Middle Men (21 page)

“A monkey can pass out catalogues,” said Larry. “You go over it with him?”

“Yeah, he did, pretty much,” said Armando, slapping Matt on the shoulder. “You guys want a drink?”

Like a lot of guys in the industry, Armando had worked his way up from the bottom. He started as a driver, moved into the warehouse, worked the will call counters, did purchasing, and eventually became a manager. He had a knack for remembering part numbers. All day long he'd sit behind the counter like a bard, singing to the lesser poets in back (“Compression stops, OR12s, half inch!”). More importantly, for Matt, he was a big soccer fan. Matt followed the Mexican league, so they always had something to talk about. It was so much easier than actually asking for an order.

Back in the warehouse the air smelled sour from the diesel exhaust of forklifts. A few guys were eating chorizo-and-egg burritos at a cheap plastic table that had as its centerpiece a gleaming metropolis of half-empty Tapatío bottles. Armando opened a fridge and grabbed two Cokes.

“Is that the last
cerveza
, amigo?” asked Larry, peering inside.

“Take it,” said Armando. “I got more in back.”

“I told Armando we would get him the new Ultima to display up front.”

“We can do that,” said Larry, trying to twist off the cap. “We can definitely do that.”

“I want it free,” said Armando. “Mike from Southwestern hooked me up with a free Kenner model.”

Mike Melendez, a snake, worked at Southwestern Sales, a rival rep company from Gardena. He had a knack for showing up at wholesalers a few minutes before Matt arrived, offering deals on Kenner products and reminding purchasing agents about the nightmare that was the Brentford ballcock recall.

“I don't know if we can do
that
,” said Larry, bending forward to get better leverage on the cap.

“Those aren't twist-offs, man,” said Armando.

“I've got an opener,” offered Matt, but it was too late.

Larry had ripped off the cap, along with a layer of skin on his right palm. Blood dripped down his hand as he took the first sip. “Just bring it in on consignment.”

The word “consignment” made Matt think of the circles of hell; he still only had a vague idea what it meant in the commercial sense.

“That works for me,” said Armando, shrugging. “Let me write it up.”

This happened now and then, a sale. It always made Matt more giddy than he expected, and in those moments he understood why some men kept grinding away year after year.

Later, over a game of ping-pong, they talked about Brentford's new urinals and Armando suggested they chase down a mechanical contractor he knew in Carson who was bidding a job for L.A. Unified.

“We could see him before we hit the luau,” suggested Larry, pressing a wad of toilet paper into his palm.

Armando interrupted his serve. “Lamrock's?”

“Are you going?” asked Larry.

“Oh, yeah,” said Armando, firing a wicked ball past Matt. “Anybody who's got anything to do with anything will be there.”

“Who's Lamrock?” asked Matt.

“Do you have a Hawaiian shirt?” Armando asked Matt.

“No.”

Armando looked ominously at Larry.

“What happens if I don't have a Hawaiian shirt?” asked Matt, beginning to panic. “Who's Lamrock?”

•  •  •

They drove north on Cherry Avenue, past the gates of All Souls Cemetery. For the past year, whenever he called on customers in Long Beach, Matt would swing by All Souls to look at his mother's tombstone. He'd stand there for a while, trying to remember everything about her, every moment they ever shared, but strangely he couldn't remember very much. His mind, for the most part, was a searing blank. Now and then he'd remember something small and meaningless from her last year, things he saw when he drove her to doctor appointments or watched television with her in the afternoon. He could see the shadows of the parking garage at St. Joseph Hospital, but he couldn't see her. This felt like a curse and he worried that he had failed her in some way. He hated himself for not finishing school, for not establishing his place in the world. If he ever made anything of himself, she would never see it.

