Black Buck

by Mateo Askaripour

  “I don’t know. It’s just—FUCK! Sorry. It’s just that without you here—” He quickly covered his mouth and held his hand there until he snuffed out the next expletive as if he were suppressing a sneeze. “I’m sorry, Darren. Without you here, it just feels like I’m sort of alone. And I’m just distracted.”

  I took a long look at Brian and wondered what would happen to him. When I was the HNIC, my concern stretched as far as making sure he was happy and focused, but I never wondered where he’d go from here. Even so, he’d always looked up to me, which maybe was where part of the confidence I had to pitch Rhett that day came from. I had to be there for him.

  I grabbed his shoulders. “Listen, man. I’m just trying to figure out this new job myself, but maybe I could give you a referral or something like that. Once I get settled. I’m not saying you’d get hired, but I could at least put in a good word in a month or two.”

  He smiled, exposing beautiful teeth that looked like pearls in black velvet, and his eyes threatened to jump out of his skull like a cartoon character’s. “You would do that for me?”

  “Sure, man,” I said, as I patted his shoulders. “I gotta go, but keep your head up. Do your job and don’t get fired.”

  “I will!” he said, straightening out his apron. “You’re the best, Darren!”

  With everything under control, I bid my soldiers farewell and checked the time. 7:55 a.m. Shit.

  I jogged into the elevator bay and saw one closing. “Hold it, please!”

  But no one held it open. And as the doors inched closer, I saw Clyde inside, pointing to his watch with a smirk on his face.

  Motherfucker.

  * * *

  I joined the circle at 7:59 a.m. Clyde gave the same pump-up speech, made the same threats, and fostered the same tension as the day before. Afterward, I was the first one through the door of Bhagavad Gita. I sat in a chair at the short wooden table, and my knee jumped up and down like it contained an automatic spring. Today is my day. Be the man Ma needs you to be. Clyde walked in trailed by Frodo and the Duchess, and went straight to the whiteboard.

  He laid out what he called the “anatomy of a cold call”—intro, rapport, discovery, presentation, objection handling, qualification, and handoff. “If you do each of these seven things well, you’ll succeed. If not, your career at Sumwun will die a quick death.”

  Then he told us about what our entire week of training would come down to: a formal role-play on Friday. “But it’s nothing big. It’ll just be me, Rhett, and Charlie, who’s going to manage you once training is over. If you pass, you’ll get on the phones on Monday. If you don’t, you’re out the door.” He mimed kicking someone out the door with his shiny loafer.

  Reader: This is important. If you can master the following, you’ll be able to call any stranger up and get what you want. I guarantee it.

  For the remainder of the session, Clyde explained the steps one by one. A good intro, he said, is based on simplicity. You say who you are and kick the call off on an upbeat. With rapport, you’re looking to quickly establish a connection between you and the prospect. To do this, ask how they are, what their plans for the weekend are, if they caught a popular TV show the night before, etc.

  “But,” he said, “for God’s sake, never bring up the weather. Everyone and their mother brings up the goddamn weather. The point here is to make yourself familiar to them ASAP. The quicker you do that, the more likely someone will let their guard down. And once their guard is down, you can make them do anything you want.”

  The Duchess perked up at that, asking the best way to get someone to let their guard down.

  “By your confidence and tone,” Clyde replied. “You never want someone to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, they should view you as a friend, relative, or trusted advisor. Not someone looking to get something from them. So while you don’t need to give a fuck after the call is done, you need to deeply care for the ten, twenty, or thirty minutes you’re on the phone with them. If their dog just died, you console them. If they’re excited about some geeky Renaissance fair, you ask them if they’re dressing up as an elf or a knight. Get it?”

  Everyone nodded.

  Frodo raised his hand, then quickly dropped it. “How do we, uh, get paid?”

  “By generating sales-qualified leads, aka SQLs. If you pass the prospect off to an AE and the AE says it’s good, you get paid. Same works for if those SQLs turn into deals. Other questions?”

  Not a word. All of the acronyms and steps made my head spin. Frodo was writing down as much as possible, literally sweating. And the Duchess was, no lie, filing her nails.

