Tawanna Johnson, my store mentor, walked tilting forward, pulled by the heft of her breasts, nailing her stiletto heels into the carpet. Her telephone rang. She removed a heavy gold bangle from her right ear and, squeezing the receiver in the crook of her neck, she entered an order change into the antiquated software, circa B.G. (before graphics), managing to hit the right keys despite her long, fanged red nails. It was Monday morning of my first day of shadowing her. Ten salespeople sat peering at the terminal screens in the middle of a huge showroom with not a customer in sight.
"Good time to catch up on things," Tawanna said, then sat for a long while knitting her brows. There was no paperwork on or around the desk she was using. Workspaces weren't assigned, so it wasn't really her personal desk. "Maybe, you enter an order for practice?"
By eleven, she ran out of things to show me and told me to just sit quietly and observe the others, but from afar. She left to the bathroom or the lunch room, and I stared at the entrance, waiting for someone to walk in. In several hours, maybe five people came in, two of them to ask for directions. If it went like this for another five hours, I'd go crazy. But, maybe, this too, was one of the things McNeal must've known. Boredom drove trainees out, and only one—ONE—succeeded.
I unlocked my briefcase and pulled out a hardbound tome of Master Data Management and Customer Data Integration for a Global Enterprise. Old habits died hard. I'd trained my Indian-national replacements as a condition for getting my separation package the way the condemned digs his grave as a condition for being buried. Manipulating down the years of my experience had only fooled the interviewers until they saw my graying hair and flabby chin. Too young to die, as the Russian saying went, but too old to get married.
I had only read a paragraph when Jay Feldman, the store manager, happened to walk by. He pulled a face and muttered, "Those newbies..." then told me that reading books on the job was forbidden.
"But what should I do while waiting for customers?"
"Observe, look around, monitor, examine, open your eyes and see..." He had the look of an aged gigolo and spoke in a deliberate suave voice. His zero-calorie advice discouraged me from asking him more questions and I was glad that he moved on.
I hid the Master Data Management, stared blankly at the front door for a while, and then pulled a store catalog and perused it twice.
"Get up. Get up." Tawanna was clapping her hands in my face. "My turn. Let's go." I must've fallen asleep. She blew her nostrils and hooked her right earring back. In her tubby sweater, her body arched, the whites of her eyes enlarged, she looked like a zebra ready to gallop. I followed in her wake toward the entrance. She paused in front of the terminal facing the door and held her index finger over letter "t." When one sneaker of the woman in a gym suit landed inside the store, she hit the key, saying, "This is the most important thing. I'm taking myself off the available list. You reading me, Ilya?" Her initials dimmed on the screen. The program was so easy McNeal had never even mentioned it in class.
The jogger wanted to browse and clearly wasn't going to buy anything this time. She didn't have a purse or anything which could hold money or credit cards.
"Just go around," Tawanna said, explaining which areas contained which room displays. "Ask for me if you have any questions. My name is Ta-wa-nna." She planted her business card in the jogger's hand. The woman glanced at Tawanna and me as if we were low obstacles to jump over without much effort and rushed along the middle isle toward the back of the store.
"A cookie monster," Tawanna said.
Continuous batches of chocolate-chip cookies were baked in the kitchen display department. The aroma of vanilla, coffee, and chocolate lassoed anyone approaching the area and made them lose all control. I'd had three cookies in the morning and was tempted to get another one.
I expected to see Tawanna go back to the queue screen and key in the code to mark herself available, but she said, "Now, stay out of sight but keep an eye on the customer."
"Why? She isn't buying anything."
"You never know. Besides, if we leave, she's is an open target. You read me, Ilya?"
"I don't see anyone with a gun."
She gifted me with a surly look. "Ilya. Move your gray matter a bit, will you."
"I'm moving it. Hovering around an unlikely prospect is less productive than getting yourself back in the queue as available."
"One would think so. But she has to leave the store first."
"And if she stays munching on cookies and drinking coffee for another two hours."
"Then you stay in the neighborhood, not stepping on her toes, but close enough to deflect anyone's long arms to grab her, and hope she leaves."
"Maybe we should go talk to her. Explain the situation."
"We can't. Against the rules."
"So, essentially we're stuck with her."
"Uh-huh. Now, you're reading me."
