by Jim Gavin
“I just want something that gets good mileage.”
“Yeah, but you need style.”
Matt felt slighted. He considered himself an industry fashion plate, if only because he refused to wear poofy pleats and knit golf shirts. One of his new customers, Ron Ciavacco, of Five Star Pipe and Supply in Baldwin Park, still wore Sansabelt pants.
“I can’t afford a fancy car,” Matt said.
“What else you spending your money on?”
“I’m saving for a trip to Europe.”
“What’s so great about Europe?”
“I don’t know. Museums, cathedrals.”
Larry laughed. “My first wife wanted us to go to Europe, but then she ran off with a Dominican.”
“A priest?”
“A shortstop. Some single-A nobody making a hundred bucks a week.” Larry put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. “Are you going to finish that?”
Matt handed over what was left of his chicken-fried steak.
“Jack showed me your numbers,” said Larry. “You’re not exactly setting the world on fire.”
“It’s been rough.”
“Jack thinks you’re a lazy prima donna.”
“I try not to be, but it goes against my instincts,” said Matt, sounding waggish to cover the absolute truth of the statement.
“I don’t tolerate laziness,” said Larry. “It’s a form of treason.”
He began ripping open sugar packs and dumping them three at a time into his coffee.
“I have no sales experience and Jack doesn’t believe in training.”
“Baptism by fire,” said Larry.
“It’s been over a year and I still have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Your job is to go out there every day and get your face kicked in. It’s the only path to enlightenment.”
“But I don’t know what I’m selling,” said Matt. “Once my contractors start talking spec I’m totally lost. They think I’m an idiot.”
It was a relief for Matt to suddenly admit these things. Among his friends he was regarded as a talker and wiseass. But for the past year he had felt perpetually tongue-tied and back on his heels. He hated to ask people for anything, but that was the essence of sales. Whenever Jack or his dad asked him how he was doing out there, he would say he was doing fine. They wanted him to do well, but this was a business and they were losing patience.
Larry looked sympathetic. Finishing his coffee, he said, “I’ve known your old man a long time. He’s a good salesman, but Christ, he’s been doing it for thirty years. You get good after a while. Nobody’s born with a priori knowledge of plumbing fixtures, or anything else. That’s been proven by philosophy.”
“We rep twenty-five lines. It’s a lot to learn.”
“So? You seem like a smart guy. Jack said you went to school.”
“I never finished. I’ve been bartending and coaching soccer.”
“Soccer?”
Larry said “soccer” with a vague distaste that Matt was used to. American men of a certain generation still associated the sport with communism and homosexuality.
“A JV team,” said Matt.
The waitress brought the check and Larry grabbed it.
“I’ll buy lunch,” said Matt.
“Lunch is taken care of.” Larry smiled. “We’re going to the luau.”
“It’s an actual luau?”
“Yeah. They got beer, roast pig, everything. You’re lucky I got you in there. These luaus are invite-only.”
“Who’s doing all this?”
“Lamrock.”
For a moment the name lingered in the air, like someone had a struck a bell. Matt had heard of Lamrock. Plumbers throughout Los Angeles spoke his name in reverent whispers, though Matt could never quite figure out who he was or what he did. He asked his dad once, and Marty Costello said, “Lamrock’s Lamrock. He’s just somebody who knows everybody.” During his first week at Ajax, Matt was standing on the loading dock with Jack, going over an order Matt had screwed up, when Linda, one of the inside sales girls, came running toward them. This was when she could still run—a month later, on her way home from work, she got caught in a drive-by on Redondo Beach Boulevard. Now there was a bullet in her spine and she was in a wheelchair. “Lamrock’s on the line,” she said, breathless. Jack, who usually kept no fewer than three people on hold at any given time, immediately ran back to the office.
“So who is Lamrock?” asked Matt.
“He’s my guy in Boyle Heights.”
“Is he a contractor or a wholesaler?”
