fictional characters

Ass Ventriloquism

STEVE BIERSDORF

On a walking/bike path through suburbia, eavesdropping on a couple twenty feet in front of him. They seemed unaware of him behind them, and he measured their walking cadence, matching it perfectly so as not to gain any ground and not to lose any, stay with earshot but not encroach, hanging back in their fuzzy periphery.

“It was Cinco de Mayo, so they were the Cerveceros instead of the Brewers, on their uniforms, in honor of the day, I suppose,” the woman was saying, alternately watching her feet take one step after the other, a mechanical process that might seem to her like she was detached from. Right foot and left foot trading places in the lead, and glancing at her male companion to check his reaction to anything she might say. They were confidantes and between the two of them there were suppositions aplenty.

“They have to appeal to their Hispanic fan base I suppose,” said he, as if she needed a mansplanation, or was angling for his usual pithy summation.

He would do that, eavesdrop, unrepentantly. If people were speaking loudly enough in his presence they were inviting him to listen, and they were intentionally loud to attract an audience so he was only obliging them. And anyway, they had nothing to worry about if they were being unintentionally loud and invidious. Most of what he overheard didn’t hold his attention for long. 

“Harley-Davidson was doing some kind of promotion, so just before the start of the game the Racing Sausages raced Harleys along the outfield warning track, and when I say race, I don’t think they broke thirty. Naturally the Chorizo won that race, and then they held the regular sausage race during the game, surprise, the Chorizo wins again. Seriously, would anyone have cared if the Hot Dog or the Italian won a race, or the Bratwurst? Would the Hispanics, Hispanic people, would they really have been offended…”

“…given a mierda…”

“…if the Chorizo didn’t win both races? Isn’t Cerveceros enough of a tribute?”

“How many Hispanics go to their games, realistically?”

“Exactly.”

He watched their feet as they spoke, feet taking them confidently and with determination to wherever they were going. She was wearing white running shoes with pink trim, upturned at the nose of them, the pink sole extended up over the front like a tongue trying to taste something on the upper lip of her shoes. His running shoes were glittery cloth, splayed to near bursting at the sides, as if he had wide feet, ever widening, as if the inevitable weight gain was causing his feet of clay to splay out to toed flapjacks, the breadth of his feet threatening to defeat his shoes. The outsoles were more worn as though he walked on the outer edges of his feet, as if he customarily walked on hot coals.

He watched their asses when they would speak, as if when they said anything they were really talking out of their asses within their shorts and lip-synching. His ass appeared flat and muscle-less beneath the long, baggy shorts, an ass pounded flat from sitting, her ass like two pumpkins beneath gym teacher shorts, shorts from years ago she could confound by still fitting into them, if gruntingly, shimmying, holding her breath, sucking in her gut and lamenting the inevitable spread of her hips. 

Drive Time

STEVE BIERSDORF

Orange construction barrels bordering either side of the freeway in tidy rows, equidistantly spaced, an orderly battalion waiting patiently for construction to break out. A woman I know, her husband works for the highway department and he moves them around. He never goes back for more, wherever more are. He moves them from one place to another. With the same spirit of decorum as calling shit ‘plant nutrition,’ orange construction barrels are known as ‘traffic safety drums.’ Sometimes they block off a lane with traffic safety drums when there’s no construction.

Last summer I changed my route to work three times to circumvent roads I normally take in varying states of disassembly. Sunbaked dudes in white hard hats and reflective vests of a florescent color somewhere between green and yellow, with their walkie-talkies holding a pole with STOP on one side and SLOW on the other. When they turn the sign to SLOW sometimes they think I’m going too fast and make frantic downward arm gestures for me to slow down. Everyone knows fines are double in a work zone, so the way I see it, it’s my risk to take. If there was anyone in these work zones I’d appreciate their concern.

On my commute the radio is on, sports talk when my other options are drive-time personalities or conservative talk radio. Apparently someone making $10 million or $15 million a year can be underpaid. They talk about how unfair it is that collegiate athletes aren’t paid, collegiate athletes on scholarship as a disadvantaged social class. I think little about these things the right-wing pundits rail on because I have my life to tend to and these things seem far removed from my reality. Distractions more than injustices. Things to get good and angry about that have little to do with me or that I have no control over.            

