“Now that’s what I like to see,” said Frank Juliet, the spittle-lipped regional client liaison manager, popping in for a visit to the Long Island headquarters for Yellow Papers, the upstart telephone listing company with a plan to take down the mighty Yellow Pages. “Two men doing what they can to make some money to take back to school next semester. I like it. I like it.” Frank was hovering over the office-gray, temporary landscape of a carpeted corner, where Arnie Taffet worked the phone in Cubicle A as I hung up mine in Cubicle B.
Two weeks earlier, we were strangers called in unison into Frank’s office, which overlooked a golf course so crowded with suburban New Yorkers that the designer had installed identical holes next to each other on the par-threes in an effort to speed up the pace of play.
“See that?” Frank had said a few minutes after congratulating us on being hired. He pulled off a well-rehearsed executive swivel from desk to sill and pointed out the window to the spiked-up links below. “That’s life in the city, boys. Or life near the city, I should say. Fact is, that right there is innovation. Twin par-threes. Genius. And guess what? It’s our demo. Our people. Think about that tomorrow when you start hitting those phones.” We nodded and smiled then, and we nodded and smiled now.
All day, we would rifle through a fresh box of index-card “leads” that listed the names of local businesses, their current Yellow Pages account information, and the last time they were visited by Yellow Papers salespeople in vain attempts to switch them over to the gospel of the newer, less-proven competitor.
Our job was to call these establishments, one after the other, and ask, “May I speak to the person who handles your Yellow Page account?” Once we got the right person, we would use our verbal dexterity to help wiggle our sales representatives into the door. If they converted to our preachings, Arnie and I received small commissions. But these could grow, according to Frank. We could head back to college with “a nice little nest-egg to sit on.” So far, in mid-May, it didn’t work very often. And we didn’t, either.
Arnie, a heavy guy with heavier glasses, spent the majority of his nine-to-fives pleading into the phone and getting barked at in return by a shrill female voice that needled him into inevitable admissions of irresponsibility. “Yes, dear,” he said, over and over. “Yes, dear.” Four days into our employment together, I learned that the constant combatant was his mother.
Arnie was working on a comedy routine. He said his buddies at Duke thought he was funny, and he would do standup for them in the dorm hallways, sometimes until two or three in the morning. He was writing every night, he said, with the big goal of a gig later in the summer at a comedy club a few towns over.
“What’s your act like?” I asked out of courtesy.
“I’m not telling you,” he said, with a knowing smile. “You gotta show up to find out.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, still not caring. “Tell me a little.”
“I’ll just say one thing. It involves Mickey Mouse.”
One of my great pleasures that summer came from telling my high school friends about Arnie the delusional dolt with the overbearing mother.
A good portion of my mornings and afternoons in the hallowed corridors of Yellow Papers, Inc., was spent on the phone with Shari, a girl I’d met at a college party in March. She grew up near me and was a sophomore at Cornell, but she took Spring Break in California and visited her friend at my school, UC Santa Barbara. I wound up sitting by a keg behind a fraternity house, drunk and noticing her smile at me from the chair across a table. She watched her friend leave the party with a burly blond guy in a “Free James Brown” T-shirt and laughed. “Thankfully,” she said, “I have the key to her room.”
We played Jewish Geography, Nassau County-style, and found out we had some mutual acquaintances. We were both just now recovering from the wreckage of high school relationships that flamed out in the wake of tuition and meal plans and months away from home. Her ex was named Larry. “Ha,” I said. “Shari and Larry. As if you’ve never heard that one before.”
She asked me the name of my ex. I paused and aimed for a far-off glance of forlorn contemplation. I gazed out at the crowd of revelers and watched a girl in a sorority sweatshirt and pajama pants puke on a fence post. I said, “Natalia.” I thought it sounded exotic. “She’s older. She’s thirty.”
Shari and I both loved R.E.M., but she was a “Green” girl and I preferred “Fables.” She told me about walking past Eric Clapton, who was smoking a cigarette next to a newsstand on Broadway at 72nd Street. I told her about meeting Joan Jett at the Palace of Wong and how the menu was the only piece of paper I could find in time for her to sign it and that she wrote “Lots of love, Joan Jett,” right by Moo Goo Gai Pan. Shari gave me her phone number and I told her I’d call and that we could hang out on the Island over the summer and see what happened.
