a duck being electrocuted. They emerge, once again, from the places unseen and from time immemorial. Already, I can smell fire and brimstone and confectionary treats.

  Another glance around Cubicle Hell shows me where they’re going. Not far away from the woman who just stood up and shouted with pride about how she had saved a customer, there sits another woman. He eyes are puffy, and her hand is trembling, and, if I listen closely, I can hear the customer on the other end of the line yelling at her. He ends the phone call by calling her a “home-stealing cunt.”

  Whose home he blames her for stealing, I doubt any of us will ever know.

  The woman is about to break down. About to cry and maybe even walk out of the building—finally quit this job and become the hero we all long to be. But the Culture Crew is there.

  They swarm her desk: same smiles, same laughter, same trail of miniature candies spilling out onto the floor in their wake. Without a word, they place a chocolate-covered doughnut on her desk and a handful of candies.

  “But I’m diabetic,” the woman sobs, tears streaming down her face.

  Then a tall, not-unattractive woman looks over at the two of us. She smiles and waves, aiming the smile at the both of us, but clearly aiming the wave at Sean. He returns the wave like sending back a Christmas fruitcake.

  “How’s that going?” I ask.

  “The fact that it’s still going is the issue,” Sean replies.

  “I don’t see it,” I say. “She looks like a fine dame. Maybe the kind a person settles down with.”

  “She does look that way, doesn’t she?”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Jesus.”

  “Ah,” I say.

  “She’s just a little bit too . . . too . . .”

  “For Christ!” I shout, throwing a salute at the same time.

  “Yeah,” Sean says. “That’s it. We can’t get through appetizers without talking about the Second Coming and the fate of my immoral soul.”

  “Immortal soul.”

  “That’s not what she calls it.”

  “Did you tell her you’re an atheist?”

  “I did.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Gotta respect that.”

  Sean takes a look over my desk. Lying there in tatters is my latest manuscript. It’s still a train wreck at this stage. Not yet blossomed into Hell of a Book. Right now, none of the characters know what they want. And since they don’t know what they want, they don’t know why they’re doing anything. They’re just billiard balls banging against one another. And nobody wants to read anything about that—even if that’s just how people go through life sometimes. Naturalism is dead—at least in the marketplace.

  “So how’s that thing coming along?” Sean asks.

  “It’s a train wreck,” I say.

  “But what kind of a train wreck?”

  “Vietnam.”

  “You know,” Sean says, “I read an article the other day about how fewer people actually get the Vietnam reference when you use it that way. When you use it that way, you’re dating yourself. It’s better to say Afghanistan.”

  “So if I say Afghanistan, I sound younger?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hell of a world,” I
say.

  “Tell me about it,” Sean says. “It’s like what happened to that boy.”

  Even though I have no idea what boy he’s talking about, I say: “Yeah . . . damn shame.”

  Because like I told you before, that’s what you say.

  * * *

  —

  Most of this isn’t overly important. Not in the greater scheme of things. This is just to talk a little bit about where I was before I got to where I am now. Because where I am now is a pretty surreal place and my therapist said that one of the best things I can do to help me deal with my depression is to keep my feet firmly planted in reality by writing down things from the past. “The past is the root from which the present grows,” she said. And that’s a true enough thing, I suppose. “Do you like what you see when you look in the mirror?” she asked. I try not to think about the past or the mirror much if I can help it. Hell, I try to think about the present the least amount I can. Reality as a whole—past or present—just isn’t a good place to hang out, in my opinion. There are better ways and places to spend your time.

  Reality is full of bad news. Pick up your phone and check out whatever news sites you frequent and I can guarantee that you’re going to see a laundry list of atrocities. The planet’s melting. People are getting trafficked, and murdered, and molested. It’s just all too much. I figured that particular fact out a long time ago. My therapist says that my condition is related to some sort of trauma of my own, that I’ve experienced myself, but I don’t buy that. I haven’t had any traumas that I know of. Sure, I’ve had my fair share of bad luck, but that’s different from trauma. My therapist said that I might not even know what the trauma is. It could be that bad or it could be that subtle. She talks about trauma in relation to that “root from which things grow” metaphor from before. She says that something made me break the boundaries between reality and imagination. She says it’s not good for me.

  I say it’s gotten me this far, so why stop now?

  She says it’ll tear me apart eventually.

  You remember how good you were at drawing, Willie?” Daddy Henry asked with a cough. “Do you remember that at all?” He smiled and leaned back in the chair that his failing health would not let him leave.