“Starting tomorrow, I have to allot you twenty dollars a day. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said as he reached into his pocket. He pulled out just one dollar.
“That’s all you have?” Robin asked.
Henry shrugged his shoulders and put the dollar back into his pocket.
“What happened to the money you took out of the bank?”
Henry looked down on the ground and avoided Robin’s eyes.
“Did you give it away?”
Henry nodded.
“To Dixie?”
Henry’s lack of response angered Robin. She tried to contain herself. She wanted to burst into a rage and shake her father’s shoulders and tell him he shouldn’t be so irresponsible, that he had to be more careful about what he did with money because the judge might rule against him for being so flippant with the estate. But she knew any such reminders would be futile. Simple reasoning, however, had worked well in the past – as long as it was simple.
“Why did you give Dixie your money, Dad?”
Henry looked at the ground, like a boy who didn’t want to talk.
“What’s the matter, Dad?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I don’t want you to say anything, except the truth.”
“But you’ll judge me if you don’t like my answer.”
“I see. Okay. I promise I won’t judge you.”
“I didn’t want to give it to her,” Henry said.
“Then why did you?”
Henry closed his eyes and tilted his head high, as if deep in thought. “Because she needed it more than I did and it was the right thing to do.”
“You think it was the right thing to do?”
“Yes.”
“Dad,” Robin said softly, “Dixie is a drug addict. Remember our discussions about enabling people?”
“Yes ... no.”
“Well, if she uses that money to get food and clothing, then I would agree with you that you did the right thing, but she’s taking your money and buying drugs. You are helping her to continue to be a drug addict.”
“Oh. You think?”
“Dad. She could die from taking drugs. You should know that.”
Henry frowned, eyes furrowed. “Oh, my. I guess I shouldn’t have given money to Wheezy, either.”
“You gave money to her, too. Dad!”
“Yeah. Last week.” He rubbed his hands together, a gesture the conversation was over. “I want to go back inside.” He turned and walked back inside the funeral home.
Robin wished Sharon were there to give her a cigarette. She took a deep breath, looked out onto Main Street and spotted Dixie dancing into town in rhythm from the music of her CD player.
“What a waste,” Robin whispered to herself. She fixed her gaze on Dixie, watched her dance to her own music. She remembered hanging out with Dixie in the school yard when they were kids. Those were the days when taking drugs meant cherry-flavored chewable aspirin. It was hard to believe the different paths in life they had chosen. What kind of relationship could Dad and Dixie have, for crying out loud? What possible reason would Dad have for making friends with such a loser?
She turned and headed back into the parlor.
Chapter 4
Sharon walked through the doors of CCA, the Clarion Collection Agency. No one could tell that her stomach and shoulder muscles were tight, and she was tired from a poor night’s sleep. She flew by several cubicles on her way to her workstation, groaned to herself and wondered how much longer she must bear this working class yoke. Sometimes she felt like screaming if she had to work another day. My God! What if it were years?
She faked it as well as anyone could fake it, donning a smile and bobbing her head and dolling out the ‘good mornings’ like she really meant it. She made a brief stop at the coffee table, grabbed her mug hanging on the wall above the urn and, while making her coffee, she listened to her co-workers who were busy putting ‘the squeeze’ on those ‘poor unfortunate individuals’, as Robin would call them, who don’t have a pot to piss in. But they were undoubtedly aware of what they were doing when they got themselves into debt in the first place, and Sharon had no sympathy for them.
Sharon’s coffee mug was larger than most. It was a good thing because presently she needed a good jolt of caffeine to start her workday. She took a swig, swirled the coffee in her mouth to take away the dryness, and swallowed. Her face shriveled involuntarily while gasping, as if she had just gulped two-hundred-proof tequila, worm and all.
It was a surreal moment for Sharon, all the voices rattling together, the soft mixed with the loud, the idle chatter interlaced with the searing ultimatums. She inhaled deeply through her nose. ‘One … two … three,’ she counted with each exhale. Feeling lightheaded, she headed towards her cubicle.
No doubt, years from now, she’d remember this place by the smells, like the hospital odors she remembered when she had her tonsils out, or like a garbage stench, which reminded her of a trip through Staten Island one hot summer’s day on her way to Jones Beach. She savored the odors in the room for a moment, the hint of burnt coffee, a man’s aftershave competing with the scent of cheap woman’s cologne. She sensed that many years from now, when the hints of these odors passed her nose once again, she’d be whisked back to this place and time and, like it or not, she’d remember it in a more favorable light than it really deserved.
Sharon approached her desk and felt anxious, a customary response when she first walks into her cubicle. The first motion of the day was the anxiety rush that seemed to settle in the pit of her stomach. But the moment passed, as it always did, when she threw her coat on the spare chair, sat down and took another swig of coffee.
“Working for a living sucks,” she whispered to herself.
“Yeah, but somebody’s got to do it,” a voice said from behind.
Sharon whipped her head around. It was Fred Clarion, Jr., the sole proprietor of the company. Sharon liked Fred, sort of. In fact, most of the people at the Clarion family liked Fred; it was a don’t-bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you kind of thing.
