“Well, the guys in the band are big fans of your felonious, melodious jam. And you’re going to have a cameo in the video for their new song, ‘Torture Me,’ which is the theme of our new campaign. Making sense? (Pause) Trust me. This is going to be one big love-fest.”
“Yes, big love-fest,” Jelloteous repeated.
By now my neck hurt. Looking up at this big Belgian goober was hard work. I told Jello I’d see him up in the executive offices, where we were scheduled to meet with his agent, Manny “Satan” Manchow. The nickname started as a joke in the industry, but now Manny got off on it. Manchow was part vermin, part vacuum cleaner bag, and bilked every client for 15 instead of the standard 4 percent. He got away with it by negotiating the biggest deals and commanding client loyalty with the provision of hookers, drugs and anything else their spoiled asses desired. Father Flanagan he wasn’t.
In a small conference room overlooking the empty arena, I reluctantly gave a copy of the new contract to Manny. Nervous about Jelloteous’s heart condition, the Link ordered me to insert a clause calling for automatic termination of the agreement upon death. That way, if Jello blew a gasket during a game, Tailburger’s financial commitment would immediately end. Given that the contract paid Junderstack $1.5 million a year while he was living, things seemed generally fair to me. Manny, who read through the agreement and began scowling at me, seemed to have a different opinion.
“What are you trying to do here, Sky? Fuck Jello?”
“No, we’re not trying to fuck Jello.”
“Yeah, you are. You’re trying to fuck Jello big-time.”
“Manny, listen . . .”
“Satan. I prefer Satan.”
“Very well, Satan. We have no desire to fuck Jello. We believe the contract is fair in light of the situation with Jello’s heart.”
“And his wife and children? What about them? What about their situation? If he dies on a road trip to Portland and the money stops, what are they going to survive on? ESPY awards and food stamps?”
“Satan, Jello’s single with no family.”
I looked over to Jelloteous to confirm this fact but he just sat there with a glazed look in his eyes.
“That’s irrelevant, Sky. My client and the people of the Belgian Republic deserve and demand better than this piece of shit.”
Satan threw the contract back down on the conference table.
“The Belgian Republic? I thought it was a monarchy.”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s a military dictatorship. Jello is the biggest thing to come out of that wasteland since Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s got an obligation to his fellow Belgilonians. They’re counting on him.”
“Counting on him for what?”
“For landing the best contract he can. He wants to go back and build shelters there for the homeless.”
“Do they have homeless people there?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Oh for Chrissakes, Satan. When was the last time he even went back to Belgium? No offense, Jello.”
“It’s been a few years.”
“How many?”
“Around ten, but what’s the difference? He sends money to his village.”
“I thought his father was an industrialist who owned four companies. I read all about it in Sports Illustrated last week.”
“Yes, but they’re small companies. By the way, he wants a fully outfitted Hummer.”
“Excuse me?”
“A Hummer. One of those military vehicles, but with leather and a CD player, all the bells and whistles. He saw Schwarzenegger’s on Accent Hollywood.”
After agreeing to insure against Jello’s possible demise, adding a Hummer, a health club membership and a lifetime supply of Tailpipe Burgers, I left the negotiations with Satan feeling lucky to have retained the bulk of the contract’s terms for my employer. I got stuck doing this piece of Tailburger’s business because the Link hated paying legal fees and had no intention of hiring outside counsel to do something he felt could be handled internally. Usually things worked out all right, but sometimes we got royally screwed. If Jello dropped dead anytime soon, this had the potential to be such a time.
I flew home from L.A. full of more regret than usual about my decision to stay on the Tailburger treadmill. At forty-eight, I knew my health was for shit, my personal relationships were worse, and I was losing whatever fire I’d once brought to the mission of the company: putting a deep-fried piece of beef into the mouth of every malcontent in the U.S. Now it was me who was cooked. I reminded myself that soon I’d have twenty years in and could take a reduced pension, but even the prospect of that failed to brighten my spirits. A call from my brother, King, who reached me on my cell phone in the Rochester air terminal, only served as a reminder of another way to live.
“Sky, it’s King.”
“King, where are you?”
I habitually asked my brother where he was whenever he called, then held my breath and waited for the answer. My fear, culled from experience, was that he’d say, “jail,” and I’d be forced to go bail him out. Fortunately, this wasn’t such an occasion, but it was close.
“I’m in Caqueta.”
“Where the hell’s that?”
“Colombia. I joined FARC.”
“FARC?”
“The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Don’t you read the papers? We’re fighting a war down here.”
“Yes, I read the papers. What in God’s name are you doing down there?”
“Well, this week I’m getting my automatic weapon training.”
FARC, a Marxist guerrilla organization that had fought against the conservative Colombian government and its armed forces for fifty years, had evolved from a legitimate movement of political insurrection to little more than a protection service for drug kingpins.
“You’ve got to get out of there!”
“Not a chance. I’m here to help the oppressed people of this country.”
“King, I don’t think FARC’s updated its recruiting pamphlet. The people of Colombia are fleeing out of fear. You’re not going to be helping them. You’re going to be conducting kidnappings and making sure the coca and poppy plants are safe for the drug cartels. Do you understand? You’ll be working to help drug dealers. Is that what you want to be doing?”
“Well, no. But the guy who hired me didn’t say anything about that.”
“Are you sure?”
“To be honest, he was talking awfully fast and you know my Spanish isn’t that great, so maybe. Have you heard of El Jefe? That’s my boss.”
“El Heffay? The guy who has all the Bogota journalists and judges executed? Have you gone completely out of your mind?”
“Those are just rumors. He seems like a great guy. Really personable. Look, I need the money, Sky. What can I do?”
“How about trying a different line of work? Maybe a job with a nice 401(k) plan; one that doesn’t require a bulletproof vest.”
“This pays better than anything I can get up in the States. No health or dental, but lots of cash. Plus, I’m not violating any laws.”
“Since when was drug-running legal?”
“I don’t run drugs.
“Then what is it that you do?”
“I drive El Jefe around. You know, from one hideout to another. He’s always worried about assassination attempts, so he sleeps in a different place every night. It’s kind of exciting. And let me tell you, this guy knows how to live. I haven’t seen this much leg since that winter I spent as a water aerobics instructor for Carnival out of Miami.”
“Why don’t you come up to Rochester for a visit? I’d love to see you.” With grave danger imminent, lying was necessary.
“Oh, I don’t know, Sky. I’d really like to get there. Believe me, I would. It’s just hard to make plans that far in advance.”
“What are you talking about? You can come anytime you like.”
“Yeah, I know, but with El Jefe, every day is a lifetime.”
>
“I can imagine,” I said, my concern growing. “You really should come up. I can get some tickets for the Red Wings or something. Would you like that?”
Watching the Rochester Red Wings, the city’s AAA baseball team and affiliate to the Minnesota Twins, was as tempting a brother-to-brother outing as I could use to entice King. We’d grown up in the upper decks of Silver Stadium rooting against the likes of the Toledo Mudhens and the Tidewater Tides, urging our Wings on to the Governor’s Cup, the greatest heights one can reach at the Triple-A level.
“I’d love it. I haven’t been to a Wings game in years.”
“They’ve got a beautiful new stadium. It’s called Frontier Field.”
“If I come, should I bring El Jefe?”
“Do not bring El Jefe!”
“I’m kidding. God, you’re tense. You’ve got to stop working so hard.”
The irony of my brother’s words escaped him.
“Be careful down there, okay?”
“I’ll call you soon.”
Closing up my Motorola, I decided that it was the name King that had caused my brother’s problems. It must have created a certain sense of entitlement in his youth as he walked around with this royal appellation. He was allowed to get away with anything he wanted. Kings don’t have to do much in this world to get by, and when they screw up, they are forgiven, if for no other reason than who they are by birth. This was how it worked with King in our family, something I could never understand and had finally stopped trying to figure out.
On reflection, it occurred to me that I was fortunate in one regard, because you often heard about characters like King, but rarely met them or had one in your own family. Most people’s siblings led the same mundane lives they did, working as lawyers or accountants or salesmen with a house in the suburbs, a wife, a few kids and a dog. They didn’t come close to living life without the proverbial net, but were perpetually fascinated by those who did. People like King, who flitted from one thing to the next, moving entirely outside the conventional and often suffocating expectations of themselves and others. People whom we pitied one moment and admired the next. People whose lives we’d like to step into, if only for a while, to see what we’re missing. Or perhaps to reassure ourselves that we’re not missing anything at all.
4
Board out of My Mind
CANANDAIGUA, NEW YORK
Every year, shortly after the shareholder’s meeting, the Link held a retreat for the entire board of directors. In a waterfront inn on Canandaigua Lake, a sixteen-mile-long Finger Lake southeast of Rochester, we spent two days discussing the upcoming fiscal year. Mostly, it was an opportunity for the ten of us to listen to our leader rant and rave about the hundreds of things that were wrong with Tailburger and the two or three that were right.
Though a few of us, including me, could voice our honest opinion without eliciting an uncontrollable tirade by our CEO, the Link had assured himself of a predominantly yes-man environment by appointing his triplets Ned, Ted and Fred to the board. Ned, Ted and Fred, who looked, laughed, walked and talked alike, each had a thick thatch of dark black hair on their arms, legs, chest and head, where it was worn in a tightly ringletted perm. They were a husky bunch with slightly protruding paunches and the obnoxious habit of perpetually chewing gum. In all my years with the company, I’d never seen any of the brothers wear anything but golf attire. They came to all meetings in loud slacks, louder shirts and white spiked shoes.
Better qualified and more appropriately attired individuals filled out the remainder of the board’s slate. Biff Dilworth, a wiry academic type partial to bifocals and three-piece suits, was president of Rochester State University. Chad Hemmingbone, a Brooks Brothers mannequin and fatuous blowhard if truth be told, was president of First Union, the area’s largest bank, and could arrange personal loans for me when the need arose. Annette McNabnay, the city’s first female mayor and our “token chick,” as the Link referred to her, was always the smartest person in the room. Tim Truheart, the owner of three area carpet stores, wasn’t good for much other than the occasional rug sample. The rest of the board was comprised of a rotating assortment of Kodak and Xerox executives who, because of the Link’s short fuse, rarely lasted long enough for me to learn their names. The Link’s patience was tested the most, however, by his own progeny.
“Ned, will you take off that damned visor? You look ridiculous. Ted, you and Fred, too. Just take the things off.” The Link was displeased.
“Dad, there’s a glare coming in off the lake. It’s blinding,” Ned whined.
“It is awful bright in here,” Ted added as Fred nodded his head.
“Just take ’em off or I’ll rip ’em off,” the Link boomed.
“All right, all right. Don’t have a coronary, Dad.”
“Yeah, Dad. It’s just a visor.”
As soon as the visors came off, Ned, Ted and Fred put on sunglasses. Even the Link, who usually insisted on getting his way, gave up at this point and started the meeting. It began, like all others, with a troubleshooting exercise intended to protect the company from areas of potential exposure. Everyone was supposed to throw out issues for consideration, but, as usual, most of our time was spent trying to shoot down the Link’s bad ideas. I’ll give him this: he was a contrarian thinker. When everybody was screaming right, the Link yelled, “up.”
“We need to arm our drive-thru people.”
“What?” I asked in shock.
“There’ve been some holdups at our drive-thru windows. I want our people prepared.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Ned piped up.
“Me, too,” added Ted.
“I have to agree. Hell of an idea, Dad,” Fred chimed in.
I was certain it wasn’t a great idea.
“Frank, we can’t put weapons in the hands of the teenagers who man our pickup windows.”
“Why the hell not? There’s no problem in the world that can’t be solved by an AK-47 automatic machine gun.”
“Well, for one thing, you need to be eighteen years old for a gun permit, and most of our employees are still in high school.”
The Link was not dissuaded easily.
