“I’d have to say, well, nachos,” said Kay, sitting in the guest chair and looking at her feet. She peers over the notepad in her lap, and ponders the toes of her shoes. “Red wine too, but you can’t kill yourself as fast 
with chips and cheese.” I thought for a moment, then wrote “nachos” in big blue letters on the white board, right next to a fading limerick about farting, and a cartoon I had drawn four years earlier.
“I think you’re right, here,” I replied. “I was originally thinking white wine may work as well, but the sweetness might get in the way of the spices and what have you.” I shot Kay a serious look. “Yeah, if I’m picking comfort food for this desert island of yours, I’m having a hard time seeing anything better than red wine and nachos. Maybe… maybe a can of Slim Jims too – no, no, let’s stick with the nachos.” A bored pause, and an audible sigh.
“So, two weeks to go,” Kay begins, “Are you getting itchy all over?”
“Most places,” I replied, “though around here…” I paint a circle in the air with my index finger over my genitals, “it’s getting really bad. I think I have ball lice or something.” Classic. Kay emits from the corner or her lips a brief pashaw that betrays, despite her IQ and more refined office-sensibility, this was solid comedy.
“Well, I’m right behind you. Five more weeks here and I’m paroled,” she says.
“Hold up!” I exclaimed. “Doritos! How did we forget Doritos?” Kay nods in agreement, and I write it in all capital letters on the whiteboard.
…
In our agency jobs, Kay and I were at the tail end of a large turnover for roughly a forty person agency, most of us leaving the state for better opportunity, and some of us venturing into the grey abyss of career-land to be heard from only in a wintery future where we’ve all grown beards and now live on various animal fats. Nearly fourteen people had left inside the space of eight months, and if you’ve ever worked in a corporation, you know why. When the ideology of those who’ve lost touch with the fact that their children’s Montessori school tuitions are funded by twenty somethings with car payments – when they begin to forget, excuses permeate the morale. Everyone becomes replaceable as they turn heel on previous exaltations of how much they appreciate their “family,” and ownership searches for excuse in others, aside from themselves, so as to shed burden. It’s never a lack of attention from upper management, or their greed mated with excuses – no, it’s something we, the traitors, must’ve done. Regardless, I’ll leave these few sentences to cap the experience as my therapist tells me it’s not healthy to ruminate on the poorer of past job experience. I’m still not completely free from my artificial sweetener addiction – produced thoroughly by the cancelation of Firefly – the brightest light there ever was, if there ever was, in the verse.
When Kay was hired, the agency called a downtown structure it’s international world super headquarters, and it was cool as much as bricked walls and pale wooden desks could cool. My office was actually in a separate building, kind of, and it was a sterile set of rooms wherein the multimedia department and the assorted copywriters made our nests. These offices were far less trendy than the whole of the company, more of a gated wing of the agency where access was divided by two locked doors (never forget your key) and a concrete set of steps, and might as well have been guarded by a rag-wearing old man who demanded you answer riddles before passage. The carpet on our side was dull, and the white walls combined with the grey topped desks could easily lull you into less of an argument if someone came up to you with a small paper cup, then asked you to turn your head and cough. My office was one of the largest and it shared a door with the company animator, but a portion of it was used for storage of old monitors, so that was great. I often thought my office had the perfect size and dimension for a large couch to relax and think of new creative what-not’s on, but company policy frowned on such displays of relaxation. I was told from fellow employees it wasn’t the best of ideas as the company opted for a more Cold War Russian theology – sure I could have a couch in my office to show people I was creative, but if I ever used the couch as it was intended I’d have to spend a night in the attic, returning to work the following day shy a toe or two, and possibly impotent.
