Jim Gavin - Middle Men - Stories

• • •

At nine o’clock the next morning, Matt pulled his black Kia Spectra into the Holiday Inn parking lot. He called Larry’s cell, but there was no answer, so he idled for ten minutes, listening to Jim Rome’s opening segment. Another fifteen minutes passed. Badly hung over, Matt decided the only intelligent way to deal with the situation was to park somewhere and sleep.

Since getting hired, he averaged nearly six hours a day on the freeway, calling on wholesale plumbing accounts from Long Beach to Victorville. This constant and solitary pursuit, across landscapes bright, hazy, and inscrutable, had started to infect his dreams. When he fell asleep — on the couch, usually, in his Garden Grove apartment, after watching several hours of soccer and flipping through the softcore offerings on Cinemax — he saw nothing but empty freeways. His dream freeways were always thousands of feet in the air, higher than the tallest buildings downtown, and the transition loops were banked at impossibly steep angles. Now Matt found himself somewhere above the coast, among clouds, screaming across a vaulted tangle of concrete. His Spectra flew off the side and he felt himself falling, falling slowly, with great pleasure, into a vast and merciful ocean.

“Look alive, you fucking goldbrick!” Larry pounded on the window. “Open up!”

Matt wiped drool from his face and turned down the radio. As Larry opened the door, Matt cleared the mess that had been accumulating for weeks in his passenger seat: catalogues, price sheets, line cards, old newspapers, and countless bags of Del Taco.

Larry threw a briefcase in the backseat and climbed in. He was wearing pleated khaki slacks, a bright orange fanny pack, and a gray golf shirt embroidered with the logo of Brentford Plumbing, Inc., of Yuma, Arizona.

“No wonder Jack gives you all the dogshit accounts.”

“Sorry. I’m pretty wrecked.”

“Lightweight.” Larry pulled out a canister of Binaca Blast, opened his mouth, and fired off several rounds. He pointed toward the drab modern tower looming over Lakewood Boulevard. “These circular Holiday Inns fuck with my head. I couldn’t find my room last night. I woke up in a stairwell.”

“You can go back to bed if you want,” said Matt.

“No, I just need some breakfast.” Larry took a pack of Kools out of his fanny pack and lit one up. “I don’t mind if I smoke. Do you?”

“Maybe you could just roll down the window a little,” uttered Matt, hearing in his voice the same fatal note of politeness that doomed all his efforts as a salesman.

“You bet,” said Larry.

• • •

They went to IHOP.

“I’ve been on the factory side for a while now,” explained Larry, as he emptied a bottle of Tabasco on his omelet. “But before that I was in the rep business in L.A. for almost twenty years. Brass, china, tools, pumps. You name it, I sold it.”

Haze poured through the window, illuminating the spotty silverware. Matt had to squint to see Larry, who seemed a blur in the morning light.

“How do you stand it living out there in Yuma?” asked Matt.

“It’s hot,” Larry said, “but there’s no traffic and nobody hassles you. I can sit in my yard and shoot jackrabbits all day if I want. I can shoot other things too. Crazy things.”

“Is there a lot of new construction out there?”

“Not like out here.”

“I call on some plumbers in the high desert,” said Matt. “In ten years everything between Victorville and Vegas will be paved.”

“That’s what we call the circle of life. As long as they’re building houses, we make money.” Larry, shielding his eyes from the morning glare, looked out the window toward the parking lot. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but your car is a piece of shit.”

“It runs.”

“Where was it made, Pyongyang?”

“It was my mom’s car.”

“Oh, right,” said Larry, squinting briefly with concern. “Jack mentioned all that. Sorry to hear.”

“Thanks.”

Matt hated knowing that Jack was talking about him like some helpless and whimpering animal. But he also knew that it was his fault. For a year, around the office, he had cultivated such a persona. The polite mumbling, the wry but troubled smile, the faraway look in his eye — these devices, once real, were now more of a routine, a play for sympathy, allowing him to coast through his job. Matt pushed around the gravy on his chicken-fried steak.

“Listen,” said Larry. “When I started in outside sales, Pete Dominic gave me some advice.”

“Pete Dominic?”

“Yeah, Pete Dominic. Before his stroke, Pete was the guy at Mulhern Sales. Booster systems, vertical turbines, Pete killed it, top to bottom. He was one of the biggest assholes I ever met, but back then he was the only guy in L.A. who’d give me a chance to do outside sales. Before him, nobody would let me off the order desk. The other bosses I had liked me fine, but they didn’t want my black ass walking through the door. Pete thought I could make him money, and I did. When he brought me on he said that if I wanted to make it selling industrial hydronics the first thing I should do is get a loan and buy the most expensive car possible. That way I’d have no choice but to bust my ass trying to pay for it.”

Matt was pretty sure this was the worst advice anyone had ever given him, but he nodded and said, “Makes sense.”

“I bought a Coup de Ville.”

“Nice.”

“It got repossessed after Mulhern went under, but that’s a whole other story. That shit had nothing to do with me.”

“I just want something that gets good mileage.”

“Yeah, but you need style.”

Matt felt slighted. He considered himself an industry fashion plate, if only because he refused to wear poofy pleats and knit golf shirts. One of his new customers, Ron Ciavacco, of Five Star Pipe and Supply in Baldwin Park, still wore Sansabelt pants.

“I can’t afford a fancy car,” Matt said.

“What else you spending your money on?”

“I’m saving for a trip to Europe.”

“What’s so great about Europe?”

“I don’t know. Museums, cathedrals.”

Larry laughed. “My first wife wanted us to go to Europe, but then she ran off with a Dominican.”

“A priest?”

“A shortstop. Some single-A nobody making a hundred bucks a week.” Larry put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it. “Are you going to finish that?”

Matt handed over what was left of his chicken-fried steak.

“Jack showed me your numbers,” said Larry. “You’re not exactly setting the world on fire.”

“It’s been rough.”

“Jack thinks you’re a lazy prima donna.”

“I try not to be, but it goes against my instincts,” said Matt, sounding waggish to cover the absolute truth of the statement.

“I don’t tolerate laziness,” said Larry. “It’s a form of treason.”

He began ripping open sugar packs and dumping them three at a time into his coffee.

“I have no sales experience and Jack doesn’t believe in training.”

“Baptism by fire,” said Larry.

“It’s been over a year and I still have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Your job is to go out there every day and get your face kicked in. It’s the only path to enlightenment.”

“But I don’t know what I’m selling,” said Matt. “Once my contractors start talking spec I’m totally lost. They think I’m an idiot.”

It was a relief for Matt to suddenly admit these things. Among his friends he was regarded as a talker and wiseass. But for the past year he had felt perpetually tongue-tied and back on his heels. He hated to ask people for anything, but that was the essence of sales. Whenever Jack or his dad asked him how he was doing out there, he would say he was doing fine. They wanted him to do well, but this was a business and they were losing patience.