When I saw Li Lee arrive for the afternoon shift, my palms began to sweat. She smiled brightly for a moment longer than a simple hello. Everything around her drained of color and faded into the background. I felt as if an invisible thread tethered me to her and, even when I couldn't see her, I was pulled in her direction. I'd forgotten the feeling. The rest of my shift I was buzzing with energy.
Before leaving for the day, I waved goodbye to her. She shrugged deliberately, as if to tell me that she too couldn't understand how this selling gig could turn into earning money. In two weeks, we'd be stripped of our training salary and abandoned to the ravages of commissions only sales. Yet, somehow, the old-timers were able to make a living. I had seen Tawanna being able to sell only a sofa and a dining set today, yet she had been here a year. Several guys I'd talked to in the lunch room had been working for the company three, even five years. Each had a wife and children. Somehow, they were able to earn enough to support their families. Somehow, they'd sold enough to survive. But how?
I didn't know how the rest of our group had fared, but both Li Lee and I made it to the first day of unassisted living. I sold a headboard and a bed frame the first day; a kitchen set and a chair the second day, a Saturday. There were about forty salespeople on the floor, so I only got three chances to say "Welcome to YourRooms." My pulse would quicken when my turn came. Like Tawanna, I'd hold my finger above "t" at the front terminal and hit it as soon as one foot entered the store. I smiled the right kind of a smile—friendly but not sycophantic—trailed my prospects not too overtly, so they wouldn't feel pressured, I asked all the right questions and made all the right suggestions, but luck eluded me. Tawanna said that I was doing everything right and Jay Feldman praised my exceptional people skills. If only I could make pasta of my ability and pay rent with the right words.
Even by optimistic estimate my first-week commissions were about one-hundred dollars. I'd have to do better to afford toilet paper. Others were getting the same number of chances I did. How could it be that I consistently got the wrong end of the house—twin headboards, cocktail tables, occasional sofas—while the old-timers got furnish-the-whole-house gigs?
As I walked behind my rare prospects or circled the sales room to get my numb legs to wake up, chewing who knew which cookie that day, I focused on what might be hidden behind the jungle of the palm-frond upholstery, the bamboo-accented bedroom sets, and the clouds of quilted white mattresses. Tawanna opened the door to the bathroom. On my next round, I saw her walking toward her desk. The next time, she was entering the bathroom again. Shortly, she went to the kitchen. Each time I circled the store, I saw her coming and going to innocuous places, but she seemed to be covering the same area, back and forth, back and forth. Jake, a tall Dominican whose wife just had a baby, made frequent surreptitious visits to the quadrant of the living-room display, checking back in the sales pit now and then. Everyone was moving and not just in circles, the way I was, but as territorial carnivores, along their marked spots.
I still hadn't summoned up the courage to ask Li Lee out, so when the next day, I opened the lunch-room door and saw her alone, pouring coffee, I felt a pang of fear, determined and afraid to get her answer. I closed the door and went past the cheap plastic chairs and long table.
"Jake got fired yesterday after you left," she whispered.
"The Dominican guy?" I looked up at the last month's report on the announcement board, searching for his name. "He exceeded his quote two month in a row. Fired?"
"He broke a rule of the queue. They say it's subject to immediate dismissal."
"Dismissal? Have you ever seen the queue rules?"
She shrugged.
"Me neither."
"Apparently, he talked Tawanna's prospects into buying a French dining-room set."
"And where was Tawanna?"
"The bathroom."
"Then it's a fair game," I said. Even Tawanna had to use the bathroom for real sometime.
"Not if Jake jumped them. They turned out to be Tawanna's plants... Then it was all hush-hush in the sales room, but you should've heard Tawanna and Jake going at each other in the kitchen. If they had knives, they'd scalp each other."
"If I had a knife, I'd butter you a roll," I laughed and raised a milk carton above her coffee cup. "Say when..."
She watched the liquid flow into her cup, her expression softening. "You are nice, Ilya." She emphasized the first syllable of my name, the way Americans do, but there was something melodiously Chinese in the cadence of her voice. Not an accent, but a latent inflection. "Your wife's a lucky woman."
I was getting warmer. "I'm not married anymore."
"Oh." She looked down and didn't continue.
