by Robert Brady
Not Bill. It left him feeling depressed. When he tried to be unique and up his sales, he either ended up getting reamed by a boss or just embarrassing himself. Like they told him, “The program works. It works best if you just don’t think about it.”
Lunch rolled around from 12:00pm to either 12:30pm or, if you made your numbers, 1:00pm. He had made his numbers, so he logged out of his terminal and stood, planning to grab a sandwich and then listen to Rush Limbaugh for his first hour.
“Bill, can I see you?”
He turned and saw Eileen, the floor sup for his division. “It’ll just take a minute.”
He shrugged and followed her to her ‘office,’ a slightly larger cubicle at the end of Bill’s row. She was a slight girl with small tits, kinky blonde hair and dancer’s body, in tight black jeans and top.
She sat, he sat.
“Do you know Melissa?” she asked.
Bill’s first thought was that he’d said or done something no longer considered ‘PC,’ and she’d taken offense at him.
“I know one who bummed a cig from me at break,” he said.
“She’s having a hard time selling,” Eileen said. “And I was talking to her about it. I offered to set her up with someone to show her, and she asked for you.”
Bill shook his head. “Eileen, I’m not a trainer.”
“I know, but you could be,” Eileen said. “You’re really good—you always make your numbers. You aren’t some young guy who is going to be looking down their blouses, and you aren’t some young girl where they will be looking down yours.”
Bill chuckled. This was as nice as he had seen Eileen. Usually she just bitched about how, when she was on the floor, she never had a hard time making her numbers.
“More work, less pay,” Bill said. “And the first time one of them doesn’t make their numbers, they’re going to say I harassed them.”
Eileen gave him her best solemn eyed look. She had really missed her calling selling used cars. “We lock your pay in at your average week for the last year,” she said, “so you can never make less than you are, but you get another hundred a week and if you beat your average, then you just make more. No downside.”
Bill did an impressed frown. That wasn’t bad, actually, and the extra money would really help him. “And the other thing?”
Eileen leaned back. “Bill,” she said, and reached out and touched the back of his hand, “even I have had to deal with it. Everyone knows it’s crap. I won’t lie—if you’re ever seen with one of these kids outside of here, they are going to be able to get you fired, so don’t party with them and you’ll be fine.”
Bill sighed. “Well, it isn’t like I am hitting the discotheques.”
She just laughed. “Actually, any place with a mirror ball, and you’re safe.”
“So when do I start?”
“You start now,” Eileen said. “Take her to lunch; keep the receipt and the company pays for it. You get one lunch per trainee. Find out what her problem is and then haul her ass back here and let her watch you sell. Tomorrow you watch her sell. If she can do it, let her know and, if she can’t, let me know.”
Bill nodded. He stood, turned, and there stood Melissa waiting for him with big, watery doe eyes. Why she wanted some old fart baffled him—maybe he looked just like her dad or something.
But she had just made him five thousand dollars more per year, and for that she could count on a hell of a training.
* * *
Chaheff knelt before the altar of Adriam, the All-Father, first among the gods. Glynn knelt down beside him, before the goddess Eveave, the Taker and the Giver. Eveave taught the balance, and Glynn would need balance to survive the singing.
That is what Chaheff had told her, anyway.
They chose a simple room for their devotions, small with rough-cut stone walls and bare floors. They knelt before a simple altar of hand-carved wood, a statue of the austere Adriam upon it, and a similar one beside it for the goddess.
“Perhaps we should have Power here,” Chaheff said.
Adriam, the All-Father, had come first among the gods. His first creation had been Eveave, the Taker and the Giver, his perfect match. He had educated her in every aspect of his divinity, and coupled with her.
The gods Earth and Water had sprung unexpected from Eveave’s womb, and later Power and Desire. These four had lesser aspects of Adriam’s might, and Adriam and Eveave had sought to teach them but failed. For all of their might, they were not wise like the All-Father or even-handed like the Taker and the Giver.