“He’s kind of both, and more too,” said Larry, throwing a fifty on the table. “Lamrock’s got his hand in a lot of pots.”
• • •
Going west on PCH, they stopped at a liquor store. Matt waited in the car, listening to Jim Rome take a call from Terrence in Sierra Madre. Rome was an old SoCal, and before he got into radio he did time as an outside salesman. For some reason this gave Matt a strange sense of hope.
Larry came out wearing a new pair of wraparound sunglasses that made him look like an android assassin from the future. He bopped his head to unheard music and carried an armful of chips and Hostess cakes.
“Ho Ho?” he offered, getting back in the car.
“I’m stuffed.”
“Do I look cool in these?” asked Larry, with a big a smile. The tag was still dangling in front of his nose.
Matt nodded.
“I bought us some Scratchers.”
They both lost. Larry blew the silver scratchings across the dashboard.
“Sometimes I think I’ll never win the lottery,” he complained. “It’s always some little Mexican guy from Guatemala with a million kids.”
Matt, who was only eighteen units shy of his degree in history, winced slightly at this.
“You know what I mean,” said Larry, sensing his disapproval. “Lord knows I’m cheering for those fucking people.”
Matt’s Nextel chirped. It was Jack.
“Is Larry still shitfaced?” he asked.
“He’s right here.”
“Good, I hope he’s helping you out. Tell him if he doesn’t write some business today, I’m going to drop Brentford and start repping Kenner.”
Larry grabbed the phone out of Matt’s hand.
“If you had the balls to bring in more inventory, your supply houses wouldn’t complain so much about late shipments.”
“My balls aren’t the problem,” said Jack.
Taking back the phone, Matt said, “We’re on our way to Eagle Pipe. Hopefully, we’ll get an order out of Armando.”
“Hope is for pussies. Just get the order.”
Jack chirped off. As Matt turned Jim Rome back on, Larry opened one of his bags.
“Cheeto?”
• • •
In his faded Chivas jersey, with its red and white vertical stripes bulging across his massive belly, Armando looked like a walking fumigation tent. He stood behind the will call counter, holding a sprinkled donut in one hand and a ping-pong paddle in the other.
“I think I remember you,” he said, squinting at Larry. He put down his paddle and shook Larry’s hand.
“Didn’t Chet what’s-his-name used to manage this branch?” Larry asked.
“Chet died last year,” said Armando, making the sign of the cross with his donut. “He had a stroke on the eleventh hole at El Dorado.”
“Chet moved a lot of Brentford,” said Larry. “Back when he was alive.”
“So did I, before the recall.”
“The ballcocks. Jesus, man. You know we’re taking care of that shit. The best we can. Has Matt talked to you about the new Ultima?”
“I gave him the new catalogue,” Matt said.
“A monkey can pass out catalogues,” said Larry. “You go over it with him?”
“Yeah, he did, pretty much,” said Armando, slapping Matt on the shoulder. “You guys want a drink?”
Like a lot of guys in the industry,
Armando had worked his way up from the bottom. He started as a driver, moved into the warehouse, worked the will call counters, did purchasing, and eventually became a manager. He had a knack for remembering part numbers. All day long he’d sit behind the counter like a bard, singing to the lesser poets in back (“Compression stops, OR12s, half inch!”). More importantly, for Matt, he was a big soccer fan. Matt followed the Mexican league, so they always had something to talk about. It was so much easier than actually asking for an order.
Back in the warehouse the air smelled sour from the diesel exhaust of forklifts. A few guys were eating chorizo-and-egg burritos at a cheap plastic table that had as its centerpiece a gleaming metropolis of half-empty Tapatío bottles. Armando opened a fridge and grabbed two Cokes.
“Is that the last cerveza, amigo?” asked Larry, peering inside.
“Take it,” said Armando. “I got more in back.”
“I told Armando we would get him the new Ultima to display up front.”
“We can do that,” said Larry, trying to twist off the cap. “We can definitely do that.”