I swallowed. "Are you—"
And, dammit, Jay Feldman barged in at that very moment and cast an evil eye at us. "What's this? Hanky-panky during work hours?"
Li Lee covered her flaming face with the back of her hand, retreating, and I couldn't even demand an apology on her behalf; he'd fire the two of us on the spot.
I crawled back to the sales pit, fulminating with anger, calling him urchin, scoundrel, guttersnipe and the whole gamut of synonyms in Russian for his ilk. What was the worth of my suit and tie if I couldn't even defend a lady?
As if to punish me for my ill thoughts, my next turn netted me prospects from hell, a Korean clan, consisting of a husband and wife, both of their parents, and three children, all speaking their language in loud guttural voices. To my greeting they answered, "Angela Park."
"She isn't here now. I'll be happy to help you."
"No. Angela Park."
"Let me see when she'll be in." I went to check, then told them that Angela was scheduled for a shift that began in three hours.
"Ooh," the husband stretched his small mouth into a tube. "Angela Park. We wait."
"For three hours?"
"Angela Park."
I suspected that this rounded off the extent of his English vocabulary. Angela Park was a Korean, too. No way they'd buy from anyone else, so I led them to the cookie area and played a gracious host for five minutes, long enough to see them comfortably seated and loaded with a supply of carbs. Then I headed to the front terminal to mark myself available and pressed an "a" to place myself at the top of the queue.
Maryann, who was now number two, jumped from her chair and flew at me. "What do you think you're doing?"
Wasn't it obvious?
"You just broke a rule of the queue."
"You're making it up."
"Your prospects haven't left the store," she said, so I patiently explained to her the whole deal about the Koreans and that they'd sit here until tomorrow, if that how long it took for Angela Park to show up. They weren't going to buy from me. Period.
Jay Feldman stepped between the two of us, his face emanating satisfaction at having another chance to humiliate me. "You aren't available until either Angela walks in or the Koreans walk out."
"Even if they stay three hours."
"Even until hell freezes over," he said. "This is a rule of the queue." He raised his index finger. "Next time you break a queue rule, you're out."
"If it doesn't inconvenience you, I'd like to see the list of the rules?"
"Don't be fresh with me, Ilya. I'm the boss here."
* * *
I boiled potatoes and heated meatballs for dinner. Nathan lay across the old leather chair, a keepsake of our old Connecticut life. Legs hanging over the side, he was reading iPhone mail. After an exhausting semester, then a rapid fire of finals, he looked pale and had a low-grade cold, so I kept mum about the open backpack he'd thrown in the middle of the living room.
"You want a beer, Nat?"
"Nyet," he said. Among the thirty Russian words he knew, neyt was his favorite.
"Come to the table to eat."
"I'm not hungry. I'll go out or something."
"Have money to burn?"
"It's nothing, Papa. I'll get a sub. What's the matter?"
I turned off the stove and came to sit across from him. Sock balls bookended Nathan's size ten sneakers at the foot of his chair. He wiggled his toes, the way toddler Nathan did, causing a spasm of tenderness to wash over me. Fifteen years before, I sat in that very chair and held Nathan on my lap, telling him a cockamamie story about the two of us flying on a mission to catch a hawk. For years afterwards, he'd ask me to tell the story and would interrupt and invent new plot turns in our joint flight.
To steady myself, I squeezed a hand over my jaw and waited for the moment of weakness to pass. "I'm next to broke."
He gave me a surprised look as if my three jobless years were only now penetrating his consciousness.
"No, let me rephrase it. I'm not next to broke. I'm broke broke."
"What are we going to do?"
"Eat potatoes and meatballs."
Nathan whirled in the chair and sat properly. "That's a bummer." He reached across the cocktail table and patted me on the shoulder. "We'll be all right, Papa." This sounded half way between reassurance and question.
"I'll do my best." I found it hard to hold his gaze. My body was intent on softening the blow of my words. "I am doing my best."
He rose and paced the room, giving me the last family news, then, right in the middle when he'd lolled me into complacency, he'd dropped the ball: he was changing his major once again. "It's not a big deal. Half my friends are doing it."
