caption read, “Banking all those RBI’$.” Gil folded the paper and slid it into his coat pocket.
Ding. Five. Gil walked down the hall, the floor sticky under his feet. The company’s office was next to Prime National Mortage, which had been vacant all winter, and another suite, without lettering on the door, tenantless much longer. He went in. Bridgid was at her desk, unwrapping a bouquet of roses. She pricked her finger, said, “Ow,” and sucked on it.
“Hi,” Gil said. “Tickets in yet?”
The company had season tickets, two box seats halfway down the first baseline, eighteen rows back. The reps divided them according to a complicated formula that was revised every season and this year had alloted Opening Day to Gil.
“Have to ask Garrity,” said Bridgid. Was there something funny about the way she said it? Funny enough, anyway, to register with Gil in passing.
Gil entered the conference room. Sales meetings began at eight sharp, second Wednesday of the month. They were all sitting around the table-the eleven other Northeast reps, and Garrity, regional sales manager. The room smelled of aftershave. Garrity’s eyes went from Gil to the wall clock, as though he were willing him to look at it too. Gil looked. 8:04.
He sat down. Figuerido, area six, just west of his, rolled a tube of Lifesavers across the table; the kind with all the flavors. Gil took one-cherry-and rolled them back to Figgy. Breakfast.
“How’s the Beamer?” Figgy asked in a loud whisper; Figgy was stoked on Gil’s wheels.
Gil made a hand movement like a car speeding down a winding road and sucked on the Lifesaver, waiting for Garrity to get on with it. Garrity always began with a gloomy summation of how they were doing, followed by an uplifting anecdote from his past about how he’d come up off the canvas when all hope was gone and fought his way to victory, hawking vacuum cleaners in Southie or some shit. That was to inspire them before he handed out the new quotas. But Garrity wasn’t on commission now, he was management, and management had no idea what it was like out there. That was fact one.
Garrity’s phone buzzed. He picked it up, listened, said “Yup.” He turned to the door. O’Meara walked in. O’Meara was the national sales manager. He flew in from Cincinnati once a year, took them all to dinner. But a year wasn’t up since his last visit; and it wasn’t dinnertime.
“Welcome, Keith,” Garrity said, rising.
O’Meara ignored him. He made a little beckoning motion with his finger-at Waxman, at Larsen, at Figuerido. They followed him from the room. Figgy forgot his Lifesavers on the table.
“Bonus time already?” someone said. No one laughed. December was bonus time; besides, you had to make quota first, and who was doing that?
Silence until O’Meara returned, followed by three people-white males, like Waxman, Larsen, and Figuerido, dressed in $150 suits like Waxman, Larsen, and Figuerido, but not Waxman, Larsen, and Figuerido. O’Meara introduced them. They took their places in the empty chairs. The one who sat in Figgy’s glanced at the Lifesavers but didn’t touch them.
O’Meara moved to the head of the table. Garrity slid out of his seat. O’Meara could have been Garrity’s upwardly mobile son, better fed and better educated. He put his foot on Garrity’s chair and leaned over the table. “Guys,” he said. “I’ve seen the figures.” He paused. Gil smelled someone’s sweat. Not his: he was cool and dry, not sweating at all. In fact, Gil’s mind wasn’t even on whatever was about to go down. He was remembering an at bat he’d had against the Yankees, one he hadn’t thought of in years. Man on second-must have been Claymore, Gil could still see him, red hair, freckles-last ups, two strikes, two out, one run down, pitch on the way. He almost felt the sunshine.
O’Meara had brightened suddenly, as though struck by an idea. “Unless it’s a misprint,” he was saying. He turned to Garrity. “Any chance it’s a misprint?”
“Wish it was.”
“Me too,” said O’Meara. “Because these numbers suck.” He sat down; Garrity drew up another chair beside him. O’Meara paused again, and in that pause met their gazes one by one. He had small green eyes, set deep in crowfooted pink pouches. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking-what a prick, expecting us to sell into this manure-pile economy, expecting us to compete with those Japs gobbling up the whole fucking business. Am I right?”
