Fat Bald Jeff

by Leslie Stella

  Fat Bald Jeff

  Fat Bald Jeff

  a novel

  Leslie Stella

  Copyright © 2001 by Leslie Stella

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, library associations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stella, Leslie.

  Fat bald Jeff : a novel / Leslie Stella.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9807-5

  1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Office politics—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.T37972 F37 2001

  813’.6—dc21 00-063657

  Design by Laura Hammond Hough

  Grove Press

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  To Chris

  Acknowledgments

  Particular thanks to my editor Amy Hundley, Amye Dyer at Lukeman Literary Management, Jim McNeill and Ben Paris for valuable advice and commentary, Jim and Nancy Stella, Lumpens everywhere, and most of all, my husband Chris, for massive amounts of love, support, and faith.

  Fat Bald Jeff

  Chapter 1

  Men never offer me their seats on the bus. I don’t know why; nothing about me screams out self-sufficiency. As the bus chugged forward, bearing me toward another day’s drudgery, I leaned against a nearby geriatric for support. The bus braked in traffic, pitching me on top of him, and the clumsy old cripple ground his umbrella tip into my instep! I elbowed him in retaliation. Late for work again. It really sticks in my craw.

  I know all about punctuality. There could not be a more punctual person than I, not counting work tardiness. Even as a child I rose early every morning to awaken my drug-addled parents. They were never grateful to be shaken from their haze, but then I never expected thanks. That’s just the kind of person I am.

  The old man tried to trip me with his umbrella as I made my way down the bus aisle. I hit him in the head with the belt buckle of my fake Burberry, causing him to cry out. The elderly are strange, and I know we should be kind to them, given their achy, unavailing bodies and relentless grievance with humanity, but I find it difficult sometimes.

  My own grandmother, though chronologically matched with the umbrella man, possesses none of the awful traits of the old. She is spry, where the average geriatric is spasmodic; she is spirited, where the other is crotchety; she is literate, where the other scans religious tracts and perhaps the Jumble. In short, she is alive, where so many of them are simply dead boring. And she still wears chic cashmere twin sets and Cherries in the Snow lipstick, although she fools no one. She’s over eighty and looks it.

  The bus dumped me at my stop, and I ran the remaining four blocks to the building the National Association of Libraries calls home. As I rounded the last corner, a BMW sped by and splashed puddle water on me. A crossing slacker, no doubt on his way to a disreputable café, snickered as I tried to wring out my coat. There can be no doubt that we live in barbaric times, when pedestrians no longer assist young women splashed by passing imports. Barbaric, too, is the shoddy workmanship I’ve come to expect from consumer items in my price range. The knockoff Burberry’s tartan lining had not been Scotchgarded at all!

  Caught a glimpse of myself in the glass doors at the office entrance: knobby, pipe-cleaner legs rooted in gruel-colored galoshes, plastic rain bonnet askew yet vigilant, luminous hazel eyes, pugnacious chin. I suppose my potential has been wasted. I blame work.

  Scurried in with a crowd of tardy zombies. It’s sad how being an employee eventually renders one soulless. Like a mad elephant seal, the supervisor rolled into my cubicle just as I removed my moist outer garments.

  Great quivering jowls, more like the earflaps of an aviator’s helmet than cheeks, brushed his collar. Black-currant eyes bore down on me out of his dumpling face. He stood arms akimbo like a Sumo sugar bowl, and high-water trousers revealed an upsetting pair of ankles.

  “Fifteen minutes late, Addie,” he blubbered through lips as thick as a Norwegian cod’s. Indeed, the lips were so massive and his rubbery cheeks so scaly and blue—and his demeanor so completely uncuddly—that they earned him the unfortunate nickname Coddles. He scolded me as I held my sopping raincoat aloft, waiting for him to finish. Finally he lumbered away, and I noted with satisfaction the trail of toilet paper stuck to the sole of his sensible shoe.