Sharon wondered how much she would tolerate Fred if he didn’t lavish his employees with bonuses every year. Money talked, and Fred knew it, and that’s why he shared some of the company’s profits to his employees to get them to squeeze harder. In was an investment. If they squeezed harder, the deadbeats would pay more, which would increase the bottom line. If the bottom line improved, the bonuses would increase - a simple process understood by all Clarion employees.
“What are you doing here?” Fred asked.
“My sister and I are doing shifts at the funeral parlor. I can only take so much of that somber crap. I’ll do a few folders and then I’ll probably go. Besides, aren’t you handing out bonus checks today?”
“Yes, I am,” he said as he handed her a folder. “As long as you’re up to it, see what you can do with this one.” Fred put one fist on top of the other and twisted them as if he were wringing out a wet rag. “Go get ‘em, killer.”
He chuckled and retreated to his office. Sharon watched him while he poked his head in each cubicle, appearing and disappearing unexpectedly, chatting with people in short spurts, saying his quick ‘hellos’. He never showed interest in small talk, unless the topic had to do with money or Clarion processes.
“He doesn’t like staying in one place too long,” Derick Orr said, peeking over the cubicle. “He might hear something he doesn’t want to hear.”
“Yeah. He’s a wonder of the world, isn’t he?”
Derick pointed to his headset, which seemed to be permanently attached to his ear. “I’m on hold. This deadbeat’s giving me the treatment. Leavin’ me hangin,’ if you know what I mean. This is my third ‘please hold, I’ll be right back.’ How are you? You don’t look so good. Ooops.” Derick pointed to his headset and disappeared behind the cubicle.
“What do you mean you are going to get a lawyer?” Derick’s voice flew over the cub
icle loudly, and then the voice softened a bit, more composed. “It’ll cost you more money than you owe, so that really doesn’t make any sense …” as his voice eventually blended in with the office’s chatter.
Sharon got down to business, opened the folder Fred just gave her, and inspected the briefings inside. Another woman, single, probably living alone. Clarion always gave her the single women, suggesting she had a special understanding of a female’s biggest misfortune; that is, not having a live-in male partner, as if that were the ultimate reason for living. “Pretentious nitwit,” she whispered to herself.
“Another stellar performance, if I do say so myself,” Derick yelled. He peeked over the cubicle. “You have to push back hard, you know. You can’t give ‘em an inch. You gotta stick these people.” He ducked back down.
The words ‘these people’ had special meaning to Sharon having she spent years talking with ‘these people’ on the phone. She couldn’t blame half of the penny-pinchers who had legitimate hard-luck stories to tell, ‘chicken soup’ kind of stories. The other half thought nothing of bilking the capitalistic system led by fat-cats of big corporations who were siphoning undeserved millions of dollars in underserved salaries and bonuses. They felt entitled to ignore their bills. After all, it would just be an expense item on their ledger sheets along with other costs. Sharon liked the aggressive ones, the ones who yelled and carried on about how difficult it was to make ends meet in such a money hungry world where everyone was stealing from everyone. ‘These people’ complained about how their situation was unique, or that the metaphorical ‘life itself’ owed them something when, after Sharon would peel the onion back, their laziness and their lies and their self-centeredness leaked through like a sieve and fueled her own passion to argue about issues of the human condition. She felt she understood their issues as well as anyone and no one was going to put anything past her.
There were plenty of times Sharon went into debt when she didn’t have to. For example, she passed by a car dealer one day and fell in love with a new model convertible and just had to have it. A Mustang. She traded in her used Honda and took out a five-year loan to pay for a new car; then two years later, she took out another loan to refurnish her apartment. She could’ve kept her Hollywood couch that had nothing wrong with it except it was old, and her compress flake-board kitchen table functioned just fine, and certainly she didn’t have to replace her ten-year old stereo because the FM tuner picked up less stations than her car radio.
Growing up she had never lived extravagantly and Sharon guessed that was the reason why she wanted new things now. All her life her mother had the means to get new things, new gadgets, new clothes that came into style. But no, that wasn’t her mother’s style. Mom’s never-ending quest not to spoil her children meant Robin and Sharon lagged terribly behind the styles of the time.
So, Sharon blamed her excesses on the fact that she came from a family where she was being taught lessons of frugality every day when they really didn’t have to. You couldn’t advertise your wants because then you’d get pounced on. ‘You want a TV in your room,’ her mother would say, ‘then work for it’. But why work for it when your chump change could buy a thousand of them.
Sharon shuddered at the prospect of working for a living for the rest of her life, and possibly becoming one of ‘these people’ who she despised for their whining dispositions. What good is it if you’re a decent, hard worker all your life? Where does it get you? An early grave, perhaps.