I noticed the new hire, Kay (a moniker the company email said she claimed) sitting in someone’s office guest-chair and talking with another recent new hire that she’d known from somewhere else – her back to me – and with a sweeping hand gesture I glanced at her wedding ring and knew instantly we could never be friends. This was also not true, but every woman in town had been married off, and I needed to find one who didn’t know me very well so interest might yet still be a possibility. If my prospects didn’t know that I’d eat TV dinners out of a bowl with a spoon – all the better my chances – though, my morning snack of coffee and Slim Jims likely didn’t aid in the odor of my conversation. Kay was short, cute, with tightly cropped pixie-fringe hair, was hired on talent where I was hired likely by mistake, and has the deep laugh of a woman learned. Not James Earl Jones deep, but more so a speaking voice that lets you know she’s been places, tried substances, and has more tattoos than you. Her job was to be a copywriter, but for a client that translates to “write me five slogans, I’ll pick one, then rewrite if for you.” Tradition dictated that as a new hire myself, I was to put Kay in a head-lock and shiv a mechanical pencil thumb-deep into her ribcage while whispering latin curses in her ear – however a simple nod and, “I’m Matthew,” did the trick. Kay was relegated to the same wing of the pseudo-building where I worked, but we really never talked until the company packed up and moved far east of town.
Toward the end of our journey in this agency, we began wasting more and more of our time at work in each others offices since the hourglass on our tenure had nearly emptied. There was a complete attitude of “screw it” as we moseyed across the agency halls, hands in pockets, and kicked invisible leaves across the carpet. Kay was far more restrained than I – but in her defense she had actual client work to continue the charade with. Out of fear or courtesy, when I gave my eight-week notice (they paid incentives for advanced warning) my pile of client work dried up to nil and required me to utilize my expert “pretend to be working while I practice card tricks” skills. Kay would pop down to my office, and I up to hers, and often we’d draw the blinds and there would be dull laughter filtering into the adjacent work areas. While this was the early 2000’s and not the 1950’s, two married-to-other-people-people spending large chunks of the day behind closed doors did give off an air of the inappropriate, and this is something I only considered long after I had left. Again, my days were spent becoming more audibly upset with company policy and letting my dress code slowly degrade into the uncomfortable-for-others range, something I’ve been known to do as my days under any particular employ come to an end. Good hygiene or bad, I was near free from this place, nearly all the air was blown into my life raft and those waters looked calm. Also, my analogies have clearly not improved.
…
From this point on in the story, I’ll be conjuring up wholly unique and false names and places for certain events and peoples. While this may not be necessary, my vague grasp of the law and it’s intricacies when illuminating possibly embarrassing scenarios for other people could drift into libel or slander or some other lawyerly sounding word. Also, this was an interesting writing exercise, trying to remember the events and people involved with a completely alien nomenclature draped over it. People who know me personally and are at least familiar with the locale and individuals in the story will surely enjoy a hearty laugh or sigh, as this isn’t some top secret information – rather it’s a minor story of a crazy person. True, my wife’s family is full of lawyers and a simple phone call may have helped, but I find ringing their homes is more tolerated when I’m in dire need, like when I’m unsure about a speeding ticket, or when I’ve kidnapped an elderly woman from her home. Change one: I’ve swapped my old manager’s name to Danny – a reference that if (God forbid) he ever reads this, he’ll hopefully enjoy just before he places the barrel of a gun in his mouth.
…
One of Kay’s first assignments was a pairing with me and my manager, Danny. Always available to belch or fart at a serenely inappropriate moment, Danny was a pretty okay manager. He never quite understood me, and in my early twenties I gave him a thousand and one reasons to regret passing my office or stopping in to say hello – whether I was designing a tattoo I’d never get or making an entry in a Photoshop contest over at Fark.com, Danny left confused and concerned every time. Not every young new web designer keeps a stash of beef jerky next to his brought-from-home coffee maker on his desk, and most employees wore socks to work under their shoes. His power was minimal in the hierarchy of the company, so he did his best to juggle the variety of strange personalties under his watch and sponge up our complaints about our employer, simply squeezing them into a jar underneath his desk, as this was more effective than attempting to pass them upwards into the firm concrete of stagnation.