  Coarse laughter sounded from beyond the cubicle walls. My office mates were sharing gossip over stale pastries, as most of the serfs around here liked to do. I picked up my coffee mug and walked back down the corridor toward the stairwell. Stinking elevator was broken again, so I had to walk down two flights of stairs to the staff cafeteria, a moldering asbestos-tiled room known as the dungeon. I had just prepared to slap my thirty-five cents down on the counter when a crude zombie pushed her way in front of me.

  I said, “Pardon me” in my most severe tone, but she just turned and gave me the type of smile that frightens dogs. She stared at my mug. “Is that an armadillo?” she asked.

  I suppose even zombies can appreciate quality ceramics. I firmly grasped the mug handle, or tail, and poured out my coffee, explaining how the armadillo represents the character armor I must bear against society’s mediocrity. But when I looked up she was gone. Gloria, the surly Guatemalan coffee attendant, scooped my change into the cash drawer and nibbled on a dried-out bear claw.

  I turned and nearly was trampled by a short yet enormous tech-support worker. He was heading for the pastry platter like a humpback whale intent on a school of plankton. It was only due to my quick reflexes, honed from years of dodging flying bits of clay from my father’s lousy potting wheel, that I escaped injury. The techie grasped a fistful of crullers and shoveled them in, while I, shaken but still prepared to go on with the day, faced the two long flights back to my cubicle. Rested for a few minutes on the landing, summoning my strength for the final ascent. Why is the elevator always broken? Exercise is risky for those of us with delicate constitutions.

  Imagine my chagrin when I came back down the corridor to see several zombies milling about my cubicle entrance.

  “Department meeting,” one said. They looked put out at having to come fetch me. I followed the rest of the publishing department—two other copyeditors, three graphic designers, some anonymous salesmen, various production slaves, the très hideola Coddles, and the department head, Mr. Genett—into the conference room. The zombies jockeyed for positions next to their friends. As usual, I sat by myself.

  Coddles rambled for thirty minutes about the new executive bathroom, off limits to the rest of us, and the purchase of more bank art for the halls. We copyeditors had put in a request for ergonomic desk chairs, but it was denied in favor of a new microwave for the lounge and higher quality staplers. I suppose that means four more years of sitting on a folding chair in my cubicle. My office mates have already developed fleshy humps between their shoulder blades and have given up hope, though I am younger and fresher and will continue to fight. This issue is particularly dear to me since I have always prided myself on excellent posture.

  Acros
s the conference table sat my two fellow copy-editors, Bev and Lura. They occupy the cubicles on either side of me, and all day I endure their mundane inquiries about each other’s pencil supply and lunch pail. Lura is all right. Her hair is unkempt, but that’s what men like these days. I expect it reminds them of wild tussling in the sack. Bev, on the other hand, is a poisonous old hag and as lowbrow as Java Man. Lura gets on well with Bev, but Lura is one of those who gets along with everyone. I demand a higher standard from humankind but am usually disappointed. Consequently, I spend much time alone. I am used to it; sensitive people have always been exiled to the fringes of society. The philistines don’t understand us.

  Next to Bev and Lura sat the graphic designers, a triumvirate of techie duds. They wear stained pumpkin-farmer jeans and grimy grandpa sweaters, and enjoy shooting things on the computer. Then the salesmen, mostly middle-aged ghosts with brown slacks and eyes like boiled eggs. I don’t have to interact with them much. The production slaves huddled together in a beleaguered pile in the corner. They are the corporate peasants of our department, trod upon and bullied by everyone else. The designers scream at them for mucking up page layout, copyeditors complain about the constant addition of new typos, and Coddles doesn’t trust them with the postage meter. The production slaves are herded two to a cube in the dark, smelly wing of our department. Their nameplates are attached to the cubicle walls with Velcro.

