Another day of eternity at the Bullseye. Gary charged into the mall and pushed through the smeared glass door into the front office, where the day’s respondents were shoveling heaps of knockoff Cremora into their styrofoam cups of free watery coffee. He did his best to convey an investigative poker face as he rushed by them. But even the temp at the desk knew he was late and sneered. Technically, the respondents weren’t supposed to lay eyes upon
the interviewer until they entered the room with the mirror. The boss wasn’t around. If he had been, he would have pounded his fist at Gary and threatened to wipe “Executive” off the face of his business card.
Gary vowed to get the boss. Not now, but some day, some way.
Among the responsibilities his boss categorized as executive was helping make sure the facility looked professional, so clients wouldn’t think they were in a pig sty. No time for that today. Gary had to whizz something awful. He dashed into the small washroom reserved for interviewers and clients. The wastebasket was overflowing with yesterday’s balled up paper towels and the cracked tile floor around the toilet looked like it had been pissed on more than the bowl.
Gary zipped up, ran his fingertips under the cold water, stepped out and gave the high sign to the temp, indicating she could send in the first victim. The temp stomped over and hissed that his panel of women shoppers, dragooned out of the mall with the promise of free gift certificates, had been waiting so long they were threatening violence. “Chill,” he declared, and shut a door in her face as he stepped into his mirrored cube, where he confronted yet another overflowing wastebasket. But he was onstage now and pretended the crap wasn’t even there. With eight or nine bigwigs watching on the other side of the glass his every move had to be crisp and clean. It was the code of the profession. The itch in his nose - and the booger too, if there was one - would have to wait.
Gary logged on to his computer, opened the questionnaire and cued up the commercials in his tape machine, three-quarter inch for clarity. The door opened and in walked respondent number one. She could barely fit in the cube. Her dress, black with yellow sunflowers, looked big enough to cover the waiting room couch. This may have surprised the crowd behind the mirror, but not Gary. Today’s subject, after all, was women’s fashion. Whenever it was, you could lay odds the Consumer Bullseye screeners would manage to round up enough five-hundred pounders to fill a corral. These, the bio sheets always claimed, were “typical apparel shoppers.”
He plunged into his “process” without so much as a handshake, a hello or a smile. He merely stood up and pointed to the ass-worn office chair placed strategically close to the corner of his table desk. Once the respondent had squeezed in, he pushed the black, saucer-shaped table mike to a spot where they could easily share it - like an ashtray - and began talking verbatim off the type displayed on the screen of his monitor. That was the idea - pure and total objectivity. No ad-libbed pleasantries or spontaneous editorializing. Everything Gary said from beginning to end was right off the script of his questionnaire. A speech made to an audience of one. This technique also cut eye contact to a minimum. All the better from the perspective of scientific neutrality.
“Good morning,” he began, reading aloud in a pleasant, scientifically neutral voice. “Thanks for joining us today. We’re sure you will find the next thirty minutes both interesting and enjoyable. In just a moment you’ll be seeing some television advertising. I’m actually going to show you two commercials which are part of the same campaign. As you watch, please keep in mind what the advertising would look like if you were watching it at home on television. Please keep both commercials in mind during our interview.”
Gary reached over to his right and pushed the play button. “And now,” he said, raising his reading voice slightly, “here are the commercials.”
He played the two spots. They sucked. Low-rent actresses playing moms and secretaries, bragging to their friends about the awesome bargains they found at the chain store. The chain store was called The Runway. Why any woman would want her fashion image to be associated with a runway was lost on Gary.
He shut the tape player off, turned back to his terminal and scrolled to the next paragraph. This was the one he loved to read, annunciating like an automaton. “In terms of the way they went about presenting their message, how clear and understandable were the commercials? Would you say very clear and easy to understand… Somewhat clear and easy to understand … Somewhat unclear or hard to understand … Very unclear or hard to understand?”