When he moved home it felt like a relief because he had a purpose; each day he knew exactly what he had to do, and nobody expected anything more from him. They watched all the home makeover shows together. His sisters also moved back home. Everybody was together. When his dad and sisters
got back from work and school, relieving him of his duties, Matt would go play pickup soccer games at an abandoned junior high, using what Spanish he knew to scream for the ball. It was the same field he played on as a kid and sometimes he expected to look up and see his mom in her lawn chair, sucking on a menthol and cursing the referee. For years she labored under the delusion that Matt got fouled every time he touched the ball. Her shrill and partisan commentary from the sidelines had once embarrassed Matt, but now, as an adult, playing with strangers at twilight on a field full of weeds and gopher holes, he wanted to hear some distant echo of her voice, fighting for him and believing in his cause, whatever the fuck that was.

A few weeks earlier, while walking through the cemetery, Matt had seen his dad in the distance, already at the tombstone, standing above it, in his brown Members Only jacket, with his arms folded and his frizzy comb-over flapping in the wind. It was two o'clock, that dreaded time of day when outside salesmen suddenly find themselves alone after a busy morning. Matt suspected that every outside salesmen looked for ways to escape this bright and desolate hour. Pubs, libraries, the beach—Matt had all his sanctuaries mapped out. Twenty minutes to himself, outside of his car, that's all he wanted. The cemetery was a frequent stop. He hid behind a tree so his father couldn't see him.

What this man did when he left the house every morning had once been a mystery, but now Matt knew. Apparently Marty Costello had busted his ass for three decades, covering every godforsaken territory in SoCal and establishing a reputation as a resourceful and good-humored sales rep. Sometimes business was good, sometimes it wasn't. The boom-and-bust life of a salesman meant that the house in Anaheim had been
mortgaged multiple times, and it was only a matter of time, Matt knew, before the bank took it back entirely. Instead of land, his dad had left him the only thing he truly owned: the freeways.

Matt used to wonder what his dad thought about as he drove the freeways all day, every day, and it made him sad to think that this man, who never complained about anything, might have dreamed about doing something else with his life besides selling toilets. But Matt realized now, with envy, that his father had moved beyond dreams. He belonged to this world, day after day. In a dusty waterworks supply on the outskirts of Barstow, which was on the outskirts of nowhere, Matt had met Woody Blake, another plumbing lifer whose body, like a Joshua tree, had been hunched and twisted over the years by the high desert wind. Holding a pit bull on a leash, Woody greeted Matt in his trailer office and said, “Costello? Any relation to Marty?”

“He's my dad.”

“I've known Marty for years. He's a good guy.”

That day in the cemetery Matt knew if he kept walking he and his dad would see each other, a pair of truants, and they would laugh. It was what the Costellos did best when they were together and it had saved them from almost everything. But Matt didn't want to share a laugh. He wanted to be alone with her, just for a few minutes, before getting back on the freeway.

In a trance, Matt hit his turn signal for the cemetery, but then saw Larry wiping orange Cheeto dust all over his khakis and remembered where he was. Larry reached back for his briefcase, put it in his lap, and popped it open. Matt glanced over and saw that it was empty except for two neatly folded Hawaiian shirts.

“Better safe than sorry,” he said.

“Why would we be sorry?”

“You'd be sorry, not me. You're just lucky I brought an extra.”

“Why is it so important I wear a Hawaiian shirt?”

Larry looked at him like he was crazy. “Because it's a fucking luau, son.”

Matt turned onto Del Amo and for a few intersections they drove in silence. As they crossed the L.A. River, Larry's cell phone rang.

“Yeah, babe . . . The box is in the garage, next to my roller skates . . . Okay, 'bye.” Larry flipped his phone shut and rolled his eyes at Matt. “Juanita, my fiancée. She's looking for the good silverware.”

“Congratulations.”

“For what?”

“Getting engaged.”

“She'll be number four. She was also number two.”

Matt was quiet for a moment, trying to do the math.

“She's got MS,” said Larry. “She needs someone around to listen to her bitch.”

Matt turned briefly to Larry, who stared straight ahead. They turned off into an industrial park and found the address. Fred Tuiolosega, the proprietor of Gateway Plumbing, greeted them wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Behind him two enormous young men with shaved heads were working the phones.

“The luau is already out of control,” he told them. “We just stayed long enough to say hi to Lamrock.”