“I want it free,” said Armando. “Mike from Southwestern hooked me up with a free Kenner model.”
Mike Melendez, a snake, worked at Southwestern Sales, a rival rep company from Gardena. He had a knack for showing up at wholesalers a few minutes before Matt arrived, offering deals on Kenner products and reminding purchasing agents about the nightmare that was the Brentford ballcock recall.
“I don’t know if we can do that,” said Larry, bending forward to get better leverage on the cap.
“Those aren’t twist-offs, man,” said Armando.
“I’ve got an opener,” offered Matt, but it was too late.
Larry had ripped off the cap, along with a layer of skin on his right palm. Blood dripped down his hand as he took the first sip. “Just bring it in on consignment.”
The word “consignment” made Matt think of the circles of hell; he still only had a vague idea what it meant in the commercial sense.
“That works for me,” said Armando, shrugging. “Let me write it up.”
This happened now and then, a sale. It always made Matt more giddy than he expected, and in those moments he understood why some men kept grinding away year after year.
Later, over a game of ping-pong, they talked about Brentford’s new urinals and Armando suggested they chase down a mechanical contractor he knew in Carson who was bidding a job for L.A. Unified.
“We could see him before we hit the luau,” suggested Larry, pressing a wad of toilet paper into his palm.
Armando interrupted his serve. “Lamrock’s?”
“Are you going?” asked Larry.
“Oh, yeah,” said Armando, firing a wicked ball past Matt. “Anybody who’s got anything to do with anything will be there.”
“Who’s Lamrock?” asked Matt.
“Do you have a Hawaiian shirt?” Armando asked Matt.
“No.”
Armando looked ominously at Larry.
“What happens if I don’t have a Hawaiian shirt?” asked Matt, beginning to panic. “Who’s Lamrock?”
• • •
They drove north on Cherry Avenue, past the gates of All Souls Cemetery. For the past year, whenever he called on customers in Long Beach, Matt would swing by All Souls to look at his mother’s tombstone. He’d stand there for a while, trying to remember everything about her, every moment they ever shared, but strangely he couldn’t remember very much. His mind, for the most part, was a searing blank. Now and then he’d remember something small and meaningless from her last year, things he saw when he drove her to doctor appointments or watched television with her in the afternoon. He could see the shadows of the parking garage at St. Joseph Hospital, but he couldn’t see her. This felt like a curse and he worried that he had failed her in some way. He hated himself for not finishing school, for not establishing his place in the world. If he ever made anything of himself, she would never see it.
When he moved home it felt like a relief because he had a purpose; each day he knew exactly what he had to do, and nobody expected anything more from him. They watched all the home makeover shows together. His sisters also moved back home. Everybody was together. When his dad and sisters got back from work and school, relieving him of his duties, Matt would go play pickup soccer games at an abandoned junior high, using what Spanish he knew to scream for the ball. It was the same field he played on as a kid and sometimes he expected to look up and see his mom in her lawn chair, sucking on a menthol and cursing the referee. For years she labored under the delusion that Matt got fouled every time he touched the ball. Her shrill and partisan commentary from the sidelines had once embarrassed Matt, but now, as an adult, playing with strangers at twilight on a field full of weeds and gopher holes, he wanted to hear some distant echo of her voice, fighting for him and believing in his cause, whatever the fuck that was.
A few weeks earlier, while walking through the cemetery, Matt had seen his dad in the distance, already at the tombstone, standing above it, in his brown Members Only jacket, with his arms folded and his frizzy comb-over flapping in the wind. It was two o’clock, that dreaded time of day when outside salesmen suddenly find themselves alone after a busy morning. Matt suspected that every outside salesmen looked for ways to escape this bright and desolate hour. Pubs, libraries, the beach—Matt had all his sanctuaries mapped out. Twenty minutes to himself, outside of his car, that’s all he wanted. The cemetery was a frequent stop. He hid behind a tree so his father couldn’t see him.
