by Jason Starr
“Friends,” I said, shaking my head. “How can you call Sharon and David your friends? Did you hear what was going on tonight? Did you hear those comments they made every two seconds? You couldn’t hear what David said at the bar, but believe me I had good reason for doing what I did. And what really pisses me off is you barging in here and defending them. What about me? I’m your boyfriend. Don’t I count for anything?”
“What comments? What are you talking about?”
“What’s the matter, are you deaf? Or maybe you’ve heard so many comments like that from them over the years you’ve gotten used to it. He’s always talking about his stupid job, dropping comments about how much money he’s making, or making digs at me for telemarketing. And then all that bullshit about Scarsdale, Sharon saying, ‘I know they can’t afford it now.’ I was sick of just sitting there and letting comments like that pass by. So I stood up for myself and made some comments of my own.”
“You don’t get it, do you? You didn’t just insult them, you insulted me. When I told you that stuff about Sharon and David’s sex life, you swore you’d never mention it to anyone. And I can’t believe you’d do that to me.”
Tears were streaming down her cheeks. I reached up and grabbed her hand. In the dark room, her body appeared gray, framed by the bright light of the living room.
“I admit I might’ve gone a little too far,” I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t’ve said exactly what I said. But at the bar, David made a comment to me about a man’s life being meaningless without work. I was thinking about it at the table and I thought – maybe he’s right, maybe my life is meaningless. Then the idea came to me to make those comments and instead of just thinking about saying them, I decided to actually say them. I don’t know why I did it, but I did.”
“Let go of me.”
“You know this isn’t me,” I said, pulling her closer. “You’ve known me long enough. You know the real me isn’t like this.”
She yanked her arm free.
“I think you’re crazy.”
“New York’s crazy,” I said, realizing I wasn’t making much sense. “I’ve been here too long. All I need is to change cities – to go someplace where I can get a job – like Seattle. I’ve been thinking that might be the best place for me to go – I mean us to go – as far as me getting a job. There’re a lot of agencies out there and with my background and contacts I can get a job at one like that. Who knows? Maybe the agency I interned at during college will hire me back? It might not be the highest paying job in the world, but it’ll be a job still, and that’s the most important thing – that I get back to work again, in my field.”
I realized Julie wasn’t in the room anymore. I heard the water running in the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said in the kitchen. “Weren’t you paying attention to me?”
She was leaning over the sink, splashing her face with cold water. I went up behind her.
“Stay away from me,” she said.
I followed her to the bathroom and held the door open as she tried to close it.
“Weren’t you listening to what I said?”
“I don’t care what you say until you apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course I’m sorry. But I’m talking about a plan – a real way we can change our lives.”
“I like my life.”
“I mean our life – together. I know I’ve been acting weird lately, but once I get a job everything will go back to normal again. And we can be together, you know get married, but not in this hell hole. We’ll go to Seattle, live by the water.”
“What about me?” Julie said. “What about my job? I can’t just quit like that. And what about my family? I don’t know anybody in Seattle.”
“You’ll meet people. I don’t know anybody out there anymore. It’s just gonna be me and you out there, just like it is now except we’ll be happy. It’s true what Sharon said – New York’s a dying city. How many times do I have to get mugged before we decide it’s time to move? And I know you want to have kids eventually and New York’s definitely not the place to do it. I sent out those resumes today, but I know I’m just going through the motions. People are gonna wonder what’s wrong with this guy, why has he been telemarketing for two years, why can’t he find a job? But if I go back to Seattle, it’ll be different – I’ll say I did some freelancing in New York and they probably won’t check my references too carefully. And I’m sure you can find a job out there in a second. There are a lot of publishing companies in Seattle and in a couple of years you probably won’t want to work too much anyway, once my salary kicks in and you start pumping out babies.”
She had toweled off her face and now she stood in front of the bathroom door, staring at me with a serious, contemplative expression. Without makeup, she looked about thirty-five years old. Lines and areas of darkness were visible under her eyes and her skin was coarse and ruddy. That’s when I realized that I had Julie under my thumb, that I could do or say whatever I wanted and there was no way she would ever leave me. She was dying to get married and have kids, and in her mind I was her last chance to do it. Like a lot of single women, she firmly believed that there were no single men left in the world, and that if she didn’t marry the man she was with, she’d spend the rest of her life as a lonely old maid. If I walked away, she’d grab on to my ankles and beg me to stay.
“I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” she finally said. “I mean I guess a change of scenery is good sometimes.”
“I love you,” I said, hugging her. “I love you so much.”
“But we can’t leave right away,” she said. “I have to give some notice at work and take care of a lot of things.”
“The sooner the better,” I said. “I’ll send out resumes tomorrow and hopefully I can start interviewing next week. Maybe next month sometime we can go out there and start looking for a place to live.”
“Next month! What about all our stuff? And what about our lease?”
“We’ll sell everything and we’ll give the landlord a month’s notice. Come on, Julie, it’ll be an adventure.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.
