Chapter 8: Silverman Finds A Groove

Silverman was back at the computer and it felt strange. Not the sitting in front of a terminal and pounding on the keys part. That he was doing that every day at his new job downtown. What felt strange was trying to get back into the writing mood, it had been so long since he'd been there.

He glanced out the window and saw the sky beautifully overcast, one of those thin layers of marine air that allowed just enough sunlight to force its way through, creating a silver aura that lit up The Convent's courtyard and the facades of the Victorians across the street. It was a delicate balance, a little more sunlight and the atmosphere brightens, a little less and the mood turns grey and gloomy. There was only a narrow band on the spectrum that produced this fairy tale effect and even as he watched the moment passed and normalcy returned. He, in turn, returned to his keyboard and the ideas churning through his brain.

Life had been coming together nicely since the last time he had put finger to keyboard, (nobody put pen to paper anymore), and he wondered how much of what had occurred in his life was worth someone else's time to read and how much was merely his own ego seeking immortality. He shrugged. If that were all it were he wouldn't be the first author to be found guilty, not by a long shot.

Where to begin the current reality check? His selves were beginning to merge so deeply and so completely one into the other that at times it was hard to keep them apart, hard to know which was manifesting at any given time.

"You're weird," Shelly had told him when he first described the feeling to her.

"I know," he had answered, "but it's a gentle weird. That's why you love me." They had been getting along wonderfully for the past six months ever since starting his current job. Amazing, he thought, what a regular income, even the wildly uncertain one of a commission only salesman can do for a relationship.

The Pottery Barn gig had long since passed into history, followed by stints on the phone setting sales appointments for a building maintenance firm, and then, when he realized how much more the salesman earned than the appointment setter, selling printer cartridges, foreign language tapes, and management consultants’ services. He had always owned the gift of gab and buoyed by an ever growing friendship with his new friend and alter ego, ag, he was discovering that when properly focused with a given end in sight, that gift could be used to generate a decent income indeed. In fact, for the first time in his entire life, he was finding his services in demand. It felt good.

The current client had him talking on the phone to attorneys throughout the country, helping them achieve their professional goals (read income) by hooking them up with clients who needed their services. He was the oldest one in the office and by choice worked only four days a week, making less calls, acting less frantic, yet closing with the best of them. In fact, he was one of the best of them. And unlike the rest of the sales force, he was getting Social Security. Shelly sent it to their investment counselor as soon as it came in.

Shelly had even smoked with him a few times in the past several months. "I've always enjoyed getting high with you," she said as they sat on the couch in their sweats sharing a bowl, "I like the unique way we relate, not to mention the sex," and her voice trailed off. "I just didn't want to support an addict in his addiction. Now that you have it under control, an occasional night of alternative reality isn't all bad. I just wish there were some other way to ingest this stuff. My lungs are getting too old for this."

He smiled through clenched throat, nodded in agreement, and blew a lungfull of yutz out into the room. The contrast between the good and bad pot produced made him chuckle. Everything in balance, he thought, and he was drawn back to his visit to the dentist earlier that week.

Dr. Harry had found a deep pocket on the inside flesh next to one of his molars the prior time he had gone for a cleaning and on closer inspection had discovered calcium deposits forming on the tooth that were pushing the gum away. He had described a new technique of going under the gum line, scraping off the buildup, polishing the tooth smooth, and then squirting an antibacterial glue into the pocket. "We really should set an appointment and hope it works" he had told Silverman. "If it doesn't, the periodontist is next and that's no fun at all." Silverman was weighing his options two weeks later when the pocket became infected and it was no longer an option.

As usual he had taken gas instead of a shot. Not that he was afraid of needles, but why go numb and feel nothing when he could get a good high and a legal one at that. Dr. Harry had positioned the nosepiece and started the flow and Silverman had inhaled deeply and fully, anxious for the gas to take effect, for the tingling sensation to get to his brain and take him to that place he was, sadly, still unable to reach completely on his own.

"Feel anything yet?" asked Dr. Harry.

"Nope," said Silverman, who was definitely getting a buzz. Dr. Harry turned the gas up slightly. "I've got to remember not to talk," thought Silverman. Last time, during an extraction, he had mumbled something incoherent about the 49ers and Dr. Harry had lowered the gas. He wouldn't make the same mistake again.

