"Are you ready to see my picture?" Katina asked, hopping in place.
"I sure am, Baby," Shauna said, squatting down beside her. She kissed her daughter on the forehead and hugged her again. "But Mommy needs more sugar. I missed you!"
"I missed you too," Katina said, kissing her back.
"Okay. Lets see this picture."
Katina proudly displayed her Crayola masterpiece.
"That's wonderful, Baby," Shauna said.
"Tell her who it is in the picture, Katina," Shauna's father advised, appearing suddenly behind her.
Shauna rose to hug her father, who kissed her cheek and squeezed her tight.
Katina pointed to a small little brown figure, apparently sitting, on a white square amidst a green field. "That's me..." Now she indicated a larger brown figure sitting across from her on the white square, with a white blob on her head and a white coat and skirt. Emblazoned on the white blob was a small red cross. "...And that's you. And we're having a picnic at the park."
"Is that a nurse's uniform I'm wearing?" Shauna asked.
Katina nodded, beaming.
"Oh, Baby," Shauna said, feeling choked up. She lifted Katina up into an embrace. When she closed her eyes, a tear squeezed out. "That is such a sweet, wonderful picture." Only briefly did she consider the empty spot in the drawing, in between the two brown figures.
They sat down to a meal of ox tail, rice and gravy. Katina brought Shauna up to date on the state of kindergarten: Somebody brought a gerbil to show & tell. A girl named Jessica ate some Playdough and got a blue tongue. The teacher said something terribly funny.
Shauna's parents briefed her on family news: Mum's niece back in Guyana had just given birth to twins. Daddy's second cousin in Tuscaloosa was back in prison. Then they asked her for news.
"I did have a good laugh today," Shauna said, brightening.
She told them about her conversation with the installer and his antenna remark. Her father chuckled, but Mum looked almost outraged.
"What is so funny about that?" Mum demanded.
"The woman has cable TV," Daddy explained. "Cable TV comes through wires, through cable. Instead of receiving three or four stations broadcast over the air, you get...what do we have, seventy channels?"
"I don't know," Mum said, "I only watch a few."
"Anyway," Daddy continued, "this woman wants to get TV stations without any wire; isn't there any way to do that? Shauna says no, not without magic. This man on the phone says wait, there is a way: it's called an antenna!" He laughed again, appreciating it greater the more he thought about it.
Mum frowned. "But that is foolishness. The woman wants cable, not air broadcast."
"Nevermind, Mum. I guess you had to be there." At least Daddy got it.
"That man could be fired!" Mum said. "He works for the cable company, but tells the woman to use the antenna?"
"No, no, Mum. He didn't tell the customer. He said that to me. It was just a joke."
"The woman wasn't from Guyana," Daddy said. "She was just ignorant."
Mum gasped and glared indignantly at her husband.
Daddy closed his eyes and shook his head. "Now I wasn't dissing your people," he protested. "I'm just saying, you grew up in Guyana where most people don't have all this stuff. This woman is from this country where everybody knows about cable TV, so she's got no excuse."
"You called me ignorant," Mum said, but her expression softened and she winked at Shauna.
"I would never do that, Sweetheart." He cleared his throat and turned to face Shauna across the lacquered cherrywood dining table. "Speaking of cable, what do we have to do to get a decent picture around here?"
Shauna's eyebrows arched, but her mouth was full of rice.
"They keep sending technicians out here," Mum explained, "but none of them fix the problem."
"The last guy was here no more than five minutes," Daddy said. "He said our TV was bad and just left. That's the same thing the last cat said. We believed that guy, so we went out and bought a new TV. Well, hundreds of dollars later, we still have the same problem, and we're still getting the same excuse."
Shauna bit her lip. "I'll see what I can do about it, Daddy."
It was dark when Shauna and Katina got home. Her twobedroom, second-floor apartment sat only blocks from the university. Most of her neighbors were students, and some of them were partying upstairs as she unlocked the door.
