by Dima Alzayat
Eli smiles. ‘Chill, baby. None of your people understand what I’m saying. Arriba, arriba, chimichanga.’ Lora flips him the finger and turns back to her desk. Eli drops his voice. ‘Anyway, I met this fine piece of dark chocolate last night and you know I don’t like to go behind my boo, but this girl was round and sweet like a Cocoa Puff.’
‘Man, you didn’t.’ I shake my head. Eli chuckles.
‘What’re you fools laughing like pendejas for?’ Lora says and stands up. Her hair, dark and curly, reaches down to her waist. She walks over to the whiteboard on the back wall and marks a line beneath her name.
‘You don’t wanna know,’ I say.
‘Eli being all nasty again? At least one of you has some sense.’
Lora, like a lot of the others in the office, thinks my going to community college at night means I’ve figured something out – what, I don’t know. At first it made her suspicious of me, made them all suspicious. They were sure I’d snitch when one of them got high during a break or hung up on a call that wasn’t closing. It didn’t matter how many times I told them it would be at least eight years before I graduated at the rate I was going. It took some time but she and I are cool now. She brings in apartment leases and insurance papers for me to look at before she signs them even though she can read just fine.
She grabs the remote off the partition between us and turns up the volume on the TV. The redhead and the dough man give way to images and sounds of a helicopter hovering above the ocean and fenced-off miles of sand. Lora groans. ‘Not this shit again.’
It started in July when a bull shark attacked a kid playing in the water off Santa Rosa Island. The bull bit the kid’s arm clean off but the kid’s uncle, acting like a badass or crazed person, wrestled the fish out of the water and got the arm back. Doctors reattached it and within twenty-four hours, news crews were holding vigil outside the hospital, reporting the same three facts on loop. A week later, a surfer was attacked a few miles south of where the boy was and a New Yorker was bit in the leg while on some fancy vacation in the Bahamas. By then, the papers and broadcasters had spun themselves into a damn frenzy. You’d pick up a magazine or turn on the TV and the headline SHARK EPIDEMIC would lunge out at you. Every shark sighting, real or imagined, was reported. By mid-August, networks were showing round-the-clock footage of sharks gathering off the coast. A few days ago, a lady with bulgy eyes and wiry hair knocked on my door and asked me to sign a petition calling for legislation ‘to control the problem.’ I started speaking to her in Arabic until she left. I was just as confused as she was. The only words I know are either curses or orders my parents yelp at me when I’m in trouble and the way I strung them together made them lose all meaning.
My phone lets out a low tone. I glance at the caller ID and hit ‘Answer’ knowing it’ll be fast and fruitless. You get to know these things – which area codes are buyers and which aren’t.
Coughs, hoarse and dry, come through the earpiece. ‘Yeah, I saw your ad in the Pennysaver,’ a deep voice grunts. ‘It says here you can put one of those satellite discs on my roof.’
I inhale loud and slow, make sure they hear it. ‘That’s right, ____.’ I can’t tell if the voice belongs to a man or a woman. ‘I need to ask you a few questions first.’
‘Hold on.’ More coughs, slightly moist now. ‘It says here I can get all the premium channels for $19.99 a month.’
‘No, sir,’ I guess. ‘That’s the basic package. Do you live in a house or an apartment?’
‘An apartment but what’s that have to do with it? I see my neighbor has a disc on her balcony and that heifer is watching all the soaps while I sit here wiggling my antennae.’
I want to hang up but through the glass I can’t make out whether Max is wearing his earpiece. The guy has freakishly small ears and they’re always tucked beneath thick black hair that looks a silvery blue under the bright lights. Makes it impossible to know if he’s listening in on a call to ensure Quality Control.
‘Ma’am, we require you to have a credit card to sign up for service. Do you have one of those?’
‘No, but my cousin Jerry does.’
‘Okay, great. You go ahead and get Jerry’s card number and give me a call back and I’ll be glad to send someone out to install a dish for you. Okay?’
‘Well, okay. But I still wanna know about the premium channels.’
I glance at the office and spot the earpiece in Max’s hand. ‘Sirma’am, you get that credit card and give us a call back, okay? Have a wonderful day!’ More coughs, sloppy and wet, spit at my ears as I end the call.