5
The next morning I was the only happy person on the number 6 train. People pushed me and shoved me and gave me dirty looks, but I smiled and said “excuse me” or “sorry” or said something to ease their tensions. I even offered to help an elderly woman carry a heavy shopping bag up the steep steps leaving the Times Square subway station. “Get your filthy hands off me,” she growled, but I didn’t get upset. I merely walked ahead and let her continue on her own, realizing that the entire world wasn’t as enlightened as I was.
At work, I was also unusually pleasant. When I got off the elevator, I smiled and wished Eileen, the receptionist, a good morning, even though she was staring at her nails and didn’t notice me. At the time clock, I spoke to a few people I had never spoken to before, asking if they had any plans for the weekend and complimenting them on their clothing and hairdos. They looked at me with baffled expressions, as if I was wearing a mask, or had just taken one off. Before the morning meeting, Harry Pearlman asked me if I’d won Lotto last night.
“If I did, would I be here today?” I said.
“Something must’ve happened to you,” he said. “Such a happy face, I didn’t even recognize you.”
I went into the conference room for the morning meeting, still very relaxed and confident. I even told a joke and had the whole room laughing. Then Ed arrived. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone. Instead, he went directly to the front of the room and clapped his hands loudly.
“Come on, let’s settle down everybody. We have a lot to discuss this morning.”
Everyone recognized the unusual urgency in Ed’s voice. They took seats on the floor or in chairs and quieted down.
“First off, I want to say that this is going to be the most difficult day I’ve had since I’ve been with the company. I wa
s up most of last night, thinking about how to introduce this subject this morning, so you’ll have to forgive me if I lose my train of thought every now and then or repeat something. I’ll do my best to be as clear and accurate as possible.”
Ed paused to wipe his nose and we all remained silent, wondering what this could possibly be about. Personally, I wasn’t worried because I knew that whatever he said wasn’t going to affect me.
“As we know, the nature of the telephone industry can be quite tenuous,” Ed continued. “Changes are constantly occurring, and that isn’t only true for us, but for the major telephone companies as well. That said, I’m afraid I’m going to have to announce that there is going to be some restructuring around here.”
A few people spoke at once, complaining, and Ed raised his voice:
“Believe me, nothing you say is going to change anything, and if there was anything I could do, believe me, I would’ve already done it. Unfortunately, sales for the company have been falling for some time now and the President of the company insists that we trim our staff.”
“Bullshit!” someone shouted.
“Yes, it is bullshit,” Ed said, “but unfortunately it is a fact and we’ll all just have to deal with it. Now before everybody flies into a panic, I want to assure you that not everyone’s job will be affected. We are currently employing fifty-two telemarketers, including morning and afternoon shifts, and we are looking to trim that number down to about forty. At that point, as sales start to recover, we’ll begin to replenish the staff. The obvious question is who will be kept on and who will be replaced? Yesterday afternoon, Mike, myself, and the other supervisors reviewed all of your records and today you’ll be called into my office for individual conferences. The goal will be to only keep the telemarketers we feel will be the most profitable for the company. We’ll take into account your sales performance as well as your recent conduct. Everyone will be called in at some point this morning, regardless if we’re planning to terminate you, so please don’t fly into a panic when your name is called.”
As Ed headed out of the room, people shouted questions at him. I heard Greg yell: “What about our commissions? What about our damn commissions?!” but Ed didn’t answer anyone.
“See, I know what they’re trying to do,” Greg said to me. “They’re gonna fire all the people they owe money to. Watch – you’ll see.”
“They better not fire me,” a guy next to Greg said. He was tall with a shaggy goatee. I think his name was Roy. “I know I’ve been late for work a couple of times, but I don’t deserve to be fired.”
“I know he’s gonna try to fire me,” Greg said. “After that shit he said to me yesterday, about taking off my Walkman and shit, but to be completely honest I don’t care what the fuck he does. I’ll tell you one thing, he better give me my fucking commission money he owes me or he better watch his ass.”
“I don’t buy that stuff about cutbacks either,” the guy with the goatee said. “I’ve worked at a lot of sales jobs and it’s always the same, you’ve got that whole chain of command bullshit. They tell us lies and their bosses tell them lies and their bosses tell their bosses lies and you never know what’s the truth.”
Mike came into the conference room and told everyone to get back to work, that today was a normal work day. Yeah right, I thought. They announce they’re going to be firing twenty percent of their staff and they consider that “normal”. But after two years, nothing that happened at A.C.A. surprised me.
I returned to my cubicle, proud of myself for not getting upset or anxious. I knew that after everything that had happened recently, I’d probably be the first person to get fired. But it didn’t bother me – I wanted to get fired. I was only planning to stay with the company another couple of weeks anyway. As for rent, I had one paycheck due to me, and I could always find a temp job to make some quick cash.