On a humid June Friday while walking out the front door of the Yellow Papers to buy a pack of gum from the hot lunch truck that Arnie called the “roach coach,” I was greeted by Lloyd, the sixty-year-old Jamaican doorman with whom I shared casual conversation and a love for Bob Marley records and wagering on horse races at the nearby Off-Track Betting parlor.
Lloyd said a friend of his had told him that Widdum, the number five horse in the eighth race at Belmont that day, was going to win. His friend was a colleague of the horse’s groom, and Widdum was “sitting on a big one.” When I got back to my desk, Arnie was on one of his calls. “Yes, dear,” he said, sighing in exasperation before hanging up. He looked my way and saw the fever in my eyes.
“What?” he said.
“Lloyd’s got a tip on the eighth at Belmont. I’m gonna make a quick OTB run at lunch. You in?”
“No way, man. Still working on my opening bit. Only six weeks to go, but who’s counting?”
Widdum stumbled around the first turn and finished last. A quarter pounder with cheese, fries and a Dr Pepper cost me eighty bucks.
Shari and I kept talking and I kept putting it off. Booze cruises with buddies, gravity bong hits in the sink and Grateful Dead cover bands, the nighttime harness races in Yonkers … there were other things to do. Having a girl to talk to on the phone every day seemed to like enough.
July staggered into late August on the heels of ninety-degree temperatures and ninety-percent humidity. Arnie and I dialed on through the fog, scoring a sale here and there and scoring dates. That Tuesday, I would pick up Shari at her house in Syosset and take her out. A night later, Arnie had an open-mic spot lined up at Greg’s Gag Garage in Hicksville.
I pulled up to her house, a classic Tudor with gables and a sparkling front lawn and driveway full of Beemers that told me I’d be marrying well if this excursion turned into something our parents dreamed of. She opened the door and walked out to me on the cobbled path. She wasn’t nearly as good-looking as I thought she was that dark night in Isla Vista. That night her eyes shined. Tonight the dumpy frame and short tree-trunk legs that hid under the table were spotlighted by the gloaming. And she was limping.
We went inside and she served me a glass of lemonade made by her mother. Her twelve-year-old brother bounded down the stairs to meet me, saying, “I’ve heard a lot about you.” He sat down and began playing Nintendo as Shari led me to the adjacent sofa.
“So, what’s going on?” she said.
Shari’s brother made a crucial tackle on Tecmo Bowl and pumped his fist. “Yessssssss!” I saw the sparkle in his braces.
“Well,” I said, gritting my teeth, “I’ve got some bad news, but I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”
She looked down at the dark orange shag carpet.
“What is it?”
“I just found out that I have to go back to California tomorrow, early, because there’s no room in the dorm and my roommate and I have to find an apartment. I’m going to have to go home now and pack. I’m sorry. Thanks for the lemonade.”
I shut the door and skipped over the stones to the car. I got in and punched the steering wheel before pulling away.
The next night, I sat by myself at a table in the middle of Greg’s Gag Garage, one of twenty-four people in the joint — not including the bartenders. I made sure to count.
Arnie was first up and I could see his hands shake as he struggled for a second to free the microphone from its holder. He was in a full-body, white Disney World uniform that made him look like a happy window washer. He beamed up there as sweat began to form at his receding hairline.
“I just came back from a summer working at Disney World,” he said. “I know, I know … there’s no possible way you could have figured it out. But you know what? I’m not ashamed of walking around all day in unbearable heat while wearing this garbage bag. I’m not ashamed of cleaning up the piss of eight-year-olds while breaking my back in the saunas they call rest rooms. And I’m not ashamed of my Mickey Mouse impression.”
And then the mouse voice. I wanted to laugh but couldn’t. He continued.
“Now I’m a working stiff. I get to work in the morning on Monday and I’ve still got last Thursday’s papers all over the desk. On Tuesday, I’m still working on Friday. Wednesdays I finally get to Monday. And on Thursday …”
A man in a shirt and tie appeared on the side of the stage and stamped on the floor, getting Arnie’s attention. He made the throat-slitting motion with his hand and Arnie’s eyes widened. Arnie turned back to the room.
“And on Thursday … on Thursday … on Thursday I sell heroin in the parking lot.”
A few laughs rang out, and I started to shake my head and clap.
“Thanks very much, everyone! I’m Arnie Taffet and I love you all!”
As he strode off the stage, he spotted me. He shrugged, gave me the thumbs-up, grinned like a madman and disappeared behind the curtain.
***
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