He went over. Instantaneously. Into that indescribable feeling where nothing changes yet everything changes. Escape from Flatland, new dimensions of Being, it's not what I know, it's what I know I don't know, yes, that's it, the human condition, what separates us from the beasts, not knowing and knowing that we don't know, to balance in the middle of polar complementaries, to experience both sides at once, the farther apart the better, up/down, in/out, yin/yang, yes!!! This is it. Nirvana. This is what I wanted to experience. Heaven. Bliss. Bli…

And that's when he realized he was experiencing bliss in a dentist's chair with a tube sucking blood from his mouth as a sharp metal tool six millimeters under his gumline scraped away parts of his body.

Yeah, he really was weird. Even he had recognized it then.

But, dammit, wasn't that the very thing he was calling the ultimate human experience? The ability to look at complementaries not just from the outside, imune from both, but to experience them from within, the place in between? He shook his head to clear the brain and went into the kitchen to find somnething to eat.

Back at mission control with a plate of cottage cheese and raw veggies, Silverman widened the lens of his reality check. He had let Shelly make a series of medical appointments for him and had come out with flying colors. They had joined a gym and three times a week after work he cycled and ran and rowed and stretched and swam and lifted weights. And that was on top of the twice a week yoga classes and the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises he did every day on arising.

Then there was the food. He was paying attention to what he took into his body based on other factors than flavor, monitoring proteins and carbs, controlling sugars, and surprise of surprises, actually losing weight. Plus, he'd given up coffee and was drinking green tea in the morning and hot water at work during the day. And, oh yes, no hard liquor! Almost five years now. That transition had surprised ever him.

He had been pouring a vodka and tonic and describing to Adam how vodka was virtually tasteless. "So you only use it to get drunk", his son had asked?

Silverman stopped, thought, poured out the drink and hadn't had any hard liquor since, no alchohol other than wine and beer. This was definitely not the Silverman he'd been living with for so long.

"Don't you have any vices left?", Dr. Smoltz had asked during the physical exam?

"Plenty," Silverman had assured him. But, aside from the pot and some of the websites he surfed with the shades down when Shelly wasn’t around he was really beginning to wonder. Was his lifelong goal of being the best Silverman he could be actually possible? And if it were, how old would he have to be to for it to manifest?

* * *

ag's Story

I been selling all my life. Started back in junior high when I worked for a florist during school vacations and sold Easter lilies or Christmas trees depending on the holiday. When I got out of school I started doing it for real and I been a salesman ever since. Big companies, small companies, water filters, nutritional supplements, solar heating panels, industrial printing, collection services, home study courses, custom T-shirts, airplanes. I done it all.

Meanwhile, I been screwed all along the way. Like I can’t even tell you how many times a manager fucks up and the only way he can keep his job is by getting rid of mine. Or I get stock options in a company where the president embezzles from his own firm, or I build up someone else’s business from scratch and get canned when things get rolling because the guy’s wife has a cousin who needs a job. I’m tired of being fired, I’m tired of being downsized, I’m tired of being over promised and under delivered, I’m tired of being screwed. I’m just plain tired. But I still like to sell and I need the money cause I know how to spend it just as good as I can make it.

So a couple years ago I land this job with a company selling aluminum replacement windows. It’s not the best job I ever had and it’s not the best company I ever worked for and the rest of the salesmen are butt heads, but the potential is there to make some big bucks and a good salesman is never out of work so I say what the hell.

It’s 100% commission, no draw, no advance, no expenses, no nothin’. Just sell and get your money. Real simple. Leads are scarce and I’m the new kid on the block so what can you expect, they give me crap. One night I get an old immigrant couple from somewhere in Slobovia living in a four-room one-story bungalow on the other side of the river. I give up dinner and drive thirty-five miles through a cold driving rain to get there.

Now not to toot my own horn, but I’m a pro and the scene is classic textbook. They are on the couch in the living room and I’ve pulled over a straight backed chair and am facing them from three feet away. My miniature sample window and looseleaf binder with pictures of the home office, Better Business Bureau certificate, and reference letters are on the coffee table facing them, just like they are supposed to be. I give the canned pitch perfectly.

