Chapter Eight

OVER MY TWO weeks at Orbit, I’d gotten Eddy Kammegian’s personal history in bits and pieces through Frankie and some of the other sales guys. The company’s president was a born again symbol of success. He had sobered up after five years of being a hopeless, homeless, juice head and coke hype. While still in a residential recovery program, Kammegian found phone sales by accident as a temp job. For him, it was like hitting the lotto. After only six months on the phone selling computer ribbon, he managed to ‘close’ an uncle who owned grocery stores on lending him the seed money to open his own supply business. One call turns it around. Orbit Computer Products was an instant success. After that came self-help and sales courses: The Forum, Tony Robbins, Og Mandino, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Tommy Hopkins.

Eddy staffed his small telemarketing business by rolling up to AA meetings and alkie recovery homes in a white, leased, four-door Benz; passing out pockets-full of business cards, pitching the barely-dry newcomers on sharing the dream.

Jimmi’s attitude toward me was different since the weekend. I assumed the change had come because of the meter maid incident and the money. We’d had sex again. Only once, but it was good sex. For her own reasons, she had stopped allowing me to kiss her. We would eat lunch together every day in her bug, parked a dozen blocks from Orbit on a side street near Santa Monica Airport, smoking cigarettes and talking.

My Chrysler Fifth Avenue was repaired and purring like a kitten. Three hundred and fifty horses humming on all eight cylinders. Cuco, the Panamanian guy down the block who did moonlight mechanical work out of his two-car alley garage, got it running good. Cuco’s hourly labor, a rebuilt battery and boiled-out junkyard replacement carburetor and spark plugs cost me just under four hundred dollars. It was a good investment, because I was sick of standing in the cold, before dawn, listening to Frankie Freebase’s nut-job rantings.

My AA sponsor, Liquor Store Dave, made sure my nights were filled with Alcoholics Anonymous obligations. Like a goosestepping robot, on instruction, I would leave work promptly at four p.m. to pick him up. After that, we would have dinner at Norm’s or Denny’s on Lincoln Boulevard with a couple of the other guys he sponsored, then we would all go to an AA meeting. When it was over, again following Dave’s orders, me and the other guys would pass out our phone numbers to the newcomers, then help sweep up. I still didn’t like AA much. All the smiles and hugging and over-worked cliché’s and bad coffee hadn’t made me feel any more comfortable. There are Twelve Steps to do in the Alcoholics Anonymous Program. Liquor Store Dave told me I was still on Step Number One.

I had just celebrated five months sober, and a couple of weeks had passed since I had had any desire to drink; even so, not sleeping remained a major deal. No matter how tired my body was, at night in my dorm in the recovery house, my mind refused to shut itself down, hour after hour regurgitating and resifting preposterous, infinitesimal shit. Sometimes there would be waves of panic, crazy ununderstood fear about losing my job or losing Jimmi. My mind rehearsed all our conversations in advance, careful to conceal the depth of my feelings, the intensity of my need for her. Eventually, exhausted, I would find myself downstairs in the community kitchen with Jonathan Dante’s old portable typewriter, doors closed to contain the sound, writing unpunctuated, rambling poems and crazy letters that I would never mail. Page after page of the shit would come out until I had tired myself enough to go back up to my room and fall asleep.

Two weeks later, at five thirty on a Friday, I stayed late at work, waiting in line for my regular commission check. Jimmi was still on the telephone selling. Because it was pay day I had negotiated permission with Liquor Store Dave to take the night off from AA. My plan was for Jimmi and me to have dinner at the Mexican restaurant at the top of the Huntley Hotel on Second Street in Santa Monica, then get a hotel room until midnight, my curfew time at the sober-living house. I wanted something expensive with a view of the ocean.

After picking up my check, I came back to the Incubator to discover she was gone. Loomis, one of the guys in her row, was the only employee left in the room. I asked if he knew where she was. Snickering, he pointed a finger in the direction of our supervisor, Rick McGee’s office. The door was closed.

I felt a stab in my stomach. Like being knifed. It was hard to inhale. ‘You didn’t know, my man,’ Loomis sneered, ‘your pal, hot little Ms Valiente with the Barbie Dolls, is McGee’s pet project.’ Then he grabbed his crotch. ‘You know, pet, as in pet-da-pussy?’

‘Since when?’

‘All this week, man. After work. Ya dig?’

‘You’re saying you saw them?’

‘Hey Dante, I’m giving you the fucking two gross price here. My desk faces McGee’s office. You go home at four o’clock. I stay late, so does Miss Valiente. And here comes tall-ass McGee…I see her go in there after work for half an hour, an hour sometimes, ya know, then come out. Every day. You tell me what they’re doin’.’

‘It’s none of my business,’ I said. ‘Valiente can hump the Boniventure Hotel for all I care.’

‘Yeah?’ jeered Loomis, ‘tell that to your face, man.’

