Chapter Six

COLD CALLING IN telemarketing is a weird test of survival. Too confronting for normal people. A hundred calls per shift—face deep in the lion’s mouth, hour after hour—dialing for dollars. The bodies pile up fast. By Tuesday afternoon of my first week on the phones, two trainees from our group of four, Jeff Baitz and Prince Johnson, had already quit. Blown out. Jimmi and I were talking again. I knew it was because she was using me, needing my help. We ate lunch together every day. As friends. I didn’t care. I liked the company.

But by late Thursday afternoon, she was sinking too. Behind me at her desk, I could hear her slamming her phone down after each cold-call rejection from a receptionist or a data processing manager. Her pitches were monotone; customers were saying ‘no’ easily after sensing the clumsiness in her typed-out delivery. She had only six deals for the week, four under the minimum limit. Grounds for termination.

On the other hand, I was home, taking no prisoners. After the initial hour or two of uncertainty adjusting to Kammegian’s pitch, my old sales adrenaline had taken over. Without cocaine and booze, my head was clear. I was like a dog with a rag in its mouth. I refused to hear ‘NO’. I’d cut the quantity, give a dollar off per cartridge as a discount, defer the shipment, propose an eighteen-month price freeze, whatever it took—then CLOSE the deal. My success ratio of pitches to sales was higher than it had ever been. I had twenty-six cold-call deals for the week, tops in the company. Twelve hundred and seventy dollars in solid commissions. Already Frankie Freebase was bragging that he’d discovered the new wonder mouth on the sales floor.

Then, finally, Jimmi bled out. It was Friday morning. She had no deals at all before the break. Sitting together in her car in the parking lot at lunch, I sipped my coffee and watched her chain smoke and drink Pepsis. In boiler rooms, you have it or you don’t. ‘You buy their tears, or they buy your toner!’

Furious and sobbing, she grabbed me around the neck. She’d never make quota. She knew it. Today was her last day. All I could say was, ‘I’m sorry, Jimmi.’ It was then that I realized something: I would do anything to keep her around, help her save her job. Anything at all.

Half an hour later, in the middle of a sale, the solution came to me. A plan. For the next three hours, I dialed my ass off, slamming DP Managers and stock clerk mooches, cutting prices, pushing partial boxes of ribbons, whatever it took. At ten minutes before the last order pick-up of the day, I had six fresh sales in my desk tray. They were small deals, but the size didn’t matter. Scooping them out, I erased my own name, then wrote ‘Valiente’ and Jimmi’s Orbit ID number on four of the orders.

I got up to go to the crapper, and on my way passing her desk I slid the pages into her ‘out’ basket. I knew they would put her at quota and save her job.

After I returned from the bathroom and a smoke, I was at my desk totaling my commissions when I felt the thud of a thick eraser against the collar of my shirt. Behind me the blazing Siamese eyes held nothing back. ‘Thanks, babee,’ Jimmi cooed. Then, as an afterthought, she grabbed her crotch. ‘Wait, vato,’ she whispered, ‘I suck your dick for free.’

We both laughed.

At five o’clock she was still on the phone, so I decided to go to the bookkeeper’s office to ask for an advance. I had won the cold-call bonus for the week: two hundred and fifty dollars.

New Incubator people were normally required to wait an extra seven days to get their first check because of the lag time in verifying orders, but, because I needed the money and because I had won the contest, I’d convinced Frankie Freebase to ask Kammegian for an exception and get me a thousand dollar advance.

It took almost half an hour for me to collect the money. Tilly, the payroll lady, kept ringing Kammegian’s line, unwilling to cut me the check and cash it without the boss’s personal okay. I didn’t mind waiting. I’d had my biggest telemarketing week in years. Twelve-hundred-and-eighty-six dollars for five days work. Take home. No taxes were deducted, because Orbit paid all its phone people as Independent Contractors.

Tilly finally got through to Kammegian and obtained his okay. I signed the pay vouchers. She only had enough money on hand to cash my two hundred and fifty dollar bonus, so I was given a payroll check for the rest.

I was leaving Payroll when Doc Franklin walked in. Orbit’s top salesman. We hadn’t met yet, but I had heard about him from Frankie. My supervisor, with a sneer, let me know that Doc would be easy to recognize. His trademark at work was his crazy hats. The man behind me in line sported a thousand dollar business suit topped off by a leather WWI aviator’s helmet, complete with a beanie propeller.

