Fante

by Dan Fante

  Chapter Thirty-six

  The Death of John Fante

  © JOHN V. FANTE

  On May 7, 1983, my father’s kidneys stopped working and he fell into a coma. Our family was notified. The next morning, after my mother and brother Jim and sister Vickie had left the hospital, I met with his doctors again, alone. I wanted to stay until the end. I was again told that his condition was irreversible. Despite the medication being administered, Pop was unable to regain consciousness. It was recommended that no special measures be taken and that he be allowed to die.

  For the next several hours, I sat outside in the Calabasas sunshine smoking cigarettes and trying to reach the decision whether or not to tell them to pull the plug and let my father go. A family member had to make that decision. My mother and family had been at the hospital for hours and were exhausted. It was my call.

  Having decided to give my permission, I was sitting with him, alone in his hospital intensive-care room, holding his hand when a nurse named Maria came in to say hi. She was the day nurse. The night nurse’s name was Mary. Two Marys. I had the thought that the Blessed Virgin, whom my father had much admired and prayed to all his life, was with him.

  Maria asked me if I was ready. Had I reached a decision? “Should we keep him alive or stop the life-support drugs?”

  I said, “Yeah, let’s stop the drugs. Let him die.”

  A moment later, before any action could be taken, Pop’s heart monitor began buzzing. He was flatlining. I leaned over and yelled at him, “Breathe, Pop!”

  He began breathing.

  A minute passed and his respiration again stopped.

  I yelled again, “Breathe, Pop!”

  Maria put her hand on my shoulder and showed me a kind smile. “Just let him go,” she said. “Don’t stop him. He wants to die. It’s time.”

  My dad, the man I loved most in the world, a man who refused to compromise himself for anyone, the man who had showed me by example what it was like to be a true artist, was gone. We had become a loving father and son after a rocky thirty-year start. John Fante’s gift to me was his ambition, his brilliance, and his pure writer’s heart. He had begun life with a drunken, self-hating father, backing out of the hell of poverty and prejudice. Now he was ending it as the best example of courage and humility I had ever known. John Fante was my hero.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Into the Boiler Room

  I soon discovered that Duke Chakaris’s company specialized in hiring newly sober people: beaten-down misfits struggling to stay sober and clean. People like me. Duke was Moses himself to his salespeople—parolees and scumbags and the marginally employable, guys fighting to keep their heads above water any way possible. Chakaris was committed to making other people successful, to “giving it away.” His passion was to hound his employees to success, into new cars and fancy condos and the trappings of financial security.

  Duke’s street-junkie instinct for survival had awakened an obsession for riches and power that he’d begun spreading like smallpox. He made sure that mind-set was hammered home to me.

  My boss understood that normal people cannot withstand the pressure of making a hundred or two hundred cold calls a day for months on end. Normies typically flamed out in less than a week at UCS, and almost every Monday morning I would see a new group of trainees enter. By Friday almost all the newbies would be gone. But the desperate people—the ones panicked by the fear of getting kicked out again by their old lady or violating probation for lack of employment—the ones in debt and one week sober and living in their cars—usually did well.

  The mantra Duke fed to us from the 5:45 a.m. sales meeting until two p.m., when we went home, was brutally simple: Dial for dollars. Success will fix anything and everything. When in doubt, make more money—and don’t drink. I fit right in.

  I had worked phone-room jobs before in New York City, briefly selling knockoff first-run videos, driveway cleaners, and porn, but I had been a daily drinker then and had almost always quit or been fired. UCS was different. I could see that Chakaris believed everything he preached. He was living proof. That was good enough for me.

  UCS had a “price-protection” pitch that Duke demanded I memorize and repeat word-for-word until nothing I said over the phone was original or deviated from the script.

  UCS’s pitch was packaged in clear plastic and tacked to the two-foot-high corkboard partition wall in front of my face. Before I was allowed to start selling on the phone, I had to spend two hours with a supervisor (the guy at the desk next to mine) rehearsing Duke’s presentation.