  “Good,” Clyde said, smiling. “Let’s begin.”

  * * *

  “Frodo, I’m Jack Durft, director of HR at Cold Stone Creamery,” Clyde said. “Give me a ring.”

  “Uh, who’s Jack Durft?” he asked, turning to the Duchess and me.

  Clyde pinched the bridge of his nose and took a long breath. “Frodo, I just told you. He’s director of HR at Cold Stone Creamery, fuck. Call me.”

  “Okay, um, hello?”

  Clyde slammed his hands on the table. I jumped. “Ring the fucking phone, you idiot!”

  “Oh, right,” Frodo said. He formed his hand into the “hang loose” sign, and brought it to his ear. “Ring ring.”

  “This is Jack.”

  “Uh, yes, Mr. Jack, this is—”

  “Click! Why are you calling him Mr. Jack? Be familiar. Would you call your friend Mr. Alex?”

  Frodo shrugged. “I guess it depends on if he wanted to be called Mr. Alex.”

  “You must have some weird fucking friends,” Clyde said, shaking his head. “But for the purpose of this, let’s assume your friends didn’t ride the short bus. Call me again.”

  “Ring ring.”

  “Good morning, this is Anna.”

  “Anna? I thought you just said you were Jack?” Frodo asked, getting red.

  Clyde swooped down on Frodo so viciously that I thought he was going to punch him in the face. Instead, he got real close to his ear, and whispered, “Do not ever, under any circumstances, break character. Understand?”

  Frodo gulped loud enough for us to hear and nodded into his lap.

  Clyde stood. “What? You think you’re always going to get the person you’re calling? You’ll have days where you make two hundred calls without ever speaking to someone. And if you do get through, you might speak with Anna the secretary, a gatekeeper whose job it is to keep incompetent salespeople like you from taking up their boss’s precious time. It’s your job to plow through them like a gang of starstruck groupies.”

  Reader: This is true. It’s the twenty-first century, so secretaries are no longer just women, but regardless, a large part of getting to the right person is by befriending the gatekeeper so they pass you along, give you information, and become an ally—not an enemy.

  Frodo smirked. The Duchess yawned. I felt like I was going to be sick.

  “Buck.”

  Shit. Oh no. It felt like I was tied to a railroad track waiting for a bloody collision as a train hurtled toward me, its lights shining through the dark.

  “I’m Harry Johnson. VP of people at McDonald’s. Call me.”

  I took a breath. Without doing any of Frodo’s stupid hang-loose shit, I said, “Ring ring.”

  “Harry here.”

  “Hi, Harry, this is Darren calling from Sumwun. How are you?”

  “Hi, Darren, I’m great. How are you?”

  “Pretty good, enjoying the nice, uh, nice—”

  “Nice what, Darren? Hello? Are you still there? Were you just about to talk about the weather? The FUCKING WEATHER LIKE I KNOW YOUR BOSS TOLD YOU TO NEVER TALK ABOUT BECAUSE IT’S BORING AND ONLY DISCUSSED BY BORING PEOPLE? Fuck!” Clyde grabbed my elbow hard, yanked me up out of my chair, and walked me over to the windows.

  “Look outside, Buck,” he ordered. “What do you see?”

  “Buildings.” I was now officially ill.

>   “That’s right,” he said, patting my back. “If you ever bring up the weather again, I’m going to throw you through this fucking window and make sure you never see those buildings from this view again. Understand?”

  Clyde somehow resembled Jack Nicholson in both The Shining and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His teeth were bared, gelled clumps of blond hair hung down over his eyes, and he was breathing like a feral animal.

  I had never let anyone speak like that to me before, and while I didn’t want to let it fly, I knew, as Mr. Rawlings said, that it was all a part of the game and that real men were judged by how much they could withstand. So I nodded.

  “The Duchess. Call Harry. Same guy Buck felt compelled to discuss the weather with.”

  Her performance was flawless.

  Clyde, finally satisfied, dialed a few numbers into the phone on the table.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah, it’s Clyde. Grab Eddie and Marissa, and come to Bhagavad Gita.”