Tilly introduced us. Franklin’s smile was ear to ear. Honest and friendly, not filled with grease like Kammegian and Frankie Freebase.

Doc put his thumb and pinkie finger to the side of his head pantomiming a telephone, ‘Do these ribbons go out to your attention?’

I played the game, snarling, ‘Bob, I am fully price protected!’

‘First two weeks, right?’

‘Right. First week on the phone,’ I said.

Playfully, Doc snatched my pay vouchers from my hand. After seeing the amounts, he thrust his palm in the air to be high-fived. I slapped skin. ‘My man!’ he roared. ‘Only one week on that horn! Almost fifteen hundred bucks! Twenty-six new accounts! Outstanding!’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Feels good.’

‘You’re sober too, right?’

An odd question. ‘Four months,’ I said. ‘Why? Does it show?’

Doc laughed, then reached up to give his helmet propeller a spin. ‘Just a guess. Around here, we’re all ex-juicers, junkies, and crack heads. I figured you for a member of the club.’

I smiled back. ‘I’ve joined an AA cult, right?’

‘More like a sober success machine. Around here, it’s white flags or toe tags. Eddy calls it, “sur-fuckin’-render”!’

Tilly handed Doc his sealed pay envelope. After signing the voucher he tore the flap open, then passed the check to me. He hadn’t looked at the amount inside. I read the numbers in disbelief: $7,099. One week’s commissions.

I handed it back. ‘Hey,’ I said laughing, reaching out to check the amount again, playing the sales pitch game, ‘that really is the price protection.’

Franklin shook my hand. ‘Keep it up, my man! You’re on your way. Orbit’s a million dollar deal. Problem is, we shove it up your ass fifty cents at a time.’

We laughed.

When I got back to the Incubator, Jimmi was gone. The room was deserted, the lights out. I was about to leave when something drew me to her desk. A queer need to be where she had been, to be intimate, to feel her presence.

Looking around to make sure I was alone, I pulled her chair out and sat down. Jimmi’s heat, her perfume, the pulse of her, was everywhere. I could feel her.

On the desk pad next to her computer was her office stuff: a freshly washed coffee mug, a row of sharpened pencils, a calculator, a scratch pad, paper clips, brochures to be envelope-stuffed and mailed out, and a stack of order blanks. A Barbie Doll in a Harley Davidson outfit rested against her phone. Everything was neat, ready for the morning. I began touching and handling each thing, wanting to experience what she experienced.

The Incubator door hissed open. Toxic Bob, another trainee, came in. I stayed motionless in the semi-darkness. Without looking around or turning on the overhead lights, he went to his desk, grabbed his jacket off the back of a chair, then left the room.

Alone again, my fingers found one of Jimmi’s pencils, a short one. I handled it, then wrote my name on a scrap of paper, then rolled the wooden-ribbed sides against my lips. The same fingers that had written with this pencil had also visited the magic place between her legs. I licked the yellow covering until its salty taste was gone.

Pulling open her top drawer, I continued my tour. At first, there wasn’t much: a pack of Kleenex and more office paraphernalia, a cheap stapler, erasers, paper clips, a glue stick, a lined box of 3x5 cards, and two Baby Ruth candy bars. But lifting the cards, I discovered a small treasure: Jimmi’s lipstick. The dark red that touched her mouth. Sacred.

Sliding the gold tip off I drew a thick line on my tongue. The taste filled me, shocking my mouth. Jimmi’s taste. Wondrous. Intense.

I was seized by a perversion. For a moment, before acting, I listened for footsteps in the hall. There were none. Then, unzipping my fly, I pulled out my cock. Taking my time, I painted the head of my dick with the gooey red stick. With each smudge my cock got thicker, more swollen. The fear that another late Incubator straggler might re-enter the room intensified the trip.

Lowering my pants to the floor, I began to jerk off. Long, slow strokes. In less than a minute, I felt myself ready to cum. Grabbing the closest thing—Jimmi’s Pepsi mug—I let go my load. Blast after blast, into the cup.

When I was done I found the pack of tissues and wiped my cock, then pulled up my pants.

Stealing her lipstick was a petty thing to do, but I had to have it. It was hers. A relic. Clicking the top back on, I dropped the tube into my pocket, then left the room.