  The second page of the presentation contained responses to standard objections. There were three standard “no” answers that the mooch would almost always give. Stuff like, “I have too many on hand.” “Your price is too high.” “We already have a supplier.”

  Here’s the response I repeated at least ten thousand times during my first year at UCS: “I understand that you don’t have an immediate need, Bob [all Duke’s mooches were nicknamed Bob], but let me make a suggestion: My product is the premium. The high-yield new micromesh nylon [whatever that was]. Go ahead with me today and I’ll cut our standard transmittal in half and send you our starter kit of just seventy-two ribbons at $22.95—you can handle that—and I’ll give you a full twelve-month price freeze on any reorder. Then, when you need more, you call me. Fair enough?”

  If Bob said no again I’d cut the order in half, lower my price by a buck, extend his fictitious, nonsense price-protection guarantee for another year, and then go back for another close.

  According to Chakaris, the word NO is only a request for more information. Statistically, most mooches can only say NO seven times to a hard sell before they cave in and buy. I never stopped trying on a sales call. I was too afraid of failure and going back to my old life. The only times I didn’t make even a small sale was when the customer on the other end of the line hung up on me.

  For me and my relentless, festering mind, pounding the phone seven to nine hours a day became the only thing that provided relief. I had a place to take my personal madness every day that wasn’t a liquor store or a gin mill.

  My first day on the job at UCS I made six sales and three hundred dollars. The next day I made a hundred bucks more. By the end of the week I’d earned a thousand dollars in commission. Making money was my new cure. It was as though blood were being delivered to a vampire.

  Duke would stomp around the salesroom for hours at a time, always dressed in a suit and tie, doing his best imitation of an evangelical preacher with a lisp: “Do you feel the power, my sons?” he’d bellow. “Gee-zus himself is coursing and pumping through your veins. Bang that phone! Dial for dollars! Today’s the day! Every call is a sales call. Praizzzze Geeezus! Praizzze heeeem and all his glory.”

  Six months later I’d managed the small miracle of staying sober. The cold-call sales I’d made were now in a reorder cycle in which the size of the first small orders I’d gotten could be doubled and tripled.

  But my problem, it became clear, was my continued tendency to blur the truth with many of my clients—and not care that I was doing it. I would say just about anything—make any promise—to take down a five-hundred-dollar commission.

  My income soared. I had money in the bank, a new furnished apartment in Marina del Rey, and a leased sports car, all courtesy of UCS. Chakaris had been unwilling to see me fail.

  As it turned out, the stress of my job and my years of stuffing my body with booze and ten cups of coffee a day and junk food, along with smoking fifty to sixty cigarettes, had taken their toll. Eight months into the job I contracted double pneumonia and, according to what my doctor later told me, almost died. It took me two months away from work to recover.

  Now that my income was gone, I was behind on my rent. By agreement, the account base of clients I had built for myself at UCS and could no longer maintain had been distributed to the top salespeople at the company.

  There was no reason not to drink. I had lost ev
erything—one more time. My way of passing the time in bed was to read books and try to write poetry. I’d polish off two or three secondhand novels a week. It was mostly bad writing, but I had a passion for literature and would devour almost anything.

  The only bright spot in my recuperation were the calls from Chakaris. He’d take time out from his day to pump me up, telling me how well the company was doing and how he was saving a chair for me in Murderer’s Row (the section where his company’s top closers sat). “You’re the man,” he’d say. “Get better. I believe in you. Nothing can stop your success but you. You’re sober today and you’re a winner.”

  When I was well enough to return to work, I had a choice: find another sales job or start over at UCS. At the bottom. I was looking at months of brutal cold calls to rebuild my client base.

  Duke called me into his office the day I returned to work, shaky and twenty pounds lighter. “Dan-eee,” he bellowed from behind his big oak desk, “you made it! You’re here! You beat the odds.”

