Good. An easy one. I reach into my desk and retrieve a business card for a divorce attorney I trust. I slide the card over to her. She looks at it like I wiped my ass with it.
“A divorce attorney?!” she screeches. “I can find a divorce attorney on my own! I’m not paying you thousands of dollars to hand me a business card!” She takes the card and throws it at me. I don’t tolerate this kind of behavior. I pick up the card and place it back into my desk. I stand and walk over to her chair and pull it out for her. She appears puzzled. “What are you doing…?”
“I am showing you out the door,” I tell her. I reach into my pocket and hand her back her check. “Yes, you can find your own divorce attorney. Maybe he can get a few thousand out of your husband you say does not appreciate you. The lawyer I was sending you to would have gotten you every penny from your husband. He also would have represented you with no prior screening because I sent you. But you can do better, right?”
“Wait!” she shouts as I open the door for her to leave. “I’ve changed my mind!” Lucy looks up from her desk and sighs. I look at her and don’t say a word. “Give me the card!”
“No and stop shouting” I tell Ms. Richards.
“I’m not shouting!” she shouts back.
“Yeah, you kinda are” Lucy says without looking up from her computer.
“Have a great day Ms. Richards and Lucy you’re fired” I say before heading back into my office and closing the door. I sit behind my desk and wait.
“Fired?!” Lucy says as she bursts into my office. “You can't fire me!”
“I believe I just told Ms. Richards about her shouting” I say. “Perhaps you should do the same. I will alert your agency. Pack your things and leave. Quickly.”
“No!” she screams and begins to sob. Great. Emotional woman. How cliché can someone be? I don’t want to sound sexist, but women really need to get their shit together. They have been crying for centuries and it’s solved nothing. “You can't make me leave!” I pick up my phone and wait for her to leave. She doesn’t. I want her to think I’m calling security. I don’t have security. I’m armed only with my sharp wit.
“Okay” I tell her. “You’re not fired. You can stay. You can stay here for as long as you want.” She looks at me as if she doesn’t believe a word that I’m saying. Doubt is always the first step to getting what you want from someone. “What were you assigned here for? A week? Two weeks? Forget about that. I can't hire you just yet but I want you here for at least a year. That sound good?”
“Yes…” she says.
“Excellent” I say with the biggest smile I can muster on an empty stomach. “I’ve never worked as a temp. Seems stressful. Never knowing how long you’ll have a job. Ah, the uncertainty that comes with that. You can work here for a year and never get more than what you started with.” There. That is the flinch I was waiting for. “No real insurance. No paid vacation. Working just as hard as any full-time employee but with not even half the reward. Sounds scary.”
“It’s not so bad” she says. She sounds so unsure of herself. Now to put the final nail in the coffin.
“I’ve read your file, Lucy” I tell her. “You wanted to be a doctor. You went to college for five years. Five years to be the woman that gets the coffee for an asshole that will fire you without any notice because you chose to voice your opinion when you really didn’t have a choice, did you?”
“No, I didn’t” she tells me. A small frown is forming on her face.
“You’ll never get to be a doctor here” I say. “This is not the place for you to grow. It’s boring. Stifling even. Plus, truth be told, I’m not a very nice guy. You deserve to have someone that appreciates your skills as an employee, Lucy.”
“I do!” she says triumphantly.
“Then go.”
With that she grabs her bags, gives me the finger, and leaves. Mondays are never dull.
I’m not going to even hire another secretary. I can handle this by myself. I’m sure you’re wondering how I even started this business. At one point I had a dead end job. I knew that I could talk anyone into doing what I wanted them to do. In school I talked C’s into A’s. I talked grown women into sleeping with me even though I was a 14-year-old kid. The first car I had was free. I convinced the dealer that me being seen in it was great advertising for his company.
My former fiancé, Maggie, never thought I could pull this off. It was difficult at first. There aren’t too many companies that offer the services I can. There's only three in the country and neither get the results I can. Maggie told me that I was wasting my time. She refused to back me or invest in any form. Every night before going to sleep she would be sure to remind me of how I would fail. You may wonder why I never talked her into shutting her mouth. Like I’ve said before, I don’t work for free.
