Six more sessions and Daniel gets his check, six more, right now Terri Pallance is talking, talking, her voice so quiet and calm, her frock from the Earnest & Sincere catalogue, long straight hair, Terri Pallance is the most nonprofit-looking woman on Earth.
This life-passage will be your new Now, she said.
Terri Pallance has plenty to do, assisting the middle class in their transition to Skid Row, it's the last growth industry, like she said in her You're Not Alone remarks, 30 million jobs offshorable, if there's somebody in the world who can do your job for $200 a month, there's no reason why he won't do your job for $200 a month, it's not your fault, during the Great Depression the IQs of NYC bus drivers went up thirty points, doctors and lawyers sleeping in the parks, it's not your fault, you're not alone.
New Beginnings workshops are required by FRP, Daniel's former employer, before he gets the last third of his severance, this is best practices now, rumor has it they're monitoring for potential rampage killers, million-dollar jury verdicts will do that to troubled companies and the liability carriers who love them.
True enough, Daniel had some of the warning signs, middle-age white male, admitted, disgruntlement/held resentments, admitted, but he lacks the critical criteria, living alone, most rampage killers are isolated, shipwrecked inside themselves, Robinson Crusoe sputtering in the bathroom mirror, his eyes mere slits, They don't know who they're messing with, They're going to pay for what they did to me, but Daniel has a wife, friends, so he's not that guy, not in profile, not a person of interest.
Also, Daniel has his meds to ease the pain, he's enjoying his new med, Mellorix, feels like a newish man, no more downward pull, no more driving around in a car made of junkyard parts, Midlife Embitterment Syndrome, the HMO doctor said, a tiny blonde who looked to be about fourteen.
Mellorix, much better than his previous med, Lixap, ugh, on Lixap he feels like a dummy without a ventriloquist, a cover band playing his own songs, like he's calling himself long-distance while driving through a tunnel, ugh, back in those dark Lixap days, Daniel asks his heart what to do and his heart said, Can I call you right back? I'm on another line.
Sometimes he misses old FRP, the pomo carpets, the back lighting, even the crap coffee, no, not the work itself, no, not his old boss, Stern, who gave douchebaggery a bad name, not the river that ran through it, the vast surging river of workplace bullshit, but he misses the money, the money was nice, nice money, the money was like his first girlfriend, something urgent, intense, like it was something that really could save you.
George F. will share first, Terri Pallance said, quietly.
George walks up, older guy, thick white hair, wrinkled face, ran a warehouse business that went under, Daniel likes him, George can tell a story, George's Tales of Torment, bill collectors calling 275 times a day, wolves and process servers at the door, breaking a tooth without money or insurance, that un-OK day when George's truck left him and his wife was repossessed.
He applied for a job as a gas station cashier, doesn't know why, the man asks, Why would someone with your experience want to be a cashier, Need a job, George said, but the guy said he needed somebody who wanted to be a cashier, someone with a passion for customer service, and old George started laughing, he knew it wasn't right, couldn't help it, so ridiculous, he used to supervise five men and now what—a passion for correct change?
George said he didn't even know what he did anymore, he'd never find another job, walks back to his seat, maybe you think life is just a Bowl of Cherries, this is your right, one of those cockeyed optimists who thinks every heart-crushing blood-spurting puncture-wound is really a valuable Life Lesson, but old George didn't, Daniel admired him for it, the purity of it, all the people brave enough to surrender to the Darkness, give the hell up, dare to be depressed.
Other people walk up and tell their stories, two unemployed product managers, a laid-off lawyer, somebody's former admin, but Daniel doesn't really listen, he doesn't care about their stories, his own story is boring enough.
Daniel looks back at Beth R., three rows over, good hair, athletic, lean and mean, the way he likes them, Beth glances over and Daniel gives his best smile, the Hai Karate smile, but she looks away, glum-like, experts agree that sometimes even the Hai Karate smile doesn't work.
He found a Mellorix site last night, this post explaining that Mellorix was a major failure, back when it was force-fed to adolescents with a jaundiced view of consensus reality, back when it was called Goth Candy, so they rebranded it as Mellorix for the blue-bin boys, the now-useless unemployed white-collar workers, now Mellorix was a hit, summer blockbuster, best weekend box office, made marketers dance and accountants sing.
Some of the Mellorixers, hating on the TV commercials, especially the official slogan, When It Hurts Too Much, love the drug, hate the slogan, so they post some slogans of their own, Where the Marketplace Ends, Mellorix Begins and Mellorix: When It's All a Big, Fat Lie.
Gloria P., suited, full warpaint, VP at Global Bank back in the Time of the Giants, reminds everybody that she's a double Ivy Leaguer, in case they've forgotten since last week, then a project manager whose contract wasn't renewed, then another offshored software developer, there's like twelve million of these guys, Gen-Ex, picked-off, ticked-off, all the people who obeyed the rules, thought that rules made sense, thought they had things figured out, then a hard left onto Nasty Surprise Boulevard.
Daniel perks up when Beth R. struts to the podium, nice strut, she worked at MegoDex, the giant database company, usual human-sacrifice hours, every weekend, all the nights, she hardly noticed when her husband divorced her, but Daniel sees her over-the-top-you-wanna-live-forever attitude, the kind of bonzai vehemence he thought was hot.
MegoDex collapsed about eight months ago, even the Wall Street Journal said to note with alarm, Beth pounding the pavement every day, one time her former supervisor applied for the same job, he didn't get it either, this week Beth learned that she'd been passed over by Inifit, after seven interviews, including gang-interviews, two background checks, No, they told her, fine resume, great personality, she wasn't a good fit, this was non-OK, because there's only two companies left in her field.
I didn't do anything wrong, Beth R. said, I know how to do the work.
Daniel knows she's upset, eyes watering, sometimes the frustration swallows you whole, he wants to love away all her pain, admitted, 82% of her pain, he still feels the old fire, he wants to Discuss Uganda with Beth R. right there on the corny institutional carpet, admitted, he's a married man and old jokes are always wrong, but he wants her anyway.
They ruin people's lives every day, Beth said, Somebody should return the favor, then she starts crying, really sobbing, refuses consolation and Kleenex, runs to the ladies room.
After a few minutes of mucky silence, Terri Pallance says, Perhaps we should cut our session a little short today.
Daniel stands in line at the sign-out sheet, signs and dates, five more sessions until he gets his check, could be worse, good thing he has Shelia to kick his butt, good thing, his lean and mean wife, she saw through him like he had a glass skull, sent him to the tiny HMO doctor, So what if you make pizza or deliver the mail, she said, Something'll come up, we'll get by, squeeze through, life goes on until you're dead.
The whole shooter-rampage story, another boring story, forty seconds on Channel 5, the newscrawl, Quiet Community Shocked, so what if it's all big fat lie, it's always been a big fat lie, people like them usually got screwed, so what, it's historical, nature of things.
Daniel walks back to his car in the New Beginnings parking lot, doesn't think about the sadness of life, at all, because that's just the kind of guy he is, let some other guy's eyes be mere slits, Daniel's eyes were not mere slits, he's not that guy, smarter than he looks, five more sessions and he gets his check.
Jon Alan Carroll is a fiction and humor writer, so his path is a lonely one.