"Ooh, dat's a lot of money", says the old guy when the numbers come up at the end and the room is filled with a loud deafening silence. Mama and papa are holding hands would you believe, staring at me with great big eyes like deer caught in the headlights. I have done my job good, they want the windows, they just can’t afford them. No shit. Who can?

I play the scene just right, savor the moment, furrow my brow and purse my lips. I am searching deeply for a solution to the problem this sweet old couple is experiencing.

"Now just to clarify my thinking", I speak slowly and rub my fingers across my chin as if I have never run into this situation before, "if I can figure out a way to put these windows in your home this week without your having to pay anything at all then we got a deal, right?"

"Sure", says papa and I reach into my case, withdraw the order pad and fill in the pertinent information while I go through the no money down extended payment plan according to the book, according to the law. I turn the pad one hundred and eighty degrees and place it on papa's lap. “So that takes care of the problem, right?” I say, nodding my head up and down as I speak and extending the pen. "Put your name, here"

"Dat's still a lot", says mama squeezing papa's hand and I switch into high gear. This is a closer, a perfect sale. I can even justify it, legit. I mean there’s a miniature windstorm blowing right through their house in the middle of a cold wet upstate New York winter. Why the hell do you think I suggested they sit on the couch instead of at the kitchen table. Because that's where I feel it coming in the most when I did the walk-around. They need these windows and I need their signature. "I don't know", says papa, the pen poised in place. "Fourteen years payments, dat's a long time."

I am not going to lose it. I redo the savings on fuel, the low-low financing, the optional insurance, the comfort, the peace at night and safety from intruders. I lean forward, make eye contact, modulate my voice. I am perfect. By the book. The old man’s hand comes down to the surface of the paper. It is a done deal and I am three seconds away from a $1500 commission.

He makes a single vertical stroke on the page and then stops. "But dat's still so much every month", he says. They are screaming their poverty through every pore of their body. "We are poor and old. What good are fuel savings over the next fourteen years if we have trouble putting food on the table now? We won't live long enough for your windows to make a difference." I can hear them even though they are only shouting it through their eyes.

I breath deeply, reach for a second wind. I have been perfect, absolutely perfect and I AM going to sign them. I am not going to lose this sale, by God, I am NOT going to lose it. "What are you talking about?" I say with an edge to my voice I never heard before. "You don't want your wife to get sick from cold coming in while you're sleeping? Do you? You know it’s cold. She could die. You know what you need. You started to sign, just finish what you started so we can do this for you and make her safe."

I know what happens next, the one who talks first loses and I... will... not... lose. They sit there trembling. The old man looks at me and turns away, stares down at his lap and up again into my face. Our eyes touch and I look down at the pen then back up at his eyes. My eyes say “take it and sign”. “I can't," says papa's eyes, "I can't."

And that’s when I see what I've done. I see their fear of this smooth talking, neatly dressed, well fed representative of the system, with the official looking papers, who walked into their home an hour ago and is trying to walk out taking what little savings, what little income they have, and all for their own good. Yes, their windows are leaking, but they can stuff a towel around the edges and wear sweaters. Who am I kidding? I saw the remnants of their can of dinner when I came in. I know they can’t afford the prime product I am offering. But I want the sale and in order to get it I am scaring them to death.

I am peddling fear. I can keep up the pressure and close them, I know I can, but only by using fear. And then I hear my voice ring in my head, “You vill sign these papers! Und you vill sign them now!! Sig heil!!”

Something goes limp inside me, something I never felt before. Sure, I missed sales, but never when I knew so clearly I could win, and never never because I felt pity. My head is spinning and I mumble something about being sorry it didn't work out and I close up my kit and walk out into the night. I even think I said "God bless you" as I left. On the ride home I wonder where my weekly check will come from. I don't know. I only know it will not be coming from the old couple I just left who needs it more than I do.

The next day I turn in my kit and quit and I haven’t sold anything for years. That’s why I took this job. It’s not selling. It’s taking orders. I figure I’ll get back into it slowly.

* * *