What this man did when he left the house every morning had once been a mystery, but now Matt knew. Apparently Marty Costello had busted his ass for three decades, covering every godforsaken territory in SoCal and establishing a reputation as a resourceful and good-humored sales rep. Sometimes business was good, sometimes it wasn’t. The boom-and-bust life of a salesman meant that the house in Anaheim had been mortgaged multiple times, and it was only a matter of time, Matt knew, before the bank took it back entirely. Instead of land, his dad had left him the only thing he truly owned: the freeways.
Matt used to wonder what his dad thought about as he drove the freeways all day, every day, and it made him sad to think that this man, who never complained about anything, might have dreamed about doing something else with his life besides selling toilets. But Matt realized now, with envy, that his father had moved beyond dreams. He belonged to this world, day after day. In a dusty waterworks supply on the outskirts of Barstow, which was on the outskirts of nowhere, Matt had met Woody Blake, another plumbing lifer whose body, like a Joshua tree, had been hunched and twisted over the years by the high desert wind. Holding a pit bull on a leash, Woody greeted Matt in his trailer office and said, “Costello? Any relation to Marty?”
“He’s my dad.”
“I’ve known Marty for years. He’s a good guy.”
That day in the cemetery Matt knew if he kept walking he and his dad would see each other, a pair of truants, and they would laugh. It was what the Costellos did best when they were together and it had saved them from almost everything. But Matt didn’t want to share a laugh. He wanted to be alone with her, just for a few minutes, before getting back on the freeway.
In a trance, Matt hit his turn signal for the cemetery, but then saw Larry wiping orange Cheeto dust all over his khakis and remembered where he was. Larry reached back for his briefcase, put it in his lap, and popped it open. Matt glanced over and saw that it was empty except for two neatly folded Hawaiian shirts.
“Better safe than sorry,” he said.
“Why would we be sorry?”
“You’d be sorry, not me. You’re just lucky I brought an extra.”
“Why is it so important I wear a Hawaiian shirt?”
Larry looked at him like he was crazy. “Because it’s a fucking luau, son.”
Matt turned onto Del Amo and for a few intersections they drove in silence. As they crossed the L.A. River, Larry’s cell phone rang.
“Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“Getting engaged.”
“She’ll be number four. She was also number two.”
Matt was quiet for a moment, trying to do the math.
“She’s got MS,” said Larry. “She needs someone around to listen to her bitch.”
Matt turned briefly to Larry, who stared straight ahead. They turned off into an industrial park and found the address. Fred Tuiolosega, the proprietor of Gateway Plumbing, greeted them wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Behind him two enormous young men with shaved heads were working the phones.
“The luau is already out of control,” he told them. “We just stayed long enough to say hi to Lamrock.”
Fred walked barefoot through a tiny office adorned with high school football trophies and BYU pennants. A big, thick man, with arms like fresh-cut logs, he perched on a stool as Larry awkwardly reached out his left hand for a shake. He unzipped his fanny pack and handed Fred his card. When Matt reached in his pocket to do the same, he found it empty. He turned red, knowing how bush league it would look running out to his car to grab more cards from the trunk.
Larry asked about the L.A. Unified job. Fred said the spec was for Kenner, but he’d switch to Brentford if their ballcock thing was fixed. He gave Larry the spec sheets, and Larry gave them to Matt to give them to Jack to give them to Linda, in the Ajax office, to run a price quote and send it to Armando, who would send it back to Fred. It was a strange and mystifying calculus. The factory sold to the rep, the rep to the wholesaler, the wholesaler to the contractor, but sometimes the rep skipped a step and talked directly to the contractor, telling him which wholesaler to buy from, so the wholesaler would have no choice but to buy a particular line from the rep. Matt was lost somewhere in the middle.
“Muy bien,” said Larry, once everything was sorted. “How’s everything else going?”
“Business is good right now,” said Fred. He waved his arm around the office. “The Lord’s really blessed us.”