The BOYS

Episode Five

As far as taking Sal's advice went, Walter Fales passed on the massage, but did stay drunk most of the weekend, staggering out of his cave having, only once, the ill-temper to heave a plate of homemade nachos at Missy. He celebrated Saturday morning, nine fuckin' eleven, by informing their once-a-week gardener, Emanuel, that his services would no longer be required and, Sunday... because his wife had locked herself in John's old bedroom after being showered in corn chips and Cheez Whiz, and dinged with a plastic plate that they'd saved off some frozen, microwave chicken dinner... he fired Estrellita. The economy was tanking after a brief recovery, there were rumours that another Corona variant was ravaging Peru and murder was all over the airwaves – from Russia to the streets of America. The Chinese newslady kept winking at him... so he thought, Saturday night, at his zenith (or abyss) of intoxication... as she reported that various authorities were still attempting to unravel the paper trail at BCM.

Having drawn the conclusion that no government agent, not even those of the technically bankrupt State, would impound the contents of an American's liquor cabinet, he drunk only beer on Sunday, polishing off one of the three cases in the garage cooler while watching the Chargers lose again, and fell asleep on the couch during "60 Minutes". He woke, surly and swollen, sometime around midnight... pissed away a small river of foul smelling, probably diabetic swill, then returned to an empty connubial bed after laying out the employment sections of the local and San Diego papers on the kitchen table.

On Monday morning, after a lengthy shower and a shave, four cups of coffee, as many glasses of orange juice and several slices of plain, white bread... since one of Estellita's duties had been shopping for the Fales family... Walter felt almost bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, all of those qualities he dimly remembered from his youthful prospecting adventures back in the days when his hair was thick, his waist was trim and Ronald Reagan helmed the ship of state with confidence and cheer. A job wasn't so much different from an investment package... it was selling yourself, and like he'd never been away from the hunt. Gnashing his teeth, Walt thumbed through the papers, remembering the attorney's admonition... any job. But, only until the mess that had been BCM went away on its own, and its fiftyish financial packagers were sexy again... that employers might think he was slumming did not narrow his options, so much as they focused them...

He drew a few circles, made a few calls, finally settle upon three prospective sinecures.

A tax preparation firm, a golf course, a cemetery plot sales office…

By noon, Walt was wedged into a too-small plastic armchair before a desk, holding a boilerplate application in his fist. According to the little plastic placard, the rajah of Rocket Tax Preparation was Simon... "just Simon," the little, foreign-looking fellow said, through a limp handshake.

There wasn't even a fuckin' waiting room, Walter had realized; three other applicants sat waiting, as he had waited... two college kids, one in khaki and the other in a cheap, misshapen suit that showed frayed cuffs and a stripe of skin above his white socks, one sorry-looking fellow about his own age whose story Walt didn't want to hear.

Simon had declined Walter's resume, pored over the application, drumming a nearly new, severely bitten Number Two pencil on his desk.

"You do understand," Simon said... in some vaguely Anglo-Indo dialect that raised Walt's hackles... and might have caused him to stand up and shoot back "...no, I don't understand..." but for Sal's sagacious (and free) advice... "that we are only capable of offering seasonal positions at this moment, part-time through December which, I may add, affords the applicant the option of uncovering supplemental Christmas-related employment, elsewhere. It is probable that those of our employees who prove qualified will enjoy full time labours in January, as financial records for the year are compiled, diminishing once more to part-time in February before the hours of revenue reckoning approach. For both of the two weeks in April, be very prepared, Mister Walter, prepared for overtime... vast quantities of overtime..." Simon smiled.

"Well," the applicant smiled, "I'm a big boy, I can handle that." And, Walter kept the thought to himself, if this shit hasn't been swept up by next April, I'll probably need the fuckin' overtime!

Simon reread Walter's application. He'd filled it out carefully, being sure to let the tax preparation manager take a gander at his pen, which had cost him... or, more precisely, Braxton... fifty three dollars, from the catalog, one refill included. "I am not a bum," he hummed, under his breath - rather like little Judy Garland in that witch movie he'd watched (although he'd say he hadn't, it was sort of off, at least around the environs of BCM). "I am not a bum!"

"You say you worked for Braxton and hmmm... for Arthur Andersen before that, in San Diego." Simon frowned. "It would seem, Mister Walter, that you have an affinity for entities that... oh my, how do I say this..."

"That have certain dealings on the dark side of the street with, uh, complicated financial policies?" And he flashed the taxman what he hoped was a worldly grin.

"Oh... I would not say that, oh now, but there is a terrible unfortunateness about this," and Simon held the resume in his left fist, pointing to it with his right index finger..."

"I worked four years at BCM, eleven at Andersen and, before that, I was chief financial officer, West Coast division, for Dunhill Strategic. And there's nothing wrong with Dunhill, sir, not a breath of scandal, before or after. Clean as the proverbial whistle."

Simon frowned. "I do not understand. How could a whistle be anything other than clean... it is what your people who... in sporting events, and the police? Them? What they place in their mouths, oh no..."

"Just an expression."

"Well... yes, Mister Walter, in order to make a perfectly honest other expression, there is no way that I can offer you one of our positions. You are overqualified."

"Overqualified?"

If it hadn't been so tight around his buttocks and the roll of skin over his belly, Walter would probably have soared out of the little plastic chair and stuffed his application six inches down Simon's throat.