Fred walked barefoot through a tiny office adorned with high school football trophies and BYU pennants. A big, thick man, with arms like fresh-cut logs, he perched on a stool as
Larry awkwardly reached out his left hand for a shake. He unzipped his fanny pack and handed Fred his card. When Matt reached in his pocket to do the same, he found it empty. He turned red, knowing how bush league it would look running out to his car to grab more cards from the trunk.

Larry asked about the L.A. Unified job. Fred said the spec was for Kenner, but he'd switch to Brentford if their ballcock thing was fixed. He gave Larry the spec sheets, and Larry gave them to Matt to give them to Jack to give them to Linda, in the Ajax office, to run a price quote and send it to Armando, who would send it back to Fred. It was a strange and mystifying calculus. The factory sold to the rep, the rep to the wholesaler, the wholesaler to the contractor, but sometimes the rep skipped a step and talked directly to the contractor, telling him which wholesaler to buy from, so the wholesaler would have no choice but to buy a particular line from the rep. Matt was lost somewhere in the middle.

“
Muy bien
,” said Larry, once everything was sorted. “How's everything else going?”

“Business is good right now,” said Fred. He waved his arm around the office. “The Lord's really blessed us.”

“I know how that goes,” said Larry. “As long as we're talking that . . .” Larry folded his arms. “The other day I caught my stepson on the computer looking at things he shouldn't be looking at. Some really nasty stuff. Nasty,
nasty
stuff.”

Fred, looking genuinely aggrieved, shook his head.

“Six or seven dudes with their business out,” said Larry, “and there's one chick in the middle, just
going
for it.”

The giant Tuiolosega boys looked up from their phones.

“I've got the new Brentford catalogue if you want it,” said Matt.

“So we had a talk,” Larry continued, “and the next day, all on his own, he went down to our church and told the pastor he wanted to rededicate himself to Christ.”

“Good for him,” said Fred. “It's easy for kids to get screwed up these days.”

As a gesture of dismissal, Fred handed Larry and Matt his card.

Larry reached into his fanny pack and took out a colorful bundle of cards and loose scraps of paper. “Let me upload you into the system here,” he said, placing Fred's card on top.

“I'm out of cards,” mumbled Matt. “I'll go grab one.”

“Don't worry about it,” said Fred, walking them out.

Back in the car, Larry took a deep breath. “I think I fucked that up.”

“It's okay,” said Matt. “I'll check in with them later this week.”

“Sometimes the mouth moves faster than the brain,” said Larry. “But at least I was talking. You can't just stand there like that. You gotta open your damn mouth.”

•  •  •

They got on the 710 north, a blind and savage freeway. The lanes were choked with freight trucks coming up from the harbor. Matt's Kia was dwarfed on all sides by smoke-belching eighteen-wheelers. Shadows crept over him and he lost sight of the sky. The farther he got from the coast, the more claustrophobic he felt. Driving inland was like being lowered into a pit.

Larry, rummaging through the glove compartment for a tissue, found a battered copy of
Catch-22
. It was one of the few books Matt had saved from high school and he had picked it up recently.

“I never read this,” Larry said, flipping the pages. “Is it good?”

“It's fucking great!” Matt heard his voice go up an octave; he coughed and tried to take it down a notch. “My dad read it while he was in Vietnam. Can you believe that?”

“I used to read a ton on the road. All that legal thriller crap.”

“I've read a bunch of Grishams,” said Matt.

“What's your favorite?”

“I don't know,” said Matt, trying to remember which one was which.

“
A Time to Kill
is his best book,” said Larry, “and can I tell you why in two words: Matthew-fucking-what's-his-name. He's a great actor when he wants to be.” Larry examined his bloody hand. “Did you read
The Bridges of Madison County
?”

“Sort of.” Matt thought of all the crappy books on tape his mom listened to during her chemo sessions and he thought of all the Sandra Bullock romantic comedies they watched together at home in the afternoons. He'd squirm during the melodramatic parts. She often wondered aloud how she and her husband, with twelve credits of junior college between them, had managed to raise children who were such snobs. But now, whenever he saw one of those terrible movies on cable, he'd watch it, waiting for the melodramatic parts where she used to choke up. It was a sick way to make himself cry.