It's Called Disturbing Page 17

  “It was awful,” Eddy said after an appetizer of oysters in a heavy butter sauce ($14.95). “If dad isn’t drinking, he’s sleeping.”

  “Wow,” Tom said, wondering if she was full.

  “He drinks and then wanders around the yard singing all these old Neil Diamond songs,” she said between mouthfuls. She sipped her gin and tonic ($6.99 each). “And then he passes out right in the garden. They have a maid and she brings him to bed. I think he’s sleeping with her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And mother...” Eddy said as the waiter came to the table to remove empty plates and bottles.

  “Your steaks will be just a few more minutes,” the waiter said, smiling at Eddy. Where are you putting it all, young man, the smile said. The steaks were $24.95 apiece. “Can I get you another drink?” ($6.99 X 2 because Tom needed another as well).

  “And mother and her goddamn dolls,” Eddy said. “Do you know they have conventions for those fucking things? They travel from all over the country to show each other their dolls slipped over these expensive wine bottles. Mother gets so upset because hers are the only wine bottles that are empty. They are the tackiest things I have ever seen.”

  “That’s something,” Tom said.

  “I’m trying to tell them everything that’s going on, you know, us breaking up and everything, and all they can do is drink and talk about dolls.” Eddy sat back to let the waiter place their steaks in front of them. Medium rare with a side of baked potato, heavy with sour cream and butter, and two slices of tomato. “They didn’t even bother to ask, or to notice...” Eddy raised one of her bony arms for Tom to inspect. “They didn’t even want to know...”

  “I’m sorry.” Tom said ineffectually.

  After three or four bites Eddy started to cry. “I think I’m going to throw up,” she said.

  “I know,” Tom said and helped her out of her chair and led her to the washroom. He asked for the cheque and paid the bill while he waited for Eddy to purge. ($96.95 + obligatory 20% tip = approx. $116.00). “Make it $120.00,” Tom winced to the waiter.

  While Tom knew he shouldn’t drive having had $6.99 X 3 drinks, he could not face calling a cab ($15.00 + $2.50 tip) and risk seeing Belraj. The man would see right through him and Eddy at this moment. Besides, it was only a few blocks away. Eddy could drive, he reasoned, the steaks, oysters and drinks out of her system by now.

  Later, in bed, Tom let Eddy curl herself into a ball and wedge herself into his arms. He wrapped himself around her like a cocoon and felt protective. She fit so snugly. Was she back? Did he need her to be back? He thought so at this very instant.

  “Do you ever think about those mannequins upstairs?” she said suddenly when he thought she was sleeping.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “I need to phone the landlord and see if they can’t get curtains on the windows. It kind of gives me the creeps.”

  She was silent for a few seconds. “They have such perfect bodies, and they don’t even have to think about it, ever.”

  “They don’t have to think about it because they have no heads,” Tom tried to joke, but the only response was Eddy’s leveled breathing. “They’re not perfect, they’re plastic,” he said finally.

  “Maybe it’s the same thing,” she said. Tom sensed rather than heard her crying next to him. He could not bring himself to comfort her. He should respond to this, he knew.

  Tom did not respond and in a short time he felt her body relax and her breathing settle into a rhythmic pace. She was asleep. Damn mannequins, he thought, if he could cut them all down he would.

  $$$

  The phone rang shrilly and woke Tom immediately. Confused, he rolled over in bed and found Eddy. She was back. Was she really back? How did he feel about this, he wondered. The phone insisted, and Eddy moaned in her sleep. Tom reached to answer before she woke. She needed sleep; she was so down the night before, despite having eaten a big meal, or maybe because of it. “Hello?” he mumbled into the wrong end of the receiver, turned it around and repeated, “Hello?”

  “Tom Ryder?” The voice said.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Sam from Consumer Life.” The recruitment manager. Tom was fired, he could feel it. He hadn’t been to the office in nearly a week and had not bothered to phone in sick.

  “Hello,” Tom said flatly.

  “Hi, I didn’t wake you, did I? It’s past noon.” The voice was smiling. So eager to ingratiate. Tom recognized the slippery way of talking from their very first interview.

  “No, no. I was just doing some... um... yard work,” Tom said.

  “In this rain?” the voice said, “What a trooper.”

  “Rain?” Tom said.

  “Listen, I need you to come down to the office this afternoon. We have a board meeting at about three.”

  “About three?”

  “Well, actually, at three,” the recruitment manager said. “It is important that you be there, can you make it? I mean, you should make it. It’s very important.”

  “Can you just fire me over the phone please?” Tom mumbled.

  There was a huge laugh at the other end of the line, followed by intense coughing. When he was through, the recruitment manager said, “No one is getting fired Tom. It’s about Wally.”

  “Is he...”

  “Dead? Not Wally.” Another laugh, morphed into coughing. “I smoke too much,” the recruitment manager said in way of explanation or apology, “Wally is out of commish for a while, though, as you can imagine. What we need to do is up the productivity of the agents while Wally is on disability leave.”

  “What are you going to do?” Tom asked, suddenly frightened.