At ten till seven Dan comes in and sits at the desk across from me. A few others follow. I spot Tami, the only other person in the place that went to college, or tried to anyway. She’d been studying to become a medical technician but dropped out to get a second job. I take mostly biology courses. No real reason why, other than I prefer to read about things that are still alive, not dead kings and poets. We hooked up once but she had a weird thing about her being Jewish and my parents being Jordanian. Kept asking if that meant I was actually Palestinian. Wasn’t Jordan filled with immigrants from Palestine? I joked about her definition of immigrant but she turned sour and I began to worry I’d messed things up. Told her I’d never even been to the damn place. I’m more American than your Polish ass, I said.
The calls start rolling in and I sell a housewife in Connecticut a three-receiver system and an old man in one of the Carolinas a basic. I glance at the board and Lora’s already up to four sales. No one ever outsells her. It’s how she’s lasted so long – two years, going on three – longer than anyone else. Story goes Max fished her out of some strip club down in Tampa, brought her up to Pensacola and gave her a job. Felt she had a way with people even though no one can see her huge chest or the top of the Papi Pablo tattoo on it over the phone. Something to be said for the guy’s instinct.
I’m stuck on a call with some wackjob already awake in California. He tells me his wife cut off his cable and took their pet pig. I lean back and let him babble. I could use a breather. Some sort of local variety show is on. Hostesses in polyester suits speaking in Southern drawls. The guy on the phone starts weeping and I ask him if some TV wouldn’t make him feel better and he talks about the pig again, a pig named Bear. I aim the remote and turn on the closed captioning: . . . and the government is not doing anything about it. These aren’t goldfish! These are deep-water flesh-hungry monsters! The guy on the phone stops talking about the pig and starts reading me his credit card number. Makes me glad I stuck with him.
The clock ticks closer to 8:00 and another batch of people arrives. Break time. I walk outside and go around the building. Eli and a few others hang out by a picnic table next to the parking lot. A new girl with bleached hair and drawn-on brows asks me for a cigarette. As usual, Lora’s in her car with the windows rolled down. She never takes her break with us. Spends it checking on her two-year-old and rambling in Spanish over the phone with whoever it is that watches the kid. Eli sits down next to me.
‘Hey, son. I have some good stuff today. You want some?’
‘No, man, I’m good.’
Every day Eli asks if I want to smoke weed in his truck. He’s generous that way, takes whomever and smokes them out. I think it makes him less paranoid if he’s not the only one taking calls stoned. I turn down the offers because I can’t pull it off the way these guys do. They squirt some Visine into their eyes, eat a few mints and jump back on the phones like it’s no big deal. When I’m high all I want to do is get some KFC and beat off to America’s Next Top Model.
Eli heads to the truck with the new girl and Dan appears and sits down. His hair is buzzed close to his scalp and he wears a pair of track pants and white Nikes. Lora calls him all-American because he used to be a star baseball player in high school. Made him somewhat of a local celebrity for a time.
‘I just got stuck on another call with one of your turban-wearing uncles asking for channels from the motherland,’ he say
s.
I laugh. ‘You should’ve put it through to me. I would’ve closed him.’
‘No one was closing this ass wad.’ He lights a cigarette and takes a drag. ‘Dude, did you hear there was another attack?’
‘Yeah, saw a clip about it earlier.’
‘I bet you the next one will be real bad. All these hit-and-runs and bump-and-bites aren’t shit.’
I take a long drag and let it out slowly. ‘It’s a handful of shark bites, man. I’m more scared of the wacked-out junkies on my street.’
‘No, dude, it’s serious. Did you see the horde of those motherfuckers off the coast? Just collecting and waiting. I’m telling you, one of those fuckers is gonna be in the right place at the right time and some dude is gonna get eaten whole.’
I get up and drop my cigarette to the ground, crush it with my heel. Dan spots a dirt mark on the toe of his shoe and leans forward and rubs it off with his fingertip. I want to tell him that the number of attacks is still lower than last year’s, that my professor spent two hours last week explaining shark movements, how the swarm off the coast is part of an annual shark migration.
