Karin Slaughter - Martin Misunderstood

The door opened. One of the line workers stood there, a cigarette in her mouth, lighter in her hands. They had never been formally introduced, yet the woman felt familiar enough with him to ask, 'What the hell are you doing?'

'Mind your own darn' business,' he said, scooping up the pieces of the broken case. He glanced up at the Dumpster, but did not dare try another attempt with a witness. He picked up his report and the other items, then walked around the building. Several minutes later, he found himself at his car. He unlocked the trunk and put the tattered briefcase beside the broken bumper. Martin looked up at the cloudy, gray sky. Two strikes already and it wasn't even nine o'clock. What could possibly be the third?

Suddenly, the clouds moved, a ray of sun peeking out. Martin closed his eyes against the light. Without warning, the joyful tones of the Harlem Gospel Choir filled his ears. '"Lord, lift me up ! Take me hi-yi-yi-igher !"'

The singing abruptly stopped as the engine was cut on the black Monte Carlo that had pulled up beside Martin's Camry.

'Whatchu doin', fool?' Unique Jones slammed the car door, her keys jingling in one hand, a tall Dunkin' Donuts mocha latte in the other. Her purse was the size of a feed sack; the strap cut into the fleshy part of her exposed shoulder. Despite the chill in the air, she was wearing a tight-fitting, bright orange sundress with matching orange shoes. Unique was a large black woman who liked to offset her dark skin with colorful scarves and glittery fingernail polish. Sometimes, she wore a turban around her head. Other days, she let her intricately braided hair dangle around her shoulders. She had terrified Martin from the day she had first walked into the building.

Martin stammered, 'I-I-I-'

'Hush up, doughboy. We got work to do.'

She talked to him like she was his boss, when in fact the opposite was true. The only time she had shown him any respect was when she had interviewed for the job. 'It's Unique with an accent on the "e",' she had politely corrected him. Martin had glanced down at her application where she had written her name, Unique Jones, wondering which 'e' she could mean. He was befuddled. Was it French? Jo-naise, perhaps?

'You-nee-kay,' she had explained, laughing, 'That's all right, baby, nobody gets it at first, but once they do, they never forget.'

He had smiled at her, thinking that this was the first time he had been called 'baby' without the implicit pejorative. One of the few things Martin could remember about his father was a joke he liked to tell: How do you catch a unique rabbit? Unique up on it.

This Unique was a high school drop-out who hadn't even bothered to get her GED. She had one month from a secretarial school under her belt and two months of accounting school. 'I learned everything I needed,' she told him. 'You either got it up here or you don't.' She tapped her temple on this last part, and Martin noticed the gold dollar-sign appliqué on the glossy red fingernail of her index finger.

'We're doing a lot of interviews,' he told her, which was actually a lie. He had reserved the office conference room weeks ago when he placed the ad, expecting back-to-back interviews. He had read up on Interviews for Dummies so he could ask salient questions such as, 'What are some of your best features?' or, 'If I asked a close friend to name one of your flaws, what would it be?'

The only other applicant had been a man who had shown up an hour late and yelled at Martin that he could not be expected to punch a timeclock; a startling statement, considering that none of the office staff were expected to clock in.

'How many interviews you got?' Unique asked.

'Well, I… uh…' Martin felt his throat work as he swallowed. 'Many. Several-many.' He pronounced the words as if they were hyphenated, and she had narrowed her eyes as if she could see straight into his soul.

She had shaken her head. 'Nuh-uh,' she insisted. 'You're going to give me the job now. I can't go home and wait by the phone. I got other responsibilities.'

'I just-'

'What time you want me to show up? Don't say eight, 'cause this kind of beautiful don't happen without a little help in the morning. You know what I mean?' She had flicked back her braided hair on that last remark. The way the beads rattled against each other reminded Martin of the time he had found a rattlesnake in his bunk at summer camp. Granted, it turned out to be a fake (a revelation unfortunately not reached before Martin had alerted the entire compound to the dangerous creature), but the beads in its tail rattled the same.

She was fishing around in her purse for her keys as Martin tried to explain that all front office employees were expected to be at their desks by eight-thirty sharp. 'I'll see you around nine on Friday,' she told him, standing. 'I gotta take off early, though, 'cause my niece is in town. All right? I'll see ya then.'

She was gone before he could answer, her halfempty Dunkin' Donuts mocha latte leaving a ring on the conference-room table. Her scent still filled the room – a sickly sweet concoction like candy floss and Coca-Cola that competed with the disturbing, yeasty odor that had come as she uncrossed her legs. This lady fug was what had stuck with Martin, and he caught a whiff of it even now as Unique headed across the parking lot.

'You gonna get that "twat" off your car?' she asked.

Martin had to jog to keep up with her. For a large woman, she moved with amazing speed.

'I've put a call into-'

'Sabatini ain't gonna help you, fool. He was laughing so hard when he came out here I half expected a brick to drop out of his pants.'

Martin remained silent. The brick comment, he felt, was completely unnecessary.

'You need to call his boss.'

She was always telling him what to do. Most of her sentences started with 'you need to.' God forbid Martin tell her that she needed to do something. He was senior to her in every way, yet Unique was the one who took control in the office – bringing in potted plants, scattering candles, air fresheners and photos of her lap dog around the common areas.

Granted, she was a faster typist, and she tended not to make very many mistakes, but she hardly had it the same as he did with her job of invoicing and collections for non-liquid products and vending items. You couldn't really compare Vomit-Up granules and LadyTickler condoms to the massive roll-paper orders and toilet-seat liners that Martin processed. It was apples and oranges, as he often told Norton Shaw.

To make matters worse, she had despicable work habits. From the moment she showed up, she would keep her cellphone to one ear and the business phone to the other. She would cross-talk to her sister, who worked in a church office, with customers listening on the other line. Meanwhile, her glossy fingernails would click-click-click against the keys like a Chihuahua on a tile floor while her hair rat-tat-tatted like a rubber snake with beads in its tail. About sixty times a day, she would apply lotion to her hands, and oftentimes her feet. The one time Martin politely asked her to find a more appropriate place to oil up, she had screamed, 'I can't help it I'm ashy!' and that was that.

As a large-breasted woman with a generous waistline, she had to maneuver herself carefully around the desk. Martin had been intrigued at first to watch the alignment of breast, stomach and arm that made it possible for her to reach the computer keyboard. She had misinterpreted his scientific interest as unbridled lust, admonishing, 'Honey, you ain't got the stamina to ring this bell!' Then, he'd had to listen to her relay the story to her sister, whose 'amen' could be heard across the room.

These were not isolated incidents but daily occurrences. Martin lived in terror of her pronouncements, which were usually made in mixed company during the most inopportune moments. He would be going over a time card with one of the shift workers and she would shoot out a, 'You ain't following what he's saying, fool!' Or, Norton Shaw would come down to check on receivables and she would shout, 'He got some bad gas from lunch. Let's do this outside.'