  “We want to send eight agents to a sales conference downtown, you’ll stay in a hotel for the weekend. No contact with the outside world, just immerse yourself in this conference.” The recruitment manager was able to make this sound like a luxury holiday, but Tom was dubious.

  “No contact with anyone?”

  “No distractions at all,” the recruitment manager said, “Believe me, you’ll walk out of there a new man.”

  “I don’t know...” Tom said.

  “You will be paid.” The recruitment manager leveled his voice.

  Tom felt offended. Perhaps this tactic worked on some other agents, like Wally or the others, but not Tom. After all, Eddy had just returned; he should be working on his relationship. “How much?” he asked.

  “That’s what we need to discuss at the meeting,” the recruitment manager said. “Some of the underwriting staff will be there as well.”

  Rebecca.

  “I’m there. Three?”

  “How about two-thirty?” the recruitment manager said. “It’s actually at two thirty.”

  Tom left Eddy a note telling her he had to go to work and slipped out the door. Traffic was heavy at this hour and it took him longer than usual to reach the office. He entered the building with his head low and could not look the receptionist in the eye. He went to his own tiny office to check his messages: “You have no new messages,” the mechanical voice taunted, and Tom left for the boardroom.

  He sat guiltily in the corner, but no one seemed to notice or care about his week-long absence. In fact, none of the agents said much of anything to each other and the management did not have a lot to say to them. Wally’s condition was summed up as being fine, but his doctor insisted on a period of rest. Which meant that production would be down for as long as Wally was out of the office, hence the need to get the newer or lesser producing agents up to speed. The investment was worth it, the management told the lesser agents gathered around the table, if they could each do a tenth of what Wally did in each month, the company would see it’s numbers at a respectable level and the agents themselves would see their pay skyrocket.

  Their itinerary was in front of them with times and locations for the various seminars as well as confirmation numbers for the hotel. The prospect of spending the weekend in a hotel only miles from home seemed strange to
Tom and probably the others as well. None of them voiced these opinions. Tom knew what his position was within the organization: precarious at best. The others here did better, Tom was sure, but they were still chosen to attend the conference. They must not be as successful as Tom first thought. Perhaps there were others who had the same doubts and fears as he. Could it be? This seminar would give them a chance to hone their skills. Up close and personal for a whole weekend with the man who wrote “Choose Your Own Reality.” Not just an hour in the boardroom, a whole weekend. Perhaps with some one on one time.

  Eddy was still sleeping when he arrived home later. He nudged her gently and she stirred. “Eddy?” he said, “I have to talk with you.” He explained his situation with as much detail as he could while she woke by degrees.

  “I don’t want you to go,” she said flatly, her eyes beginning to flutter like water in a stream coming against rocks.

  “It’s just for the weekend,” he said and kissed the bone of her shoulder. “I thought we needed time apart anyway. You were gone for what, a week and a bit, a couple more days will be alright.”

  “It’s not that; it’s got nothing to do with us.” Tom could sense she was choosing her words carefully, trying not to hurt his feelings. She was doing a poor job. “I just don’t think I can be alone right now,” she said.

  “But I can’t take you with me,” Tom said.

  “I don’t want to come with you.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “I don’t want you to go.” She started to cry softly. “I don’t think I can be alone right now.”

  “There is nothing in the fridge,” he offered.

  “It’s got nothing to do with that.” She sat up suddenly, shrugging off his attempt to comfort. “You don’t understand anything.”

  “I guess I don’t,” Tom said, trying to keep his voice level. Was it anger he felt, resentment? It was something. An emotion. And it felt rather good. “This is something I have to do for my career.” The words felt so foreign on his tongue, he was not even sure he really meant them.

  Tom left her there, crying or not, and shouted back through the walls of the apartment; “I’ll leave you the car.” He would take a taxi. He phoned the taxi first, inexplicably asked for Belraj and packed while he waited.

  Belraj didn’t recognize him as Tom climbed into the back seat. He simply said into the rearview mirror: “You know who I had in my car yesterday? Elvis Presley.”

  “You did not,” Tom said flatly.

  Belraj looked in the mirror and he smiled, “Oh, it’s you. No. No, I didn’t.”

  Chapter 17

  The hotel was large and clean, and Tom walked across the expanse of the lobby with his one bag in hand toward the front desk. He had to wait in line behind a large man who was waving a newspaper. “I don’t want this paper,” the man was saying, or shouting, depending on which side of the desk one happened to be on. “You lay this at my door every morning when I specifically requested a different paper.”

  “But, sir,” the helpless desk clerk said, pleading with her small eyes; she must have been only twenty or so, Tom reasoned. Through a partition behind the desk Tom could see another clerk, obviously older and probably with more seniority, glancing around the corner at the altercation, refusing to get involved. “This is the paper that we give to all our guests.”

  “I don’t care what the other guests receive.” The man was raising his voice by this time, “I want the paper I requested.”

  “This would mean we would have to supply your paper separate from all the other...”

  “Do you speak English? I ain’t talkin’ about what the other guests get, I am talking about what I want. I am a paying customer. I come here regularly, you little bitch!”

  At this point Tom, despite his instincts, stepped toward the man and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, now,” he said.

