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Not even the clouds are out in Albuquerque— a piercing sort of blue that makes it hard to look outside. Sunlight bounces off every surface: the concrete, the gleaming outlines of cars. Even the swaying trees branches and the mailman waving at passersby seem to reflect the concentrated brightness of the sun.
Jimmy squeezes a monogrammed neon stress ball, grateful for the relief of the fluorescent-lit purgatory on days like today. AC and a reasonable amount of light is all a man needs, right? That, and the will to live. You know— purpose, meaning in life, motivation to keep breathing this stale, plastic-y smelling air while his joie de vivre slowly shrivels away.
Surely, he can’t be meant to keep this job for a whole year? 365 days, all spent while barely talking to a handful of people per day. No one to appreciate his charm or be impressed by his wit and high effort! His skills are wasting away at this dump, that’s for sure.
Jimmy chucks the ball at the door, and it returns to his curved palm like the recoil on a whip. It makes a satisfying thump that leaves his skin smarting.
He can’t let himself go down that path. That is a short and miserable road straight to a hell worse than this place.
Luckily for him, the thoughts are forced to skedaddle as the front door opens.
Two women step inside, followed by the faint buff of warm air from the blinding outdoors. Jimmy straightens his tie on reflex, but still, it’s nice to look smart for your customers!
One of the women, the blond one, pauses and scans the store, her mouth already set in a line. The other walks ahead toward Jimmy, polite smile on her face.
Jimmy stands, smile at the ready— not too big, not too eager. Just right. Showtime!
“Welcome to CC Mobile. My name’s Jimmy; what can I do for you today?” He starts pulling out boxes of cell phones, displaying them in his hands one at a time. “Looking to upgrade, switch carriers, or maybe just here to admire the finest that modern technology has to offer?”
“We’re looking for a new cell phone plan,” says the brunette.
“Sure thing!” Jimmy sweeps the boxes to the side. “New service or switching over from another carrier?”
“New,” she says. “Two lines, but under one account, if possible.”
A moment happens between the two women, the blond looking sideways at the brunette, sharp and meaningful.
“Oh, uh, it’s a business account, if that matters.”
“Sure thing! I’ve got just the coverage for you. Nationwide. No roaming surprises.” He gestures toward the poster behind him. “FionaCom’s got a great deal! Let me just grab something; it’ll explain everything.”
“How many minutes are on the plan?”
Now it’s the blond who speaks, and Jimmy smiles to himself, suddenly reminded of a Kim from ten or so years ago. Clipped and professional, no nonsense, or not until she’s warmed up to you. He’s sure this woman is just as ambitious and driven as Kim was then.
To the woman, Jimmy nods along, amiable as anything. “You can select the different plans here for how many minutes you’re looking for. And they’re all just thirty cents for every minute over, which is standard across all the offers we have here.”
“We’re not heavy users,” the brunette offers. “Mostly calls. Some texting.”
“Sure thing. I would be happy to help with that.”
The man behind the counter is trying far too hard.
He’d said his name just a minute ago, but Carol glances down at his name tag to double check. Jimmy.
Alright, then, Jimmy. Carol looks back up at his happy face, his mouth chattering away all smiley, his hands doing this flourishing thing where he flips the pen around and around while he points to the chart.
Not an offensive kind of “try hard”. Just earnest, insistently so, as if effort alone might make them walk out of this store with a contract signed. Well, they had walked in with every intent to, so he really didn’t have to try this whole razzle dazzle schtick.
His smile frustratingly stays in place.
Carol has met this type before— people who believe that if they explain something well enough, long enough, it will become impressive by sheer persistence. Met plenty of them in the indie publishing scene and at the big houses, now, too.
She closes her eyes and thinks of this as practice. Now that she’s signed her first deal, she’ll be meeting a lot more of these types anyway— legal, marketing, sales, they’d all want to pitch her their ideas.