  * * *

  Marissa, Eddie, and Tiffany, senior SDRs who’d already hit their numbers, stood at the head of the room and inspected us as if we were cattle. With arms crossed, Tiffany grinned, and asked, “Who’s first?”

  “Wait,” Eddie said. “Let’s get a temperature check. How’re you all doing?”

  Frodo and I shrugged. The Duchess said, “Fine, how much longer do we need to be in here?”

  “As long as it takes, rich bitch,” Tiffany snapped. “You three must be the most pathetic group of SDRs I’ve ever seen.”

  The rest of the session was traumatizing. By lunchtime, I felt as if I’d been mauled by Mike Vick’s dogs. Fortunately, lunch was catered.

  The event space’s marble island overflowed with yellow rice, pinto beans, spotted tortilla shells, chicken, steak, sautéed onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and green peppers. The three of us returned to Bhagavad Gita without a word. Frodo had taken double of everything, and it barely fit on two oversize plates, the Duchess had made herself a small taco salad, and I went with a modest steak burrito.

  “So, how’d you all hear about Sumwun?” Frodo asked, as a mouthful of salty juices trickled down his chin.

  “I met Rhett at Starbucks,” I said, trying to be casual.

  “Is that what happened?” the Duchess asked. She impaled pieces of chicken and lettuce with her fork, likely performing culinary voodoo on someone.

  “That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

  “What were you doing at Starbucks?” she asked.

  “How did you get here?” I deflected.

  “My father plays squash with Clyde’s father at the Greenwich Country Club,” she replied, like I should have known. The truth is, I hadn’t known squash was anything other than a vegetable until I was fifteen.

  “And?” Frodo asked, pausing to swallow an overambitious mouthful.

  “And Clyde told me about the role, gave me some guidance, and now I’m here with you two specimens of excellence.”

  “Guidance?” I asked. “Like what?”

  “Like how to role-play and do the job, what else? Nothing special.”

  Nothing special. No wonder she wasn’t getting destroyed in the role-plays. She had connections. Connections, like treasury bonds, are issued to every rich white person upon exiting the womb. Whenever one of them gets high and crashes their parents’ car, whenever they get busted for buying coke from an undercover, whenever they get caught messing with the wrong gangsters on vacation, they make a call, send a text, or whip out their AMEX.

  Reader: One of the most important keys to success in sales is focus. Never let anything or anyone throw you off track, especially people who seem to be born with it all.

  Frodo, having managed to swallow more than he could chew, breathed with relief. “Yeah, my recruiter also coached me. Sumwun was actually the sixth place I interviewed at. When Clyde saw I was a D1 tackle at Notre Dame, all he asked was if I was prepared to work harder here than I had on the field. After I said yes, I got the job. By the way,” he said, setting his dripping taco down and turning to me, “has anyone ever told you that you look like Dave Chappelle?”

  The cards are stacked against me. I didn’t have a daddy to play squash with the director of sales’ pops. No recruiter to lay up five interviews for me to bomb until someone took a chance on me because I was an athlete. The only thing that got me there was a momentary flash of courage—courage that was growing weaker by the day.

  * * *

  The day repeated in cycles of different SDRs grilling us nonstop. By the end of it, I was spent. Thank God Clyde never came back.

  I grabbed my bag and headed for the elevator when I heard shouting. My curiosity outweighed my exhaustion. When I got closer to Rhett’s office, the door swung open and Chris, the small, sweaty, red-faced cofounder, rushed out like a hurricane.

  “If you don’t take care of this, I will!” he shouted over his shoulder as he stormed past me.

  I peeked in and found Rhett seated on a leather couch with a glass of gin in one hand and his forehead resting in the other. His pressed white button-up was wrinkled. I quietly backed away until he looked up, our eyes connecting.

  “Oh, Buck, I didn’t know you were here. Everything alright?”

  His eyes were bloodshot, and his olive complexion looked paler, as if someone had ripped off a few sheets of his skin to reveal the sallow, vampirelike inverse of his daytime self.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry for interrupting. I’ve just been stuck in Bhagavad Gita all day and heard screaming so . . .”

