A Firing Offense (2 page)

I looked over the messages at my desk. Two were from radio reps and a third was from a salesman from one of the local papers. My rep at the
Post,
Patti Dawson, had called. I threw all of these messages away but made a mental note to return Patti’s call. The last message was from a Mr. Pence, a name I didn’t recognize. I slipped that piece of paper beneath my phone.

For the remainder of the afternoon I traded retail clichés (“Katie, Bar the Door,” “Passin’ Them Out Like Popcorn”) with Fisher, the company merch manager, and finished laying out my weekend ad for the
Post.

A breathy intern answered the phone when I called the
Post
looking for Patti Dawson. She said that Patti was on the road and that I should try her car phone.

After four tapping sounds and two rings, Patti answered. There was some sort of light pop in the background, Luther Vandross or one of his imitators. Patti kept her car stereo cemented on WHUR.

“What’s your schedule like today?” she asked, her voice sounding remote on the speakerphone but characteristically musical.

“I’ve just finished my Ninth Symphony,” I said. “Later I’m performing brain surgery on the President.”

“You got any time in your busy day to give me an ad?”

“It’s done. I’m gonna cut out early. I’ll leave the ad on my desk. You can just drop Saturday’s proof here and I’ll correct it tomorrow.”

“I’ll also drop our new rate card by.”

“Courtesy of those philanthropists at the
Washington Post?”

“You got it,” she said, her voice beginning to break apart. I said I’d talk to her later, and she said something I couldn’t make out, though somewhere in there she used the word
lover
.

I switched off the crane-necked lamp over my drawing table, considered calling Mr. Pence, but decided to take his number with me and leave before any more assignments came my way. En route to the stairwell I passed the glass-enclosed office of Nathan Plavin. He was sitting in a high-backed swivel chair with his chin resting on his chest, watching his fingers drum the bare surface of his oak desktop. Over him stood his top man, Jerry Rosen, who was pointing his finger very close to Plavin’s chest. Nathan Plavin, the owner of a thirty-million-a-year retail operation, looked very much at that moment like a little boy being scolded.

I looked away, oddly embarrassed for him, and passed by Marsha’s desk. Reaching the stairwell, I hollered back to her that I was gone for the day. Marsha yelled to me that Karen had called, but I continued down the steps.

A nearly lifesize cutout caricature of Nathan Plavin dangled from the ceiling at the bottom of the stairwell. I had designed it two years earlier and since then used it in the head of all our print ads and mailers. The caricature depicted Nathan with an enlarged head topped by a crooked crown, overflowing with stereos, televisions, and VCRs. There were dollar bills in his clenched fists, and a wide smile across his fat face. One of his teeth was golden.

KIM BROUGHT MY FOOD
and set it down. The fish had no taste and the fries tasted faintly of fish. I quickly finished my early dinner and brooded some more over another beer. Kim took my money and nodded as I headed out the door.

My apartment was the bottom floor of a colonial in the
Shepherd Park area of Northwest. I walked around to the side entrance, where my black cat hurried out from behind some bushes and tapped me on the back of my calf with her nose. I turned the key and entered.

She followed me in, jumped up on the radiator, and let out an abbreviated meow. I scratched the top of her head and tickled the scar tissue on the socket that had once housed her right eye. She shut her left eye and pushed her head into my hand as I did this.

In my bedroom I undid my tie as I pushed the power button on my receiver. The tuner was set on WHFS, and I moved the antenna around on the back of the set to better the reception. Weasel was ending his show, predictably, with some NRBQ from the
Yankee Stadium
LP. I switched over to phono and laid Martha and the Muffins’ “This Is the Ice Age” on the platter.

I walked through my tiny living room to the kitchen. Behind me I heard the four paws of my cat hit the hardwood floor simultaneously with a mild thud. She followed me into the kitchen, jumped up on the chair that held her dish, and sat down. I found a foil-covered can of salmon in the refrigerator, mixed a bit of it into some dry food, and put it in her dish. She went at it after the obligatory bored look and a slow blink of her left eye.