After the ten o’clock break, Ed started calling people into his office. First, Cathy Hendricks went in. She’d been with the company for several months and as far as I knew she was a quiet, dependable, humorless employee – exactly the type of person A.C.A. liked. I watched her sitting in Ed’s office, nodding as Ed spoke to her. Her expression was calm, but she was always calm, so it was hard to tell what was going on. Ed looked as serious and inhuman as a Nazi prison guard. After about five minutes, Cathy was through. We all watched her, to see if she was going to leave the office. But she returned to her cubicle and started making calls and I saw her give the “thumbs up” signal to the person next to her.
The next two people who were called into Ed’s office also left unscathed. Then Tanya Parks was called in. She was a young black woman, a college student at F.I.T., who’d been with A.C.A. for several months. I always thought she was one of the best telemarketers at the company. On the phone, she was calm, yet aggressive – polite, yet persistent. She won telemarketer-of-the-month her second month with the company, and since then she’d been among the top five telemarketers. Needless to say, I didn’t expect her to get fired. But when she ran out of Ed’s office crying uncontrollably it was clear that that was exactly what had happened. She gathered some things from her desk, stuffed them into her pocketbook, then left the office without saying goodbye to anyone. People were stunned, shaking their heads and exchanging looks of disbelief.
“All right, let’s just forget about it,” Mike said. “Let’s get back to business as usual. Everybody, back on the phones.”
“Now I get what’s going on here,” Greg said so everyone in the room could hear. “He’s gonna keep all the white people, and fire all the black people. I shoulda known that’s what his plan was. It figures.”
Mike came up behind Greg and put a hand on his shoulder.
“All right, Greg, let’s just forget about it, okay?”
“Get your faggot hand off me!”
Mike yanked his hand back, as if it was on fire. He gritted his teeth and became extremely pale.
“Get back to work, Greg. Right now, or else!”
Infuriated, Mike went into his office and slammed the door shut. People laughed, like children making fun of a teacher who has left the room. I felt sorry for Mike, but I was also glad. I felt I had gotten some revenge for the way he and Ed had embarrassed me at the meeting the day before.
Greg continued to complain loudly about Ed and white people and how the black people in the office shouldn’t take this without a fight. A few whites got into a debate with Greg about racism in general, but I didn’t say a word. I felt completely removed from the entire situation, as if I was watching it happen on a television or movie screen.
During the next hour or so, six more people were fired. In total, five black people had been let go and two white people. The big surprise came when Harry Pearlman was fired. Of all the workers, I’d thought Harry had the best chance of keeping his job.
“He told me my sales were down,” Harry said, trying to stay calm. “So what, I said, they’re down a little. You’d think after three-and-a-half years that time would mean something. But not in this place it doesn’t. Here, they don’t know from loyalty, they don’t know from respect.”
Although more blacks had been fired than whites, I still wasn’t sure Ed was making his decisions based on race. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I knew one thing – that it was only a matter of time until I got fired.
Ed came out of his office holding a clipboard.
“Greg Brown.”
Greg took his time getting up. He stayed in his chair for several seconds, then he slowly took the Walkman headphones off from around his neck. He waited a while longer, then got up. He walked confidently into Ed’s office, eyes focussed straight ahead. Everyone was watching; even Mike was standing outside his office, staring in that direction. It was great drama, as good as any play or movie. For a while, Ed did all the talking. He consulted his notes occasionally, but mostly he spoke to Greg directly, his hands interlocked on the desk. Of course we couldn’t hear what he was saying through the glass,
but knowing Ed it was probably some discourse on “professionalism” and “responsibility.” Greg sat calmly with his arms folded in front of his chest. Then – it happened so fast, I hardly even noticed it – Greg was on his feet, leaning over the desk, punching Ed repeatedly in the face and chest. Everyone was too stunned to react. Through the glass, the fight was noiseless, making it seem unreal. I was the first one to reach the scene. I pulled Greg off the desk and tried to hold him back. He pushed me aside and went after Ed again. I tackled him from behind. By that time, other people had come into the office, and as a group we were able to hold Greg down.
“Racist motherfucker!” Greg was shouting. “Let me go! I want my fucking commission!”
Someone helped Ed up off the floor. He wasn’t hurt very badly. His nose was bleeding out of one nostril, but he had no other bruises.
“I’m pressing charges,” Ed said, pointing at Greg. “I’ll make sure you pay for this.”
Greg continued to scream and shout at Ed. Finally, we were able to move him out of Ed’s office. Ed was on the phone, calling the police.
“You better get out of here,” I said to Greg. “He’s serious. He’s calling the cops.”
“Why’d you pull me back, man? Why’d you do that?”
“Because it’s not worth it,” I said.
“He owes me money. I’m not leaving here till he pays it to me.”
“He won’t give you any money now,” I said. “Get out of here, before you get in even more trouble.”
“I was gonna kill him,” Greg said. “You know that, right?”
“I know,” I said. “Just get out of here.”
Greg took a few things from his desk, then walked slowly toward the front of the office. Ed started shouting maniacally: