Mooch

by Dan Fante

  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.

  Chapter Nine

  THE MONDAY MORNING following the trouble, I was drinking coffee, taking a break, demonstrating a quick close technique to my new teammate, Neil. A move I had learned while selling porno movies. It works like this: The mooch says, ‘Look, I don’t need any videos (or light bulbs or gizmos) right now. I’ve got a year’s supply in my storage room.’ Acting surprised, the salesman says, ‘Look Bob, I would never want to overstock you. But let me ask you this: it’s your department, you’re the boss, right?’

  The quick close works eight out of ten times. I mean, what’s the mooch going to say to that kind of question—‘No, I’m a lackey, I only clean the toilets here.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Frankie Freebase come down the stairs from a meeting in Kammegian’s office. He walked directly to my cubicle, then motioned for Neil to go back to his own desk. ‘You’re wanted upstairs in the boss’s office,’ he said, spitting the words. ‘Now!’

  ‘Okay. What for?’

  ‘Well, dicko, let’s just say that Kammegian ain’t invitin’ you up there to present you with a new Chevy SUV. Get goin’.’

  I slid my chair back and stood up.

  Frankie was leering. ‘You didn’t tell me what happened outside Payroll last Friday. Now, you’re fucked.’

  ‘It was an argument. Nothing. It wasn’t important.’

  ‘Swell. Try running that down on Kammegian. By the time you get back here to your desk, I’ll have your shit packed up and you’ll be ready to rejoin that sparkling-fucking, unique-fucking, thrilling-fucking team of cock
suckers selling vacuum cleaners and home maintenance crap where you worked before. You’re history at this company, asshole!’

  I had tried to call Jimmi all weekend. Once an hour. Twenty or thirty times. I kept getting her answering machine. I knew the locations of all the AA meetings she attended: the one at Twenty-sixth and Broadway in Santa Monica on Saturday night and the other one on Sunday at twelve thirty on Ohio Avenue. She hadn’t showed up at either place. I had even driven by her house, but her car was not in her sister’s driveway or parked on the street. All weekend I had stayed in my dormitory room near the hall pay phone, smoking cigarettes and trying to read. Waiting. She never called back.

  The owner of Orbit Computer Products was on the telephone at his PC when I knocked and came in. I let the door hiss closed behind me. Looking up, Kammegian motioned me to a chair.

  Behind him at eye level on the Orbit Trophy Wall of Champions was an imposing World War II photograph of Winston Churchill. I hadn’t noticed the picture at my job interview, because it was blocked by his big leather chair. General George Patton was up there on the wall too. His photograph was even bigger than Churchill’s. And Colin Powell. And Norman Schwarzkopf. All part of my boss’s military armed-forces-self-improvement obsession. When I leaned close to the desk, I was able to make out the engraving on the brass plate below Churchill’s image. It read: ‘Never give up—Never, never give up.’

  Kammegian ended his phone call, then rolled back behind the center section of his desk. ‘Okay Mister Dante,’ he said, ‘let’s hear your version of what happened at the Payroll Department on Friday afternoon.’

  ‘My version is—I picked up my biggest paycheck yet.’

  My reply induced a smirk. He rocked forward and let his elbows come to rest on the desk pad. ‘Exactly. First things first. Right?’

  ‘One day at a time,’ I chimed back.

  Kammegian stood up and extended his hand. ‘I would like to personally recognize you for your outstanding work last week,’ he said. ‘Winning the cold-call bonus again was an impressive accomplishment. Over two thousand dollars in commissions for five days work. Right?’

  I shook his hand. ‘Right. All solid deals. Everything verified.’

  We both sat down.

  While I watched, my boss resituated a paperweight by his telephone, rocked back again in his big chair, then tucked his legs back under the desk.

  Withdrawing a custom-imprinted pencil from a shiny metal holder by his Rolodex, he began toying with it, running his manicured finger over the lettering on each side, then pricking his thumb with the point. I was starting to relax when, suddenly, in a kind of fit-outburst, my boss slammed the spine of the fucker straight down at his desk. Yellow fragments detonated and flew everywhere. A good-sized chunk zinged past my cheek.

  ‘Equivocation is disloyalty, Mister Dante! You’re full of shit, and your two-thousand-dollar-a-week job is on the line here this morning. Let me caution you, I have zero tolerance for what took place on Friday afternoon. So, let’s back up. What happened in the Payroll Department?’

  ‘You mean outside Payroll?’

  ‘Do not fuck with me, Mister Dante.’

  ‘Okay look,’ I said, brushing remnants of pencil shit off my sleeve, ‘the whole deal was a misunderstanding. A miscommunication.’

  Kammegian rocked backward. ‘Explain your version.’

  ‘I lost my temper.’

  ‘And—what happened when you lost your temper? Did that contribute to further miscommunication?’

  ‘Okay, I made a remark. Several remarks.’

  ‘I see. And you made these remarks to another trainee or to a supervisory person?’

  ‘To Jimmi Valiente. And to McGee too.’

  ‘That’s what you’re calling a miscommunication?’

  ‘Essentially. Basically. In a nutshell.’

  ‘Then—basically—the reports I have, one from another sales person and one from Tilly Hickman in Payroll, about a fist fight by two of my employees, are both incorrect? More miscommunication?’