Danny and I never really clicked, but we were friendly enough, and one of Danny’s super powers was the ability to engage in conversation with any type of personality that came through the door. As my immediate manager he had congealed into a strange mixture of manager, asshole, listener, and alcoholic uncle. He gave my wife and I a wooden bread-box as a wedding present and strangely, when I reach to it with a slice of toast on the brain, this is how I like to remember working with him. When he, Kay, and I were tasked with visiting a new client’s business to begin the discovery process for a new website he’d ordered, this put light fingerprints on everyone’s emergency escape button. There are good clients, there are bad clients, and then there are the crazies. On one crisp fall afternoon we were all about to meet a special brand of the latter.
…
Bill ran the largest and possibly the most famous carnation farm in the world. I’ll let that soak in for a minute. It was surely the most famous in the United States, but as far as the world he wasn’t quite sure, as he hasn’t been everywhere in the world quite yet. I know this because it was the first thing he told me when we arrived on his beautiful acreage. Kay, Danny, and I all crammed into Danny’s car, and we drove to the outskirts of town – those places that even out and slowly become farm land. Close enough to town to fix a jones for buffalo wings, but just far enough outside of town that you could walk to your detached garage in the full monty. We pulled slowly up the gravel driveway at Bill’s house, and before we opened the door, we leaned forward and peered from the windshield as one would when trying to detect a green light but had pulled directly into the middle of the intersection. A round of nods later, we exited the vehicle, and walked up to his massive house. Two door-bells and three knocks later, Bill answered the door wearing a dirty t-shirt and well worn sweat pants. Little did I know that my disgust at his wardrobe would influence me later in life. The word we’re looking for here is “irony.” The overwhelming smell of cigarettes hugged our clothes, and Kay later remarked that she was near certain that he was keeping the spent cigarette butts in his pockets, and possibly his mouth.
Bill was the kind of guy that I always assumed an alien would take the shape of. His body was average for a middle aged man, well fed with thick fingers from his work and a rounded not-quite-fat belly from his evenings. His head was an almost perfect egg shape, his sweaty skin stretched over it with a face that was as round in the front as it was on the sides. His large 1980’s dad-glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, the kind that he’d probably purchased twenty years earlier and refused to replace. He had very little hair left and appeared to shave roughly every other day – and the tuft on the top of his head made me imagine it was the handle used to pull his face off of his alien skull every evening and let it air-out until the next morning while he slept in his giant carnation shaped omnivipod that kept a constant mist sprayed directly onto his exposed face-lungs. Bill, it’s the first name an alien would seem to give themselves as they learn how their new human body works, lips forming an oval and then pursed – “Biiilll. My naem… na-ame… my name is Bill.” Bill was also a handshake dodger. He didn’t dodge shaking hands because he had some deep fear of fingers, but he was that guy who sees three people with their hands out for a hand shake, shakes two, then gets distracted by the third while pointing to something else in conversation. It was me, the first time, who’s hand was “left hangin’” while Kay and Danny simply looked at me and felt the burn all the same. We retired to Bills living room – a place adorned with Pottery Barn artifacts and plastic flowers. Strangely, I don’t remember seeing a single carnation in this room.
Bill led the meeting. I had nothing to contribute, as every question Kay and Danny asked was met with a long diatribe that had little to no value for our project. Bill spoke quickly and loudly, he wasn’t excited that we were there, just joyed that he could once again recite his practiced speech on how amazing his carnations were. “Best in the United States, that’s a certainty,” he kept repeating. We dealt with him the same way you deal with the crazy homeless man you’ve accidentally walked in on in the McDonald’s bathroom washing out a diaper in the sink. He looks at you to engage in conversation, “You know I’ve been to the center of the sun, right? I am president of the ocean.” You simply pretend to urinate, mimic zipping up your pants, and reply, “I know, sir. I’ve seen your campaign posters, never again will we suffer from a lack of brown napkins.” He nods in agreement, and you leave your new best friend to continue washing his fetid miscellany in the sink.