Man Tits En Bronze

STEVE BIERSDORF

This is the statue coronation speech I wanted to use, wrote and considered giving, but decided against in the end. There’s a good chance they’d have taken it the wrong way. It’s lovely that they do these things for me, and if I’d given this speech, well, they might not have appreciated the humor and I might’ve come across as ungrateful.

That’s why they love me. I wasn’t a great player and that’s my shtick, lovable loser, the self-deprecating quips, and I’ve been doing the radio play-by-play for thirty-plus years. That’s why they’ve made this hideous bronze statue that looks nothing like me. The other statues in front of the stadium are of great players, home run hitters, ace pitchers, heroes for what they did on the field, and so I’m different that way. I made my bones off the field, that’s why my statue will be the only one in front of the stadium not wearing a baseball uniform but a crewneck sweater and knit slacks depicted in bronze.

My name appears on the base of the statue and that’s the only way you’d know it was me because it’s a shitty likeness, a big, shitty-likeness statue of the team’s self-deprecating radio announcer who played briefly in this city, and not even for this team but for another franchise that used to play here until it relocated to a larger metropolitan area. And because I was on the Tonight Show and had a recurring role on a short-lived prime-time sitcom with a laugh track:

“Thank you, thanks (here I turn to my right and ponder the statue for a few seconds). First and foremost, I’d like to say that if you think I posed for this statue, you’d be mistaken. Does anyone know who did? Whoever he is, he needs to lay off the estrogen pills. Kidding, seriously, if I’m not mistaken this likeness was created from a surprise picture taken of me fresh from the men’s room. I’d just taken care of my business and my hands were still wet so I had ‘em in my pockets in case someone insisted on shaking hands with me, which happens often. People see me, they want to meet me and shake my hand, so this explains the pocket billiards.

“Yeah, so I’m just out of the men’s room and someone insists on taking my picture. I have to say it’s always a little intrusive, but especially fresh from the men’s room. This also explains the shit-eating, please-get-away-from-me grin, which in bronze makes me look like I don’t take very good care of my teeth. In fact, looking at this statue, I look like I might have lived in medieval times and some think I’m old enough. I’d suggest for future bronze statues with closed mouths only, otherwise shit-eating grin lends itself to a literal interpretation.

(Again I turn to the statue and ponder it)

“I’m glad I didn’t forget to zip up.

(More pondering)

“What struck me when I first saw this statue are the man tits.

(Here I’d expect mostly a silent, taken-aback reaction where a few people would laugh insanely, possibly some current players they’ve ‘invited’ to the ceremony. There’s a chance their laughter would be infectious, though I couldn’t be sure, and it’s largely because of this uncertainty that I scrapped this speech.)

“I can see it now. People approaching the stadium from the outer edge of the parking lot and they see me from afar, there by the stadium they’ll see my statue and they’ll know it’s me because of the man tits, which are prominent enough to see from that far away, and possibly from space. On a statue that size, those are some ample man tits. I’m really stacked. Fortunately for me, I’m a happily married man. Maybe some little boy a generation or two removed from now will look up at this father and ask, ‘daddy, who’s the guy with no hands and man tits?’

“‘Son, I do believe that was the first handicapped hermaphrodite to play in the major leagues.’

“At my age, man tits are inevitable. How many men over seventy have tight pecs? In fairness to the artist, the man tits are at least pushed up like I’m wearing a sports bra. So I appreciate that, firm man tits are preferable to unrestrained, droopy ones. I can’t help but think, generations from now, as being referred to as the man tits guy, ‘daddy, who’s the man tits guy again? What did he do?’

“And honestly, folks, I didn’t do very much. I have the best job in the world, the best seats in the house. Thank you for the tribute.”

