Grab It

New job. He arrives seven minutes before the hour, suit, tie,haircut, the moustache shorn away. Gonna make it this time. Honest, Honey. From hereon it's hard work and a straight career. I'll never write another short story

Account Management Service. Such a nice business sounding name. It's painted on the frosted glass in gold letters. But the door is locked. So much for the early bird routine.

He's a threadbare young man--an intellectual, or what passes for it these days. To look at him is to see a face pale as an oyster. To look at him is to know his wife cuts his hair. The streets are full of his kind, former students who have never clearly understood the demarcation between community College and the real world.

So Kevin Cassidy stands there shuffling his polished shoes. In good time a leggy high-ass black girl with her hair done in a million braids all tipped off with colorful beads arrives to open the door. Not your average secretary type--her frosted fingernails are much too long for efficient typing.

He's supposed to meet a Mr. Klipper. She motions him into a squeaky chair, pops a stick of gum into her already moist mouth, and suddenly there's a confession magazine open on the desk before her.

Kevin counts the rhythmic strokes of her jaws. He reaches one thousand, two thousand, then three, before the phone finally rings. She picks it up, her beaded hair jangling.

"Account Management."

And someone is screaming on the other end. Kevin makes out certain shocking words, but Ms. Confession Magazine only yawns.

"Listen to this." She hands him the phone and he picks up part of the story. Somebody is billing the caller's sixty-three wife for maternity expenses, twins, no less. Could it be Account Management Service? Kevin listens in wonder.

The door opens and Mr. Klipper enters in a pair of baggy pants, a long droopy moustache, shoulder length hair, and that peculiar odor that says--I sleep in my clothes.

Ms. Confession points at the telephone which Kevin still holds to his ear. "Sabino. He's mad as hell and he ain't gonna take it no more.

Mr. Klipper's heard all this before. "You," he says to Kevin. "You that new guy?" He knows these Community College types. He recognizes that haircut. He spots that pale and newly naked lip.

"Sir!: Kevin covers the mouthpiece with his hand. "This man says he's going to sue for a quarter million dollars!"

"He does, does he?" M<r. Klipper grabs the phone. "Hello? Savino? Don't give me that hysterectomy bullshit. I don't care if your old lady had ten of them. You're gonna pay that bill--you hear!~"

He hangs up and looks straight at Kevin. "Can you beat that? He's giving us that old hysterectomy routine.

It seems they try everything. Hysterectomies. Amnesia. Some even pretend to be dead. "But we collect! That guy, he's gonna crack! He's gonna come in on his knees and beg to settle that account!"

Mr. Klipper explains the job. "These people are deadbeats. You gotta be tough. Ruthless. Take your work home. Call 'em at three, four in the morning. Never let them rest! And don't let anyone tell you you can't make money here. Commission! Look at me! I own three cars, all European. My girl wears mink! I even send my m other an allowance!"

There's a list of delinquent accounts, telephone numbers, a phone. You pick it up, you dial, you set your teeth and wait.

Kevin finds his heart pounding. Like all writers he has a deep psychological aversion to telephones--especially when they were ringing on a stranger's line. What will happen when someone answers. How will he actually speak to a real person?

A little kid answers. you hear, in the background, "I ain't home."

A woman answers in perfect English--and suddenly switches to Polish or Portuguese.

Some give promises. Friday. They'll pay on Friday. Always f\Friday.

Others are belligerent. Ain't paying nuttin till you fix their television, or food processor, or whatever. No use telling them you only collect debts.

After a few hours it is clear Kevin is getting nowhere. The folks out there may not have taken and college courses, but they're still too smart for him. Mr. Klipper shakes his head. 'here. Hang on to the extension and watch how I do it."

So they're both on the same line when a woman answers, distraught, tearful. "Oh, oh, oh! Whoever you are--I can't talk now."

"You damn well better talk," Mr. Klipper snarls. "This is Mr. Luciano and I've been given a contract on your account!"

"Oh, leave me alone, please leave me alone," she wails so pathetically that Kevin almost cries out in commiseration.

"We'll leave you alone when you come up with six hundred bucks!"

"You have no mercy," the woman weeps. 'Leave me alone or I'll kill myself--then see how much you get!"

Mr. Klipper bares his yellow teeth. "Don't give me that old I'll kill myself routine."

A shriek. Kevin's hair stands on end. On the other end of the line there is a crash, curiously resembling the shattering of a window. Then the swiftly fading scream of a departing soul. Then silence. Then the weeping of children. Kevin thinks he hears the words "Mommy, mommy."

"Ah hah hah." Mr. Klipper hangs up. "Hear that? The old throw myself out the window routine."