The phone rang. I walked back into the living room and picked up the receiver.

“
HELLO
.”

“Is Nick Stefanos in?”

“Speaking.”

“My name is James Pence,” an old voice said on the other end of the line. I fished his message from my shirt pocket. “I’m sorry to bother you at home.”

“I received your message at work,” I said. “Forgive me for not returning your call—I get a load of people calling me all
day, trying to sell me advertising space or services. If I called them all back, I’d never get anything done.”

“I’m not selling anything,” he said, though there was a hurried, desperate edge to his voice.

“What can I do for you then?”

“I’m Jimmy Broda’s grandfather.”

After some initial confusion I brought Broda up in my mind. He was a kid, late teens, who had worked briefly in the warehouse of Nutty Nathan’s. We had struck up a mild sort of friendship after discovering that we had similar interests in music, though his tastes ran towards speed metal and mine to the more melodic. I had chalked that up to the difference in our ages. Broda had apparently quit a couple of weeks earlier. I had not heard from him, assuming he had joined the ranks of other young, low-level employees who tended to drift from one meaningless job to the next.

“How is Jimmy?” I asked.

“Your personnel girl called a couple of weeks ago and said he had not reported to work for two days straight. Asked me if I knew where he was. Of course I didn’t know. It wasn’t unusual for him not to come home for stretches at a time—the crowd he ran around with and all that.”

I had no idea what he was talking about or what he wanted. I had the urge to excuse myself and hang up the phone right then.

“Two days later,” he continued, “personnel calls again. She says to inform Jimmy, when I see him, that he’s been terminated. Job abandonment, I think she called it.”

“Listen, Mr. Pence. I’m sorry Jimmy lost his job—”

“He liked you, Mr. Stefanos. He mentioned you at home more than once.”

“I liked him too. But Jimmy probably had a bigger idea of what I am than what’s reality. Those guys in the warehouse, they think anybody who works upstairs and wears a tie has a piece of the action. I’m just a guy who lays out ads and buys
time on the airwaves. I don’t even talk to the people who make hiring and firing decisions. What I’m saying is, I don’t have the influence to get Jimmy his job back.”

“I don’t need you to get his job back, Mr. Stefanos,” he said. “I need you to help me find him.”

A long silence followed. He made a swallowing sound, then cleared his throat.

“Why are you calling
me?”
I asked.

“I bought a TV years ago from John McGinnes in your store on Connecticut Avenue. This year I bought a toaster oven from him. He’s my man there,” he said with that peculiarly elderly notion of salesman ownership. “I talked with him yesterday morning. Said he didn’t know anything but you might. Said you’re pretty good at finding people when you put your mind to it.” I made a mental note to slam McGinnes for that.

“Mr. Pence, if you’re worried about your grandson you should call the police,” I said with what I hoped was an air of finality.

“Please. Please come see me, only for a few minutes. I have something to give you, anyway. A cassette tape you made for Jimmy.” I remembered it, the usual soft punk and hard pop. Though it was no big deal, the Broda kid had seemed mildly touched when I gave it to him.

“I have somewhere to go tonight,” I said, “But maybe I could stop by for a minute. I mean, if it’s on my way. Where do you live?”

“I’m on Connecticut, the first apartment building northeast of Albemarle. Apartment ten-ten. Do you know it?”

“Yes.” It was right up from the store.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby then,” he said excitedly.

“Right. Twenty minutes.”

M
Y GYM BAG
was in the trunk as I headed down Thirteenth Street. Bob “Here” was the DJ on HFS and spinning some post-patchuli oil nonsense. I pushed a Long Ryders tape into the deck. The first song, “Sweet Mental Revenge,” had a guitar break reminiscent of the Eagles, the difference being that the Ryders had testicles. I turned up the volume.