Shauna had done her best to make this place as homey as her mother's house. Katina found it comfy and safe, but Shauna knew it was only temporary. One day they would have a house. A permanent home. But one thing at a time.
Since they had already eaten, Shauna let Katina bring her dolls out into the living room to play. Shauna tuned to the Caribbean music channel, and opened the sliding glass door to her balcony to breathe in the night air and gaze at the moonlit university campus while her computer booted up.
One thing at a time. One day she would march into the registrar's office and pay tuition for her first semester. Some day after that, she would be a registered nurse, getting paid to help people every day at a hospital or clinic. People who really needed help. People sick or hurting--not disgruntled TV junkies unsatisfied with their cable service.
She heard the Windows startup music from her computer speakers behind her. She daydreamed a little longer before returning inside, sliding the screen door shut to keep the bugs out, and sitting at her desk. She got online, logged into the University of Phoenix site, and plunged back into her general education course work.
Once when she got up to use the bathroom, she took time to pin Katina's picture on the wall above her monitor. She glanced at the picture repeatedly through the evening, smiling almost every time.
Just before her daughter nodded off on the couch, Shauna asked her, "Katina, what's this blank spot between you and I in the picture?"
Katina looked up, blinking sleepy eyes, and yawned. "That's for a man, Mommy."
"A man?"
"Yeah. I left it empty so he'll have a place to sit with us at the park."
"What man?" she asked, feeling a tug at her heart. "Your father?"
Frowning, very serious, Katina shook her head. "No. The man whoever you fall in love with."
Shauna stared at the picture. She didn't mean Clarence, did she?
"I don't think it's Clarence," Katina said, as if hearing her mother's thoughts.
"Let's get you to bed," Shauna said, rising to stretch. Katina stumbled over and spread her arms wide. Shauna lifted her into their ritual good night carry, and took her to her room. Though still tiny, her daughter was getting heavier. One day she would be too big to carry.
"I don't see how your feet can stand it," Jenny said, through a crunching potato chip, as they sat at their usual table in the break room. "Just get some flats. They'll even let us wear sandals here, as long as there's no thong between the toes."
Shauna made a face. "Don't worry so much over what I wear, Jenny. They're my feet. Some girls like to torture themselves by piercing parts of their body to hang jewelry from it; I prefer to torture myself by wearing high heels."
Marcie poked her head in the break room and made eye contact with Shauna. "Hi. May I speak with you for a moment?"
Shauna rose and screwed the cap back on her water bottle, wondering if she was in trouble. She followed Marcie to her desk. Team supervisors didn't have their own offices--just slightly larger cubicles. Marcie took a seat and motioned for Shauna to follow suit.
"I've been going over the logs for the last month," Marcie said. "You've got the best scores on second shift, again."
Shauna's surprise was twofold: One, that Marcie could find the time to review the logs; two that, evidently, everyone else in Customer Service was struggling to get through the checklist in the allotted time worse than Shauna was.
"Donna and I have noticed you've been consistently at the top since you've started with us," Marcie said.
There was another surprise. Donna Wilson wa
s the Customer Service Manager.
Marcie smiled. "And it's not just about the numbers, even though I know it seems like that most of the time. I've noticed the way you interact with customers, and it's clear to me you really have a heart for helping people."
Shauna wondered how in the world that came through, when most of the specific calls she remembered were from customers who emotionally exhausted her, which caused her to get snippy. Out of all the calls she took, it seemed like the customer hung up unsatisfied most of the time.
"We all know the customers we get can be draining," Marcie continued. "A lot of them are simply impossible to please. I've seen the way you've handled the good and the bad, as well as your coworkers, and I think you've got potential for promotion."
Shauna's eyes were wide, now.
"I may be moving on soon," Marcie said. "It looks like Donna will be transferring to Human Resources, and I'm moving up to take her spot. She asked me for a few names of my possible replacements from within the team. How would you feel about being on the list?"