I hated him. I wanted to yank the cheap ball-point pen from his shirt pocket, then jab the fucker into the eye socket behind his nerd-shit eyeglasses. Instead, I walked away, back to my old desk, pretending to be checking to see if I had any phone messages.

I had to know for myself.

I hung around until Loomis went home. Then I shut the Incubator lights off and moved to another desk with a better angle view of McGee’s office, keeping my eyes fixed on the line of light beneath his door, holding the phone to my ear, ready to fake a conversation in case they came out. Soon, thinking it through, I realized Loomis was right. I felt it. I was a fool. God had found a way to fuck me again. I mocked myself and cursed my heart. She had stopped letting me kiss her. I should have known then. This woman sucked cock the way most people say ‘hi’ in an elevator. I hated her for the whore she was.

Disgusted and shamed, seeing the truth and my stupid obsession, I got up and moved toward McGee’s door. I was about to slam it with my fist when cowardice—like the smell of something dead—stopped me. The thought of seeing her with McGee made me freeze. Turning my back, a whipped dog, I walked out of the Incubator.

In the break room, I smoked a cigarette, stalling, guzzling stale coffee, thumbing through magazines. I had to see her. There was no purpose to it, just crazy, addicted need. It didn’t matter that a hundred feet away she was probably on her knees licking McGee’s cum off her lips.

Three stragglers from Doc Franklin’s sales team, waiting for their pay checks to be printed and signed, came in and poured coffee. Having fun. Joking. They hardly noticed me with shame and self-disgust oozing from my pores.

One of the girls, whose name badge read ‘Sylvie’, recognized me and said ‘hi’. Pretty. Outgoing. We’d met before. A week prior in the copy room. Sylvie had been impressed by how quickly I had caught on to Orbit’s telemarketing program. She’d even congratulated me on winning my first cold-call bonus. Then we’d had a ludicrous conversation where I had pretended to be grateful for the compliment and acted as if I were interested in how she was doing. As if I gave a fuck.

She stood above me. Smiling. Making conversation. She wanted to know what team I would be on when I left the Incubator. I couldn’t answer. I looked up into her eyes, but I couldn’t talk. My mouth began twitching. A mute dufus, I half tried to form a word shape, but nothing came out. Finally, I lurched to my feet, then left the room. All I cared about—my single intelligible thought—was McGee’s office.

I decided to wait for Jimmi in the parking lot, watching the exit until she left the building. No one would bother me there.

Walking down the hall past the payroll office, the glass door suddenly swung open. It was Jimmi, her check envelope in her hand. A young male employee was holding the door, watching her pass, leering at her ass. Then, a second later, McGee came out too.

Seeing me, uncomfortable but trying to act pleased, she shuffled up. ‘Yo mijo,’ she whispered, ‘where you been? I’ve been looking for you.’

She pulled me a few feet down the corridor and gave me a long hug. ‘I found out I’m okay,’ she hummed. ‘My orders went through and got verified. I made quota again. I got my check.’

Face to face with her, I was wet bread. ‘Look,’ I said, fumbling for my two Orbit checks, pointing at the numbers, grinning like an idiot, ‘I’m rich. Over two grand. Let’s drive to the beach. We’ll have dinner.’

Her smile was a wonder. The eyes, two flawless blazing blue beads. ‘Sorry, baby,’ she whispered, pulling me closer, ‘I can’t. I’m staying. Rick’s been helping me, coaching me with my pitch. We’re going to get a bite, then go back to his office.’

She was lying, and I knew it. My anger hissed like spit. ‘It’s Friday night, Jimmi,’ I snarled. ‘Almost six o’clock, Friday-fucking-night.’

‘Man, shhhh! Keep your voice down. He’s helping me. He wants to work late. Okay?’

‘Hey, what about this, I’ll come too. I need his fucking “help” too.’

‘I said no, Bruno. Okay? I tol’jou, man. I’m busy.’

I was yelling now. ‘How fucking stupid do you think I am?! You’re sucking McGee’s dick!’

‘Mind jour bizniz, motherfucker!’

I was out of control, but I couldn’t stop. ‘Answer this then: while you’re fucking him, do you whisper that you want it up the ass!!? Do you beg him to cum in your mouth?’

She stepped back. ‘I said shut your face, man!’

‘Did you lick his asshole?’

She tried to edge herself down the hall in the direction of the ladies room, but I grabbed her arm. Screaming, she pulled back, but I held on.

The commotion brought tall McGee rumbling down the corridor. ‘Let her go, Dante,’ he demanded, cuffing me from behind. ‘Let the woman go. Right now!’

Freeing one hand, I shoved him off. ‘Tell the truth, asshole! I want to know! Are you fucking my whore?’

‘Last time, Dante. Let go!’

‘Lick my scrotum, gerbil shitbrain!’

McGee’s punches came in rapid succession. By the time the throbbing started, I was sitting on the floor with my back against the hallway wall, holding my nose, blood and snot dripping down on my shirt from between my fingers.