Power became a dark god who would work against the others when it suited him. “Why would we want to taint this place—?” she began.
“No god taints a place,” Chaheff interrupted her. “Power exists as does every other god, and has his followers and his motives, just like any other god.”
“Not like Chaos, Destruction and War,” Glynn challenged him. The primary sin was laying on daughter by son, and Power and Desire, Earth and Water each had done this. Chaos, Destruction and War were the sons of Power and Desire, and in the history of all things, they had done nothing but cause heartache and woe.
Chaheff grinned. Glynn knew he tolerated her for her youth and temerity. Since the death of her father, he had tried in small ways to advise her, in ways beyond his requirements as a mentor.
“True,” he said, “Chaos and War, as the scriptures tell us, brought about the end of the One Place, where the gods lived. And we know War encouraged the people of Fovea to nearly annihilate each other before the Uman-Chi created the Fovean High Council.
“But even his presence does not defile,” he wagged a finger at his student. “People will defile themselves ultimately, and you know the Rule of the Gods.”
Glynn nodded. When the One Place had been destroyed by Chaos, the goddess Water had been struck dumb. Earth, who loved her, had taken her to a burning remnant of the One Place to warm her, and bonded with her to sustain her, and to rock her from side to side.
Water had birthed Life in his embrace, and Life had spread all manner of living things upon Earth’s divine body.
Eveave had stepped in by creating the ‘Rule of the Gods,’ which protected Life’s children from the direct influence of the Gods.
However the gods found indirect ways…
They prayed together. Glynn ignored the hard stone that made her knees throb, the stiff posture that made her back ache. She ignored the dryness in her throat from taking no drink, and she prayed even until her voice cracked.
She knew the pain served its purpose. The discipline of enduring it, the suffering, brought one through to the other side and, there, to enlightenment.
After hours and hours, knowing the sun had not only set but had risen, Chaheff spoke the final prayer and they were done.
She stood smoothly and with decorum, the only hint of her discomfiture the smudge on her white robes around the knee.
Uman servants appeared as if from the stone walls with food and drink. Glynn took a goblet full of red wine and waited for her mentor to drink. When he did, then she sipped, the tart liquid soothing her raw throat.
She didn’t thank the Uman. It wasn’t their place to be thanked. They would serve, she would cast, that is what they did. You didn’t thank the Caste of Warriors for killing, the Caste of Merchants for selling, or the Caste of Artisans for making these goblets every time you used them.
It was simple in its grace, and all parties understood it.
“Sore?” kindly old Chaheff asked her.
She bowed her head and smiled. “I persevere,” she said. “It is a matter of the mind and what it will hear from the body.”
“We are about to let you sing a song, Glynn.” Chaheff’s kindly brown eyes focused on Glynn’s violet ones. “You were chosen to be a Caster, because you came to your father on your own, and like me with mine, you told him, ‘The most powerful thing in the world is not a knife, or a sword, or a spell, or a god, but a thought.’”
“A song
is a thought you sing out, in a way to get others to believe in it. Lose control of your thoughts, and you will unleash the most powerful thing there is, and be at its mercy.”
“I can sing it out, my Lord teacher,” Glynn promised him. She searched his eyes, silver on silver to anyone else and lovely violet to her. Even now, exhausted from the prayer, the song remained burning in her mind.
“I have no doubt you can,” Chaheff squeezed her shoulder. “But what will you do with the thought?”
Chapter Two:
The Evolution of Woman and Man
Lunch on the company dime was at a sit-down restaurant—specialty burgers, curly fries and double-large sodas served in glasses, not paper cups.
They sat together on the outdoor porch, where they could smoke. Melissa had her Marlboros from her car.
“Stupid no smoking laws,” Bill complained. “Like we aren’t Americans.”