The only response that issued from the gigantic sunflower dress was labored breathing, the sounds of a major mental struggle. Gary kept his eyes neutrally glued to the screen. Still, he couldn’t miss seeing the king-size bosom, like a pair of fluffy pillows in raucous sunflower pillowslips, pour onto the desk and push against the table mike. He thought about how that must have sounded to the group behind the mirror. He hoped they had the volume on high.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the woman peering at his screen.
“Shall I repeat the question?” he asked.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll take the first one.”
Gary marked the answer - the highest possible mark - and went on. “Now, please tell me what happened to you as you watched…”
But she stopped him in mid sentence - suddenly agitated. “Why can’t they just show the clothes? Why do they need all that stupid talk? Talk talk talk. I have no idea what they were talking about. Do you?”
Gary met this outburst with smooth scientific neutrality. He knew exactly what to say. The words were there - spelled out for him right on the screen. “Now please tell me how believable are the women in these commercials. Very believable… Somewhat believable… Somewhat unbelievable…”
The approach worked. The woman settled back, her eyes as opaque as the one-way mirror. When she said nothing he asked, once again, if she wanted him to repeat the question.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll take the first one.”
He wrapped up the interview and got ready for the next victim, expecting 747 number two. What he got instead was the exact opposite. A stick figure with sad eyes and frosted hair. A fashion waif – for once, the screeners had found someone who actually was right for the subject being researched. She in fact did have the physique of models you see on the runway - long, bony limbs and zero body fat - although her hair came straight out of Nails ‘n Tresses in the mall. Gary thought of Audrey Hepburn kidnapped by the Grand Old Opry.
Without thinking about it, he broke the professional code. He stood up. He extended a somewhat courtly greeting, helping her into the well-warmed chair. The pink skirt sat well above her skinny knees, creating a thigh shot that was rare in the J.C. Penney mall. Gary’s inner voice scolded him for making more eye contact than was scientifically appropriate. Behind the mirror, the research police could get very pissed. The boss might hear about it later. If the cheeses were assholes, they could even pull the job.
But giving her a close inspection did get one thing off his mind. Beauty-wise, this was no Audrey Hepburn. This wasn’t even her third cousin.
“Good morning,” he said, reading right off the prompter on his terminal. “Thanks for joining us today. We’re sure you will find the next thirty minutes both interesting and enjoyable. In just a moment you’ll be seeing some television advertising. I’m actually going to show you two commercials which are part of the same campaign. As you watch, please keep in mind what the advertising would look like if you were watching it at home on television. Please keep both commercials in mind during our interview.”
Once again, the Runway spots played verbosely on the screen above. Gary sensed an opening when no eyes were on him, and he coyly tucked his head in and down and away from the mirror. In this hunchback posture he whipped out a business card and deftly employed the corner to dig at his molars. The dried carrot from the veggie bagel - a plague since breakfast at Donut D’Lite - was out in two seconds.
At the conclusion of the interview the respondent did something straight out of a horny fantasy. She slipped Gary a folded-up scrap of paper as she stood up and walked away. The respondent then executed a cool little wiggle to mark her disappearance into the universe. The tight pink skirt lingered in his field of vision, like the afterburn of a flashbulb. He was still squinting as respondent number three waddled in.
He stuffed the wad of paper in his brown pants and waded through interviews with four more “typical apparel shoppers.” Then the client had him do three more. The agony refused to end. And if he wanted to dine on the house, waiting for him in the grungy kitchenette was a plate of microwaved lasagna not fit to be served at a zoo.
Finally, they let him go and he shot into the client rest room for another pent-up whizz. Back of the one-way mirror, they must have been swigging beer with their fake Twizzlers. Oceans of it. He stood in the tide of piss and litter and unwrapped his message. All it had was a scribbled phone number and a smiley face, both in ballpoint. For a smiley face it was weird. Something about it was sorrowful.
Gary had an hour break before the evening interviews. He put on his scientific poker face, barreled through the waiting room and exited to the mall. Instantly he flipped open his phone. But before he could punch in her number he felt her on his elbow, clawing like a small bird with her pink, pointy nails.
“Didn’t you even see me? I was sitting right there. You just blew by.”
