Page 70 - WTP VOl. XIII #2

Red Hammers (continued from preceding page)
“Hi, Bill. This is Marissa. Did you know that now’s the time to invest in brick-and-mortar drugstores? The population is aging, and these days fewer and fewer consumers want to buy personal items, like tooth- paste and deodorant, online. Find out how to earn passive income. Call me back.” She cuts off sharply and hangs up the phone.
“Excellent!” Julia beams. “Not even a single stutter or pause!” She raises a V for Victory over her forehead and keeps it there until Marissa returns the gesture.
“You’re hired. Pay starts at $12 an hour and checks get direct-deposited every other Friday. Can you start tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Marissa tells her. ~
She’s back on the Bridge Line by 9:30 the next morn- ing. By 10, she’s disembarked, walked past that same huddle of cars from yesterday, and is taking her seat in that same windowless office in the layer cake building. She logs on to the computer’s database of rich guys and makes her first dial.
It goes to voicemail. The second does, also. So does the third. That’s not really surprising, she figures, since most people don’t answer random calls from unknown numbers. She records one voicemail after another: The population is aging, and these days fewer and fewer consumers want to buy personal items,
like toothpaste and deodorant, online. She falls into rhythm—dial, recite, dial, recite, dial, recite—trying her best to stay upbeat and persistent.
Ten calls go unanswered, then twenty. She starts won- dering if this is some kind of trick. Is she being tested to see if she can get anyone to answer? Expected to make a quota, like in canvassing? How is this busi- ness model profitable to anyone if no one picks up the phone? She takes a deep breath, tries to remind herself not to worry about anything she can’t control. At least no one’s stopped by to yell at her, microman- age her, or suck her into their drama. Then, around lunchtime, someone finally answers the phone.
“Hail Satan,” a voice says. “This is Deven.” “Deven?”
“Ah. Didn’t anyone tell you? If you forget to dial a one, you get kicked over to an internal line.”
“Oh.” 63
“Yeah. Don’t sweat it, though. Glad you’re on board. You should come hang out in the breakroom so we can initiate you into the Red Hammers. Screw the calls.”
Marissa doesn’t want to hang out in the break room with Deven. She’s sure that whatever he’s up to will attract attention. So she thanks him for the invite, hangs up, and goes back to leaving voicemails: dial, recite, dial, recite, dial, recite.
Around two o’clock, though, her stomach snarls. She didn’t pack a lunch, hasn’t eaten anything today, and can feel herself running out of energy and patience. Maybe there are granola bars or something in the break room. It’s at least worth checking. Besides, it’s been almost three hours since she talked to Deven. He’s surely left the break room and is back in his own windowless office by now.
“Mar-is-uuuh!” someone yells when she pushes the break room door open. “Haven’t seen you in like, for- ever!” She winces, steps backward, and sees another person she vaguely remembers from high school. One of the lacrosse players? John?
“Break room reunion!” He pushes a huge, flattened palm towards her face so she can slap it. “Fight, fight, Inner Light—kill, Quakers, kill!”
She high-fives him tentatively and gazes into the long, narrow room. There’s a fridge, a sink, a coffee maker, and a plastic folding table. Deven’s sitting at the far end of it, vaping. Julia’s leaning on the wall beside him next to yet another of their high school class- mates: a quiet, stringy girl whose name might be Amber.
“What the...?”
Deven grins at her and holds out his vape pen.
“Wanna hit, Marissa? It’s a spliff.”
She waves it off. “Do you guys just... spend all day in here?”
“You fucking bet we do!” says Deven, baring those creepy incisors. He passes the vape to Julia, who at this exact moment Marissa realizes is not actually her supervisor.
“Now that you’re officially hired,” says Julia, “I can officially tell you that no one cares what we do around here.” She pulls the spliff and passes it to Amber. “We’re not even sure if there’s anyone else