The Fantasy Years

“AS YOU KNOW, Four Seasons Customer Service isn’t just about magazine subscriptions,” Shannon said concluding the quarterly floor-wide meeting. “It’s about developing a relationship with the customer. A rapport.” Jenny sat in the third row, giving Shannon, the assistant general manager, her best with-the-program attention. Jenny made a point of arriving early to get a seat toward the front. She actually liked these meetings: they always ended in such an inspirational way.

“We at Four Season’s are in the business of all kinds of phone-based customer services and customer support. And we’ve got contracts coming up that require us to educate the consumer. That means, when you get a caller asking for customer service, it’s not just a matter of adjusting their subscription and hurrying them along. It’s a matter of developing a rapport, a relationship with them. And more often than not we’ll be called on to educate the customer about the changes with whatever client we’re representing.”

Jenny nodded, looking around at her co-workers. Educate, yes.
“I can’t impress this enough on you. You’re no longer expected to just note changes on customers’ accounts. You’ll have to be able to explain to the customer how things work with whatever product you’re providing services for, whether it’s a phone company or a vacuum cleaner. But I’m sure you’ll do a great job. Why? Why?” Shannon asked, setting her intense, wide blue eyes on Cynthia, Jenny’s co-worker sitting three seats to Jenny’s right.

“Because Four Season’s means world class customer service?”
Shannon laughed. “You sound so unsure.” Laughter ruffled throughout the room. “Yes, Cynthia because Four Season’s and you, Cynthia, have a reputation for world class customer service. So I want you, and everyone here, to bear that in mind as you go back to work.”

It just felt good to Jenny. Then Chris, one of the floor managers, began clapping, and everyone in the room applauded in a burst of good feeling. Jenny checked her watch as she and the others in the faux-wood-paneled room bolted up from their seats, heading back to their cubes.

Jenny sat down in her cube, turned on her computer, took a sip of her coffee, took a deep breath. She put the headset on. She took another deep breath. She really couldn’t get enough deep breaths before the onslaught. When the call-processing program was up, she held her finger over the button on the phone and, pushing it, heard the bing! of the soft ring tone which signaled the new incoming call. The first call of the day.

The voice was gravely and intimate. Breathy and angry. Like Rick coming home after having his work cut short by a contractor.
“How long,” the voice began, “does it take you people to finally answer the fucking phone?”

In July of 1993 Vince Foster’s death was news to Mike. It was news to Dennis. It was news to a taxi dispatcher named Cletus in a stuffy office in Louisville. The news of the death of Vince Foster, who was a Clinton aid, seemed mysterious. And it was news to a guy in Houston named Charlie. Before even saying hello to his coworkers in the Titan Property and Casualty branch insurance office one Monday morning, Charlie quipped.

“Oh, here we go! Here we go!”
“What?” his co-worker asked.
“Did you hear about Vincent Foster? Clinton’s deputy counsel. He killed himself. Did you hear?”
“Yeah,” his co-worker said, his voice swelling with satisfaction.
“This is where it all begins to unravel. The whole Clinton lie. You mark my words. No one in that position just kills themselves. No one takes their life without a reason. No one so close to the president just does that. There’s always a reason.”
“There’s a reason.”
“Of course there’s always a reason!”
“How can there not be?”
“And then there’s the cover-up. This is just the beginning. You mark my words.”
“But what do you think they’re covering up?” his co-worker asked.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

Whoosht! Dennis drove the same back way he took from the Country Kitchen to the office every morning. As he drove down the residential road, he was just entering the straightaway. The one lined with wide lawns and flimsy plastic mail boxes, where he usually picked up speed. But instead he slowed down for what he saw: a car, a Mazda, parked by the side of the road with a flat tire. He slowed down to see a lone woman, looking out over the horizon. She was tall. Her blond hair was pulled back into a neat pony tail. She waved once at Dennis who nearly locked up his brakes coming to a halt. He put his car into reverse, turned down Rush on the radio and lowered his window.

“You gotta flat, ma’am?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I do.” The woman’s mouth was a little too large for her oval face, Dennis thought. But she was a woman. She needed his help.
Buzzing with purpose, Dennis pulled up past her on the roadside, opened his trunk and got to work.

“If you’re so good at math, what are you doing here?” the girl with the dyed black hair asked Brandon.
“Well, let’s just say I was good at math. I wasn’t good at attending class.”

Brandon had made it back to community college. Finally. Amid the endless nights of beer and bongs and Black Sabbath, the forces of order had aligned themselves enough in his life so that he could afford the tuition and register for community college at the same time.

Brandon found himself in the sober, smoke free-light of a remedial math class. He had always overlooked this kind of clarity in life.
“I’m the opposite,” The girl laughed. “I showed up every day and did all my work. I just wasn’t any good.”

She wore gothy make-up to hide her wholesome looks, Brandon thought while he and she talked about math class, then high school, then where they lived. They found a lot to talk about. The conversation carried on and on in many different directions, and whatever topic they arrived at, there seemed always to be more to talk about again. Brandon thought he saw the guy behind her roll his eyes as she and Brandon talked. He didn’t care.
Her name was Carolyn. She was 23.

“You know when I was a trucker I didn’t have to answer to anyone,” Mike said, then sneezed.

He brought the car to a halt at a stop light.

“You had to answer to me,” Kath said.
“I just wish I could have a job where I didn’t have to answer to anyone.”
“Like what?” Kath asked. “Everyone has to answer to someone.”
“Do you have to say it that way, Kath? Do you have to say it that way?”
“What?”
“‘Everyone has to answer to someone.’ No one wants to hear that.”
“Okay,” Kath spoke flatly, deadpanning the words. “You don’t have to answer to anyone, Mike.”
“I’m not saying I don’t want to answer to anyone. I had to report to people when I was trucker. But in between…”
“That’s what you liked, Mike. You got to do whatever you wanted in between.”

Mike scanned the strip mall looking for the Applebee’s. It was around here somewhere. “What I liked,” Mike declared. “was driving across Kansas riding side by side with another trucker taking turns pulling ahead of each other. I’d lead, then they’d lead. I liked that.

“And I liked pulling up in the middle of the night at a truck stop at two a.m. outside Flagstaff and walking inside and seeing a table of buddies,” Mike said with a certain fondness smoothing the edginess out of his hoarse voice. “And we laughed when we saw each other and I sat down and they made room for me at the booth. That’s what I liked.”

“Everyone wants a job where you can sit around with your friends.”

Mike threaded his car down the access road, making a series of deft lane changes until he was in the far right lane, ready to turn off.

“And what else I liked? No tourists on the road. Not at that hour. Just a few stragglers. A couple highway patrolmen, maybe. And then us, the truckers. And it was like we owned the place.”
Mike checked Kath’s face, which showed the same kind of skepticism she showed when he talked about his ideas for the future. But Mike didn’t care. He went on: “And it was like we owned the place. You see, a lot of the country, most of the country really, looks like this. Same Applebee’s. Same Safeway’s. Same parking lots. But when you get out on the road and you see the land, and you see how it changes, and us truckers were the ones who… The only ones. It was like we owned the place. Like I owned everything I could see. Like I had some part of it. That’s what I liked.”

Mike parked the car, and got out. The Little Rock highway skyline uncoiled for far, far in both directions.

“Instead of now. Now I feel like another employee working at another job like the rest of these guys here,” Mike said, nodding as they opened the second door to enter the Applebee’s and the high school aged hostess, decked out in ill-fitting polyester approached them to ask, “Two for smoking or non?”