Trixie

STEVE BIERSDORF

Trixie’s Mani Pedis is a reality show with local sway, Trixie being the star, her nail salon here in the ‘burb with the rest of us plain folk. Everyone around here loves the show, proud as we all are of the local affiliation. I keep expecting to recognize one of her clients, women exclusively, they sit in a chair and Trixie does the manicure or the pedicure while they kvetch. About traffic, weather, bills, their health, their significant others, kids, jobs, the price of things, celebrities, politics, religion, fabric, food, air travel, fashion, hygiene. Sometimes the cameras follow her clients back to their cushy lives and they have beautiful homes, drive nice cars, have good jobs or they don’t work because they can not to, but there’s still plenty to repine about. Like perfection is still a reasonable expectation.

Trixie is an artist. Her nails are exotic, playful, colorful blends, sometimes with little logos or glittery or with French tips or tips of distinct colors sprinkled with diamond dust, a Trixie invention. When Trixie’s cuticles are dry, she brushes them with polish she keeps in the center console of her jeep.

Trixie tries to get her clients to hold their hands still so she can work her magic. The women need to lay their hands flat on a portable table so she can apply the gel polish. Keeping their hands still is problematic for her clients, they’re fidgety and distracted, which upsets and frustrates Trixie. To the point where it’s really fucking with her humanity. 

Cell phones are another problem. Trixie’s on a tight schedule, but the women take calls or stop to respond to texts and Trixie gets behind and has to rush. Sometimes the women are short with her. I wonder if the show’s producers tell the clients to be intentionally difficult, create a little tension, makes for more interesting viewing. Her clients must watch the show, especially if they’re on. They must see the mockumentary-style kvetching Trixie does with the camera. And yet they persist. 

Sometimes after they leave Trixie holds her osteoarthritic left hand. Sometimes her hand hurts so much she goes into a janitor’s closet and cries. She turns away from the camera. I can see the heaving of her shoulders and when she’s done, when it’s time to compose herself, she dabs beneath her eyes with a tissue to wipe away eyeliner trickles or smears. On one episode she goes to a hand specialist. The hand specialist prescribes a hand cream and unrestrictive bandage. Trixie doesn’t try the hand cream because it’s a free sample and otherwise expensive, and she’s concerned that if she uses it she’ll become dependent on it and her insurance doesn’t cover the scrip. She has private insurance. Her annual deductible is $16,000, so she pays out of pocket for everything, visits, prescriptions, consultations, treatment. If the manufacturers of this cream were on top of their game, they’d give her a free supply to promote their product, unless they’re concerned it might be ineffective in front of several million viewers.

Abruptly, Trixie decides to move on, though maybe not abrupt to anyone paying attention. The show’s a hit, and with her name recognition Trixie wants to franchise her nails business. Because of her painfully arthritic left hand she can’t do it anymore. There are legal repercussions. They play out on her show, interesting in a conflict-of-interest kind of way. The Trixie’s Mani Pedis executive producer calls Trixie into her office and tells her she can’t do this. She won’t be able to use the name of the show or the logo. Trixie listens, crossing her legs, nodding pensively, cucumber cool. The Trixie’s Mani Pedis executive producer smiles tensely before laying out her case, expecting defiance. When the meeting ends and there’s been no outward resistance, the executive producer is pleased, walking around her desk and extends her hand and arm straight out and they shake hands.

Later in the same episode Trixie meets with an attorney, a referral from one of her well-connected clients. The attorney is an older paisano, mid-sixties with slammed-back hair, hyperactively thin. He seems shell-shocked to be meeting her, at being on a reality show. He has a manila folder on his desk. He asks questions as he flips through a document. He sits back in his creaky leather chair and turns devil’s advocate, grinning confrontationally. Is she sure she’s got the stomach for this? It could get ugly. She’s famous now, she’s a reality TV star. Why mess with success? He has big glasses that catch the backlighting and the glare obscures his eyes, giving him a zany look, zany or devilish. He ignores her answers and meanders off topic. He tells Trixie he’d have retired if it weren’t for his fucking kids and their fucking student loans. He pushes a button on the phone on his desk and asks for two bottled waters. A pear-shaped woman shows up a moment later and hurriedly sets the bottled waters down on his desk and leaves, careful to keep her back to the camera, terrified of it.