Stunned though she was, Shauna didn't hesitate. "Great. I would like that a lot."
"All right," Marcie said, with a nod. "Just keep doing what you're doing." Marcie turned to a stack of paperwork. Shauna was dismissed.
Shauna heard snippets of phone conversation as she returned to her cubicle. "Ma'am, it's not our responsibility if your DVD player is jammed." "What channels are giving you the problem, sir?" "Have you heard about our triple-play package?" "No, don't worry about the furniture--the technician will move that if he needs to."
She sat, slipped her headset on, and her trance was broken within minutes.
Brad, an effeminate CSR two cubicle rows away, sashayed up to her chair. Shauna smiled to mask her dislike of him. In a sitcom, Brad would fill the obligatory funny gay character role. In real life, he was humorless, vindictive, backbiting and full of vicious gossip.
"I have a technician who's asking for you," lisped Brad.
"For me? Why?"
Brad put his hand on his hip and sucked his teeth, put out by the ordeal of walking from his cubicle to hers. "I don't know, Sugar. Do you want to take the call or not?"
She shrugged and nodded.
"Shauna?" the voice asked. It was slightly familiar.
"Yes it is," she said. "How can I help you?"
"I just sold a DVR, and was hoping you could make the necessary changes to the account for me."
"Oh. Well, certainly." Each time a technician sold something to a customer, a CSR had to add the new service or equipment to the account records. Shauna and the tech spent about three minutes making the changes. Fortunately, these calls were exceptional and didn't count against her time quotas.
"Is there anything else I can help you with?" Shauna asked, once all that was done.
"Yeah: you could laugh at some of my jokes for a while."
Her eyes squinted and nose wrinkled. "Excuse me?"
"Shauna, this is Miles. We talked yesterday."
She was blank for a moment, and then slapped her forehead, laughing at herself. "Oh, snap! I knew I recognized your voice from somewhere."
"You forgot me so soon? I'm hurt."
"No," she said, giggling. "You gotta understand: I talk to a hundred different people on any given day."
"Okay. I guess that's understandable." When he made the "I'm hurt" comment, his voice had a joking tone. Now he was so nonchalant, she perceived a sadness underneath the sudden cold distancing--like he really was hurt, now, if only a tiny bit.
"I'm sure you go in and out of so many houses, they all start to blur together in your mind," she said. "And the people in the houses, too."
"Ya got me there," he said. "There's only a few that stand out; because of uncommonly bad or uncommonly good experiences therein."
Therein? Who used words like that, outside of literature? "Actually," she said, "you were my uncommon good yesterday: that was the best laugh I've had in a minute."
"And I wasn't even trying to be funny at the time."
She rotated slowly in her swivel chair. "That's why it was funny: you took me by surprise."
"Hmm. So if I want to make you laugh like that again, I have to be natural."
"And spontaneous," she said.
"Aw, man, I guess I might as well throw this Pollack joke book away."
She giggled. "Hey, wait a minute. What if I'm Polish?" "Are you?"
She guffawed.
"I'll take that as a 'no'."
She was still laughing, observing her brown face in the reflection of her monitor. Who could ever imagine she was Polish?
"A 'yes'?" he asked, the playful tone restored to his voice. "If you're Polish, I'll trade it for an Italian joke book."
She wheezed and laughed harder.
"I have no idea how I did it this time," Miles said, "but I'm very proud to have made you laugh again."
"You sure did," Shauna said, getting control of herself. Other CSRs were peeking over their cubicles in her direction, looking for the cause of the outburst. "Listen Miles, I have to let you go. If my boss comes through and sees me carrying on like this, she'll figure I'm having too much fun on the clock and she'll...I don't know what she'll do, but I'm sure there's some kind of punishment for it."
Miles chuckled. "I think they lock you in a room full of TVs tuned to the local access station. You know--Fred Smurd's camcorder test footage; highlights of the Buttwater County Birdwatcher's meeting; the Funky Sock College Drinking Team's annual karaoke screech-off."
