Working for Nissan. Saturday morning and I’m being punished. Early this morning the loudspeaker squawked, “Attention, attention, anyone not having three scheduled, verifiable appointments for today shall not catch new customers. You will sit in your office and mail letters.” The brand new manager got a head start on showing his ass.

That caused a riot. “Well, she-it,” one Hispanic salesperson said. “I’m going home and pick up the ole lady. We going to the lake man.”

“No,” the manager said. “You shall not leave the premises. You shall stay here and think about what you have done.”

“Joo saying we can’t sell cars but we have to stay here and not get paid?”

“That is correct Mister Espisto.”

“The hell with this. The days of slavery are over man. Find yourself another fool.”

There was a mass exodus. The manager had to blow up balloons by himself. I decided to take the option of sitting in the basement dungeon sending spam emails. So screw them. Here I sit, all alone in my underwear, sending resumes out and collecting minimum wage. That manager won’t be here long. He’ll join the progression of buffoons the owner has pinned all his hopes on.

I will survive. There are other crappy car lots to inhabit. Burke marches on.

Management at the Honda dealership was so stingy they bought thank you cards at a railroad salvage depot. Anything to save a few pennies, even if it meant profiteering from a train wreck. The cards were water stained and so moldy they stunk up the storage room. They were festooned with cheesy artwork that came straight from the fifties. The illustration was of a salesman with an over-inflated head leaping through a hoop. You could tell he was a salesman because he rushed across the paper carrying a brief case. Velocity lines wavered in the air behind him. The caption read: We’ll jump through hoops for you. THANK YOU FOR YOUR BUSINESS!

They had thousands of these hideous things. I sent out a few before my skimpy sense of decency kicked in.

I found a shop called Nuthin’ but Paper. It was a discount store but they probably didn’t carry inventory that had been scraped up from a tragic boxcar derailment. There were two selections in the thank-you aisle. A blue pinstripe number and bright yellow cards, the color of pain, die cut in the shape of Mister Sun.

I went the more conservative route.

Two teenage girls sat on stools behind the counter. They jabbered on non-stop in the manner of young girls the world over. “And that Julie Smith,” the cashier said. “I hate her. She wears those clothes-“ She made a face like she just smelled the fungus covered cards back at the Honda dealership.

“Oh, hello? I know it.” the second chatterbox said. “And that car she drives.”

They squealed in unison, ”Ee-yew.”

“And what about her hair? Doesn’t she know the eighties are, like, over?”

“Yesterday she was talking about her big-shot father the sales manager and I was like ’whatever’ and she was like, ‘huh?’ I hear her daddy’s gay anyway.”

The longer I listened to them, the more I despaired for our future as a species. They ignored me for almost five minutes.

I spoke up. “Oh, you girls know Julie?”

Their conversation skidded to a halt. “How do you know her?” the cashier asked.

I said with a deadpan face, “Julie’s my daughter.”

“Oh my God, Mister Smith. I’m so sorry.”

“We were just kidding. I like Julie. I was going to invite her to my birthday party.”

“That car belonged to her grandmother. She wanted Julie to have it when she died.”

They had tears in their eyes as the cashier completed the sale. I gave them the most evil look I could manage.

As I left the second girl said, “I was just kidding about you being gay Mister Smith.”

If cars sit around a lot too long they start falling apart. It’s not good for them to be stuck in one spot for long periods. Same for salespeople. You can tell a lifer. Someone who’s spent so many years in dark cubicles, away from the sun, you can see through their skin, down into the layers beneath. Veins and stringy muscles. They respond to basic stimuli, light, food, reproduction. Primal urges pull them from place to place like one celled animals

Dealerships need fresh blood to bring customers in. Families looking for mini vans and sport utilities to drive to Disney World are horrified if they stumble into a lot full of the walking undead. Ten years ago at the Honda store they advertised every day for salespeople with no experience. Recent high school and college grads flocked in; lured by claims of easy money and fast living.

When I see fresh young salespeople I want to tell them to run. I have to stop myself from grabbing them by the scruffs of their necks and shaking them. “Don’t wind up like that!” I’d point at one of the many pathetic examples of a wasted life as he struggles to walk in a straight line. “It’s too late for him. Save yourself kids,”

After a two week training course they’re set loose on the world. Each week the graduating class sits in their first Monday morning sales meeting. Abuse from the managers scars some of these kids for life. At one sales meeting a pretty young women, a brand new graduate from a nearby Christian college, sat quietly. She arranged her pencils and pens in a neat orderly row. She wore a pink fuzzy sweater and white socks.