Okay, so here’s what I think, he says. The TV show, production company, studio, whatever, they’re full of shit. It’s your name, your business. It was an established business before they came along. Did the TV show enhance your business? Sure. So what? They can go after some of what you make selling the franchises, licensing your methods and any proprietary products and whatever. If they do we’ll go viral, make them out to be a greedy entertainment conglomerate bullying a small business entrepreneur and woman to boot. You’re a sympathetic figure. You’re a person people feel like they know. People like you, not the production company. They’ll be sensitive to public opinion, mostly because their advertisers are.

Trixie smiles gratefully. The attorney holds up his hands with a cocky grin and his big gleaming glasses.

The Trixie’s Mani Pedis producers meet with their attorneys. Their attorneys look young to be established attorneys. They look like actors playing attorneys. The TV show’s attorneys banter back and forth like the producers aren’t there and conclude that the TV show might get a percentage of Trixie’s franchise profits, but it isn’t likely the TV show can prevent her from moving ahead with her plans. There’s no relevant language in her contract. The possibility of Trixie franchising her business was never anticipated, much less safeguarded against. Filing injunctions or bringing an action could be interpreted as restraint of trade. Trixie could counter-sue and have a compelling argument.

The executive producer glares at them. Isn’t that their job? Isn’t that what they’re paid for? To anticipate every contingency? Having iron-clad contracts to prevent this sort of thing from happening? Shouldn’t they have had broader language that would have precluded Trixie from doing this? Isn’t that what attorneys are for? To anticipate bad things happening? 

The show’s attorneys arrange a meet with Trixie’s attorney. The show’s three kid attorneys on one side of a conference table with a big window with a cityscape view behind them, Trixie’s attorney on the other, choosing a seat near the entrance. The two flanking attorneys have opened laptops in front of them, Trixie’s attorney has nothing, no briefcase or satchel or attaché, not even a notepad. He crosses his legs, liver-spotted hands resting calmly in his lap. After exchanging pleasantries they get right to it.

Your client will have to share her profits from franchising her business, that’s a given, says the kid attorney in the middle. The TV show will be her silent partner, siphoning off re-investable profits while she’s trying to get the expansion off the ground. Without the show, her brand will depreciate. There won’t be any syndication of the reruns. The show would rather keep going. Ratings are strong. The show has a following. They’re willing to revisit Trixie’s compensation. The smart move is for her to renegotiate rather than move ahead with her expansion plans. No one can argue Trixie’s Mani Pedis hasn’t enhanced her brand. That’s an easy case to make. Franchising wouldn’t be possible without the show.

Trixie’s attorney listens with his confrontational grin and big glasses that catch the backlighting and corresponding glare where his eyes would be, zany-looking as all get out. Fuck off, he says, grinning expansively. Trixie’s quitting. Three more episodes and her contract is up and she’s under no obligation to continue. He stands, smoothing his trousers, buttoning the top button of his suit coat and departing. The kid attorneys sit in silence for a half-minute before they go to commercial.

On the last show Trixie’s having lunch with her boyfriend, then drinks with a friend/client, there’s a bon voyage celebration at her store, balloons and champagne and cake. At the end, out in the parking lot with a sunset beyond trees and shadowy bungalows in the working-class neighborhood where her store is, Trixie takes off the thumb bandage, carefully, and throws it in a dumpster, turning to beam at the camera a last time.

Rackheads

STEVE BIERSDORF

Hunting licenses are down again, despite the DNR’s insistence that the whitetail population is as robust as ever. They release data to the local newspapers and media outlets, and there are articles to spur the harvest. Whitetail deer have been migrating to the suburbs to avoid the harvest and traffic accidents are on the upswing.