"Now you gotta stop!" she declared, through more laughter. "You're trying to get me in trouble!"
"No buttons on the TVs," he continued. "A thousand remote controls, but none of them work. You can't change channels. The beatings continue until morale improves."
"Miles," she said, but couldn't finish her sentence.
"Okay. I'll let you go, Shauna. You have a great day."
She sighed, and wiped her moist eyes. "Okay, Miles. Thank you. Bye-bye."
An hour and several routine customer calls later, she noticed her reflection in the monitor. The grin remained plastered to her face.
Miles had brightened her day again. She wouldn't forget his name next time. That he would take the time out of his probably busy day to chat with her was touching. He was a lot more flirty in this second conversation.
Not everybody flirts because they're attracted, she reasoned, but most people do. Quite probably he was attracted to her voice.
He wasn't the first. Katina's father, wherever he was now, had suggested Shauna ought to be a phone sex operator. With a body like hers, he added, she could also get rich doing live naked webcam.
Clarence had made similar remarks, but hadn't been as crass about it.
So who was Miles, Tech Number 7188, and what did he look like? He was definitely educated, though sometimes his accent seemed to have an inner-city stamp on it. Like Daddy.
Daddy was raised in the projects, but perfected his diction until the ghettospeak and 'hood Ebonics only came out when he was intentionally acting the fool.
She enjoyed Miles' flirting. He had a nice sense of humor, and there was no malice behind it. Nor was there an overbearing romantic innuendo.
Clarence could be funny, but his flirting was more direct--even confrontational at times, issued like a challenge. How did that one line go he used before their first date? Do I get your phone number or do I have to knock out your husband first--something like that. It was flattering, but a little too in-your-face.
She had another date with Clarence coming up. So why was she wasting time daydreaming about a man she hadn't met?
4
Miles looked through his route, ordered stock and picked up the equipment he would need that day. Berger, a tall, fat bald man with a pierced ear and a goatee, cornered him to inquire about the job on Baylor Avenue. Again.
Miles went through it again: what was on the work order; what the customer had been promised; where she wanted the third outlet, h
is warning; her request to go through with it. Berger started reciting company policy at him.
Miles asked what he had done wrong; what he should do differently in future.
Berger continued reciting policies.
Miles asked if, next time, he should do only what's on the work order, tell the customer "tough luck, call the office." After all, that's how most techs pursued their quotas.
Berger said no, a good tech should go above and beyond to make the customer happy.
Miles was confused, convinced in his own mind that he had tried to do just that. What he figured out, but didn't say out loud, was that Berger didn't like dealing with angry customers, and simply wanted to take his frustration out on somebody.
Once that was over, Miles left for his first job.
With the radio tuned to the classic rock station, Miles watched the road through his windshield while daydreaming about what he would do over the weekend. The Nextel beeped. Tyrell.
Townsend must be out of earshot, so we're buddies again. "What's up, Tyrell?"
"Yo, Bowser, we're in the same zip code today. You wanna get lunch, man?"
"No thanks. I packed lunch today." Besides, another "brother" might see you eating with Whitey.
Miles packed lunch daily to save money, but normally would do fast food with Tyrell anyway just to be sociable, and save his lunch for the next day. This would not be one of those days.
"You're a punk," Tyrell said. "Fine."
The next call he got was from Denny. "Man, you left before I could catch you," he said, after the initial greetings.
"You're at Broadcast Lane?" Miles asked. Denny, and all Service Techs, worked out of the Libra Street office.
"Yeah, came over for a meeting, but was hoping to holler at you for a second."
"Sorry, Denny. What's going on?" He turned onto Ackerman Boulevard and the scenery began its transition from business/industrial to lower middle-class residential.
"You're not in trouble," Denny said. "In fact, I wanted to congratulate you. You had the lowest go-backs all month."
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