She leaned over and whispered to a fellow alumnus from class, “I can’t believe it. We’re so lucky to be here.”

The boy grinned at her, “I know. All we have to do is hang out and ask people if they want to buy a car. It’s going to be so easy.”

It made me want to cry.

The general manager waddled in. “You all are a bunch of goddam criminals,” he said. “I ought to call the police and have them lock up every one of your asses for stealing. You’re stealing from me when you come in here on a Saturday and don’t sell a single frigging car.” This went on for forty-five minutes. Just a typical Monday.

After the meeting the pink sweater girl sat stunned. Her socks dropped down her ankles. Without a word she packed up her pencils and notebook and walked out. We never saw her again. The boy called his mother to come get him.

After the youngsters run screaming from their near death experience, the lifers come out, moaning and gasping for breath. Suffering from terminal lot rot. Their seals eroded. Leaking fluids from dried up hoses. They are the crumbling foundation this industry is built on.
God help us all.

“Oh shit,” Jay said. “My nipples are on fire.” He rubbed his chest. “That damn dry cleaners put starch in my shirts again. Damn it, I tell them over and over, no starch. I’m allergic as a sonofabitch.”

Jay is a large black man. The sight of him skipping to the fiery nipple dance put the rest of the sales staff in a bizarre and giddy mood. He hopped on one foot out the door. “I’ve got to go home and rub some lotion on my chest.”

We were silent. If one of us started laughing, all pretense of civility would be lost.
The phone on Jay’s desk rang. We were all on the verge of hysterical laughter. None of us trusted ourselves to pick it up and hold a professional conversation. The memory of John flapping his wings was too fresh.

Ned, the clueless finance manager, walked by. “Anybody going to answer that?”

We hemmed and hawed.

“I’ll get it my damn self,” said Ned. “I got to do everything else around here, might as well do that too.”

He picked up the receiver. “Hello…just a minute, I’ll find out. Hey,” he asked a saleslady named Diane. She had witnessed the events leading up to this moment. “Where’s Jay? Is he working today?”

She lost it in great gales of laughter. “Oh Lord,” she gasped. “He…he,” she indicated the area of Jay’s injury, waving her hand in front of her own chest. The rest of us didn’t stand a chance. We cried and snorted, trying to hold back guffaws.

Ned cocked his head to one side. “Just a minute,” he said into the receiver. “What’s the matter with you people? That’s Waylon on the phone. You know, the general manager? The big cheese.” He held the phone out in evidence.

I tried to communicate Jay’s agony in charades. I rubbed my chest with both hands. Soon ten well dressed people paraded in front of Ned scratching our chests and miming the agony of starch intolerance.

The message didn’t sink in Ned’s head. “Waylon, I believe Jay’s…” he watched us as we tried to communicate the pain of nipple allergy.

“Jay’s lactating right now.” He held the phone away from his ear. Waylon’s voice rattled out the small speaker. We evaporated, leaving Ned to explain how a fifty-five year old man had to leave work due to spontaneous milk production.

“I didn’t believe it either Waylon but we have witnesses. Sure, sure. I’ll write a report.” He ripped a sheet of paper from a legal pad. “Now, how do you spell ‘lactating’?”

Such a mood I’m in today. Been living on five hours sleep a night for a week. That’s hard for a man of my advanced age. My brother and his wife are visiting from Indiana and we’re trying to see as much as possible in a few days. Last night we made the trek to the Smoky Mountains to watch synchronized fire flies.

No kidding, they flash in unison.

Or so they say. We didn’t actually see the performing glow worms. My brother, his wife and my nephew all loaded up in the Corolla and toured the mountains. When we arrived at the Sugarlands information center, the parking lot was jammed. One harried little Ranger waved angry tourists away. Some of these people came great distances to see a bug blink and they weren’t going quietly. They wanted to watch insect foreplay.

“The trolley isn’t taking any more passengers,” Ranger Mole said. “There’s no more room.”