Mr. Dixon is back for two more snowmobiles. He writes a check, the idea that he would need to finance the purchase is comedic, never mention financing options to him unless zero percent is available. When Mr. Dixon arrives for his new Ski-Doos, the owner is there for the occasion and the GM, they make sure he feels sufficiently fawned over, Mr. Dixon magnanimous enough to spare them a few moments. It’s a sign of respect if Mr. Dixon takes the time to jaw with you on the showroom floor, in full view of everyone. The GM gives Mr. Dixon our very best price and checks on the prep of his machines. We make very little money when Mr. Dixon buys something. When he grinds us on price, we appreciate this firsthand opportunity to negotiate with a fabulously wealthy, highly successful businessman and cheap fuck that he is, he’ll take his business elsewhere if we don’t meet his price. Where he spends his money and who he does business with is an exclusive club. We always comment on how “down to earth” or “cool” he is when he blows through and graces us with his unprofitable business. Mr. Dixon isn’t a person who likes to “fiddle-fuck around,” like the GM says, and he appreciates that we respect how valuable his time is, because he is the sun and we are blades of grass.       

Deer farms stocked with genetically enhanced male deer, bucks with freakish racks of antlers, if you hunt deer this is the ultimate prestige that you stuff and mount for posterity. Used to be if you shot an 8-point buck people were impressed. If you buy a genetically-enhanced deer you can set it loose somewhere, shoot it and have yourself a 16- or 20-pointer, mount that shit over your fireplace and invite your homies over to ooh and ah. The better the deer farm’s product the more points per rack, farms with the pricier deer buying semen, ova and embryos from Mr. Dixon who sits atop this food chain, the unrivaled king of deer eugenics. Mr. Dixon uses only the best bloodlines of whitetail doe or buck, including superstars in whitetail breeder lore like Rumpelstiltskin (23-pointer), Superseed (28-pointer), Goldeneye, 747, Deerstar, legends all, residents of Mr. Dixon’s own deer farm. The big money is in their semen.

The success of his eugenics business spawned a subsidiary manufacturing mechanical deer, robot decoys. His sole customer is the DNR and he is their sole supplier. The DNR places these robot decoys in the woods along country trunk highways to northern woods hunting destinations, to coax hunters driving by into taking a shot, which is a big fine. As the company slogan asks, who can resist a trophy buck? The deer are available in different poses and are lifelike (although only their ears and tails move), encased in actual deer hides with a dry preservative, tanning to make the hide last longer is an extra $200.

Knowing Mr. Dixon, having him as a customer gives us a glimpse from the penthouse. It’s as close as we’ll get, unless we win the lottery, which we don’t expect to but don’t entirely rule out. Even if we don’t make any money on him, and I mean any, not a red cent or copper one. He’s royalty here in whitetail country, where it’s all about the rack.

Because imagining the absolute worst-case scenario is my default setting

STEVE BIERSDORF

Beach and the Gulf of Mexico on this side of the island, waterways on the other, walled off by an impenetrable mangrove thicket infested with things that bite and constrict, uncompromising, vicious, camouflaged things. I see how the island could be taken, overrun then fortified with only the beach side to defend. Not much potential for resistance or insurgency here, where aggression is getting up at sunrise to find the good shells before anyone else does. The local police cruise the beach in jeeps, looking for open containers or enough nudity to offend public decency statutes.

In quick succession take out the local cell tower wherever it is, inland somewhere, easy to find because its exact location can be googled, detonate the concrete stanchions that prop up the causeway so it buckles and keels over into the bay. There aren’t two, the only way on or off the island if you’re driving. An amphibious assault from the ocean in the new moon cycle, storm the condos and resorts, evacuate the residents top floor to lobby, set up MANPADS with SAMs on the roofs of the taller complexes, heat-seekers.

I’m well acquainted with the view from the balcony, the beach and ocean and our building’s identical twin across the way, its pool, green tennis courts and driveway on the grounds in between. Almost straight down to the crown of a several-stories-tall royal palm, with its full head of yellowish fronds and branchless beneath, fronds like dying plants in a pottered vase, its trunk like a cylindrical sculpture hewn by the elements, steady inbound breeze, torrential downpours, rain delivered sideways, glazed by the tropical sun. I estimate the top of this royal palm to be slightly more than halfway to the ground from the tenth story balcony I peer down on it from. I wonder if it could be possible to land atop the crown, but suspect only with a running start. It looks like a step off the rail and I’d be able to hit the mark. What I can’t know is if the crown is substantial enough to impede my fall or if I would tear through it, two hundred pounds hurtling down and the fronds a matador’s cape.  