There is a small poke in her side that finally opens her eyes. When she looks over, Helen is, of course, engaging with Jimmy’s yammering, but somehow her wife had still noticed (as she always does).
Wife. Well, as newly wed as two lesbians in New Mexico could be. They’d eloped to Colorado just last year to make it official. Carol almost starts to smile at the memory, then stops herself. Nothing to be happy about; only Helen’s sister was asked to come, and their other witness was someone else’s dad they grabbed out of the city hall lobby. And if this salesman asked her what she was smiling about, what would she say? He wouldn’t know anything about what that’s like.
Jimmy runs through FionaCom’s coverage map, tapping a laminated chart on the counter.
“Pretty solid coverage,” he says. “There are a few dead spots, sure, but nothing you wouldn’t expect.”
“What about outside the city?” Carol asks.
“Depends how far out you go. I’ve used it out there in the desert…”— his smile falters, just barely there, but Carol catches it anyway— “and it only works a couple miles out from the highways. So if you’re commuting, traveling between cities, that kind of thing, you should be fine.”
Helen leans in slightly. “How is it for traveling?”
His eyes light up, “You guys do a lot of traveling?”
“No.” Carol doesn’t care to make small talk. Just fork over the contract, mister.
“Not yet,” Helen amends. Carol stifles a sigh. “We might be doing some traveling in the future—” If, thinks Carol, the book does well, if they get a bigger schedule outside of Albuquerque. “So we just want something that’ll handle everything.”
They’d discussed this in the car, but Helen had insisted. ”I’ll pay for it for the first year. Please, Carol, let me do this. I know your book is gonna do amazing.” And she’d let Helen, sweet, patient, insistent Helen, coax her into it…
“Then the Premium Max plan will make the most sense,” Jimmy says, sliding a brochure toward them. “Shared minutes, two lines. Enough cushion that you’re not counting every second of every call, but not so much that it feels like you’re paying for unused minutes.”
Carol studies the pamphlet. Thirty-five dollar activation fee, two hundred to cancel early, yada, yada. Nothing jumps out as offensive.
“How long is the contract?”
“One year,” he says. “Standard. No surprises.”
Carol looks at Helen. Helen reads her face easily.
“That seems reasonable,” Helen says. “Doesn’t it?”
Carol considers it another moment, then nods once. “Fine.”
Jimmy looks relieved, though he tries to hide it. He gathers the paperwork, still talking, with even more of that easy charm that still rubs her the wrong way.
Carol tunes him out just enough to think: chill out, he’s harmless. A little desperate. Almost certainly underpaid.
She signs where indicated.
When Jimmy thanks them, it sounds genuine. Poor guy.
They leave with their plan activated and the SIM cards and brochure bagged, plastic handles looped neatly around the brunette’s wrist— Helen, as Jimmy had learned as he ran her card.
The bell on the door rings once, bright and brief, before the heat rushes back in behind them and then seals itself out again. Jimmy watches them through the bright glass as they cross the parking lot.
He exhales, slow.
That had gone well. They might have even been impressed. At least Helen might have been. Her business partner, not so much.
But hey, another day, another sale. It felt good to help someone get what they needed. That counts for something, doesn’t it? Isn’t that why he helped out the Sandpiper people and gotten the Mesa Verde boxes for Kim? He helps people.
The store settles back into its familiar, dead hum. Jimmy reaches over and straightens a display handset that was nudged out of alignment. Squeezes his stress ball again, adjusts the handset one more time, then back to where it was when he goes too far.
For a moment, he lets himself stand there, resting his restless hands on the counter, mind buzzing with white noise.
Maybe he’s not practicing law. Maybe he’s not dazzling anyone with the nice clothes and the company car. But he talked to people today. He listened. He helped them get what they wanted.
He nods to himself, small and private.
Maybe I’m still good at this,_ he thinks. _Whatever “this” is…
This fic was based on this image:
I tried to reverse image search for the person who found this. If you know who I can credit, please let me know!