Rejection is a long tradition in my family, we thrive under adversity. The four of us snuck around until we found a nature trail no one was using and waited for darkness. The fire flies came out but something wasn’t quite right. These weren’t the choreographed flashers we were promised. These were the lower demographic Lampyridae. Less educated, toothless bugs living an undisciplined life. Flashing at random with no pride in their work. This was unseemly, even for bug sex. Their offspring will never amount to anything.

My nephew commented as he watched “The male lightning bug is saying, ‘Come on baby, I brought you somewhere real nice’.” He’s a smartass too.

We turned to star gazing. The darkness is so deep in the mountains we saw faint suggestions of galaxies. And there’s some debate about a potential UFO.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll discuss the car lot. I don’t have complete control over what comes out.

Nothing’s happening at work that isn’t too depressing to talk about. So let me tell you about some movies I’ve seen in the last two weeks.

The Bourne Ultimatum. All movies should be this good. It’s at the discount theatres now. See it on dvd or at the dollar movies. Matt damon is becoming a fine actor. Let’s hope he doesn’t atart taking crap scripts. It’s a trap other fine actors have fallen into.

Halloween. The Rob Zombie remake. I had high hopes for this. Mister Zombies first two movies were worth seeing. This version of the classic disappointed me. The first part dragged on. by the time Mike became the adult Shape, I had almost lost interest. I understand character development but there’s a reason people go to Halloween movies. To see Mike Myers in his recycled Captian Kirk mask do evil deeds. Plus he barley used the great theme music John Carpenter wrote. he made a good movie but I recommend you see the original. No one else has come close.

Shoot ‘em Up. Exactly like it sounds. Good escapist diversion. No character development, no story arc. But damn, it was fun. See it at the dollar theatres. Clive Owen should have been James Bond. He’s a great leading man.

More reviews in the future and more car lot trash talk. What’s not to love?

Life and Death

“Burke, you gotta come get me,” Hoss called me at least twice a month to rescue him. It was always keys locked in his car, an ex-wife ready to kill him or a jealous husband.
“I forgot my wallet and these guys are threatening to kill me. It’s a matter of life and death.”

It’s always life or death with Hoss.

He gave me directions to the bar. I had a hazy memory of being in that dive years before. Seems like I barely escaped with my skin back then and now I was going back.

The interior of the bar was caught in slow stasis. No matter the time or condition outside, inside was always the same. Smoke, beer, and urine mingled with body and spice odors to form an atmospheric constant. The dim lights took some adjustment.

Pool players stopped banging their balls long enough to give me a suspicious, sideways look. I looked like a cop in a cheap suit

The owner of the bar was a woman of indeterminate age with henna red hair. She turned on her stool to stare at me. She was trying to figure out what I was up to. “What’ll you have?”

“Coke please,”

She slid off her perch. She never stopped looking at me as she opened the waist high cooler. In the cooler, beer, ice and glasses were covered with ashes and spent cigarettes. She pulled out a red can.

“Glass?” she asked.

“No thanks.” I studied her for a moment. She stood in a loose fitting sparkling evening gown; her hair was sculpted and varnished into a bouffant exo-skeleton. The woman’s skin had been surgically tightened so many times her eyes pulled to the sides of her face like a catfish. She was also caught in a self-imposed stasis. She was around sixty, but she tried to pass for an eternal thirty.
The ten-year-old T-Bird out front was probably hers. It was scrubbed and polished and wore two bumper stickers, VIVA LAS VEGAS and IF YOU’RE RICH I’M SINGLE. The bar patrons looked at her with respect. She placed the open can in front of me. “I haven’t seen you in here before, have I?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You new in town?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am. I’m on assignment here.”

“Assignment? What sort of assignment?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that. You understand.”

“Of course I do. I used to go out with one of you guys.”

I spun halfway around to look for Hoss. A hooker sat in one corner, giving me the same look that I gave prospective buyers at the car lot. Three men continued their pool game, glancing sideways at me every few seconds. In another corner an old man sat with two bleak and weathered women. Every few seconds they erupted in laughter. One of the women stared at me and smiled a broken toothed smile.

These people had come together to celebrate their declines in good cheer. I really wanted to find Hoss and get the hell out.

