Charles Frederick - Grim Fandango

When I came into the office the morning after Lana left town, I found Eva in a pretty agitated state. Domino was the first agent in and he had kept Eva hopping as he started making Lana’s office his own. When I stepped out of the elevator Eva was just hanging up the phone. She then picked up the office appointment book and slammed it down on her desk as hard as she could.

“Any messages for me?” I asked.

“I’m in no mood for jokes, Cal,” she barked. I actually took a step back. I don’t think I’d ever seen Eva like that before. Sure, she’d been angry plenty of times, but never so thoroughly enraged.

I must have just stood there for about five seconds before inanely saying, “Really?” That got me the whole story on Hurley. It was Copal (who wasn’t in the office yet) she had been talking to on the phone. Hurley wanted her to get a new computer for his office and she had balked at that. She had wanted Copal’s support in reining Hurley in and hadn’t got it. In fact, Copal told her to give Hurley whatever he wanted. To Eva’s mind, the office was her domain. The office manager’s only concern was ‘the little stuff,’ by which she meant us agents. Well, she had a point. Of sorts. In any case, she was being jerked around on two tethers. I wouldn’t have liked it if I had been in her place.

But at first I thought Eva was overreacting. That is, I did until I had my first Domino experience a couple of minutes later. I went to Lana’s office to introduce myself. Hurley was busy unpacking one box and tossing Lana’s stuff into another. When I figured out that he didn’t really know about Lana, I told him the story and warned him that he was likely to get some resentment from the others in the office. His only response was, “Hey, that’s a shame!” Then he made some remark about Lana’s computer being a piece of crap. I was irked by the fact that he wasn’t genuinely listening. As we talked—or as I talked and he babbled—I riffled through Domino’s box. “Look at all the diplomas!” I said half to myself.

“You have to have the proper attitude to get diplomas like those, Manny.”

“Really?” I said in mock astonishment. “I thought you just had to have the proper postage.” Domino was not happy with that crack, but I was. Having got my lick in, I made my excuses and went to my office to start on the day’s cases.

That evening Eva and I met at this new nightclub she wanted to try out. It wasn’t exactly my style. I imagined it would have been full of ferns if there were any to be had. The orchestra wasn’t half bad, especially if you liked the Kay Kyser sound, which I didn’t. Eva was still in a foul mood but was trying to relax. We tried to stay off shop talk, but the shop intruded.

I was doing my best to take her mind off the workday we had just got done with. I asked her, “So what are you gonna do this weekend?”

She said “Fuck!” and my jaw dropped. She didn’t seem to notice my reaction, but hissed, “He’s here!”

“Huh?”

“Domino! Don’t look!! ” she snapped when I started to look around.

Maybe he had been aware of us the whole time, or maybe I had moved in the right direction. Whichever it was, Domino got up from his table just then, drink in hand, and sat down at ours. “Hey, kids! How’s it goin’?”

“I’ve been better,” Eva growled.

“Something’s been eating her all day,” he said brightly. “Must be that time of the month.”

I winced. Eva was actually speechless.

“Well,” Domino went on obliviously, “I’ve had quite a day myself. Man! I can’t believe what a mess that Laura left in my office!”

“Lana!” Eva snapped.

“Oh?” he said. “I guess I heard it wrong, then.” Domino then leaned back in his chair and looked over at the band. Then, looking back at me, he hefted his ridiculous drink with an umbrella in it in what he must’ve thought was a jolly salute and said, “This is the life, ain’t it, Cally?”

“Last time I checked,” I said, “we were all dead.”

“Oh, Manny!” Domino exclaimed. “Where’s your optimism?”

I opened my mouth to ask something about what the hell difference optimism could make when Domino turned to Eva and asked, “I guess you two are some kind of an item, huh?”

“Sure, Dom,” Eva said tiredly. “Whatever.”

“Say, that’s terrific. Tell me, Cally,” Domino switched tracks again, “how many Double-N tickets can a guy expect to sell around here?”

I thought of saying something like, ‘I don’t know, Dommy. How many Double-Ns came with your Monopoly set?’ Instead, I just shrugged and said, “Depends. If you’re lucky, maybe five or six a month. Two or three is more likely, though.”

“Now is that the winning attitude?” he chided me

“Saints don’t grow on trees, Hurley,” I said with a growl.

He just waved that aside and sipped his drink.

I’d had enough of the guy. “What did you do to get this job?” I asked. Eva started.

“You mean, what’s my secret to success?” he asked smugly.

“No,” I said, “I mean, how did you screw up and get stuck at the DOD?” Domino slowly put his drink down. ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘I’m getting to him.’ “What sin did you commit and how long are you going to have to work here to pay it off?”

“I could easily ask the same question of you,” he said coldly.

I should have expected that, but instead I was thrown. “I don’t know the answer,” I admitted. “I still don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Well, how convenient!” he sneered. “Then neither do I.” And having got in the last jab, he finally left us.

“Oh, good going, Manny,” Eva said with only mild sarcasm. “What made you ask such an asinine question? Who’s always saying there are questions we don’t ask, anyway?”

That made me defensive. “Look, I wanted to get rid of him, OK? I really can’t stand that guy!”

“And you think I’m in love with him?” Eva shook her head. “Listen, darling—I wanted to get rid of him, too, but don’t you think there was a more grown-up way of doing it?”

“Well, you were pretty quiet back there. Didn’t you have anything to contribute? Just how would you have gotten rid of him?”

Eva opened her mouth and then closed it. She looked down at the table and said, “I don’t know, I guess.” She shrugged and looked back up at me. “I just wish you weren’t so nasty about it, that’s all. I shouldn’t criticize when I don’t have any better ideas, should I?” she asked wryly.

“Who else cares enough to keep me on the straight and narrow?”

Eva patted my hand and said, “Now don’t get mushy on me, sweetie.”

We got off Domino after that. But he didn’t just disappear, unfortunately.

Over the next couple of weeks Domino kept getting on everyone’s nerves until Apollo popped off with that complaint and ended up leaving town. Just before he left, though, he had an idiotic physical confrontation with Domino. Hurley was a big guy and Apollo was thoroughly taken to the cleaners. Domino might have been a linebacker or something in college for all I know. He was a jock of some kind, anyway. It seemed that whenever he wasn’t on a case he was stripped down to his undershirt shadowboxing or skipping rope or whatever in his office, like he couldn’t take sitting still. ‘The Sweatiest Man in the Office’ I dubbed him. “You gotta sweat to sell, Cally, and you know it,” he’d say to me even though I had a couple of decades selling on him. What made his smugness hard to take was the fact that he was selling.

It isn’t that easy to be a sales agent. It’s not as simple as ‘good life=premium sale’. An agent has to put all the pieces of a life together and search out the absolute best a soul deserves and then convince the client to buy. It takes experience to do that well. Hurley claimed it was all a matter of ‘the winning attitude’; but even though that was a load of crap, he was selling a lot of premium packages for a beginner. Actually, he was selling a lot for a veteran.