So Kevin sees he has much to learn. He comes home that night sobered, thoughtful Honey, who teaches elementary school, is lying exhausted on the couch, a wet rag over her forehead.

"There's hope," Kevin whispers. "I got the job."

New jewelry. She's such a nut for new jewelry. Even if it's only a jag diamond. Flash enough carets and they'll think the Shah of Iran remembered you in his will. But the friendly neighborhood mugger who hangs out by the alley doesn't even look up.

They all know her. Bernadette O'Higgens, a dusky long legged young woman who claims to be a model. Maybe she is. Every morning she leaves with her American Airlines bag and hops the downtown bus. A springy indefatigable chick who favors tight pants and platform shoes, who studies karate and yoga and sometimes creative writing at the Community College. Yes, she must be a model. A hooker could afford better jewelry, would live in a better place.

The building is a trap. Many times the landlord has been warmed. Get those wires back into the wall. Plug up those pipes. Get some rat traps and set them around. But rest is cheap and she lives there, as do others.

There's an old man who plays the numbers and prays to Jesus for help. There's an unemployed oboe player who practices all night. There's a gay couple, male or female, nobody can tell. There's an unhappy young man who really means to kill himself and will gladly tell you all about it. And there's Mr. Logi who comes and goes at mysterious hours and never speaks at all. Passing Mr. Logi in the hallway, Bernadette O'Higgins draws a breath of raw gasoline. "That man's an arsonist," she decides as she is turning the key in her lock. 'i've got to move out of here."

Furnished room. You know the type. Tattered couch, tattered chairs, tattered rugs, Cockroaches peering out from behind the pictures. Toilet that overruns ever morning. Bernadette throws her shoes at a cockroach, drops her coat over a chair, falls on the couch, and admires her yag. Someday she will have a diamond like this, only real. Mr. Real will come along and he will put the real thing on her real finger. But he better hurry. She's twenty-nine and the modeling business hasn't been so hot and she's been fighting off all those Mr. Not-so-reals for sooo long.

The phone rings. "Is dis Miss Bernadette O'Higgins?" a strange man's voice rasps.

Why not say yes? She does.

"Dis is Mr. Antipasto from the Account Management Service."

Right away she knows she's got a patsy.

"Lissen. We gotta account here for a hunret sixty bucks."

"Oh," she says, knowing very well what it's all about. "But I didn't buy anything from you company."

"You had an account wit Abram's Joolers," the voice rasps.

Down the hall the oboe player begins to tune up, sounding precisely like an Indian Fakir bending over his basket.

"Oh, my goodness. Do you suppose this is about the turquoise?"

So she tells him about the turquoise, how it goes with her peach colored jump suit, how she foolishly signed the agreement, how she went weeks, months with hardly a job, how the rent became due, how a friend needed money for an abortion, how a purse was stolen or lost and finally returned with only--but thank God for that--the I.D.'s in it. She tells of her strict upbringing, of a mother who insisted debts were sacred, of a father who always paid cash. She tells him of much more than he might have cared to listen to if she had not had such a seductive low timbered voice. And finally she tells him, Friday, absolutely Friday when she cases her check from the modeling agency. 'I did lingerie," she confesses. "I usually won't do that but . . . " She tells him Friday, without a doubt Friday and Account Management Service will have all one hundred and sixty dollars and goodbye it has been nice talking.

Kevin Cassidy sits back, a bewildered smile on his face.

"Antipasto!" Mr. Klipper sneers. He has been dictating a letter, listening with one ear to this lovely conversation., "How many times do I have to tell you? It's Anastasia!"

The secretary, typing very slowly with her frosted nails, has completed the heading. John Savino, number such and such, zip code so and so. Dear Sir. Without waiting for instructions, she plunges into the text which she knows by heart. A very succinct text, the kind never taught at Community college. It begins, "We no longer can . . " and ends "our legal staff."

Kevin rubs his upper lip. "She said she'd pay."

"Oh Friday! How many times do I have to tell you? Friday is never!"

Kevin sighs. "The strangest thing. She said she was a model, but I could have sworn I heard a snake charmer in the background."

Friday comes. Friday goes. Kevin cashes his paycheck. $82.50. Too bad. You got to add to it with commission. If that O'Higgens babe had come through you could have brought home flowers for Honey.

Instead, Kevin takes work home. Honey doesn't like it when he does this, uses the phone, ties up the line at all hours. As a matter of fact, watching his moustache grow back, she begins to suspect her husband hasn't got himself into the business world after all.

"You've been writing again," she insists, lying on t he couch with that wet rag over her forehead.

"No, no, my dear. I've been calling consumers day and night. Look! I'm doing it right now!"

He dials and the phone rings clear across town.

Bernadette O'Higgins hesitates before answering it. But it could be Mr. Real. It always could be.