Callous is what Robin had called her at times. Sharon thought herself rather observant, not callous. She saw how some of ‘these people’ worked their fingers to the bone and still couldn’t make ends meet. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. She was the way she was because she did understand. But, in her case, it was a little different. With an estate worth millions, there was always that nagging hope that some of it might come her way. Like winning the lottery, only the odds were a little bit better in her case. Maybe fifty-fifty. Notwithstanding, she had to be careful about rationalizing about overextending her financial boundaries. She didn’t have access to any of that money and might never have access to it. She could become like some of ‘these people’ quite easily since she was only one step away from financial crisis herself, living from paycheck to paycheck, that is. Quite a middle-class dilemma where most of the horror stories began – a time when they lived from month to month - and then something unexpected happened creating the initial spiral down into the dismal emotional place where debtors go. “Don’t they have prisons? Don’t they have work-house,” rings in her mind from the Christmas Carole movie she was forced to watch every December 25th with Mom and Dad and Sis. She was forever fearful of becoming one of ‘these people’.
Sharon needed to learn how to adjust to the lifestyle of a struggling, un-rich, and un-famous, middle class woman, just in case she never got hold of what was rightfully hers. She hadn’t quite got the hang of it yet. Paying off two loans and pinching pennies to pay for rent and dry cleaning and utility bills and all the other living expenses was the only inspiration for her being at Clarion. So, as it turned out, Mom got her way in forcing her to work for the ‘things’ and the ‘its’ in her life. Bravo, Mom.
Actually, these arguments over the telephone challenged her. She really loved doing battle with faceless people. Sharon felt confident she could perform ‘the squeeze’ as well as anyone in the office. Maybe there were maladies at play, like alcoholism or a divorce, which led, in part, to the reason people defaulted on payment of this or that, or ‘it’.
Fred held several training sessions where Sharon learned how to employ personal experiences to exploit weaknesses in others, sort of method acting for collection agents. If a Clarion employee could strip the borrower of dignity, then the spirit could be broken. If the spirit broke, then it was just a matter of negotiating the amount and frequency of the payments for commodities bought during more affluent times, or perhaps bought during an emotional crisis when the borrower just had to have that car or stereo system or expensive furniture.
Sharon felt that working at CCA was analogous to working in the New York Stock Exchange where one could get caught up in the fraternal frenzy of buying and selling. In developing a good squeeze process, one had to understand the fears and uncertainties of human nature and develop a pitch that would expose those frailties. And once you found the weakness, you expose it and drill at it until there is no more cover to protect; no more defense, no more protective masks. Of course, Fred Clarion wouldn’t put his ‘squeeze’ policy in writing. There were rules to be followed from The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which were violated every day at Clarion. Sharon was wise to the fact that Fred very rarely roamed the floor to monitor the employees’ behavior because, if he did, he would’ve spotted violations as clearly as Felix Unger could spot a spaghetti sauce stain on a white wall. Fred wouldn’t have to look far or listen very carefully because he knew how his team got results. So, he poked his head in and out of cubicles to say hello as quick as Wyatt Earp drew his gun. And usually he did it in the morning before his workers got a head of steam going. This was his way of turning a blind eye, a deaf ear to their tactics; this way he could avoid perjury in case his company was sued for violating the laws. The unwritten rule at Clarion, which Sharon understood clearly, was be as vague as vague could be. He had a five-page methods and procedures policy that said absolutely nothing. Sharon often joked about it and some of her co-workers actually had the implied mission statement banners in their cubicles, which said ‘don’t get caught’.
Sharon saw the ‘official’ posters on the walls every morning, names of Clarion’s clients – car lots, banks, charge card companies – and the list was growing as the company’s reputation for collecting debts increased with every passing month.
The Clarion Collection Agency had either met or exceeded the client’s expectations of debt collection for fifty-five straight months. Todd Pitt, the office secretary, hung a chart on the wall abo
ve his desk displaying this proud fact. It was a constant reminder there was nothing more important than index results. The chart was the first thing Sharon saw when entering her cubicle, and the last thing she saw when leaving for the day.
“Are you okay?” a voice from behind asked.
Sharon turned. It was Todd, the secretary. “I’m fine,” she said.
“I don’t understand why you came in today.”
“Because half my salary is based on commission. And we get our bonuses today. I mean, how am I going to continue to live in my customary style of caviar snacks and seasonal cruises?”
“Yeah, but it’s your mother for crying out loud.”
Sharon pushed her chair closer to the aisle. “My sister has everything under control, Todd. She’s always in control, you see. And I will hold down the fort tonight. I will be missing in action all day, mañana.
“Agh. The funeral?”
“Yes,” Sharon said. “So, kindly shut up. I need the money. Mind your own business. Get lost.”
Todd nodded profusely. “I get the picture. Mum’s the word.”
Sharon pushed her chair back, and spun around into a working position. She stared ahead as if the wall had some influence over her. She listened to another of Derick’s pitches from over the cubicle. Maybe that would motivate her.
“Mrs. Robinson …Mrs. Robinson … Mrs. Robinson, please let me talk. I didn’t say you are a bad person. The sad fact is that your credit rating stinks. Every credit bureau in the nation says you don’t know how to manage your money … what do you mean ‘How can I say that?’ It says it right here.”
Sharon stood up and looked over the partition. Derick waved his hand in the air suggesting that he had lost control in this conversation.
Fred Clarion stepped over to Todd’s desk. “Okay, everybody listen up,” he said. Sharon’s attention was diverted as a crowd gathered around Fred.
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