  Mr. Genett took over the podium and Coddles plumped down next to me. Quelle pig! I could feel his pinprick eyes on me, lingering particularly at my bust, which, though not ample by today’s ridiculous standards, was at least symmetrical and secured by a too-snug dove-gray jacket I picked up at the thrift. I shifted away from him, but not as far away as I would have liked. He breathed heavily through his mouth and stank of brine.

  I doodled on my notepad, my own initials intertwined with realistic renderings of the prairie gentian. An ordinary girl would doodle her initials with someone else’s, and intertwine them with hearts and roses, but in this awful, workaday world, I have come to realize that I can depend on no one but myself. As an experiment, I doodled Martin’s initials with mine. As suitors go, he is parochial and clean, but the broad, offensive strokes of ML clashed with my delicate AP, so I scratched it all out immediately. How could I have a future with a man named Lemming? On the other hand, he likes to take me to nice restaurants, and the truth is, I have grown rather fond of it.

  Tried not to let the Lemming occupy more of my brain. Mr. Genett described in excruciating detail a new project for us, composing and designing Web pages for the other departments. Depressing, as I have no interest in technology apart from solitaire.

  He concluded with fake enthusiasm: “So by doing the work ourselves under present salary conditions, we can end the fiscal year for the National Association of Libraries in good shape.” Mr. Genett, though possessed of a luxuriant head of hair, has the business acumen of Barney Fife. He had just announced to a roomful of underpaid servants that more work was to be heaped on, with no extra pay. I looked around, expecting someone to protest, but everyone diligently wrote down the outline for the project and said nothing. So I did too. I am disgusted by our unthinking obeisance.

  Mr. Genett then introduced the tech-support people who were going to teach us Web design and HTML coding. Two creatures entered the conference room. One resembled a sort of grasping stick-insect. A tangle of matted fur sprang from beneath a decaying baseball cap advertising RON’S PIZZA. He seemed permanently pitched forward at the waist, like a bent rake. The other I recognized as the tiny angry whale from the dungeon. He wore a black T-shirt that struggled to contain his bulk and a monstrous pair of black jeans. A thick mass of bristles jutted out from a moon face so pallid it made Coddles look positively tanned. The fluorescent lights in the conference room reflected off his oily globe of a head and dazzled me. A trail of perspiration oozed through the T-shirt, staining it white with salt.

  “I’m Jeff,” he said. “And this is the other Jeff. We’ll be scheduling workshops over the next few weeks to teach you this stuff.” Then he wiped his nose on the back of his hand, thus adjourning the meeting.

  The bus journey home was no more enjoyable than the earlier voyage. The rain had not let up, and my umbrella finally gave out after years of halfhearted service. Its skeleton flapped open at the joints, as seemingly useless as a polio limb. But I found it still had a little zing in it after all, as I ground its tip into the insteps of fellow bus riders who trespassed on my personal space.

  Approached my building with trepidation. The neighborhood urchins have made my plastic rain bonnet a point of attack. For once they were not lurking in the rubbish-strewn alley, so I took a quick look around, under the dead evergreen shrubs in the front, in the biohazard Dumpster from the mom-and-pop clinic on the corner, down the gangway between my building and the adjacent one. Nobody about, except for a lurching drunk emerging from the alley, so I felt it was all right to enter. Up the stairs to my apartment, I railed internally against the safety measures I must take to combat security risks. Once the urchins nailed me right in the head with an empty liter of Sprite, and old Paco from the first floor had to rush out and frighten them off. I laid on the front stoop in agony while Paco threw full cans of Busch beer at them. Barbaric times!

  I threw down umbrella, bonnet, galoshes, and odious coat outside the door. Friday evening, but the pain of work had not yet released its hold. I hurried to the liquor cabinet and mixed myself a double tequila with lime. My roommate, Val Wayne, had guzzled all the vodka last week when he lost his job. Then we drank all the rum to celebrate his new job on Monday. I usually find tequila loathsome, but its bitterness seemed strangely appropriate today, with the rain and developments in the stinking job.