  ‘Tilly was in her office, and the other person, whoever that nosy, lying cockfuck is, was not in the hall either. In my experience, Mister Kammegian, my opinion: most people, out of some snotass ego need to make themselves appear okay in their dismal, chicken-shit, insect, ratshit, little lives, are prone to make presumptions about matters they don’t know thing-fucking-one about. There were only three people in that hall: me, Jimmi Valiente, and McGee.’

  Kammegian selected another pencil. This one’s point was sharpened too, but the stem was longer; brand new, right out of the box. ‘Last time, Mister Dante: were you involved in a fight or not?’

  I knew he had me. ‘Okay, I was,’ I said, ‘but it wasn’t actually a fight.’

  ‘Explain actually, Mister Dante.’

  ‘What I mean is, it wasn’t technically a fight in the way you mean. McGee shoved me. To me, literally, in concept, a fight is where one person physically, actually, slugs the other person. That didn’t happen.’

  ‘I see. So we’re talking about a shove here, not a slug. What about the bruise on the side of your face?’

  ‘Completely unrelated. I’m coming clean here, Mister Kammegian. One recovering alkie talking to another. I banged my face on the metal paper towel dispenser at the 76 Gas Station on Lincoln Boulevard on Saturday morning while gassing up my Chrysler. No big deal.’

  Eddy Kammegian was on his feet. He paced around the side of his desk, then sat on the thick mahogany edge facing me, his shiny belt buckle eighteen inches from my nose. When he crossed his arms I could see his shirt cuffs were fastened by two gold Civil War cannon cufflinks. Fat diamond studs glistened from where the caisson spoke wheels should be. ‘So it was no big deal?’

  ‘Right,’ said I. ‘My injury isn’t work related. Therefore, no big deal.’

  ‘Is Ebola no big deal, Mister Dante? A virulent epidemic that could easily bring a company or a city or an entire army to its knees?’

  ‘Somebody at Orbit has Ebola?’

  ‘Last time, asshole! You, me, Rick McGee, Ms Valiente. We’re all eating out of the same pot. Orbit Computer Products is a finely-tuned elite assault machine. Any employee disturbance, any dissension, spreads through our sales organization like a toxic virus.’

  ‘Hey!’ I said, ‘I understand. Like a turd floating in Orbit’s steaming vat of delicious tomato soup.’

  Kammegian reached around and yanked his telephone out of its cradle. Before dialing, he turned back to me: ‘How many sales did you make this morning?’

  ‘Two so far.’

  ‘I’ll have Tilly cut you a final check.’

  I was on my feet. ‘Wait!’ I yelled, ‘Jesus, I’m cooperating! I told you what happened.’

  ‘Sit down, Dante.’

  I sat down.

  ‘Have you been “involved” with Jimmi Valiente? The truth, please.’

  ‘We became friends.’

  ‘YES or NO?’

  ‘We had dinner together. We hung out.’

  ‘And McGee? What about him? Is Ms Valiente “friends” with Mister McGee as well? Was that the problem?’

  ‘Ask McGee. Ask her. I’m not involved with Jimmi. There was no fight.’

  ‘There are three words I want you to consider before you leave my office today: procrastination, deception, and masturbation. They are the best ways I know that a man can fuck himself. I hope you get my meaning.’

  ‘Check.’

  My boss crossed the room and opened his office door. ‘Meeting concluded.’

  ‘I’m not fired?’

  ‘Have you been candid and one hundred percent forthcoming with me this morning?’

  ‘I want to keep my job, Mister Kammegian. I like my job.’

  ‘Then go back to work. Have your manager locate Rick McGee and send him to my office. Do that now.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, walking away. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Onward and upward, Mister Dante.’

  My boss spent the rest of
his day conducting interrogations. His secretary, Elaine, was up and down his office steps twenty times, a yellow legal tablet tucked under her arm. Jimmi and McGee were called in. And a guy in the parking lot that afternoon who had seen me with my face bleeding as I left work, Bowen Kessler.

  The next morning, Tuesday, I was writing up an order when Kammegian’s secretary tapped me on the arm then stuck a ‘Post-It’ note by my telephone. The Post-It read, ‘8.17 a.m. You’re wanted in Mr Kammegian’s office.’

  Upstairs, my boss was waiting, hands folded on the desk in front of him. ‘Sit down, Dante,’ he snapped.

  I did what he said. But as I did, he lurched to his feet, then paced to the bay window overlooking the sales floor. He began flipping the blind open and closed by pulling its strings one at a time. An imitation of Field Marshall Rommel pondering a Panzer deployment.

  Nervous, knowing something bad was coming, my eyes came to rest on the shiny pencil holder by his desk. The supply had been replenished.

  Finally, he abandoned the window to walk around behind my chair. I could feel him there, his hands on the backrest near my neck. ‘Does the name Todd B. Baskin mean anything to you?’ he half hissed. ‘Has Frankie Freebase ever mentioned that person?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This spring, Dante, a low snake coward saboteur named Todd Bennington Baskin betrayed me, violated his fiduciary responsibility to Orbit Computer Products, and was arrested for theft. Baskin was once a highly-respected commando at Orbit Computer Products. My V.P. of Marketing with an income of over 200k per year. My left hand.

  ‘Left hand?’

  ‘My higher power, the God I’ve come to know and experience through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, is my right hand. Baskin was my left hand.’

  ‘Okay. Right.’

  ‘Question, Dante: Why would a man, a highly successful, trusted man, a man with a 2,200 square foot condo in Beverly Hills and partnerships in three shopping centers, a man with an honorable discharge from the United States Navy, risk everything, his entire career and his freedom, over a petty obsession? Can you answer that?’