Maggie left well before my business took off. As she let Baby Bigfoot sweat all over her I was working hard to get my company off the ground. By the second year, at the age of 26, I was making millions of dollars a year. Of course when Maggie found out she called. I ignored her. She tried to light that spark back in our relationship completely unaware that she was starting a fire with water. I let her know. She didn’t stop. And so it continues till this day. I haven’t tried to date much since Maggie. I don’t have the time or the patience for most women.
My next client shows up and is standing at the desk where Lucy was seated. I open my door and we shake hands. He’s a big guy. Freakish almost. He looks sad and I’m praying he isn’t a crier. Crying is a sign of defeat. He sits down and the chair disappears behind him. I wait for him to speak for three minutes. I rarely speak first. One piece of good advice I got from my father was “Shut up and listen.”
“I have a problem,” he tells me. His name is Joe Taylor. “I can't get it up anymore.” I hope he’s not talking about what I think he’s talking about. So of course that means he is. “I used to be able to rock any woman’s world. Just…pounding them, you know? But now I can't even take care of myself. Can you help me?”
“Yes,” I say with no hesitation. Damn it. In all the time I’ve been doing this business I’ve never come across this problem. I don’t mean just personally. I have never had a problem having sex. I have never helped someone else. I told Joe that I could help him because it’s a challenge.
“How are you gonna help me?” Joe asks. “You’re not a doctor or nothing. And you don’t look gay.”
“Are you gay?” I ask him. His eyes light up with fire. “I was mistaken,” I tell him. The last thing I need is this gorgon snapping my desk in half and grinding my bones to dust. “I can help you but this is a delicate issue. It may be expensive.” He laughs.
“I have plenty of money,” he says. “You just name the price and I’ll pay it. This is very important, man. Mr. Tatum, my entire life is based around my cock.” He reaches into his coat pocket and hands me a DVD. “Here, watch this later. It’ll all make sense.”
“I will,” I tell him.
“Thanks,” he says. We shake and I walk him out. It’s lunchtime and I decide to head to Tony’s. Ever since the incident where Mrs. Phillips blew her brains out the place has been busy. Ira liked it…for five minutes. Then she realized that diners didn’t enjoy when the waitress sat down with them and talked about her abusive ex husband while smoking Black & Milds. I walk in and sit at my booth. Ira always saves my booth for me during my lunchtime. She ignores two tables and comes over to me.
“Cyrus, I don’t know how long I can do this” Ira tells me. She goes to light up and someone at the next booth starts coughing. “See?!”
“You’ll be fine, Ira” I tell her. “Mrs. Phillips has brought this place a lot of customers. Once they get over the excitement they’ll stop and you’ll have the place all to yourself.” I look over and see a line forming. “Are you going to help them?”
“Not yet,” Ira says. “They wanna sit at the death booth. Bunch of savages. So what’s happening with Mrs. Phillips kids?”
“I don’t
care,” I tell her. And I really don’t. I fully grasp that three kids have now been left with no mother or father but I believe that they will grow up in a far better environment. Honestly, Mrs. Phillips, in her mental state, would have killed one if not all of those kids eventually. That news story writes itself.
FOUR
I head back home after my last client for the day, Ms. Jane Tucker. Ms. Tucker is a mess. I try not to judge my clients too harshly but I was this close to not accepting her. She wanted me to encourage her to leave her husband and two month old child. The kid was not the reason I almost decided not to take her on. It’s because she is a friend of my ex fiancé, Maggie.
“I’m being smothered” she says calmly to me. It was a nice change of pace from Ms. Richards. “A few times I have been at the super market with my baby and came close to leaving him there. I’m just so damn tired of it all.”
“I see,” I tell her. Notice what I said. “I see.” Not “I understand.” Telling a woman that you understand her is like telling a fish that you know what it’s like to breath underwater. “How can I help you?”
“Either talk me into leaving or staying,” she says. “I just need to do something other than sit on the fence.”
“That’s not what I do” I tell her. “You need to tell me what you want. I’ll help you get there.” She nods and I plan