The invasion force overrunning the twin tower to our north, lining up on opposite balconies and systematically clearing the condos in this building by unleashing automatic weapons fire covering every square inch of visibility into these condo apartments in the southern tower. These condos are glass-walled facing out but there are two obstructed views, on the other side of the kitchen and the full bathroom by the guest bedroom and not the master. Everything else is in the line of fire. Behind the kitchen wall as the torrent of automatic weapons fire swarms every inch, shredding glass, chewing up the plaster walls, splintering wood, devouring furniture and creating flurries of lighter material, foam rubber, feathers, dust, dismembered bits of cloth, pieces of everything scattered under a deafening rain of hellfire. Systematic shock and awe, floor by floor, so by the time the invasion force moves in behind the covering fire, any resistance has been obliterated.

When the unleashing ends my ears ring with it, what’s left of a cabinet door dropping to the floor, a piece of glass table falling and breaking in half. I make a break for it, straight out and over the balcony, bits of glass crunching under every step, jumping the rail, realizing I’ve overestimated how far out the royal palm is, I won’t land dead center in the crown, crashing through the fronds and I grab desperately as I come ripping past, I feel a sharp pain in my upper chest and my arm feels like something’s tried to remove it from its socket with a violent tug. The momentum of my fall disrupted enough to blunt the impact. Landing in a blink. One of my arms is useless. I slither. It feels like something’s been threaded through my pelvis so I can stand properly only with the assistance of fishing line at the behest of a manipulating hand. I spit out teeth. My jaw barely opens so that when I spit blood and broken teeth tumble reluctantly out, blood, saliva and teeth fragments coating my chin. On the left side of my mouth are gums or broken teeth, same side as the useless arm. I blink blood from my eyes, drops on my eyelashes. I make for the nearby dumpster, not walking but partially erect, dragging what doesn’t work and over-relying on what does, lean over and fall in and close the lid over me with a hollow, metallic boom, hoping no one saw.  

At the Ballpark

STEVE BIERSDORF

The ballpark has a retractable roof with a giant glass greenhouse façade, giving it the look of a massive, self-contained biosphere. Our team is in the early stages of a rebuild, so if they lose today we can chalk it up to better days ahead. Every twenty seconds or so they play a short blurb of a song, “Wild Thing,” “Let’s Get It Started,” “Plush.” “Day-O,” daylight come and me want to go home. Turns out (google search) they have a forty-song playlist.  

Between innings a group of young men and women down on the field shimmy laterally to centerfield with a huge inflated sombrero upside down, with writing on it, presumably some local restaurant or restaurant chain. The inflatable sombrero and the sideways-moving legs of those carrying it resemble an immense and deformed crustacean scrambling desperately in search of a return to the sea, stuck and enclosed by the walls around the field and the leering, hollering masses.

Beneath mammoth ads for Southwest Airlines, Bud Light and Larry’s Shoes, above the Target bullseye logo plastered to the outfield wall, someone walks to the edge of the outfield stands with a much smaller inflated object I take for a replica of a pillow-sized taco, throws it in the general direction of the upside-down sombrero, the taco bounding off the brim of the sombrero and falling to the outfield grass, to the collective, unconvincing “awwww” of the stadium crowd. The leftfielder jogs out to his position, observing it all, pounding his glove with his fist with what can only be disdain.

A left-handed batter stands in and swings at a pitch like a blur, redirecting the blur, slower-moving and looping and askew and high into the glowing stadium lights. The ball is a small darkening object, a tiny pin-prick eclipse of the candlepower, rising impossibly high and on its descent angled straight for where we’re sitting. A man in the team regalia stands and the ball falls to him as if hit to him intentionally, or at him. He lifts his hands together to catch it, but it bounces off his hands with a meat-slap and skips to the row directly in front of us. As if the baseball is a priceless trinket dropped from the sky, something that if procured would inexorably alter the life of its new possessor, as one body and then another and another hurtle directly over us, diving headfirst, knocking us from our seats to our knees, spilling beverages. A pile of bodies in the row in front of us, a scrum, a compilation of legs and arms and torsos and grunts and jostling, and a woman walks up to the scrum, reaches in and magically produces the fouled-off baseball, holding it aloft, triumphantly, and the entire section erupts, as she turns and curtsies to the rows higher up.