By the time they got to Master Wok in the food court, Gary had found out the basics. Her name was Nancy Crumm. Her occupation was in the entertainment and catering fields. “You can’t really call it one or the other,” she said, not exactly in an upbeat way. “I’ve got my feet in both.”
“What about the other body parts?” Gary joked. And the sad eyes got even sadder.
She had had a big former life with the airlines. At one point she even flew transoceanic. A year on the crew to Dublin, two to Sydney. But when her mom died she deplaned for good. To take care of her dad, who could still drive the streets with a handicapped plate, but required a live-in at home. “That says it about me,” she said. “I play out and live in.”
Gary dipped his wedge of Crab Rangoon into the sweet and sour sauce. “I can see you up in First Class serving the martinis,” he said, remembering her wiggling exit from his cube. “You move well in small spaces.” Nancy accepted this without comment, pushed aside the fried rice and dug into the veggie delight. For her, digging in meant spearing a bean sprout. Gary shoveled a mound of pork, rice and shrimp into his face and wondered if she was anorexic.
But not for long. His hour was up.
Back at Consumer Bullseye, the temp from Hell had more salt to throw in his wounds. She produced an envelope. Some brownnose had organized a collection for the boss’s birthday next week. The temp snickered that at Gary’s level he was expected to kick in ten dollars. “Minimum,” she said. “Executives can afford more - and he knows it.” After kicking in the ten Gary had to run and smoke weed in the car to cool his blood pressure. He smoked and fumed. Consumer Bullseye sucked to the nines. It had more kiss-ass workers than anywhere else on earth.
The very next day. Early. The two-seater and four-seater tables in front of Sbarros were just starting to fill up. Gary snagged a four-seater, put a foot up on one of the plastic chairs and scribbled on the white space of a tomato-stained National Enquirer. He didn’t mind waiting for her. Anything, anything, that got him out of the cube.He made two columns, death and life. The boss he put under death, definitely, because the boss was a death person. The boss would stick it up anyone’s ass, utterly unconcerned about consequences. You could have a gun in his ear. He’d still can you and call your mother a fuckhole to boot. Himself he put under life. Gary was a life person because he was living life as though death would never come, wasting all his time in the shittiest of shit jobs, as though time went on forever. Nancy he started to put down under life, but he stopped mid-way. He couldn’t pin her down, not yet.
The perfume index today was even higher than yesterday. He smelled her before he saw her. She made her entrance in stick figure fishnets, grabbing the eyeballs of the kids wiping tables and stacking trays. She was the queen in her food court.
He took time watching the black seams as she wiggle-walked back with her tray of rabbit food. But not for love or money could he push a piece of pizza down Nancy’s thin throat. Not with a steam shovel. She had her no-cal dressing on the side and ate her shredded lettuce out from under the onions and the black olives. But she seemed to like it when he gorged on the fat and cheese. The more he tossed down the merrier. Her sad eyes gleamed with victory as he inhaled the pepperoni disks.
Then they smoked and she let him commit verbal mayhem on the boss.
“The maggot-assed swillbucket. I hope he dies on his birthday.”
Gary assumed she was agreeing with him as she puffed away in sad silence, rat-tat-tatting her pink fingernails on the food court table.
But he soon learned Nancy Crumm was only diligently doing her night job. Being entrepreneurial. Adding and subtracting. Gary’s announcing he had been held up for a $10 kitty contribution – and that the whole Consumer Bullseye work force had been similarly mugged – this had Nancy’s abacus clicking.
“How much do you think is in the kitty?” she asked, lighting up number three with her pink Bic.
He did the math in his head. Sizing up the fat wallets of the financial guys, the salesmen. Guess-timating the thin wallets of the screeners, the other interviewers, the backroom clericals. With the brownnose factor jacking everything, there could be a good grand and a half in the envelope.
“Let me tell you what I do,” she said, taking a long, dreary drag. “The good news is it gives Dad a chance to get out of the house. He always drives me. I wouldn’t feel safe with anyone else.”