  “Get the fuck off me.” The man shrugged Tom’s hand the fuck off him. “I want my goddamn paper. Mine, the one I read.”

  “The news is the same,” Tom reasoned, and out of the corner of his eye saw the gratitude in the young woman, she seemed to swell. Even the timid desk manager managed to peak around the corner further than he had before. “It’s all the same news. Does it really matter?”

  The man looked as though he was ready to punch either Tom or the desk clerk as he backed off a few paces. “Tomorrow morning,” he said savagely, “I want the paper I requested on my front door. If not, I will rip this place apart and have your job, you little slut.”

  “Whoa!” Tom said, but the man had already stormed off down the hall and into the elevators, complaining to everyone he met what shitty service he was receiving at this shitty hotel and how the place would be in shitty shambles by the time he was through with it, legally speaking of course, he said. “Shit!” he reiterated.

  “I have a reservation,” Tom said to the clerk when the man’s ranting faded up the elevator shaft. “My name is Tom Ryder. I’m with...”

  “I’ll handle this.” The desk manager finally stepped forward and pushed his way in front of the young woman. “Do you have identification?” he requested officiously.

  Later, before Tom went to his room, he scoped out the halls where the seminars would be. There was a hockey reunion in a banquet hall next to where the Consumer Life seminar would be held. Tom studied the old photos of the players, each one smiling, exposing various missing teeth. On the opposite side of the Consumer Life meeting was a seminar called: “Honey and Vinegar: Getting what you really want through kindness.” Tom recognized the picture of the lecturer as the man bitching about his paper at the front desk.

  The next morning, Tom foolishly thanked the electronic wakeup call that came through his telephone. He had tossed and turned all night in crisp sheets and now stumbled around half asleep looking for his clothes in a hotel that, to him, resembled his apartment a little. He banged into walls and once picked up the wall mounted hair dryer mistaking it for the telephone as it rang the reminder wakeup call. He tied his tie around his neck and spit on his shoes to give them some sort of resemblance of polish and made his way down the stiflingly hot hotel halls to the first seminar.

  There were about thirty men and women in the banquet hall. Some he recognized from the office, others must have been from another agency. He did not nod in recognition at any of his fellow agents and they did not look at him. He sat alone near the back and poured himself cup after cup of free water provided in pitchers. He looked around the room for Rebecca, but she was not there. The lights dimmed, and music played from small speakers in the corners of the room. The music was fast and meant to be inspiring, but the speakers were small and Tom could hear coughs and seat shuffling over the sound.

  In time Travis Bunk, author of “Choose Your Own Reality”, came out from behind a curtain. He was flanked by a young woman and an older gentleman who seemed to have no other purpose than to stand beside him and frown at the crowd.

  “Welcome!” Travis Bunk shouted at them.

  “Ahem,” someone said.

  “I am glad you are all here today,” he continued undaunted, “I am glad you all have made the conscious effort to CHOOSE YOUR OWN REALITY!” His flanking staff clapped enthusiastically, not quite inspiring applause from everyone gathered around the tables. Tom clapped as well, but stopped due to being the only one.

  For three hours Travis Bunk ranted and roamed the banquet hall, in turns holding his book in the air and slamming it down on various tables in front of hapless agents. Tom could see some roll their eyes, and others allow light into their eyes as readily as if they were learning the secrets of the world. Tom tried to let light into his eyes but realized he was not entirely listening to the speech. He had already heard it in the office and it began to sound stale to him now. After all, what had the disturbing concept done for his client, Joe?

  “I tell you the truth,” Travis Bunk shouted at the ceiling so loud even his flunkies flinched, “Your potential client is not your
friend, he or she is your enemy! He or she is a child who needs to be disciplined and you are the parents who know what is best. DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR POTENTIAL CLIENT! They do not have a clue what they are talking about.”

  “Excuse me?” There was a voice in the back, three seats away from Tom.

  “Yes, a question?” Travis Bunk smiled and offered a hand to expose the interloper.

  “What about building rapport with your prospect?” The man with the question looked uncomfortable but the request was reasonable enough that the room looked as one from him to Travis Bunk.

  “Rapport,” Travis Bunk said flatly and let his hands fall to his side. His partners were looking at him questioningly, and he turned to them and smiled ironically. They took the cue and grinned at the ceiling as though they were dealing with a room full of imbeciles. “He wants to build rapport,” Travis Bunk said as an aside to his aides.

  “Yes, rapport,” The man said evenly. He did not shift uncomfortably as Tom was doing now, nor did he take his eyes off Travis Bunk; his timidity apparently gone after being singled out.

  “What’s your name?” Travis Bunk said and approached the man, his assistants following a step or two behind.

  “Frank,” Frank said.

  “Well, Frank, now I know your name,” Travis Bunk smiled, “Is that enough rapport?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “Where do you work?” Travis Bunk inched closer. Frank named his company and gave its address as well. “Good, good. A nice firm,” Travis Bunk said.

  “It is, thank you.”

  “How are we doing for rapport now?” Travis Bunk asked.

  “Getting better,” Frank said.

  “Well, Frank,” Travis Bunk looked to each of his cohorts, “your tie is a piece of shit.”