The way the college planted doubts in the students' minds about the evil of being certain of their professional interests, I couldn't help but conclude that it enjoyed parents' misery. I wanted to yell, Stop. A smart person could do well in more than a single field. Just pick one. But we'd been through this routine before, so I bit my tongue. "What is it this time?"
"International relations."
"Who're we going to relate with?"
"Mostly, the poor. Working in resource poor settings, non-governmental organizations, globalization, and so on."
"That should come in handy. I guess you're all done with America?"
"Me?"
"You. You're not rich to help the poor. You have to help yourself first. What was wrong with being a neuroscientist? With creating useful stuff or doing research? What's wrong with helping yourself first?"
"I am helping myself. It's a hot field."
"It's been hot for a long time. But in the past, it was called the white man's burden."
Nathan jumped up from the chair, shoved his fists into his pockets, and went to the bedroom, yelling at the top of his lungs, "It's you who're clueless. Get a grip. This is the world I have to live in, not in your imaginary self-reliant utopia." The mild, tactful, afraid-to-hurt-a-fly Nathan had only snapped twice in his whole life: when he revolted against studying clarinet and when his mother announced she was leaving me. And after those two storms, the subjects of the storms became closed for discussion, as if he'd sutured the wounds. If anyone mentioned the issues again, he changed the topic or left the room.
I imagined him going to rural India where corpses and the living shared the same river, to the tsunami-ravaged coasts of Asia. Would he be teaching English to barefoot children, or lecturing burqa-wearing women huddling around him about birth control, or throwing bags of rice to hungry and riotous mobs?
The next day, I went to work jaded from a sleepless night. In the store parking lot, I saw Li Lee. She stood next to her Camry scanning the cars. She became animated and waved for me to come over. Her skin acquired a rosy glow. Her hair wasn't twirled in a bun but hung loose below her shoulders in shiny sheets of black agate over a casual snow-white t-shirt. The frays of her faded jeans grazed the skin of her feet. Her flip-flops were definitely against store regulation. She turned her back to the entrance and smoothed her hair, a relaxed smile playing on her lips. I sensed a change in her, as if she had become someone she was more comfortable with.
"I was just there," she said. "Got my things and quit. My husband said when I told him how things really work in the store that we weren't that desperate. So what? We won't go out for a while. We won't buy new clothes when we don't need them. We'll shop at dollar stores more often. We'll manage while I look for something else. I just can't do it. I can't make a living following the rules. There are three times too many salespeople on the floor. YoureffingRooms get a great customer service for next to nothing, and they don't give a damn about salespeople. Rules of the queue my foot. Everyone who makes a quota does it on the sly. You either break the rules or... I just can't. It's beyond me. Do you understand?" She looked at me with pity and triumph, like an orphan whose parents had suddenly materialized and were taking her home would look at the poor friend destined to stay in the asylum. "In the meantime, I'll find some part time. Babysitting, perhaps. Maybe I'll fake a Chinese accent and pass for a greenhorn to get the job." She laughed and covered her mouth, so I couldn't tell if she was serious about passing for an immigrant.
I wanted to kiss her, to press her body close to mine, to feel the silkiness of her hair, the delicate down covering her arm. I wanted to look into her eyes until I could drown in them. "I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you, too, Ilya Levin."
I made myself turn and walk toward the front door. Beyond it, Tawanna was showing the ropes to a new sales trainee by the queue terminal. Preparing to be assaulted by Beyonce or Houston's belting that looped from opening to closing in the store, I drew myself up, sucked in my stomach, and squared my shoulders. No one could or would rescue me. I was alone. I had to be the one to make it. Besides, people in resource-poor settings needed help, and who was I to object to that.
Natasha Grinberg was born in the USSR and immigrated to the United States in 1980. Her short stories appeared in Identity Theory, Prick of the Spindle, Jewish Scribers on the Roof, AIM, Duck & Herring, Cause & Effect, and other literary magazines. She authored a regular column and multiple essays for the Forward's Russian edition from 2001–2003 and contributed to the radio affiliate of The New Russian Word.
Comments (closed)
Mark Kay
2010-05-19 12:51:05
Dear Natasha,
Brilliant story! We wish to see more of your stories and your essays that we can’t wait to be published. Your ability to portray the human performances and individual resources are meticulously assembled, there are not too many can manage...
Please, do not stop writing.
Thank you.