Joanne, a customer service rep, walks up. She’s wearing pajama pants rolled up to her knees and smoking a Virginia Slim. ‘Ya’ll better head back in there. Max is on the prowl.’
I look at my watch – 8:12. ‘Thanks, Jo.’ Dan gets up and follows.
Inside, Max weaves through the Pen, making his way down each row. His face looks gray in the fluorescent light, nearly matches the turtleneck he’s wearing. At each cubicle he hovers and listens to people on calls, signals them to hurry up or slow down, to upsell or come down, and when he gets really worked up, smacks the low fabric-paneled walls that separate the desks. But he never comes to a full stop. I’ve never even seen the guy sit.
My phone rings as soon as I put on my headset. A middle-aged woman in Arkansas needs a dish because the cable company in her town is going bankrupt. Sure sale. I’m taking down her information when Max arrives at my desk, his gray eyes wide open even though he’s probably been up all night. Lora says Max likes his coca. The way he’s lingering, I think he’s going to listen in but he doesn’t. Continues down the row instead. I look over at Eli drooping in his chair but he’s already on his way to closing someone. I finish my call and look up to find Max has pulled the new girl into the glass office and is circling her as she cries. I turn to Eli. He keeps his eyes down and focuses on his call but I know he’s worried.
A minute later the girl is escorted outside. Makeup runs down her face and one of her eyebrows is smeared. Max moves to the center of the Pen and spits out curses and warnings but he doesn’t look at Eli. Karen stands behind him. He declares to no one in particular that he’s going to get food and leaves. As soon as he’s gone, everyone starts laughing and talking about the poor ex-newbie. ‘Another one gone,’ Eli says.
Lora shakes her head. ‘Not even a warning.’
‘Max is hungry today, kids,’ Dan laughs.
Karen tries to rein us in but no one pays her any attention.
There’s a lull in calls and I’m staring up at the TV when Dan waves his arm over the panel separating us. Eli rushes his call to a finish and the two of us stand up. ‘You gotta hear this,’ Dan whispers and puts his phone on speaker.
‘You listening to me?’ The voice is thin, raspy.
Dan forces a serious look. ‘Yes, ma’am. Let me make sure I have this right, where is it you want the dish installed?’
‘I told you,’ the woman says. ‘My husband got locked up and he can’t get anything but local channels in that damn place.’
Lora stands up and Tami walks over. Dan’s eyes stay focused on his phone. ‘So, you want us to install a satellite dish on the prison building?’
‘Yes. Can you do it by Sunday?’
Lora starts laughing and Tami smiles at me. Each of us gets calls like this every few days but only Dan invests the time you need to harvest them.
‘How do you suppose we’ll get around the guards and live wire fencing when we send someone to install the dish?’
‘Well, how am I supposed to know? That’s your job.’
‘Yes, yes, it is. Well, let me give it to you straight.’ Dan waits a beat. ‘We do offer a special service, a hardly-used-very-top-secret machine that can shrink our installation man down to the size of a peanut. That way, he can sneak in undetected, through the fence, past the wire and into the cell. And we can shrink down a dish to go with him and he can install it inside your husband’s TV. How does that sound?’
I fold over and try to laugh quietly while Eli snorts between chuckles. The other end of the line goes silent and Dan grins as we all lean in and wait for a dial tone.
‘Ooo, you can do that?’
We erupt into such a fit that Dan has to mute his phone and take off his headset. Tami has tears in her eyes she’s laughing so hard. Lora sinks back into her chair. ‘Ya’ll are crazy,’ she says.
We start to settle down as Max walks back in. I look at the board. Only four sales under my name but it’s still twenty minutes till nine. I answer a call, lean back and stare at the TV while some grandpa from Alabama, probably a non-sale, yaps in my ear. A reporter is on the beach, the Gulf stretched out behind her. The old man starts listing his order before I realize I’ve managed to turn him around. You go on auto-mode sometimes, say certain phrases you know will work with particular types of people.
I’m taking down the old man’s address and Eli yells, ‘Oh, shit.’ I look at him and his face is all contorted, his nose and mouth twisting, renegotiating their positions on his face. I follow his gaze to the TV as Lora stands up.