Nods from the three new men, various facial expressions from the others, nothing from Gil.
“Hit it on the head or what?” said Garrity.
O’Meara didn’t respond. He held up his index finger. His hands were small and plump, not even big enough to grip a baseball properly, Gil thought with contempt. “Let’s take the economy first. Does the expression self-fulfilling prophecy mean anything to anybody?” His eyes fastened on Gil. “Renard?”
“Nope,” Gil said, almost adding, Maybe it means something to Figgy.
“You were going to say?”
“Nothing.”
O’Meara didn’t take his eyes off him. “The thing is, Renard, all the pissing and moaning about the economy swells up into one big pig of an excuse. Self. Fulfilling. Prophecy. If the economy sucks, well, hell, how can I be expected to beat my quota, or even meet it, for Christ’s sake? Not my fault, right? So you don’t even try anymore, and then the economy really is in the toilet. Like lemmings, right? Whoosh. Boom.” He gestured out the window. It needed washing. Beyond it gray flakes, fatter now, swirled out of a dark sky. “That’s the beauty of our system, curse and beauty at the same time. We control it. Us. Guys like you and me, the folks in this room, up to our elbows in the machinery. We’re the ones who can make the economy whatever we want.”
Gil watched the snowflakes. A fastball, it had been, low and away, but too close to take. He’d slapped it to right, past the diving second baseman, whose name he couldn’t recall. He remembered the pitcher though: Bouchard, the Yankee ace. And he remembered the roar of the crowd as Claymore scored the tying run and he himself went all the way to third when they overthrew the cutoff.
“Let me give you an example,” O’Meara said. “Would you stand up, Verrucci?”
The man who now presided over Figgy’s Lifesavers rose.
“Verrucci’s come up from Texas to lend a hand for a while in area six. Mind telling us your take for the month of Feb?”
“Feb just passed, Mr. O’Meara?”
“That’s right, Verrucci.”
Verrucci named a figure Gil had never touched, not even when things were steaming during the Reagan years.
“Pay much attention to the state of the economy, Verrucci?”
“Don’t have the time, Mr. O’Meara.”
O’Meara laughed. “Ignorance is bliss.” He studied his audience. “Still with us, Renard?”
Gil nodded, thinking, Texas, that explained everything.
Verrucci was still standing. “Thank you, Verrucci. Sit down.” Verrucci sat, picked up the Lifesavers, peeled back the wrapper, and popped one in his mouth.
“Enough philosophy,” O’Meara said. He raised a second finger. “Which brings us to the Japs.” He smiled. “I think we’ve finally got something that’ll help you with them.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a knife. It was a tanto, about eleven inches, with a six-inch blade and a red-white-and-blue-checkered polymer handle. He held it high, like a king leading his men into battle, then nodded to Verrucci.
Verrucci left the room. O’Meara took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and passed the blade lightly down his forearm, shaving off an inch-wide strip of wiry, rust-colored hair. It fell on the open pages of Garrity’s appointment book.
Verrucci returned with a car door. Japanese? — Gil wondered. Verrucci laid it on the table. O’Meara opened his briefcase, took out a claw hammer, positioned the knife a few inches below the door handle, and began pounding on the pommel. Pounding hard; a sweat stain spread over his right armpit, and his face pinkened in pleasure. Ten blows-Gil counted them, too many-and the blade sank down to the choil. With a grunt, Verrucci stood the door on end, showing the tip of the blade protruding through a speaker grille inside. O’Meara jerked the knife free, extended his forearm, cut another swath. Garrity watched the wiry hairs falling on his appointment book.
O’Meara passed the knife around the table. “Say hello to the Survivor,” he said. “State-of-the-art workhorse of our new state-of-the-art line.”
“A new line?” someone said.
