Dying to Call You

the day off? Take the rest of the week off—at your expense. No, don’t come in. You screw up one more time and you’re fired.”

Vito slammed down the phone and said, “Seven fifty-five and the fuckups are calling.”

The phone rang again. Vito picked it up and shrieked, “If you’re not here at eight A.M. you’re fired. Fired. Get it? Oh, hi, Mr. Cavarelli.”

Suddenly Vito’s voice was soft and respectful. “You’ll be in this week? Yes, sir. No, sir. No, we didn’t make our quota last week. We’ll make it this week for sure. I’m trying to fire the junkies and bring in quality people, but it takes time, Mr. Cavarelli.”

“I’m one of the junkies,” Nick said.

He was eating his usual breakfast of jelly doughnuts and orange soda. Despite his sugary diet, Nick was a skeleton. He talked in nervous bursts. “Finally got out of the halfway house. I’m sharing a trailer now. My own place. First time in years. I used to live on the street. I’ve come a long way. I don’t want to lose my home, but if I don’t sell something today I will.”

“You’ll make a sale,” Helen said. But she knew Nick was doomed. This morning, he couldn’t sit still long enough to sell. He’d flit to his computer and make a call, then buzz around, bothering everyone. He looked like a big dragonfly in his bright yellow shirt.

“Nick, sit down and sell,” she hissed.

“I will, but I gotta get a sody,” he said, and zipped up front to the machine. Next she saw him crawling on the filthy carpet with Marina’s little boy, Ramon, playing with his dump truck, promising to get him a candy bar.

Nick had an unerring instinct for bothering the wrong person. He tried to borrow a quarter for the candy machine from Mabel, the boiler room’s longest survivor. She’d been there an astonishing five years. She was a large, placid woman who used a headset so she could knit while she called. Mabel seemed friendly, but Helen noticed that she watched everyone. Helen heard her reporting their minor infractions to Vito at the end of the shift. The Madame Defarge of the phone room would complain about Nick panhandling for sure.

Nick sat down at his computer and made a call, then threw down his phone and said, “They hate me. Everybody hates me. I can’t get any sleep. My roommate was drunk and he kept me awake all night. How am I going to sell if I can’t sleep?”

“I’m sorry, Nick,” Helen said. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

By twelve thirty, Helen had been insulted one hundred and twenty-six times, propositioned twice, and hung up on sixty-three times. Some woman in Oklahoma blew a police whistle into her phone. Helen’s ear was still ringing from that. She put the whistle woman on CALL BACK. She’d be pursued by septic tank calls till her last breath.

Helen managed to make two sales, one in Maine and another in Kentucky. It wasn’t enough to get her into survey heaven, but at least her job was safe for the day.

Nick had not sold anything. Helen was not surprised.

When he did sit down at his phone, he argued with the callers. She heard him saying, “Listen, lady. I’m trying to tell you something. I can save you thousands in septic-tank bills.

Lady, please don’t say that.”

He hung up his phone in despair. “It’s over. I didn’t sell anything again. That lady just told me to fuck myself and die.

I can’t take all this hate with no sleep.” He put his forehead down on his sticky desk. It was five minutes to one.

“Nick!” Vito called. Nick sat up with a trapped, panicked look. He knew the end was coming. He hunched his skinny shoulders and went up front. Vito’s firings were always done in public.

“Nick, you haven’t had a sale in two weeks. You’re out of here.”

“Please, Vito,” Nick said. “Give me one more day.”

“I can’t waste space on losers. And I can’t have you bothering the help. You’re out.”

“I’ll lose my home,” Nick pleaded.

“I gotta have sellers. Get lost.”

Nick left. She saw him sitting next to the smokers’ trash can at the entrance, weeping. He didn’t notice he was sitting in a pile of cigarette butts. Helen averted her eyes and walked past him, then wondered if she should go back and give him some money. Would it be an insult, reducing him once more to a homeless beggar?

In their world, money was never an insult, Helen decided.

She found twenty-two dollars in her purse, and gave it all to Nick. “Here, buddy. Dinner’s on me.”

He would be panhandling soon enough.

At the Coronado that afternoon, Margery was drinking a screwdriver by the pool.

“I thought you’d be high on life,” Helen said.

“OK, I admit it. Fred and Ethel are getting on my nerves, too,” Margery said. “But they pay the rent, they aren’t weird, and they aren’t conning anyone—unlike some of my previous tenants.”

“I’m beginning to miss the con man,” Helen said. “At least he never lectured me on the joys of clean living. How long are they staying?”

“For the season, at least. They signed a lease through March.”

March seemed a long time away, especially when Fred and Ethel came bouncing through the gate, looking preternaturally chipper.

“We had a lovely lunch on Las Olas,” Ethel said. Helen could just imagine what the exclusive Las Olas restaurants made of her gold tennis shoes and I LOVE FLORIDA sweats printed with maps. The state looked even bigger stretched across Ethel’s rear end.

“It was lovely till some bum asked us for money,” Fred said.

“I told him to get a job,” Ethel said. “I don’t know why those people won’t work.”

Helen saw Nick sitting by the trash can, crying for his lost job and soon-to-be-lost home.

“Because you people hung up on him.” Helen stormed off, slamming the gate. She heard Ethel say, “What set her off?”

I can’t take any more misery, Helen thought, as she wandered aimlessly around her neighborhood. The walk did not comfort her. The neighborhood was disappearing. The exuberant Art Deco apartments and affordable cottages were being torn down for overpriced condos. Soon only the rich would live here.

Porta-Potties and construction Dumpsters camped on every block. A construction worker whistled at her, and Helen glared at him. He was the enemy, the destroyer. She shouldn’t complain about Fred and Ethel. If her landlady couldn’t keep their unit rented, the Coronado might be torn down, too. Then where would she live? In a soulless shoebox like Debbie.

Everything she cared about seemed to be slipping away.

She couldn’t stop the construction, but she could keep in touch with her friends.

Helen rummaged in her purse for change, and then for Sarah’s phone number. She found a pay phone on Las Olas.

“Hi, Sarah,” she said. “I haven’t talked to you in way too long. Want to meet for lunch sometime this week?”

“Anything wrong with today?” Sarah said. “When do you have to be back at work?”

“Not till five.”

“Good. Do you like crab?”

“Love it,” Helen said.

“I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

Helen ran back to her apartment. The pool was once more deserted. Helen was glad she didn’t have to face Margery after her outburst. She fed Thumbs and changed into her good black pantsuit, which was only a little tight from the potato chip binges.

Chocolate, her stuffed bear, was nice and fat. She reached inside for a fistful of money and caught a flicker out of the corner of her eye. Someone had passed her window. She hadn’t shut the blinds. She tiptoed to the window hoping she would finally see her neighbor Phil, but no one was there.

The man was maddening.

Sarah pulled up in her Range Rover right on time, and Helen settled into its unaccustomed luxury. Her friend had played the stock market, parlaying a small inheritance into major money, thanks to Krispy Kreme doughnut