  “I’m okay, Duke. I’m glad to be here. Thanks for the calls.”

  Duke rocked back in his executive chair. “Today is your first day back. The start of a brand-new life. By way of welcome I want to tell you about a man I admire greatly. Winston Churchill.”

  “I’ve read Churchill,” I said.

  Duke held his open palms out for silence. “May I continue my thought?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let this exemplary man be a beacon of power and greatness to you as he has been to me. Churchill was our kind of champion. Once, toward the end of his career as a leader of the free world, an interviewer asked Lord Churchill to what he owed his great achievements, his long and successful career as a statesman. The old bulldog was in his eighties. He never batted an eye. ‘I can sum up my philosophy of life in seven words,’ Churchill growled. ‘Never give up. Never, never give up.’

  “Daneee, you’re starting over, at the bottom of the heap, pounding that phone. I know you’ve had a tough time. But I believe you’re a true winner.”

  “Thanks, Duke. I need the money. I’ll try to do my best.”

  “I’m going to help you get back on the beam, back to the rare air, a mountaintop where the snivelers and whiners of this world will never go. I’m one hundred percent committed to your success. Never, never give up! Are you with me?!”

  “Sure, Duke.”

  Six months later I was again earning over fifteen hundred a week. I had stopped lying to my customers. I met with my boss every Friday afternoon, and he cheered and coached me every step of the way.

  Eighteen months after I’d first joined UCS, Chakaris moved his phone crew of ex-drunks, dopers, and misfits to a new building near L.A. International Airport.

  Duke had spent a chunk of money and transformed the dingy warehouse into a first-class telemarketing facility. The place now contained ten rows of partitioned, upholstered “workstations” with office chairs instead of the corkboard and bare metal furniture we’d had at the motel. Chakaris called our padded cell cubicles command posts and began referring to his employees as sales commandos.

  The day we moved in, the tall employee parking lot entrance door to UCS featured a massive, gold-lettered sign that read, THROUGH THESE DOORS PASS THE WORLD’S GREATEST SALESPEOPLE.

  The new UCS had a coffee room and a training room and space for thirty-five telemarketers. Our staff began to be fed on a diet of free double-strength coffee and boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts all day long.

  The elevated, glassed-in sales manager’s office of UCS stood above the sales floor. On the side wall for everyone to see was a large sales board. As every new kill got recorded on this board by its telemarketer, noisemakers, whistles, and war whoops would fill the building. There was a new sales contest every month with a grand prize. Paris, Puerto Vallarta, Cancún.

  Duke began every day by speaking from a raised platform in front of his troops. He would thrust his fist in the air, blow through a noisemaker, and bellow out: Do you feel the power, my children!

  When the cheering settled he would begin the sales meeting (rally session) by congratulating the top salesperson of the day before. “Richard Burgess, you made a twenty-two-hundred-dollar commission on a cold call yesterday! One call turned your day around! Praise heeem! Get up here and stand at my side. Tell your fellow commandos and swat-team members how you did it!”

  Richard (or whoever was the best salesman the previous day) would ad-lib something like, I didn’t quit. I stuck to the pitch and I kept asking for the order.

  Duke would yell, “Thank yeuuu, Geeezuz! Praiseee Heeem and all His glory!” Our sales floor would then become reinfected with an excitement not unlike the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

  Chakaris drove his staff hard and himself harder still. As a consequence of his long IV drug use and exhausting work schedule, he contracted Hepatitis C and began frequent absences from the company.

  Every couple weeks, as I would later find out, he would pump himself up and make an appearance at work. His arrival would always be greeted by cheers and New Year’s Eve noisemakers. Duke was loved and feared.

  For my part I admired the guy and thought him crazy at the same time. He was P. T. Barnum and Dick Cheney—a ringmaster and an uncompromising zealot. I never completely bought the act but I always cashed my checks every two weeks.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  From Success to Filthy Socks

  By now I had seen hundreds of phone people come through the company, but only two dozen fire-breathing phone-pounders had survived the boot camp of months of cold calls. I’d upped my earnings to over 100K a year in commissions, and only UCS’s three or four top guys were earning more.