"A man of your qualities wouldn't feel right, working these long hours, solving common problems as most of our customers bring." Simon then wagged a finger in Walt's face... in his fuckin' face!... and scolded: "You will say that you would, everybody does, but you would be looking for a better job from the moment you cashed your first paycheck!"

"So what? You said it yourself... the job's a temporary."

"Yes, yes..." Simon nodded, "but you see, Mister Walter, the discretion of your coming and your going must be ours, not yours. If it were up to me, I would be most satisfied to have a man of your background and capabilities working in this office... and, perhaps, as you say, some of your dark dealings might be advantageous to certain of our customers, so long as the authorities also remained in the dark. We are a franchise, and there are corporate rules. There's nothing I can do, Mister Walt."

Simon spread his arms in a universal gesture of meek, corporate helplessness, and Walt could only glare at him while the three other applicants rustled in their unarmed plastic folding chairs, overhearing, but pretending not to, pretending not to smile with satisfaction. Rejected! Their hopes still survived.

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Two hours later, Walter Fales ducked into the office... an aluminum shed, truth be told... adjoining a miniature golfcourse on the State Highway out towards the desert and reservation casinos. Despite the bright, mid-afternoon sun, the place exhaled creepy vibrations: the astroturf blanched to an unpleasant salmon color, the waterfall dried to a brown trickle, the windmills and pinwheels silent in the stagnant, ochre air. The only customers; soldiers, Indians... Native Americans, Walt corrected himself, as opposed to Simon who was probably an Indian Indian, if not some sort of terrorist... and an elderly couple in shorts and white polo shirts, were torpid as slugs and about as skilled with their putters. Beyond the shed, a thin, dark man in shades and dark clothes... a drug-dealer if Walt ever fingered one... flailed away at his bucket of balls.

The manager was puffy and flabby without actually achieving fat... a Pillsbury Doughboy thinned down by cancer, Walter reckoned him; he even had that pale, yellow-green tinge one associated with cancer, or some sort of liver disease. "I'm Ted," he offered another dead fish handshake. "You're the one who called, this morning?"

"Uh huh?" Walter hummed, offering the guy his resume. There was a clipboard of the same employment application forms as at Rocket... the drugstores must be selling thousands of 'em, these days, but Ted did reluctantly accept and scan the resume.

"You didn't tell me it was miniature golf," he felt obliged to explain, "the ad just said Manager - golf course. I haven't exactly had specific experience, but I've put in a lot of time in finance and salesmanship... I could probably do a few things, you know, get this place humming again." He gave Ted a lopsided smile. "I have spent a lot of time on the links... gotten a lot of business done there, and I know my way around. Firestar, Seven Hills, even went up to Pebble Beach, last year, shot 79. I know guys at the club and in the Pro Shop... if it mattered, I probably could get you letters of recommendation. I'm already thinking of ways I can make this place hop..."

"Well, this is miniature golf," Ted said, blinking, as if he didn't even think Walter had noticed. "And I can't help you, you're overqualified."

He let the resume slip from his fingers and it did a nice, Olympic-class pirouette into the wastebasket.

"Sorry..."

Ted glared, as if the applicant was just a coyote turd on the fifteenth hole, and Walter glowered back. This was hate, he perceived... pure, undiluted hate, clean and sharp as a circular saw, and I didn't even know this fuck ten minutes ago. Probably forget him, just like he'll have forgotten me by tomorrow morning. Then he focused, pointed...

"Mind if I have that back, then? Those resumes are overqualified too... they ain't cheap fuckin' xeroxes, they're laser printed on rag stock, and they ain't cheap..."

Ted made no motion, other to nod and let his hand fall down in a swinging, pointing motion towards the trashcan. "Help yourself," he smirked.

"I am not a bum," Walter reminded himself, but under his breath.

His last appointment of the day... out of a bunch of wrong numbers and recordings that hadn't called back (three places he'd gone to where the Human Resources stooge was "in a meeting" and this other joint where they took applications to sell magazine subscriptions, door-to-door, (and required applicants to fork over a two-hundred-fifty dollar "confidence bond")... was at that friggin' cemetery, which had advertised a need for experienced salespersons to peddle plots and caskets to weeping survivors of the dear and suddenly departed. Despite the approach of Halloween... and a disinclination to approach any closer to dead bodies than the six feet to the plasma television spewing out "Law and Order – Rapid City" or one of those CSI shows... Walter had (sort of) considered this opportunity the best of a weak lot. Hey... people were growing older every day, people were dying, some of them, and funerals were expensive propositions, as some of the tab from his own mother's sendoff was probably still on the VISA. (Between them, his two sisters had only come up with half of what had been a five-figure shindig, with more hidden extras and gratuities than her sojourn in a public hospital!)

He'd even blown off an appointment for a part time piano-selling gig to prepare himself for this interview ("boning up", he'd smirked). Death was a sober business, but only somewhat more so than managing complex group investment portfolios... seizing opportunities where they arose and remorselessly weeding out losers, serving up volatile cocktails of risky petrochemical and biotech ventures, leavened with plenty of so-called "defense investments" with sunshine and smiles. But, having put on his best game face for one of the DeClericey brothers... whose first name he never did learn, and whose hand, thankfully, he never did have to shake... the mortician crinkled the resume with the faintest inclinations of regret, then handed it back to Walt with a single word of dismissal...

"Overqualified!"

Some Mexican wheeled a cadaver, in its casket, by them for display. Walt couldn't help but gape... the stiff old man seemed to wink and Walter blinked, rubbing his eye, with the resume limp in his hand. How could he even begin to argue his case, in such a location?

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