For a full ten minutes Gary stayed quiet and listened, all ears. Then he marched out into the teeming midway aisle of the mall on his new mission, determined not to screw this one up. He had some selling to do, but he could do it. When the lights came on and they surprised the boss there’d be the usual cake and candles. But there’d also be the world’s boniest stripper dancing in his fat lap.
Two days before the big bash Gary was in Gentlemen’s Wearhouse, picking out a new brown party suit. It was executive all the way - from collar to cuff. The cell rang just as the tailor started to pin him. It was the temp from Hell giving him the all-clear on Nancy.At the stoplight, he put it in reverse when he meant to go forward. That was the first mistake. Then he forgot to duck when the pissed-off shit in the bruised Lexus threw the big right hand. All over a ding Gary put in his chrome no larger than a quarter.
Returning to the mall, Gary saw his punched eye staring back at him, reflected on the big glass door. Definitely not party pretty; and he heard about it later from the new gang of clients behind the one-way mirror. They were back there in the safe, anonymous darkness, snarfing the knockoff M&Ms, lusting for insights about biodegradable garbage bags. They had the gall to bitch that his shiner was a distraction for the respondents, a variable that could invalidate the whole garbage bag survey. The way they ranted and raved he was sure they would run to the boss.
Having the face of a Cyclops was a tough break, but it couldn’t change the boss’s birthdate. The big night came and he crawled into Nancy’s dad’s ancient Toronado like a beaten, blackeyed dog. She had invited him to come along because he was “such a special friend.” Normally she allowed no one in the car on worknights but her dad.
“To do this I have to be relaxed,” she said. “Dad doesn’t threaten me. And you don’t either.”
Gary didn’t know whether that was good news or bad. Nancy’s father was over eighty and deaf as a post. The two men were up front. The back seat served as Nancy’s dressing room. He was aware of her primping and spraying as they rode, and the Dad straddling the line, keeping a bald Toronado tire in each of the two lanes.
“What do you have on?” he asked. He pictured her surrounded by pasties, strings, straps. Lots of stuff to unhook.
“Just a coat. And shoes.”
“That’s it?” He glanced nervously at the father. The father didn’t bat an eye.
“That’s it,” she said. “My act is about the element of surprise.”
They pulled up at a traffic light, sandwiched between eighteen-wheelers. For the horny guys up in the cabs there was a box seat view.
“Does your father know where he’s going?”
“He knows where the mall is, if that’s what you mean.” A burst of perfume fogged the windows. Or else it was her body heat.
But in the right circumstances - and this was it - a handicapped plate can be a big help. Gary had a much shorter distance to cover escorting a butt-naked lady through the hordes converging for Twenty Percent Madness Night. The truth was, in her long purple fake fur she looked like just another soccer mom - who just happened to have gone insane and colorblind at Frugal Fannie’s.
The Dad was an old pro at the chauffeur role. He didn’t even make an attempt to get out and come along. Gary glanced back with his good eye just as they hit the sidewalk. The Dad’s head was back and his nose was in the air.
Gary wondered if he should go back and crack a window. The Dad was bony just like his daughter. But his skin was ancient. In that nose-up position he seemed like one of those frozen men they pull out after ten thousand years.
“He okay?”
“Long as I bring him back a jelly doughnut. Just let him hibernate. He loves sleeping in parking lots.”
Gary had done his homework. Now it was time for the test. As he had arranged it, there was a wall-to-wall crowd of employees in the biggest of the mirrored rooms, the one Consumer Bullseye used exclusively for large focus groups. While Nancy hid in his cube, Gary herded the crowd out of the room into the dark space behind the one way mirror.
Word came from a scout with a walkie talkie phone that the boss was on his way down, moving fast. The come-on they’d used was a bogus Budweiser project – testing urban imagery with Latinos - as if Budweiser would ever come to a dumpster like Consumer Bullseye. The e-mail told the boss it was rumored one of the Busch sons would show up, a kid Busch they were grooming to take over Mexico.