Music scratched from a cheap radio. A tall cooler behind the bar was covered in grime, empty except for a few enshrined flies on display. It had a photo taped to it. The yellowed photo showed the same cooler full of different brands of beer.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said. The hooker perked up. “A short heavy set guy. He goes by the name Hoss.”

“Oh,” the owner said. “That asshole? he ran out the side door there and said if anybody came looking for him he’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I promised myself to wait for Hoss long enough to finish my Coke. I craved fresh air.

The elderly man in the corner came up with an exciting new form of entertainment. He told the women, “I take these dogs everwhere I go.” He had two tiny dogs. Each dog weighed four or five pounds; he carried them in oversized pockets of his railroad coat. “Never go anywhere without them.” He pulled one dog, then the other out for display. Each time he showed his prized animals the women squealed with delight.

I drank the soda and looked at my watch.

At the corner table the elderly man held the two dogs by their napes and banged their snouts together. The dogs snarled and gnashed at each other. His audience rocked and squealed again. He smacked the dogs’ noses together once more. Uproarious laughter spilled over the bar.

The red haired Madame looked at the miniature circus in the corner, then back to me. “I wish we got more guys like you in here.”

Screw this. Hoss was on his own. On the drive home I wondered if the dry cleaner could get the smell of bar funk out of my suit.

There was no blog yesterday. I’ve been suffering from narcolepsy, or some other ailment that makes me sleep eleven hours back to back, punctuated only by the rustlings of my fifty year old bladder.

Enough medical talk.

The Moonie girls have resurfaced. Our little car lot is on the border of metropolitan Knoxville. There’s a dirty little dive called the Duck Inn where you can get three meats, a vegetable and a side of dysentery for five bucks. There’s usually a pack of salesmen there making fools of themselves. I quit drinking during the Reagan era so I went there to bask in secondhand smoke. It opens the pores.

I spent the afternoon watching my fellow numb nuts sink lower and lower down the social strata. After an hour of nicotine loading it was time to move on. Then I saw them. Shimmering silhouettes standing against soft sunlight spilling in the open door. They seemed to float into the diner. Were they angels, sent from above? No, that’s the food poisoning talking. It was just the Moonie girls.

They held small dowel rods in each hand. Gaily colored Teddy Bears wrapped their spring loaded limbs around the rods like tiny pole dancers.

The ladies approached a table full of bikers. “Have-ah you had-ah you hug too-ah day?” the Asian girl asked a grizzled old biker. She clamped a cherry red Teddy Bear to his sleeveless vest. He looked down at the anomaly stuck to his greasy colors. He glared up at her under bushy eyebrows. One of his eyes was milky white.

The American Moonie tried to pull her comrade away. The little Asian girl didn’t notice that she was putting the hard sell on a hardened criminal. With his tattoos, scars and layers of dirt, she thought he was a typical American.

“How much does somethin’ like that cost?” the biker asked.

“Ooh, ees only two dolla,” she smiled at him. “How many you-ah wan’ today?” All the salesmen recognized her technique. She was putting the assumptive close on her customer.
“Come on,” the taller American girl tugged at her sleeve. “Let’s go to the Waffle House.”
“Wait a minute,” a second biker said. “We’re conducting business here.”

“Yeah,” the first biker said. He still had the smiling bear stuck to his vest. “We’re getting down to the negotiations stage.” He leaned back and asked the smaller woman, “How much is ole reverend Moon getting’ for a blow job these days?”

“Brow jah?” the Asian girl asked. “Wha’ ees brow jah?”

“Please, let’s go now,” The taller woman yanked the smaller girl out the door.
Through the smoky glass we heard, “Wha ess brow jah?” The biker dude had the Teddy Bear stuck in his beard.

That should make a scary story around the campfire at Moonie camp. In hushed tones, between choruses of Koom-By-Yah and making s’mores, they’ll tell the tale of the giant hairy monster and the brave little Moonies.

Salespeople sometimes have wispy long term friendships. We cross paths and move on. These quasi-friendships can linger for years before dying out.

My friend Reynolds has drifted in and out of my focus for about eight years now. He’s a great salesman when he’s sober. And he’s sober about two months of the year. Reynolds drives a seventies era Dodge Polara. They’re a spectacle rolling down the street. He in his plaid suits. The Polara shrouded in blue smoke and emitting mysterious sounds.
Last night I saw him in a bar/diner downtown. Reynolds had been here for a few hours already, was more than a little drunk, and feeling rather chatty.