  Phoned my mother and asked if she wanted me to come over for dinner on Sunday.

  “I won’t be available to cook,” she said. “I’m going on a date.”

  “Well, you have to do whatever you think is best,” I said.

  She made an unintelligible snorting noise and told me to call Grandmother Prewitt for free eats. I resented the implication that I wanted to sponge food off my family. But Mother has an adder’s tongue. Grandmother always said so.

  I credit my grandmother with forming me into a presentable citizen. She exposed me to culture while my parents laid about on the floor all day. She taught me to cook decent food instead of that bulgur slop Mother always boiled up when she could be bothered to cook at all. Mother used to groan, “God, Addie, you’re like a prison matron” when I ordered them out of bed for breakfast. Father would emerge from his marijuana hangover to chuckle at us, while I tidied their disgusting blankets and emptied the bong water.

  Father used the weekends to recover from working, even though he was unemployed for the first nine years of my life. By “work” he meant staring into his potter’s wheel, shaping wobbly bowls and dropping roaches in the clay. He sold a fair amount of gigantic ashtrays, though, and Mother had the marginally more conventional career of at-home seamstress, so we never starved. But our home was as filthy as a gypsy camp, and I fled to Grandmother’s wholesome house down the street whenever possible.

  I dialed up Grandmother, who naturally was overjoyed at the prospect of dining with me. She told me to invite the Lemming, but I knew he wouldn’t want to go. He claims an allergy to chintz.

  Before she rang off she said, “Addie, dear, why don’t you bring that nice sherry we had last time? It was so delicious.”

  I promised I would, then made a mental note to soak the label off that old bottle of Strawberry Hill under the sink.

  Topped off my tequila and rummaged around in our barren refrigerator for another lime. I found a ragged rind in the meat drawer and extracted what pitiful juice there was into the glass. Val likes to suck on limes as he relaxes on our revolting disco couch after a long day of work. I’ve warned him repeatedly about the effect of citric acid on tooth enamel, but he doesn’t listen. His teeth are beginning to look li
ke mossy stalactites, but he says, “So what? That’s why I have a mustache.”

  Hope Mother enjoys herself on her date, selfish shrew, while I keep the old lady company. My father had been dead only three years when she decided to trash her respectable widowhood and prowl the gutters for men. Her current spousal equivalent is a philistine laborer called Jann. His accent is perfect South Side Chicago, but he looks like one of those heavy-handed Swedes. She claims Jann is an architect, but I’ve seen him lumbering about her apartment in a Bears jersey, and there’s something about his massive shoulders that cries out for a yoke and harness. What kind of dates can they go on? All Jann likes to do is fish for crappie in Lake Calumet.

  Curled up in the corner of the disco couch, averting my eyes from its grotesque geometric squiggles. At least it’s comfortable, plus it was a bargain from Montgomery Ward’s fire sale. I thought once I joined the walking dead in the work force, I’d be able to afford some finery and culture in my life, but the National Association of Libraries pays me only enough to live with a roommate and eat simple sandwiches.

  Lionel Richie sang his classic “Hello” to me from the hifi, and I felt hot tears welling up. I wish a blind person would feel my face and make me a big clay head. Why is there no modern equivalent to Lionel? Today’s music does nothing for me; the throbbing just gives me a peculiar feeling in the seat of my pants. Looked out the window. We on the third floor have a decent view of treetops, although they aren’t in bud yet. It’s early March, and as Grandfather used to say, it’s not spring until it snows three times on the daffodils. We don’t have daffodils here, but I’m marking the time by the snow on the biohazard Dumpster.

  Val Wayne came home while I dozed on the couch. It was kind of him to tiptoe around as I slept, but I woke up when he tried to steal the lime wedge out of my drink. He had changed out of his shirt and tie to his usual household uniform of flared trousers and Black Sabbath baseball jersey. Lionel had been replaced on the stereo with something dark and menacing. I inquired as to the new paralegal job.