Everything went according to plan. The workers behind the mirror stood still as stone and held their breath, watching as the boss bulled into the fully lit, empty focus room. His face fell when he found no one there. No Busch, not even a research grunt low on the Anheuser totem pole.
The boss sat down scowling and fidgeted with his watch. As the seconds ticked you could see he wanted to find someone and shoot them for wasting his time. He picked up a yellow pencil and snapped it in two. When he began to look truly homicidal Gary hit the switch and unleashed Nancy’s personal CD. It was the kind of gooey rug you hear under late night porn or at the dentist’s office. But it perked the boss up, and he looked straight at the door. As the tenor sax made a particularly raunchy squeal the door flew open and in she came, a whirling dervish in purple fake fur. Then the fur hit the floor and released bedlam. They all poured in from the back and screamed Happy Birthday just as Nancy pounced on his lap.
“You did meet a Busch,” someone shouted. “It’s just spelled different.”
Gary swam with the crowd into the focus room and got as close to the action as he could. Too close. A stripper was one thing in a strip club, where there were beams of blue and red light to cover the hairy moles and ass pimples. But office lighting was something else. It made Nancy look like some deranged rape victim, all bones and veins and goosebumps. The only undressed person in a room of normal-looking white collar workers - of both genders. Even her scraggly crotch hair looked anorexic, and her arms and legs were the pale bluish gray of frozen turkey wings.
Gary wanted to throw his suit jacket over her hollow shoulderblades and rush her back to the car.
As it turned out, it would have been better if the boss had blown his top and fired Gary on the spot. Just canned him in front of everyone for orchestrating lewdness in the workplace. He would have gone out like a hero, flipping the bird at Bigdome with both hands.
Instead, the boss did the exact opposite. He not only loved it all, he lapped it up like a horny pig. He even made Nancy climb on him for an encore after they ate the cake. Gary’s esteemed associates roared and stamped their feet.
The boss wasn’t one to forget a good time. That night Gary went home with Nancy’s father, and Nancy went home with the boss. She paid an obligatory visit to the car (minus the jelly doughnut) to wake the duffer up and explain things. But it wasn’t necessary. As far as he was concerned, Gary was the front seat passenger on both the arrival and departure legs, therefore all was normal. As before, he drove on command, and somehow found his way.
But something unsettled Gary even more than being jilted and left to ride home with a driver who was as dessicated as a fossil in a rock. After Nancy lap-danced the boss he gave her one of his business cards, and even wrote something on it. Whatever he wrote was compelling enough to bring a sneaky grin to her face – and a good five minutes of huddling, cuddling and conspiring, just the two of them.
The upshot came soon enough. After a particularly grueling day in front of the all-seeing mirror – a day in which he succumbed and publicly chased an inner ear itch with a pencil eraser - Gary was summoned by the temp from Hell. She sent him on high to the boss’s private chambers. As he ascended the carpeted steps, so spotlessly blue, he sniffed a familiar scent, thick as swamp flowers. At the top stood two fishnetted stick legs, also familiar.
“This way,” said Nancy, her voice a sharp icicle that stabbed him where it hurt. Without another word she led him into the kahuna’s domain, and she stayed and watched as Gary writhed on the hot coals of demotion. “You want that word ‘executive’ back, you earn it,” the cheese proclaimed.
As the months went by, Nancy rose through the ranks and became office manager. She worked upstairs, the only other executive besides Mr. Shit himself to have a corner window. She still wore the fishnets once in a while. But in general, she began to wear ever more prim black outfits, and her once-pink nails turned a severe blackish red. She issued a fusillade of humiliating memos about tidiness and proper executive behavior. Whenever the client bathroom was a little grungy Gary was sure to get a stinging e-mail from either her or the boss, or both.
Occasionally, without even letting him know, Nancy and the boss would join the clients behind the one-way mirror. They would watch Gary’s every move and later attack his behavior.
There wasn’t a thing he could do about it, either. The simple fact was, they were on one side of the mirror, the side with the glass you could see through, and he was on the other. The side that relentlessly glared.
It was more proof of how death people always have the advantage.