I remember bringing along a notepad and a pen, but I also remember taking not a single note. Instead, I opted to avoid eye contact with Bill while he mentally raped Kay and Danny – their eyes fixated on Bill but their ever tightening grip on the armrests of their chairs betraying a person in the center of an epileptic fit. I would scribble something on the page, cross it out, then scribble down a new something in an attempt to appear busy and attentive. There was the one classic, “What do you think Matt?” pointed in my direction by Bill, and as this freed Danny and Kay from his hold, I had been paying no attention to a single word of the conversation. “That sounds like a good idea, but I’d want to be sure that we showcase the pride you have in your carnations. Bright colors are going to reflect this,” I replied. This is an acquired skill, but for me today it was simply a fluke – a karmic withdrawal for something positive I’d done earlier in life. With my history as a solid C and D student, my reply should’ve been more along the lines with tearing off my shirt and then running from the room screaming. Had I answered incorrectly, I was certain that Bill would’ve angrily shot from his mouth and across the room a black sinewy tube, and started pumping anticoagulants directly into my neck. “This guy knows exactly what I’m talking about,” Bill stated while pointing directly at me. “Clearly you’ve got a winner here.”
We arose when Bill did, and he led us through an elevated kitchen into his massive garage, where his office was located. Inside, Bill took a seat in his leather desk chair, and a quick survey of the room showed us that there were no other chairs for our frightened butt cheeks. Kay, Danny, and I simply stood while Bill took to his computer and feverishly started opening pictures of his carnations to show us how well he knew his flowers. He didn’t make any notice or mention that we were all still standing, like servants in waiting, around his office. “Look, here,” he said. “Come closer.” Bill turned his monitor to the three of us, and a slow motion slide-show of the various carnations he’s grown played using the best Ken Burns effect whatever screen-saver freeware he’d used to create it could summon. An amateur keyboard-esque midi song played behind it, the kind you’d hear in an electronic greeting card. Bill was discussing his carnations with Danny when his gaze suddenly locked back to mine – he pointed at me. “Tell me, tell me what song this is. I’ll bet you’ll never guess.” My heart raced, since he asked this semi irritated question seconds after I had noticed the black shotgun in the corner of the room. It wasn’t located in a prime piece of real estate where Bill could readily arm himself, it was across his desk in an opposite corner of the office. This was a position he’d likely chosen to simply show people he was armed, that he was capable of buying a gun and bullets and he might use them if the sky wasn’t the proper shade of boogers that day.
“Uh, that’s ‘zippity doo daa’,” I said.
“Bang,” replied Bill. “Got it again.”
With this, Bill rose, and we rose with him. Our next and last stop was his porch, the place where the entire mini-adventure began. We asked if we could visit the two giant greenhouses he’d erected on his property, and he said he’d “never let us in there”. His human emotion sensors must’ve properly notified him of our confusion, and he quickly added that this was because it wasn’t carnation season (or something like that), and the greenhouses were completely empty. On his porch, he reached onto a ledge, and on return he produced one potted carnation for our inspection. It was beautiful. His craziness or unidentified technology apparently worked – I mean, we did see photos, but the man’s work was quite simply beautiful. He was like the embodiment of Chris Cooper’s “John Laroche” character from the film Adaptation, only heavier and much, much more scary. His work was beautiful, but I wasn’t entirely certain he didn’t have a jar somewhere in his possession with a decade’s worth of used bandaids inside. With this, the parting formalities were passed around, and three hands went out for the handshake. Kay was the snubbed on this go-around, as she produced her hand and Bill was caught by a sudden brain fever, one that made him skip Kay’s offer and point up to his greenhouses to mutter something to Danny. I pretended not to notice Kay looking down at her empty hand, then returning it to her jacket pocket – a courtesy she extended me an hour earlier.
After we returned to Danny’s car, he started it and backed out of the driveway at exactly the speed in which we assumed he would. There was silence for a few minutes, then we began exchanging notes on what we’d just endured. From our hour or so meeting with Bill, the three of us had noted the following:
1.) Bill grew carnations, and only carnations. They were the perfect plant, and there wasn’t any need to waste time with others. Carnations were all that you would ever need.