"Did is Mr. Enchilada from da Account Management. I'm calling about dat joolry bill. . . "

"Oh, Mr. Antipasto," she corrects. "Didn't you get my check?"

She's a pro. Always she'll send it Friday. Always it gets lost in the mail. Or the modeling agency doesn't have the check ready. Or her mother is taken to the hospital and lord if the Blue Cross hasn't lapsed. Or many many things. Never does she show anything but the best of will. And always there is this oboe playing in the background.

"That broad's got you number," Mr. Klipper insists.

"She says Friday," Kevin insists.

"You're writing again," Honey insists.

"I always pay my debts," Bernadette insists.

Obviously he winds up going to her place. Picks a time shortly after dark when she always seems to be home, takes the cross town buss, shudders w hen he sees the neighborhood. It's a warm muggy night, the windows are open all the way to the fourth floor, and he can hear the snake charmer music pouring out. Two women are on the stoop kissing. Or maybe it's two men. He can't tell which.

Do they know what apartment Ms. Bernadette O'Higgens lives in?

They send him on and the short of the two, the one with the bright red lipstick, lisps, " Well. He's certainly no Mr. Real."

Up the staircase he goes. When he reaches her door he hers ugly gasping sounds behind it, as if a large wet animal were being strangled. He knock, and she answers with a plunger in her hand.

"Watch where you step. The toilet's gone over again."

"This is the Bernadette O'Higgens he has been talking with. She's tall and far too dark to be pure Irish. Her short curly afro style hair is suspiciously negroid and so, for that matter, are her large dangling earrings. She is wearing that peach colored jump suit that goes so well with the turquoise and a magnificent yag diamond worth, say $200,000--if only it were real. A splendid girl She makes Honey look like something from the convalescent home.

"My goodness," she says. "I would never have taken you for a Mr. Antipasto."

In no time at all she has him down on the tattered couch and is pouring red wine. She is thinking--what a break this is! It will take Account Management months and months to recover its momentum. And, of course, she checks him out just in case he's Mr. Real.

"I've seen you somewhere," she says. "Did you by any chance go to Community College?"

Well. He admits he did take a creative writing course or two.

"I remember you,' she says--an outrageous lie. 'You were in my class! I had long hair then."

Immediately he's telling her about his new novel. "It's about a guy who works for a collection agency."

But the book is stuck in outline. Little wonder--he's chosen the story of Mr. Sabino and his hysterectomized wife. Someone at Community College forgot to tell him sixth-three year old women and not interesting--not even to the people who write about them.

Well, it's a pleasant wine, even if it's only Swiss Colony. They knock off a few glasses and he starts getting that warm feeling. Damn! She looks good with her peach colored pants suit and her dangling earrings. The oboe player is breaking in a new reed. "You could write a book about this place," she tells him, pouring out another glass of red. Take that guy who prays for a number, how he keeps saying, "Jesus gonna come through for me." Take that gay couple, how they got married in gay church and how the short one threw his or her garter and hit a young guest in his or her eye. Take--first pouring another glass and removing her necklace and earrings which are getting heavy--that moody young man who is planning suicide. Then she tells about the old lady who does magic. If you want to get rid of anybody, all you have to do is bring in a bit of their hair. Momentarily he thinks of Honey. The wine must be making him dizzy. They are getting close now on that couch. She has unbuttoned her jump suit all the way to the navel and he can see all that dark velvety skin. He wants to p;ut his hand in there, and why should he? More wine; they kill the bottle, and the tells him about Mr. Logi and the way he smells of arson. "But he won't burn his own house down, will he? Without waiting for an answer, she shrugs out of her jump suit and throws her arms around Kevin. The oboe player, now on the E flat scale, never misses a note as t hey sink together into the dusty recesses of the couch.

Perhaps it's the oboe player. Perhaps he hits just the right note exactly as they hit orgasm. Perhaps it's the wine. Perhaps it's because they are both Community College Alumni. Whatever, at the very moment when Kevin Cassidy blows his cookies, bernadette O'Higgens decides that he, he, no other than he, is Mr. Real. Of course she's made that mistake before, impetuous girl, but for the time being he's Mr. Real and that's all there is to it.

Now there are passionate kisses and pledges of undying true love. Now there is talk of "getting away from it all together." Kevin has not much to say but Bernadette more than makes up for him. She mentions Mexico, Acapulco, the Honduras Coast. She mentions California, the Big Sur, Steinbeck Country. Kevin fights hard to remember Honey, poor Honey, but all he sees is that wet washrag on her forehead.

Account Management Service. Such a nice business sounding name. As the weeks go by, Kevin learns what kind of a boss Mr. Klipper really can be. A boss who grows purple and screams at you. "Tell them to pay their bills! Ask them how they'd like it if some night a couple of the boys were to drop in!" Poor Kevin. Up to now he's collected a mere thirty-three dollars.