  He waved a hand and smiled, bringing the color back to his face. “Ah, don’t worry about that. Just boring startup stuff. Take a seat.”

  I dropped my bag and grabbed the other end of the couch. His office was massive, about half the size of Qur’an, and had two long black leather couches, a full-size pool table, a desk made out of an old door, and, of course, floor-to-ceiling windows.

  He slowly rose from the couch, and walked toward shelves full of books and bottles of bourbon, whiskey, vodka, and more. “Drink?”

  “No, thanks, I don’t really, uh—”

  “No worries. I probably shouldn’t as much as I do. But there’s something about a cold glass of gin at the end of the day that makes me feel more human.” He laughed. “Does that make me an alcoholic?”

  “I guess it depends.”

  He sat next to me. “On what?”

  “On if you still feel human without it.”

  He looked into his glass, as if there were answers at the bottom. “Clyde tells me you’re having a hard time.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, admiring his books. Daniel Pink. Dale Carne­gie. Eric Ries. Andy Grove. All part of the standard startup CEO guide. “You like to read, huh?”

  He laughed. “You could say that. But you still didn’t give me a straight answer. How’re you doing?”

  “This shit’s tough, man,” I said before I could stop myself. “I feel like Clyde’s going harder on me than the others. Like I’m always a step behind.”

  He set his glass down and nodded. “This is normal, Buck. If you feel like he’s going hard on you, he probably is. But it’s only because he sees your potential just like I do. This,” he said, waving his hands around, “means nothing if people aren’t pushed past the limits of who they thought they were. And, believe it or not, I know who you truly are, how great you can become.”

  Damn. This guy believes in me more than I believe in myself.

  Reader: Everyone thinks the key to succeeding in sales is motivation. Wrong. Motivation fades in an instant. But inspiration? Man, that’ll sustain you longer than accidentally overdosing on Viagra. Rhett, as you’ll come to see, embodied inspiration. He hooked me—even blinded me.

  “And what about you?” I asked.

  “Me? Ah, all’s well. We just need to hit this number. What you’ll learn, Buck, is that every single problem you have disappears,” he said, clapping his hands, “once you hit your number.”

  I d
idn’t know where the time went, but it was 8:30 p.m. and my exhaustion returned like a dormant case of the clap. “It’s getting late, Rhett. I gotta go.”

  “This?” he said, laughing. “Late? By next week, eight is going to be early for you. Go home, rest up, and be ready to kick some ass tomorrow. But I want you to promise me something, Buck. I know we haven’t known each other for long, but if you promise this to me, I’ll promise it to you.”

  I waited for the guy to get down on one knee and profess his love to me, but I was thankful that he just said, “Promise me that you’ll always be honest with me, Buck. That you’ll never hide anything from me. And I promise to look out for you. To mold you in my own image and make sure you succeed.”

  He stretched his hand toward mine. I knew that taking it into my own meant making a promise I couldn’t turn away from—a handshake I couldn’t undo. Like I said, I was already a minor planet in Rhett’s gravitational pull, and I liked the feeling. I took a breath and grabbed his hand. A small smile appeared on his face.

  “I promise.”

  9

  After waking up with a headache the size of Kanye’s ego, I headed into the kitchen. But there was no sign of Ma. I walked downstairs and found her door closed, which was unusual. She normally slept with it open.

  “Ma,” I said, tapping the door. No answer. “Ma,” I repeated, louder. No answer. When I opened the door, I found her lying on her back, out cold. Seized with terror, I slowly crept toward her, thinking she’d died in her sleep. Tears had begun forming in my eyes when I kicked over a glass she’d left on the floor. She bolted upright, her black sleeping mask still over her eyes.

  “Thank God,” I said. I picked up the glass and wiped my tears. “I thought—”

  “What time is it, Dar?” She removed her mask to reveal dark rings under her eyes.

  “6:40 a.m., Ma.”

  “Oh, I must’ve slept through my alarm. I’ve been so tired, baby. I think I may jus’ call out.”