“Hey, I could fix us some soup.” She got up and scraped the Salisbury steaks into the garbage can. “Minestrone or cream of tomato?”
“Whatever.” Fry scooted his chair back to the table. Sometimes he believed that his mother was on the verge of losing her mind, and sometimes he believed that she was the sanest person he’d ever met.
“Now what, Mom?”
“You know my friend Bonnie? She’s doing these ecotours where she takes tourists kayaking out to Cormorant Key,” Honey said. “She says it’s a ton of fun and the money’s pretty good, too. Anyway, driving home from Marco this afternoon I noticed a string of bright yellow kayaks crossing the bay, and I thought: What a heavenly way to spend the day, paddling in the sunshine through the mangroves!”
“Kayaks,” Fry said skeptically. “Is this the same Bonnie with the solar-powered sewing machine?”
“You sound like your ex-father.”
“He’s not my ex-father, he’s your ex-husband. Anyway, what’d I say wrong?”
“Oh, just the look on your face.” Honey took the soup pot off the stove. “What was I supposed to do, Fry? The man squeezed my boob. Did he deserve to be clobbered with a crab hammer in the testicles, or did he not?”
“How much does a kayak cost?”
Honey set two bowls on the table. “I’m not sure, but we’ll need at least two or three, for starters.”
“And where would you take these goobers on your ‘ecotour’?” Fry asked. “I mean, since Bonnie’s already locked up Cormorant Key.”
Honey laughed. “Have you looked out our window lately? Have you noticed all those gorgeous green islands?”
The phone began to ring. Honey frowned.
“Every night,” she said, “like clockwork.”
“Then don’t answer it,” her son said.
“No, I’ve had it with these clowns. Enough is enough.”
More than a thousand miles away, a man named Boyd Shreave stirred a latte and listened on his wireless headset to a phone ringing somewhere distant, in the 239 area code. A photocopied script lay on the desktop in front of him, but Boyd Shreave no longer needed it. After three days he knew the pitch cold.
Shreave was employed by Relentless, Inc., a telemarketing company that specialized in outbound sales calls to middle-income residential addresses in the United States. The firm’s call center was a converted B-52 hangar in Fort Worth, Texas, where Boyd Shreave and fifty-three other solicitors toiled in individual cubicles that were padded to dampen ambient noise.
In the cubicle to the right of Boyd Shreave was a woman named Eugenie Fonda, who claimed a murky connection to the famous acting family and in any case had recently become Boyd Shreave’s mistress. To the left of Boyd Shreave sat a man named Sacco, who was cavern-eyed and unfriendly and rumored to be a dot-com burnout. During work hours, Boyd Shreave rarely spoke to any of his co-workers, including Eugenie, due to the onerous calling quotas imposed by Relentless, Inc. They were on the phones from 5:00 p.m. to midnight, strafing east to west through the time zones.
It was a dreary and soulless job, though not the worst that Shreave had ever held. Still, at age thirty-five he realized that the feeble arc of his career had more or less flatlined during his six months in telemarketing. He probably would have quit were it not for six-foot-tall Eugenie, the ash-blond crest of whose head he could gaze upon at will in the adjoining carrel.
Boyd Shreave had been in sales since the age of twenty-six: corrective footwear, farm equipment, automobiles (new and used), fertilizer, herbal baldness remedies, high-definition televisions and exotic pet supplies. That he had failed to succeed, much less prosper, surprised no one who knew him. In person, Boyd Shreave was distinctly ill-suited for the craft of persuasion. Regardless of his mood there was an air of sour arrogance about him-a slant to one thin reddish eyebrow that hinted at impatience, if not outright disdain; a slump of the shoulders that suggested the weight of excruciating boredom; a wormish curl of the upper lip that was often perceived as a sneer of condescension or, worse, a parody of Elvis.
Almost nobody wanted to buy anything from Boyd Shreave. They just wanted him to go away.
He’d all but abandoned his ambitions in sales when, upon the occasion of his most recent firing, his future ex-boss had suggested that he consider telephone work. “You got the pipes for it,” the man had said. “Unfortunately, that’s about all you got.”
It was true that strangers were often unnerved when Shreave opened his mouth, so mismatched was his voice-smooth, reassuring and affable-with his appearance. “You’re a natural,” Eugenie Fonda had told him on his first day at the call center. “You could sell dope to the Pope.”
Shreave didn’t set the world afire at Relentless, but for the first time in his life he could honestly claim to be semi-competent at his job. He was also restless and resentful. He disliked the late shift, the confined atmosphere and the mynah-bird repetition of the sales script.
The pay blew, too: minimum wage, plus four bucks for every lead he generated. Whenever Shreave got a hot one on the line-somebody who actually agreed to a callback or a mailout-he was required by company policy to punt the sucker’s name to a floor supervisor. Shreave would have gladly forgone the shitty four-dollar commission for a chance to close the deal, but no such responsibility was ever dealt to rookie callers.
A woman picked up on the fifth ring.
“Hello, is this Mrs. Santana?” Boyd Shreave asked.
“It’s Ms.”
“So sorry, Ms. Santana, this is Boyd Eisenhower calling-”
Eugenie Fonda had told Shreave not to use his real last name with customers, and coached him on selecting a telephone alias. She said research had proven that people were more likely to trust callers with the last names of U.S. presidents, which is why she’d chosen “Eugenie Roosevelt” for herself. Initially Shreave had selected the name “Boyd Nixon” and in four days failed to churn a single lead. Eugenie had gently advised him to try a different president, preferably one who had not bolted from the White House with prosecutors camping on the doorstep.
“Eisenhower, like Dwight?” asked the woman on the end of the line.
“Exactly,” Shreave said.
“And your first name again?”
“B-o-y-d,” said Shreave. “Now, Ms. Santana, the reason I’m calling this afternoon-”
“It’s not the afternoon, Mr. Eisenhower, that’s the problem. It’s the evening, and I’m sitting down to eat with my family.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Santana, this won’t take long. Or perhaps you’d like me to try back later.”
It was a line designed to keep the customer on the phone. Most people didn’t want a callback; they wanted to get it over with.
The woman’s voice began to rise. “Do you know how many telephone solicitations I get on this number? Do you know how aggravating it is to have your dinner interrupted by strangers every night?”
Boyd Shreave, unruffled, was already fingering down the call list. “Is Mr. Santana available?” he asked perfunctorily.
To his surprise, the woman replied, “As a matter of fact, he is. Hold on.”
Moments later, a new voice said, “Hullo?”
“Mr. Santana?” Shreave thought the person sounded too young, although there was always the possibility of a sinus infection.
“What’re you selling, mister?” the voice demanded.
Shreave let it fly.
“Mr. Santana, I’m calling about a unique real-estate opportunity that we’re presenting to specially selected candidates. For a limited time only, Suwannee Bend Properties is offering ten pristine wooded acres in north-central Florida for only $3,999 down-”
“But we already live in Florida,” the voice said squeakily.
“Yes, Mr. Santana, this valuable offering is being made exclusively to residents of the southwest coast.” Boyd Shreave glanced at his pitch sheet. “You live in the fastest-growing part of the United States, Mr. Santana, and in recent years many of your neighbors have gotten fed up with the traffic, high taxes, crime and big-city stress. A lucky few of them have relocated to beautiful Gilchrist County, the heart of traditional old Florida-a safe, peaceful and affordable place to raise a family. Instead of being packed like rats into a gridlocked suburb, you can relax on a lush, secluded ten-acre ranchette, not far from the historic Suwannee River. May I send you some printed information, or perhaps arrange for a qualified sales associate to call back at your convenience?”