Phone Scammers

STEVE BIERSDORF

They were working an old IRS scam. Googling phone scams you could find out what people were hip to, so he invented his own messages. The women quickly copied him when they saw his results.  

“You are hereby notified that we need to speak with you or your attorney immediately regarding an ongoing investigation. In the event we do not speak with you in our office today, we will document that you waived your rights to counsel and submit your file to the state.”

“This telephone number is linked to a questionable financial transaction that is now under investigation. It is possible that your name and social security number could be involved. I need you to call me or one of my associates immediately.”

He would make two hundred calls by lunch. Rarely, if ever, talking with anyone on the initial call. The calls were local but came from scrambled numbers with Ohio area codes. He’d eat lunch, take a solid forty-five minutes and peruse shit on the Internet. The women hammered the phones nonstop trying to get someone, skipping lunch or eating at their cubicles between calls. You had to scare people with the messages you left. They had to call you.

Early afternoon the callbacks started in earnest. Sometimes he couldn’t keep up, the women gladly handling his overflow. Mary Stewart took the inbound calls. From the number on caller ID she would know which agent had placed the call, confirm the caller’s name and social security number and transfer the call to him if it was his, or if he wasn’t on another call. He’d reconfirm the social security number with the caller. Knowing their social security numbers was like holding their babies out a window ten stories over a sidewalk.

They purchased call lists from payday lenders, storefront or online. It was the afraid callers with sketchy credit histories who gave up their card numbers. The standard charge was payback of the fictitious loan for $400 and a $35 processing fee. He went for more. Sometimes he’d say the loan was for $1,500 or $2,000 and they’d want to mail him a check, he’d tell them if they gave him a credit card number he would waive the processing fee and come down $300 to settle. Sometimes with the bigger amounts the card number wouldn’t go through, and Mary Stewart or Mr. Anderson would send it through for less, whatever they could get.

The women were using his scripts, but they didn’t have his deep, resonant voice. They had weird accents. Sometimes they would go out into the empty warehouse together, Denise Meyers, Susan Jones, Ann Johnson and Mary Stewart. Susan Jones and Ann Johnson smoked. They would converse in a foreign language. After five minutes of his standing there awkwardly with his hands buried in his pockets, Mary Stewart smiled apologetically and gave abridged translations. When Mary would translate, the other women would stop talking in the strange language, looking at him by turns. The next time he followed them out into the empty warehouse they spoke English.     

They could hear each other. They had earbuds and weren’t right on top of each other, but the offices were tight, formerly the administrative offices of a defunct propane gas concern. The women would threaten the callers if the callers weren’t taking the bait or were confrontational, “get a good lawyer,” “I’m forwarding this information to the three credit reporting agencies.” They took the confrontational calls personally. You couldn’t. If there wasn’t any money in it get off the call quickly, hang up if necessary.  

Denise Meyers was the most egregious. If Denise Meyers called a blocked number, she would continue to call using all twenty-nine scrambled numbers with Ohio area codes and leave her message, or her version of one of his messages. She would call the same cell number from all thirty scrambled lines until she was completely blocked, each time leaving increasingly menacing versions of the original message. If she knew where the owner of the blocked cell phone number worked she would call that person’s work and leave messages with a receptionist that the owner of the blocked cell number was facing a grand jury indictment for embezzlement. She would look up family members and call them, telling the family members their brother, sister, son or daughter was facing fraud charges. He would listen to her being awful in her weird accent and disaffected tone. He’d listen to her and want to fuck her. Fuck her hard.

Taking Inventory

STEVE BIERSDORF

Yesterday when I checked the National Debt Clock was $20,493,703,619,404. It’s like a never-ending telethon run amok. Watch it for five minutes and it’ll go up another million dollars. Can’t sleep, check in on the National Debt Clock, and it’s still going up at two in the morning. Checking it just now and it’s up to $20,493,874,732,187. I wonder, how do we borrow $171 million in little over twenty-four hours? Do we borrow that much every day? We’re not really planning to pay all that back, are we? We can’t be.   