2.) Bill hired only teenage boys from the local high schools to act as his support staff during the summer. The boys had to be a member of the wrestling team, as there was no other sport more noble, had a better work ethic, or that taught you more about the delicacy of working with flowers.
3.) Bill might actually be the world’s best carnation farmer as far as we could tell with our limited floral knowledge, however the feeling that he was going to make a necklace out of our genitals was something we couldn’t shake.
…
When my last day on the job arrived, I left around noon, because – say it with me – what were they going to do, fire me? Tradition held that a departing inmate was taken to a nearby pub for drinks on the company nickel, and a hearty tally-ho from a good portion of the staff pushed your boat from the dock. By the time I left, departure number fourteen inside of three quarters, I was treated with a “well, bye” from the receptionist, and I drove immediately home with my cardboard box not nearly full of office supplies I should’ve stolen on my way out. A few hours later my wife and I were joined by Kay and her husband at a bar downtown near where Mikayla and I used to overpay for an apartment. We all retired, walked up to the apartment after buying a few rounds, and sat in near silence (music would’ve helped the mood on reflection) in our living room and uncomfortably sipped wine, thinking about how life was surely going to get better from here and listening to the traffic through our open window.
I called Kay before writing this story to double check my facts, and ruminate on what she could remember from the events. As most of my pre-article phone calls go, the phrases “Oh, God,” “I can hardly remember,” and, “That really happened, didn’t it?” were directed at me. She’s living in California now, the true fashionista (a word she likely despises) she was meant to be. Kay and her husband were actually one of my first clients when I launched out into freelance waters, and for their American dollar bills I produced for them an embarrassing work of art that I’m thankful has been changed and replaced well since. Kay teaches, and she’s a consultant on the sway and forth of the culture of the consumer, fashion, and the creativity to exploit there-in. She still writes too, and I know this not only from her LinkedIn page, but from every simple sentence she sends me via e-mail that reminds me her command over the written word is still a double-blackbelt compared to attempts of your humble author.
We ruminated on people like Bill, those well to do business owners with a delicate grasp on how to interact with other humans. We hear stories about people like Steve Jobs, a boss that you needed to avoid eye contact with at your very own job – lest you be fired on the spot, or suffer the possibility of Steve punching into your abdomen, and eating one of your kidneys right in front of you. There’s a special flavor of sociopathy that seems to accompany these people, and I’ve always hoped it was a prerequisite for success. I did some Google’ing of Bill before writing this, and from an article online via the town paper’s website – it appears he’s picked up and moved states. It had something to do with a “greenbelt tax exemption” – something that allowed him to dodge traditional farming taxes since he lived close to town, and grew everything in greenhouses. The article has many quotes from Bill complaining about how now, in a recession, is not the time to be shutting down small businesses. So, Bill up and left. The article’s author actually went to the County Assessor for comment. He said that Bill never actually contacted his office for information regarding the new taxes he would incur. Apparently, Bill was looking at a yearly tax increase of three hundred and ninety one dollars. Total. For the year. That’s right, Bill did well over two hundred thousand dollars or more of business every year, but his fevered thinking decided that packing up his entire life, home, acreage, and business was an easier thing to do than to cough up a few extra benjamins.
…
Kay and I haven’t seen each other in person for almost five years now, and our fateful meeting with not-Bill the carnation farmer (that really wasn’t) was from today nearly nine years ago. Near the end of the conversation we started talking about pornography, as married-to-other-people-peoples often do over the phone. I told her my porn name would have to be “Burton Cummings,” an homage to the lead singer of the 1970’s rock group The Guess Who. “I know my tranny name,” said Kay. “Lyle of the Valley.” I found this funny, but still felt as though there was a level of humor to this I wasn’t smart enough to enjoy. This is how it usually went with Kay.
“I look forward to the possibly never awkward lunch we’ll have one day,” I said. “We’ll go out for coffee and have nothing to say, and end the meal on a hesitant hug.”
“Yeah,” said Kay. “We’ll see what other horrors you can remind me of.”
…
Music masterfully created by Allen Masterton, who’s talents are without flaw.