I made a right on Military Road, passed under Sixteenth, and neared the Oregon Avenue intersection where I hung a left into a severely sloped, winding entrance to Rock Creek Park. As kids we had as a rule driven this stretch of the park with our headlights off, navigating by the moonlight that cut a path through the treeline above. God or the dumb luck of youth had always brought us safely through; tonight, even with my hi-beams on, the darkness seemed to envelop me.

At the bottom of the hill I crossed a small bridge and turned left onto Beach Drive. Soon after that I made a right on Brandy-wine
and cut over to Albemarle, cruising by million dollar Tudor houses with dark German and British automobiles parked, like hearses, in their driveways.

At Connecticut and Albemarle I looked across the street to the left. Though there was no foot traffic at this hour, Nutty Nathan’s was open. I decided against dropping in on McGinnes. By this time of day the effects of malt liquor and marijuana would have rendered him incoherent.

I parked on Connecticut, an after–rush-hour privilege, and walked across a brownish lawn to a tall, tan-brick building. As a salesman at Nathan’s on the Avenue, I had often delivered and installed air conditioners here for the elderly residents of these rent-controlled apartments.

When I entered the first set of glass doors, a guy in the lobby who looked to be on the green side of seventy caught my eye. He motioned to a bored-looking young woman behind the switchboard and a buzzer sounded. I pulled on the second set of doors and entered the lobby.

The old man strode towards me quickly and with deliberate posture, though he looked as if it pained him some to do so. His handshake was firm.

“I’m Nick Stefanos.”

“I knew when I saw you,” he said in a self-congratulatory manner, then looked me over. Either Pence liked what he saw or felt he had little choice; he pointed a slim hand towards the elevators.

We passed an obese young security guard with a seventies Afro who was talking to the woman at the switchboard and ignoring us and all the old people sitting around the bland lobby. The lobby had the still, medicinal smell of a nursing home.

Pence took me to a metal door that led to the elevators and attempted to pull it open. A look of mild panic appeared on his face as the weight of the door knocked him off balance. The security guard said something behind us about the old man
forgetting to take his Geritol. We heard the laughter of the guard and the woman at the switchboard as we entered an elevator.

The old man was silent as we rode to the tenth floor, though his lips were moving and there was a slight scowl across his face. He was wearing workpants pulled high above his waist, a white cotton T-shirt, and oxford Hush Puppies that he wore laceless like loafers. The thick leather belt drawn tightly around his abdomen looked water-damaged and was permanently bent in several spots. Time had eaten him like a patient scavenger.

The elevator bounced to a stop, causing Pence to grab the handrail with reluctance. The doors opened, he bolted out and I followed. He stopped at 1010 and with no trouble at all this time negotiated the lock and door.

We entered as he flipped on a master light. The apartment, with its florid, cushiony sofa and armchairs and a curio cabinet filled with delicate porcelain figures, had obviously been decorated by a woman. But a glass caked with milk on the table and the general disarray of the place told me that his wife or companion was gone.

“Have a seat,” he said. I chose one, noticing as I sat that its cushion contained a rogue spring. I remained seated, as none of the other chairs showed better promise. Though it was rather cool, I had the desire to crack a window. His apartment had the smell of outdated dairy products.

“Goddamn security guard,” he muttered, unable to forget the fat rent-a-cop in the lobby. He quit pacing and lit on a seat next to an end table, on which sat a crystal lamp, a TV directory, an ashtray, and a pack of smokes. Pence shook one from the deck directly to his mouth, looked up at me, and said, “You mind?”

“Not at all.” He lit it with a Zippo and let out a long stream of smoke that continued to pour out erratically as he began to talk.

“You always have to ask now, before you smoke. It seems like every time I light up, in the Hot Shoppes cafeteria, or wherever,
some young guy in a suit tells me the smoke’s bothering him. I’ve got to laugh at your generation sometimes. You guys spend all your time in health clubs in front of mirrors, you’re repelled by smokers, you drink light this and light that—and with all your health and muscles you’re basically a bunch of powderpuffs. Forty years ago I could have kicked your collective asses—with a cigarette hanging out the side of my mouth.”