“Hey, Burke. I’m sorry, man.”

“Sorry for what?”

“All the years you’ve had to apologize for me. Well…no more.”

“I’ve never apologized for you.”

Reynolds thought about that for a moment. “Well, you should have.”

“Hey,” I said. “You’re not driving that big smoke bomb car home tonight are you?”

“No way. I’m calling a cab. I know when I can drive and when I’m not able.”

“Well I wish more people were like you.”

“Not me, because they’d be about to throw up about now.”

“No, I mean calling a cab instead of driving drunk. Where’d you park the dinosaur, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s in my driveway. I took a cab over. Tell you the truth, a few nights ago I had a drink or two at home and went out to work on it. Woke up the next day and had car parts all over the house, out in the yard. In the bed”

“What kind of repairs were you doing?”

“Nothing. It was running great. What I did, I did out of love.”

Reynolds and I were silent for a few moments. Then Reynolds spoke up. “Who gave me the tools? That’s what I want to know.”

I’ll catch up on his progress when we meet again in a few years.

A number of industries have sprouted to accommodate the schedules of salespeople at car lots. We’re stuck there for ten to fifteen hours a day giving rise to all manner of enterprising souls. They’ve rushed in to fill the needs of the many indentured automotive sales professionals.

There are mobile barbers, tailors, shoe salesmen, fruit vendors, purveyors of black market replica watches and sunglasses, shoe shiners and a niche marketer whose sign reads: GOLD TEETH 4 LESS. He’ll cap your choppers and have you back in front of the public in minutes.

I’ve bought ties, socks, watches and a banana all before lunch.

There is also traffic in the world’s oldest profession. This happens mainly at Ford stores for some reason. I walked into the showroom at the Ford dealership and noticed a group of salesmen gathered around an office. They darted about as furtively as a bunch of tubby emphysemics could.

I listened to the guy at the center.

“Yeah, tell her to come over to the tool shack behind the used car building. That’s right, tell her it’s Chipper. She’ll know who that is.”

“What’s he doing?” I asked a young salesman.
“He’s calling an escort service.”

“To come here? At work?”

“Sure, he does it twice a month. On the first and the fifteenth.”

“Payday.”

“You got it. You want to order a little something for yourself?”

I couldn’t imagine being that…what? Desperate? Shameless?

“No,” I said. “I’ll pass. I’m saving up for a new lawn mower.” I thought that sounded manly enough.

I forgot about the illicit commerce until later that night when I was finishing up a deal. I met my customers in the finance office and walked them out to their new car. They were a nice couple in their seventies. Their son and daughter bought them a new Crown Victoria.

“Oh wait,” the sweet silver haired lady said. “I forgot my glasses. They’re still in our old car.”

“It’s parked right behind the building here.” We found their trade-in near the tool shed. The couple looked under the seats and in the trunk. Suddenly a crash came from the shed. It sounded like a stack of hub caps falling from high up.
A woman’s voice rang out, “Work it baby, work it. That’s right. Momma like it like that.”

Oh hell, I remembered, it’s payday.

I tried to usher them away. “Let’s get on back and I’ll go over the options on your new car-“

A screech echoed across the wall of the used car building. “Lord have mercy, baby. You tore it up.”

“Should we go check and make sure she’s all right?” grandma said.
“No mom,” her son said. “I’m sure everything’s under control.” He glared at me like I was responsible. His sister shepherded her parents away from the depravity.

I explained how to operate the cruise control and fog lights but the older couple’s attention wasn’t on the car.
“I think we should go back and check on her,” the lady said.

The door of the tool shed opened with a loud croak. The lady of the evening stepped out. Her blonde wig was sideways. She tugged it into position. “Call me on the first,” she said. She staggered over to us.

“Hey good lookin’” she said to the older man. “You got a light?” She held up two fingers and winked at him. “And a cigarette?” She broke into fits of laughter.

He said to me, “There’s something not quite right here.”

“You’re cute,” the hooker said to his son.

“Let’s just get out of here mom.” The son came over and whispered, “I’ll be mentioning this incident in the new owner’s survey that Ford sends out.”

I’m looking forward to reading that in a sales meeting.