‘That looks crazy,’ she says.
On the screen, dense gray smoke swells and rises from a tall building. The clock reads 8:53.
Dan turns to the TV behind him. ‘Dude, what is happening?’
A caption finally shoots up onscreen, about a plane and the World Trade Center, and I hear a voice in my ear. The old man is still on the line. I want to tell him to turn on his TV but I remember he doesn’t have one. This is why he called us. In the office, Max and Karen stare at a large plasma screen. Max sways from side to side.
On the TV above me the closed captions are all garbled. Eli’s phone rings and he lets it go. Max sticks his head out of the office. ‘Keep taking calls!’ he shouts at us. Eli hits ‘Answer’ but leaves his eyes focused on the screen. We all do. The old man’s asking me something about installation time. Lora hits ‘Unavailable’ on her phone, grabs the remote and turns up the volume. Dan glances up at her. ‘Dude, you’re gonna get us all in some shit,’ he says but she ignores him.
Broadcasters report the arrival of fire crews. The redhead and dough man are back on. ‘What do we know so far, Harry?’ the woman asks. ‘Some sort of crash, some kind of accident maybe?’ ‘We don’t know anything really, Susy.’
Tami, Eli, and Dan go through calls, and I try to get through mine. Joanne sits on her desk and even though her headset’s on, I can’t tell if she’s speaking. Tami finishes a call, walks over and stands behind me, her arm grazing my shoulder. We watch smoke billow from shattered windows and debris flutter to the ground like leaflets.
Joanne takes off her headset and from where she sits on her desk, she reaches for the nearest TV and turns up its volume. The jumble of different newscasters drowns out the voices on the sales floor. I try to explain to the old man what’s happening, try to describe what it looks like. ‘I don’t care about New York City,’ he says and puts me on hold to go look for his credit card.
Onscreen, the smoke is really thick and black and the redhead is giving numbers. Estimations of damages and digits of people. The time on the bottom of the screen reads 9:02 and I look down and try to focus on my half-filled order form.
The redhead breaks mid-sentence and I glance up to see a ball of fire blaze and expand close to the top of the second building. The noise from the TV now comes in shreds and fragments, interrupted gasps, abandoned
sentences. A few headsets come off and several people hang up mid-calls and stand up. Eli leans back, his eyes pink and glazed. ‘That is some wack shit, son.’
Max opens the office door and steps down into the Pen. ‘Get back on the phones now or you’re all fucking fired.’ His tone is measured and booming and spreads across the sales floor. People glance down at their phones. Tami moves back toward her desk and Joanne slips into her chair. Karen picks up the remote, aims it and mutes the TV. Only Lora remains standing.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Max says to her and motions as if to move toward her but doesn’t, slightly tilts in her direction instead. Karen turns to the second television and begins to lift the remote again, but Lora gives her a look that stops her mid-aim before turning to Max, her dark brown eyes narrow.
‘You wanna fucking fire me, go ahead, but I’m gonna stand here and find out what the hell is going on.’
The Pen falls silent except for the sound from the television. I catch Lora’s eye to signal her to just let it go and sit down, to not get herself in trouble. But when she looks at me her face is like a question, and I have to look away because I know I can’t do what she’s asking. What would I even say? It would only get me fired with her.
Max sways in silence for an entire minute then starts to say something, loudly inhales instead, and turns around toward his office. Karen scurries to follow but he shuts the door behind him, leaving her in the Pen with us. The old man comes back on the phone and starts reading his credit card number. I don’t write it down.
No one else is taking calls now and the ringing tapers off. The headline onscreen changes every few minutes until one finally sticks. The words tumble in my mind, mingle and unravel and overlap again. I know the others too have seen them. I turn to Tami and she’s looking at me but glances away and back to the screen. I feel Dan’s stare against my shoulders, my chest, but when I look up his eyes are still fixed on the TV. ‘Fuckers,’ Eli says from behind me and I don’t turn to look at him. ‘Dirty fuckers,’ he says again. The old man’s voice is still in my ear, but my neck is hot and I can’t make out what he’s saying.