“Tell me about it,” Melissa said. She took a long, satisfying drag. Bill had learned she was twenty-four, dropped out of college, followed some band around for two years, ended up here for lack of a better place and lived with two roommates.
“This your only gig?” Bill asked.
She took another drag and exhaled it. “It is for now,” she said. “I tried working in an office but I don’t have the clothes.”
“They can be pretty strict,” Bill said.
“Yeah, they can,” she said, accentuating the ‘yeah.’ “Like, show one bit of cleavage and it’s, ‘Adios, slut.’ So I said, ‘Screw that,’ and came here.”
“Never sold before?”
“Girl Scouts. Can you believe it? Me in one of those uniforms? My sister said I was a total geek and she wouldn’t join.”
“I don’t know,” Bill said. “I really love the cookies.”
“Oh, I could kill for the cookies,” Melissa said. She sat back in her chair and blew a puff of smoke in the air. “You know the thin mint ones? I think I went up a pants size on those things.”
Bill prevented himself from looking at her middle. He still wasn’t comfortable with the rules in the office; better to stay quiet.
“But you’re not from here,” he pressed. That was as personal as he dared get.
She took a drag and shook her head. “Nah,” she said. “Main—ah, born and raised. I thought I would take a break from the northeast, from city life. I like it down here. It’s nice. You know your neighbors; people come over to your house and say, ‘Hi.’”
Bill grinned. He had no idea who lived next door to him at the apartment.
“So what’s happening with sales for you?” Bill asked, as their meal arrived. “Are you following the steps?”
She nodded, reaching for her burger. She had a healthy appetite for a girl. Women Bill knew were either fat or sweating every calorie.
“It’s like, I follow the steps, yanno,” she said, “but then they ask some stupid question, like, ‘How much money will I make in my first year?’ and I am like, ‘I don’t know—a lot.’”
Bill choked on a mouthful of beef. He almost felt like he was shooting pieces out his nose. He chewed and swallowed, feeling like a horse at a trough, and finally said, “You said that?”
“Well, the stupid card didn’t tell me what to say.”
She was referring to their script cue cards. You had a pack of laminated cards with numbers on them, and you could shuffle through them by number, so that if you were on card seven, and a client answered a question one way, then you went to card ten or, another way, card fourteen.
Newbies always got the cards mixed up, or read them and didn’t listen.
“I can show you a trick to that,” Bill said. “I used to have the same problem with that question.”
“Really?” she asked. The expression on her face seemed so grateful, as if she had asked him to cure her father’s cancer, and he’d just said he could. “That is nice. Thanks, Bill.”
She smiled a giant smile, putting him right on his guard.
“Yeah, not a problem,” Bill said.
They ate quietly for a while.
“So no kids, no woman, no fun—what’s up with you, Bill?” she asked, taking a bite of her French fry. “You gotta have something going in your life.”
“I do?” he asked. This had become way too personal, and he didn’t like it. “Why is that?”
She shrugged. “I dunno,” she said. “Cuz otherwise you live your life between commercials? What did you do at my age?”
“At your age?” Bill said. “I was at Woodstock, or telling everyone who would listen how great being at Woodstock was.”
“Really?” she said. “You were there? That is so cool. Was it really all, like, drugs and sex and cool music?”
Bill laughed. “Maybe in some peoples’ minds. It was mostly bad weather, too many people with too few facilities, and a bunch of people thinking they were going to save us. The music was good, though. That was the last time I saw ‘The Who’ live.”
“Wuh—who?”
“The Who,” Bill said. “Before your time.”
“Guess so,” she agreed. “Did you want to be a rock star?”
Bill laughed. “When I sing, wild dogs show up trying to mate. No, it made me want to hate the government and protest the war.”
She nodded sagely. “Korea.”
“Vietnam,” he corrected her, angrily. “Cripes, what do they teach you kids in school?”
“Not a lot,” she said. “Which is how I landed this great job. So, you can show me how to sell?”