  Duke’s health was now failing. He often had to spend several days a week in bed. One of his top salesmen, Tom Shaughnessey, was appointed VP of marketing. We called Shaughnessey “Tommy-two-tone” because his face turned bright red when he whooped and yelled. Tom, not accidentally, was the mirror image of his boss’s personality: obsessed, ambitious, and relentless. Unfortunately for Tom, Duke’s personality contained only two speeds: Go for broke—and stop.

  Chakaris proved to be a brutal taskmaster to his second-in-command. From his sickbed he constantly drove Tom over the phone and, a year later, as a result of the relentless pressure to increase the gross sales numbers and raise the size of the staff, Tommy-two-tone flamed out and quit. UCS was left without a manager.

  The following day, a jaundiced Chakaris made an appearance on the sales floor. He’d decided to lead the morning meeting himself, to show his troops that their leader was still at the helm.

  After he’d pumped up the staff and passed out cash to several of the previous day’s Champion Closers, the meeting ended to marching music and rousing cheers.

  Ten minutes later I was called into Duke’s private office: the “inner sanctum of success,” a huge place adorned with trophies and brass plaques and framed portraits of World War II generals.

  Duke stood up from behind his teak throne. “Daneee-boy,” he snarled, “I once told you that I saw a sleeping giant within you! You’ve become a true predator, a real winner! You’ve turned your life around here at UCS and come back from failure to achieve your goals. You’re a leader in our elite commando strike force. I see in you a man who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals and assist those around him to glory and financial independence. Are you ready to move our troops ahead? Are you ready to take command? Are you ready for greatness?” (My boss actually spoke that way.)

  I took a sip of my coffee, stood up, and straightened my tie. “Sure, Duke,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  Chakaris came around his desk to shake my hand. “As of today I am appointing you vice president of marketing at Universal Computer Supply. As of today you are my right hand. My number-one man. I hereby entrust the future of our sales department to you. This is your moment in history. This is your battlefield. This is your time. Congratulations, Dan!”

  Within six months I
had doubled the sales force at UCS and increased the company’s overall gross volume by 20 percent while working twelve-hour days.

  Duke was a cagey and frequent real estate investor, and as his liver problem slowly went into remission he helped me negotiate the purchase of a remodeled house in Venice Beach. Then, a month later, he goaded me into buying a new sports car. I had somehow become Chakaris’s trick pony, his example of the miracles possible at UCS.

  Months later, Duke’s health got to a point where he could work again. On the occasions when he’d appear in the sales department, he would commandeer the morning meeting and pump up the staff. At the height of the excitement, he’d point at me and begin listing my accomplishments: my house at the beach, my sports car, my sales record after starting over a second time with the company.

  I had begun to feel overworked and boxed in, and I’d given up twelve-step meetings because they took too much of my valuable time achieving greatness. Now, several nights a week, I was sleepless and had to take over-the-counter pep pills to keep me operating at full steam.

  Miki La Sustantiva was twenty-four when I first saw her as a new UCS trainee; I was fifteen years older. She was tall and sexy with huge black eyes—a former model and lap dancer and a master at manipulating men. Miki was trying to find a job that fit in with her financial ambitions.

  Our attraction was instant. I began to coach her privately after work and eventually began to feed her enough strong leads during the day so she’d make her trainee quota of ten sales per week at the company.

  Among Duke’s many military-type company rules was a strict policy of no interoffice dating. “Fraternizing” was right below alcohol and drug abuse as a reason for termination. Many of UCS’s salespeople had lapsed into their old habits and, as a result, had been sacked on the spot. I decided the rule didn’t apply to the sales manager with the house in Venice Beach and the new black sports car.

  My hours at work and my dedication to my job allowed for almost no personal life. My sobriety was getting rocky and I knew it. Miki was the answer.