Yes, it's a tough world, even for bill collectors, and Honey does nothing to make things easier. "Don't touch me! Go earn some money! Then you can touch me!" What's he supposed to do? Live like a monk? Not while Bernadette is around. He gets to know the oboe player by name, meets Mr. Logi who does smell of gasoline. He buys a charm from the old Polish lady. (The charm is supposed to give you power over women, but all it does is give Honey three days indigestion.}

Meanwhile the bills for the yag ring and the great afro earrings are added to Bernadette's account. She's up to four hundred dollars. "I give you two more weeks to collect from that broad," Mr. Klipper warns. "Then I take over for myself."

There's Honey. There's this job. There's this novel that's never going to get out of outline. And now Bernadette. It's a tough responsibility, being someone's Mr. Real.

"I want to run away with you," she says.

"But Sweetheart," he says. "You're so terribly in debt.

Inevitably, he funnels his frustrations into his work. "Hello, Sabino? Listen you creep. Don't give me that old hysterectomy routine. Yeah, yeah, I know what time of the morning it is. You wanna sleep? Put that money in an envelope--then you sleep!"

One morning there it is. an obscene not and a photograph of the sixty--three year old wife accompany Sabino's check. 'May you rot in hell! May your mother contract syphilis!" And much more.

Is Mr. Klipper pleased? No, he is not. He has personally worked these waters almost eighteen months. Now another man pulls in the fish. So instead of a bonus, he's threatens to hold out twenty dollars a week until Bernadette's bill is paid.

Meanwhile Bernadette has been to the old Polish lady. "I got to know. Is he Mr. Real?"

Out come the charms. A toad's foot, dried bat blood, fingernails from an unborn babe, a bit of monkey fur. The crone, the tip of her nose almost meeting the cleft of her chin, mixes it all up in a Dr. Pepper bottle and sprinkles the results on a pocket mirror. "Look into the glass," she commands. Bernadette sees herself. But it is as if there is a shadowy figure hovering over her shoulder. "That's him!" she cries. "Mr. Real!"

"Ten dollars," says the old lady.

"I'll have it Friday!"

By Friday Mr. Klipper has kept his word. And isn't Honey pleased when she sees the check now. $62,50 A nice business sounding sum. From here on, Kevin can sleep on the couch.

Kevin arrives at Bernadette's filled with rage. In the hall he p;asses Mr. Logi, toting two five gallon cans of Gasoline. "Behold!: Logi cries, "The hand of the Lord is on this earth!" Or some such nonsense.

Bernadette is wearing a beautiful brown skirt, very full and cut from some rich material. Her blouse matches as does the scarf she has loosely knotted about her lovely throat. Kevin notices her boots, new, that soft pliable real leather that costs and costs and costs. "Come downstairs," she says. "I got something to show you."

"How can you afford clothes like that when you can't even pay your debts? In fact, they're costing me--"

She cuts him short with a kiss. "Wait till you see, wait till you see."

And downstairs, diamond bright at the curb, glitters a brand new Lincoln Continental packed with suitcases. "Now kiss me," she says. "And we'll be off."

"We?"

"Do you think I would let Mr. Real get away?"

"But this car . . "

"Ten dollars down. No payments till October. By then we'll be in a garden in Guarnavaca. We can create a whole new world for ourselves."

A sign. A sign. Have you ever stood at the crossroads of life and waited for a sign?

"See!" Bernadette flips open her wallet and a whole deck of credit cards shoots out accordion style.

"But some day we'll have to pay!" Kevin cries.

"Of course! Of course we'll pay--as soon as we have the money!"

It's such a logical proposition Kevin hardly needs the sign. But he gets it anyway. Suddenly the oboe player has stopped and the snake charmer music is replaced by sirens. The gay couple run out of the building, desperately clutching their bodies. "Fire! Fire!" the old Polish lady appears in the window, her hair in flames. The numbers player sprints down the sidewalk in his underwear and the suicidal young man, in his rush to get out of the burning building slips on the stairs and is killed. Mr. Logi reappears with his gasoline can crying, "Judgement! Judgement!"

How many signs does a guy need? Kevin slides into the plush interior of the Continental--wonderful car, has an instrument panel like an airliner's--turns the ignition key, and unleashes three hundred and sixty purring horses. With Bernadette at his side, he turns down the street, vaguely heading south.

The gay couple stand at the curb watching. 'If you ask me," the short red lipped one says, "That guy ain't no Mr. Real."

The tall knobby-kneed one takes a moment before he or she replies. Then come the words of wisdom.

"Baby, if it looks good, grab it, cause it may not come by again.