“Yeah,” Bill said.
“And can you tell me something else?” she asked.
She looked right into his eyes, and Bill thought, Here it comes, oh, boy. This is her whole angle.
“What?” he asked.
She looked down, and looked up, and said, “What is it we’re selling? Because I have been selling it for three days now, and I have, like, no friggin’ idea.”
* * *
Glynn knelt alone at her personal altar, dedicated to Adriam.
Most Uman-Chi worshipped Adriam. Some preferred Eveave, and most of them were women. Glynn felt as if the god-mother forced justice on those who didn’t need it. Most Casters were men, Uman-Chi men worshipped Adriam, and so did she.
“Oh, Adriam, who is great and wise,” she intoned. “Clear my mind, my burdens and past. Give me the moment, that I might serve thee in it.”
She spoke the litany, and imagined herself alongside a stream. Her mind became a pitcher, and she emptied it into the clear water. The thoughts became fish that swam away.
Out poured the worry that she was not up to her challenge. Out poured the male Casters who judged her. Out poured the thorny beast of a fish that was her hatred for the Conqueror. Out poured her longing for her father and her brother.
And in her stream, a great, white fish with jagged teeth and long, whale-like flippers devoured all the others, and looked up into her vessel, hungry for more.
And that was not good. If she could not clear the stream, then she could not have the moment. If she could not have the moment, then she could not cast.
In her mind’s eye, she knelt by the stream, she lowered her top, and she leaned forward. Her breasts dragged the water, its cold embrace bringing rise to her nipples, and she nourished the white fish.
It looked hungrily to the pitcher and, seeing nothing, addressed her breast. She felt the pull within her as the beastly thing suckled, the pain of its teeth on her soft flesh.
Being an enchantress, a woman who cast spells, made Glynn rare in and of itself. She had come to the Ultimate Truth at the unprecedented age of 90. With precious few women to learn from, Glynn’s methods were, by necessity, mostly her own.
To create, she’d realized, a man gives from himself.
To create, a woman gives of herself.
She bore the pain. She nourished the fish and, when it had its fill of her, it swam away without a backward glance. Her stream ran clear, sweet and free, and her mind reflected it.
Her non-corporeal energy floated out from her body, in her imaginary world and in her real one. She looked down upon her two selves, pristine in the dream and real in her little chapel, alongside her rooms in the royal palace.
She saw the little imperfection in the skin beneath her shoulder. She touched it, and connected her lifeline back to herself. She reached out with her power, into the cold air of a day in the month of Adriam, and wrapped the city in her ethereal self.
She would do this every day, many times a day, exhausting herself and, at the same time, defining her strength. Each day saw her a little stronger, a little better, a little more able to disperse herself.
When the time came, she would sing. If she lost the song, if she lost the thought, she would use this newfound power to dispense the energy she released. Giving of herself, she would save her people and her city.
Transitioning herself from caster to conduit, Glynn Escaroth of the Family Escaroth prepared herself for singing.
* * *
Melissa sat at her cubicle, squeezed in front of her work station. Her headset made her ear sweat, her top made her boobs sweat and Bill’s hamburger-breath settled in her nose. She scrunched in between him and her desk, in a space too small for more than one. Bill’s big ol’ belly took up a lot of room—most of which she needed.
She felt frustrated. She did a job that seemed stupid to her, getting people to work from home selling ‘products,’ to other people who worked from home. Personally, she saw it as a sucker’s bet, but people sure sold it and people sure bought it, and if they could do it, why couldn’t she?
“Hello?”
Someone picking up the phone startled her back to reality.
“Hello, Sir,” she said. The Teleminer program on her screen told her this was Edward Befram of Hershey, PA, that he was 35-50, and that he owned his own home. “Is this Edward?”
She girlied up her voice like Bill had shown her. She called him Edward, not Mr. Befram, so he would warm to her. What man didn’t like a call from a girl?