I live in what was once a quarry pit. At some point they ran out of rocks to pulverize, and now there are townhouses and single-family homes where once were mountains of rubble. It’s a valley now with an imported horticulture, low-maintenance roadside flora that can thrive out of a gravelly, nutrient-deficient subbase and thick flowering trees growing from patches of sod. The people behind me live a little higher up on the western ridge. At the back of their yard is a bulwark of white boulders, leftovers from those old quarry days. I live alone, in a two-level two-bedroom townhouse with a two-car garage. Beneath the kitchen sink, I have an array of household cleaners to tackle the most stubborn stains or waxy buildup. 

My neighbors to the right, a retired couple, we’ve never exchanged a word. We haven’t made eye contact. For the husband, waking up each morning without a meaningless job to go to has been an awkward transition. His driveway is always the first one shoveled when it snows. He uses a snow blower for the main stretches and fine-tunes the edges with one of those ergonomic shovels curved in the middle like half a parentheses, so he doesn’t have to bend. In summer he handpicks the weeds in his yard and punches aerating holes in his lawn with a long, thin-handled implement with a three-pronged metallic claw. During summer days when I’m home I sometimes hear the discharge of a pellet gun – pop-pffft – coming from his backyard, followed by the frenzied scattering of birds from the vicinity of his well-stocked birdfeeder.

I have this gnawing feeling I should do I’m not, not sure what that would be. My leg bouncing frenetically or if I’m lying down, my foot moving side to side like I’m waving at someone with it. I should feel better having my time at my discretion. I feel like I’ve fallen into one of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for scenarios. Sometimes I watch the ceiling fan for a disturbing amount of time. Every revolution the slats disappear and reappear. There are six of them, only three visible if the setting is on high. I know how many floor tiles there are in the front bathroom. I wonder how I came to have thirty-three forks.

Any latte is a Goodlatte with good company

STEVE BIERSDORF

I arrive at the downtown hotel for the interview five minutes in advance of the scheduled time. I’m to meet Jim Goodlatte in a café off the lobby. Jim Goodlatte hasn’t described himself or told me he’ll be wearing a red tie or a blue shirt or name tag, so I’m wondering how I’ll identify him. When I enter the café, there’s a huge guy in a suit with an open laptop and smart phone sitting alone and almost no one else there, a few elderly people in armchairs at the front window, staring out at the sidewalk, backs to the rest of the café, lethargic turn of their heads following the traverse of any passerby.

We shake hands and mine is lost in his, though he has an easy grip and lotiony soft hands. He asks if I’d like something and I say sure and he says go ahead, I’ll wait, and gestures toward the counter. I order a latte, pay for it after a moment’s hesitation, the woman behind the counter waiting patiently for me to hand her my debit card. She gives me a plastic number like a miniature sandwich board and says she’ll bring it over when it’s ready. I put the number at the edge of the table and it doesn’t take long. She picks up the number and sets the latte in the same spot. As we’re talking, I’m compulsively pulling on the latte despite how hot it is. The aftertaste is melted cup. I’m getting pretty geeked and the roof of my mouth becomes callused. My responses are more elaborate than they need to be because I’m overstimulated. I’m careful to maintain eye contact, Jim Goodlatte is an eye-contact guy.

Jim Goodlatte pokes at his computer. His fingers are too big for the conventional keyboard. I can tell when he’s backspacing by the peck-peck-peck with his bratwurst of a finger. He mispronounces my last name, pauses, asking me how I pronounce my last name, I pronounce it correctly and he apologizes, smiling introspectively, like fucking up names is a lovable flaw. He’s staring at the screen of his laptop facing away from me and he goes hmm, huh, asks me a few questions about my jobs past and present. It occurs to me this is the first time he’s looked at my résumé. Initially, I find this off-putting, but then I decide he’s just not that into his job. I’m waiting for him to ask me to describe a weakness and stare blankly at me, not listening to my bullshit, wondering why he asks this question when people always respond by blowing smoke up his large ass.