Scott McClanahan - The Collected Works of Scott McClanahan Vol. I

“Hey,” one said all sexy like she knew me.

“Hey,” I said. I thought, “What a nice woman.”

I never had such a pretty woman dressed in sexy clothes come right out and say “Hi” to me.

Maybe she thought I was cute.

It made me feel good about myself.

After a couple of months of calling people it started wearing on me. We had to meet quotas each week at the telemarketing place and even though I was a top level caller, I was running into some bad luck.

Hello my name is…

Click.

Hello my name is Scott McClanahan.

Click.

There were other things too. The name of the company changed every other week, paychecks were late a week at a time, and one guy was constantly listening to a police scanner. I guess if the cops were coming they could get the massive call computers out the door and down the freight elevators before the coppers showed up.

I was having such bad luck calling one night I even told one of the managers that I was sorry, but my girlfriends’ mother had died the day before and I just wasn’t myself.

She didn’t die.

I mean I was lying now.

I was a liar.

So when I came home that night Kim was all over me.

“I mean why would you say my mom died?”

“I know. I know. I panicked. I thought they were going to fire me.”

“Fire you? Scott, it’s a telemarketer job that pays $7.00 an hour. Most people are there to earn money so they can get high. I mean they have work release prisoners working there. Besides that, you hate it. So why don’t you just quit?”

I was thinking about it. I was tired of walking home through the dark and beating people out of money and them not knowing where it was going. I was tired of waving at the women in the pretty clothes and wanting them to wave back. So I made a plan to leave, but then the next night my luck started changing.

I started going “Hello” and before I could even get it out they gave me 75 dollars.

“Hello my name is Scott McClanahan…”and the caller gave me 150.

“Hello my name is…” and they gave me 25.

And so I sent out at least three or four info packets for future donations.

I was in the zone.

Matt even gave me a high five.

And then B-Dawg threw me a t-shirt because I was the top caller for the night, “Hell yeah.”

Maybe I wasn’t quitting.

But then it happened. The phone clicked and the info popped into my computer screen—65 years old. White male. Georgia. He gave 30 dollars last year.

“Hello,” he said real quiet on the other end. And so I went through my whole spiel.

I told him about the FOP.

I told him thanks for his past support.

I asked him if the FOP could count on him again this year.

It was quiet again.

And then he finally said, “Well sir, I’m sorry……I’d really like to……But I just don’t know if I can.”

I immediately went into my first rebuttal.

“Well sir we appreciate your past support of 30 dollars but please realize…”

And then he said, “No, no. I understand what you’re saying…… I always love to help out the troopers, but I don’t know if I can.”

And then there was silence.

Then he said, “I lost my daughter…three days ago…in a car crash.”

And so I started looking through my rebuttals, but I didn’t have one for a guy who had lost his daughter in a car wreck.

I just said, “Oh I’m sorry sir.”

And he started talking so that I couldn’t even say anything else. “From what we can tell the road was wet and she was going too fast.”

Then he was quiet and said, “They said she lost control and wrecked…she died.”

And then it was quiet again and I could hear something else. I could hear him crying on the other end.

I improvised, “Well sir I’m sorry to hear about your loss but maybe our 25 dollar level would make you feel better as a donation to the FOP in your daughter’s memory.”

He said, “But that’s just the thing. I don’t know.”

So I looked over at the manager B-Dawg and he was running his finger across his throat — in a throat slash motion which meant, “Cut the phone call. Cut it.”

I said quick, “Well sir why don’t I just send you an info packet and you can make the decision yourself? Okay?”

But he wouldn’t have any of it.

He whispered, “No, don’t go. Please don’t go. It’s good to talk to someone. I’ve just been stuck in this house and I’m so lonely. Please don’t go. I’m so lonely.”

And I didn’t say anything

Then I heard CLICK.

The call was cut.

I looked over at Brian, the manager, and he had cut the call himself. He walked over to me and said, “I’m sorry you had one of those fucking criers. Shit, sometimes those old fuckers just talk and talk and talk for hours about how this happened to this person and how that happened to this person.”

And then he said how sometimes you can talk for ten minutes and they won’t give you a nickel. “Lonely people babbling.”

Then the next call started ringing into my computer and I went back to work saying, “Hello my name is Scott McClanahan.”

“Hello my name is Scott McClanahan.”

“Hello my name is Scott McClanahan.”

“Hello my name is Scott McClanahan.”

And so that night I walked home passing the sexy girl in the alley who was smoking cigarettes. And for some reason this time she didn’t look pretty anymore. She looked cut up and scared and her eyes looked like werewolf eyes. I still tried waving “Hi” at her like a big dork. I still thought it was strange you didn’t say hello to people in a city when you passed them.

Why is that?

And the woman didn’t even look at me but just kept her head down and turned away like I was a werewolf too. And so I walked all the way back to my apartment watching the lights from the cars zipping down 3 rdAvenue like stars. So I unlocked the door, and locked it behind me and I sat down beside the telephone in my tiny apartment, hoping the phone would ring — just like hopefully somebody will call 304-252-0430 right now, and then maybe I won’t be so lonely anymore.

I didn’t have any money for dinner. I’d never even been on a date before — or at least a date date. When I was in school it was all about hooking up at parties and hanging out together with a whole group of friends and maybe finding each other later that night. But this was like a real date. At least it felt like a real date when I called her up that morning and asked her if she wanted to go up to Pipestem State Park and look out over the mountains. I told her I didn’t have any money for dinner, but she didn’t seem to mind, or at least she thought I was joking. So that afternoon I picked her up and drove out to Pipestem. Once we got there, we walked hand in hand, up to the observation tower, and she started telling me about how she used to have a lazy eye when she was a kid. It was so bad she even had to wear an eye patch in order to correct it, and all the kids at school started calling her “the pirate.”

She laughed.

And then we both laughed at how ridiculous the whole world was.

We kept right on laughing and started climbing the steps of the observation tower, counting them on the way up—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 20, 30, 40. Then after about eighty we finally got up to the top and caught our breath. It was beautiful up there. We laughed some more and I told her what a lucky girl she was being on such an expensive date and if she played her cards right I had a whole pocketful of coupons for the Pizza Hut lunch buffet. If we scraped together our nickels and dimes then maybe we could go. She laughed again and I noticed she had a cracked front tooth, which looked so cute when she grinned. We stood looking out over the mountains.