“Fine. From now on, we’re only hiring those lonely senior-citizen types, the kind in the McDonald’s ads who spend every waking hour of their lives wishing they had a job swabbing out toilet bowls. And I want ’em all armed.”
Biff Dilworth, the most refined member of the board, attempted to denounce the proposed new policy in his own way.
“Frank, as a man dedicated to the higher education of this country’s young people for the past forty years, I fear that such a step will only contribute to the further demise of the thin line of civility currently separating man from beast. For the sake of humanity and the future of our kind as a people, I urge the reconsideration of this arming business.”
The Link was clearly moved by such an impassioned plea. His soft side lurked just below the surface.
“You’re right, Professor. Maybe I was a little hasty. I’ll tell you what. We’ll start with a military-strength pepper spray, and if that doesn’t work, then we go to guns.”
“Well, I don’t know, Frank . . .”
“Look, I do know. This’ll make us more money. I guarantee it. I just read a Wall Street Journal article about drive-thru times. For every ten seconds you shave off your average customer’s visit from menu board to departure, the store makes an extra fifty thousand dollars per year. Do you know who has the fastest time from the menu board to departure? (Pause) Wendy’s. One hundred fifty point three seconds. One hundred fifty point three fucking seconds. They’ve got high-tech timers and a greeting that takes less than one second. ‘HowmayIhelpyou?’ Less than one second. Do you know how long our average time is? Six hundred forty-three seconds. It’s pathetic. Slowest time in the business. That’s why we’ve got to arm our people. If the customer knows the shaky pre-Parkinson’s fry guy living on a fixed income in a shithole studio apartment in Baker
sfield is packing something, he’s gonna think twice about returning a screwed-up order. Am I right? That right there will save us a few seconds.”
“Maybe we should just shorten our greeting,” I offered, hopeful to avoid arming everyone with pepper spray.
“That’s good, Thorne. I don’t know why we spend so much time with the friendly chitchat. From now on there’ll be no more, ‘Welcome to Tailburger, the burger of choice for the downtrodden, disabled and incarcerated. Whatever you decide to eat, don’t forget to wash it all down with a Tailfrap.’ Way too wordy. From now on out, we keep it simple. ‘Order, asshole.’ That’s it. Plain and simple. We’re the burger of abuse. It’s time we started acting like it. People don’t drive in for the fresh-faced, seventeen-year-old gal with the brace-filled smile anyway. They come by to see people like themselves—aging, regret-filled losers who are ready to be crapped on just like they’ve been crapped on for their entire lives. Now enough about that. Have we settled with Mother Teresa yet?”
Mother Teresa was the Link’s nickname for Sister Ancilla Satter, a nun from Rochester’s Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother convent. In a horrifying accident, Sister Ancilla’s face had been burned by a blast of steaming hot microwaved air that escaped from the corner of one of our Fanny Packs, a sack of fried pork products which we marketed as ideal for those with an active lifestyle. According to eyewitnesses, after Sister Ancilla picked up her food at our window in the church’s meals-on-wheels van, recognizable by the baby lamb painted on the side, she tried to peek in the pack to make sure her fried rib tips were accompanied by our secret sauce. Upon doing so, trapped heat rushed out, overwhelmed the sister and caused third-degree burns to her holy visage. Fortunately, her habit had protected her neck and part of her face.
“Her lawyers want more money,” I informed the Link.
“Those cocksuckers. Fuck ’em! I say we blackmail her.” The Link was livid now, his head the color of a ripe tomato. “What kind of dirt do we have on the old hag?”
The Link’s belief in military intelligence, his extreme paranoia and his genuine concerns over the employability of his own children led him to initiate KGB-type activities within Tailburger. As the owners of three local spy shops called Who’s Nailing Your Wife?, Ned, Ted and Fred profited greatly from this arrangement. So did the paterfamilias. While the boys got thousands of dollars selling nothing but surveillance equipment and paramilitary gear to Tailburger, the Link got information he could use against his enemies and allies.
Red Meat Cures Cancer Page 3
