like to reiterate some aspects of it before we continue. In our conversation you basically agreed to play on the management side of the fence in this company, and to work more seriously at your position. This was definitely a fourth down situation, but understand that I allowed you to call the play.”
I had spent many nights, lying awake in bed with fists clenched involuntarily, fantasizing about this moment. Usually the fantasy consisted of me firing off a string of cleverly vulgar obscenities, but on weirdly violent nights it ended with me pulling Brandon over his desk by his Brooks Brothers lapels.
Now, looking at his reddening face and hearing his feet slide nervously off the desk drawer that he had only moments before so coolly placed them on, I only wished he’d hurry up and get this done. I must have been grinning, because his plastic smile faded, leaving his fat upper lip stuck momentarily on one of his big front teeth.
“So it was my call, Ric. How did I blow it?”
“Don’t think for a moment that I don’t wish I was sitting here praising your performance. But when you went to work in our Connecticut Avenue store, you went as a representative of management. And you let us down.”
“How so?”
“A very serious complaint was filed last week. A customer called and claimed that two salesmen, fitting the description of John McGinnes and yourself, were intoxicated during business hours. The customer also reported the smell of marijuana in the store. Can you explain this?”
I looked out of Brandon’s tiny window, across the office and through the larger window on the south wall, at the brilliant blue sky. It was one of the last beautifully sunny days of the year.
“Are you letting me go?”
“I’m afraid so, Nick.” His body relaxed in his chair.
“What about McGinnes?”
“I do only what’s right for this company. McGinnes is an extremely valuable employee. I’m hoping that a very serious conversation with him will straighten things around. He’s the engine that powers that store. Bates and Malone are decent employees, but they’re in that store basically because I need some black faces on my D.C. floor. No, I definitely think McGinnes is salvageable.”
“You didn’t actually take that complaint yourself, did you Ric?”
“Mr. Rosen,” he said unsteadily, “took the call when I was out. He suggested that there was no alternative but to let you go. Frankly, on this point I agreed. The nature of the complaint constituted a firing offense.”
Through the window of the south wall I watched a flock of blackbirds pass across the blue sky. I rose from my chair. “Is that all?” I asked. I stared at him until he looked down at his desk, a little gray in the face but basically unmoved.
“I’ve written up your termination papers, effective immediately,” he said coldly. “You’re eligible for vacation pay, which will come in your final check. I’ll pass this on to personnel.”
I walked out of his office and softly closed the door behind me.
It didn’t take long to clean out my desk. I was quite certain that I was through with retail. I left behind industry related materials, drawing implements, certificates from management seminars, sales awards, and all other evidence of my tenure in the business. Oddly, the things I put into the plastic bag that a tight-jawed Fisher had wordlessly handed me were the most memorable objects of my career at Nutty Nathan’s: a book of matches, on the cover of which was printed “It Pays to Advertise,” which opened up to a pair of paper legs that spread to expose a thick patch of female “wool”; a caricature of me that the office girls had commissioned, with what I thought to be a rather lecherous look in my eyes and with a cigarette hanging trashily out the side of my mouth, circa my smoking days; a set of pencils with erasers shaped as dickheads; and a file of vulgarities that is charitably referred to as Xerox “art.”
All of these things I knew would end up in my apartment’s wastebasket. But on that day, like some sentimental pornographer, I couldn’t bear to leave them in my desk.
I dropped the duplicate key off with the woman in charge at the personnel office, who was busy cutting out clip art for the company newsletter, a waste of paper so heinous that as “editor” she should have been convicted of arboricide. Seaton, the controller who peed with his trousers around his ankles, stopped me in the