Martin Misunderstood (3 page)

The only other applicant had been a man who
had shown up an hour late and yelled at Martin
that he could not be expected to punch a timeclock;
a startling statement, considering that
none of the office staff were expected to clock in.

'How many interviews you got?' Unique
asked.

'Well, I . . . uh . . .' Martin felt his throat work
as he swallowed. 'Many. Several-many.' He
pronounced the words as if they were
hyphenated, and she had narrowed her eyes as if
she could see straight into his soul.

She had shaken her head. 'Nuh-uh,' she
insisted. 'You're going to give me the job now. I
can't go home and wait by the phone. I got other
responsibilities.'

'I just—'

'What time you want me to show up? Don't
say eight, 'cause this kind of beautiful don't
happen without a little help in the morning. You
know what I mean?' She had flicked back her
braided hair on that last remark. The way the
beads rattled against each other reminded Martin
of the time he had found a rattlesnake in his bunk
at summer camp. Granted, it turned out to be a
fake (a revelation unfortunately not reached
before Martin had alerted the entire compound
to the dangerous creature), but the beads in its
tail rattled the same.

She was fishing around in her purse for her
keys as Martin tried to explain that all front
office employees were expected to be at their
desks by eight-thirty sharp. 'I'll see you around
nine on Friday,' she told him, standing. 'I gotta
take off early, though, 'cause my niece is in town.
All right? I'll see ya then.'

She was gone before he could answer, her halfempty
Dunkin' Donuts mocha latte leaving a ring
on the conference-room table. Her scent still
filled the room – a sickly sweet concoction like
candy floss and Coca-Cola that competed with
the disturbing, yeasty odor that had come as she
uncrossed her legs. This lady fug was what had
stuck with Martin, and he caught a whiff of it
even now as Unique headed across the parking
lot.

'You gonna get that "twat" off your car?' she
asked.

Martin had to jog to keep up with her. For a
large woman, she moved with amazing speed.

'I've put a call into—'

'Sabatini ain't gonna help you, fool. He was
laughing so hard when he came out here I half
expected a brick to drop out of his pants.'

Martin remained silent. The brick comment,
he felt, was completely unnecessary.

'You need to call his boss.'

She was always telling him what to do. Most
of her sentences started with 'you need to.' God
forbid Martin tell
her
that she needed to do
something. He was senior to her in every way, yet
Unique was the one who took control in the
office – bringing in potted plants, scattering
candles, air fresheners and photos of her lap dog
around the common areas.

Granted, she was a faster typist, and she
tended not to make very many mistakes, but she
hardly had it the same as he did with her job of
invoicing and collections for non-liquid products
and vending items. You couldn't really compare
Vomit-Up granules and LadyTickler condoms to
the massive roll-paper orders and toilet-seat
liners that Martin processed. It was apples and
oranges, as he often told Norton Shaw.

To make matters worse, she had despicable
work habits. From the moment she showed up,
she would keep her cellphone to one ear and the
business phone to the other. She would cross-talk
to her sister, who worked in a church office, with
customers listening on the other line. Meanwhile,
her glossy fingernails would click-click-click
against the keys like a Chihuahua on a tile floor
while her hair rat-tat-tatted like a rubber snake
with beads in its tail. About sixty times a day, she
would apply lotion to her hands, and oftentimes
her feet. The one time Martin politely asked her
to find a more appropriate place to oil up, she
had screamed, 'I can't help it I'm ashy!' and that
was that.

As a large-breasted woman with a generous
waistline, she had to maneuver herself carefully
around the desk. Martin had been intrigued at
first to watch the alignment of breast, stomach
and arm that made it possible for her to reach the
computer keyboard. She had misinterpreted his
scientific interest as unbridled lust, admonishing,
'Honey, you ain't got the stamina to ring this
bell!' Then, he'd had to listen to her relay the
story to her sister, whose 'amen' could be heard
across the room.

These were not isolated incidents but daily
occurrences. Martin lived in terror of her
pronouncements, which were usually made in
mixed company during the most inopportune
moments. He would be going over a time card
with one of the shift workers and she would
shoot out a, 'You ain't following what he's
saying, fool!' Or, Norton Shaw would come
down to check on receivables and she would
shout, 'He got some bad gas from lunch. Let's do
this outside.'

At times, she reminded him of the Geraldine
doll his mother had bought him for Christmas
when he was a child. Flip Wilson was one side
while Geraldine, his cross-dressing alter ego, was
on the other. Pull the cord and witticisms would
come out, such as 'The Devil made me do it!' and
'When you're hot, you're hot!'

Perhaps worst of all, and even more
humiliating than listening to her complain to her
sister about menstrual cramps while she took off
her shoes and lotioned her feet, was that she kept
promoting herself. On her first day, Martin had
foolishly given Unique the ability to order her
own business cards. In the course of three years,
her title had changed from 'accounting assistant',
to 'accounts executive' to 'senior account
executive'. Any day now, he fully expected to
find a card that read, 'Unique Jones, Chief
Financial Officer'.

Meanwhile, Martin's own cards simply read,
'Accounting'. He had ordered a thousand printed
up his first day of work. Sixteen years had passed
and the box was still half-full.

Back in the parking lot, Unique had stopped at
the front door. 'Your mama didn't teach you to
open the door for a lady?'

Martin was opening the door for her as a witty
comeback occurred, but she was halfway to her
desk by the time his mouth moved to get it out.

She said, 'Don't mumble, fool,' as she tossed
her purse on to the desk. The chair made a noise
like two pool balls hitting against each other as
she sat.

Martin quietly put his stack of business cards,
his pens, the yellow legal pad and his report on
his own desk. His chair made no noise as he sat
down and turned on his computer. When he'd
first started working at Southern, the only
automated part of the process was an IBM
Selectric that got stuck on the 'g' and the 'l' no
matter how many times it was cleaned. All the
ledgers had been done by hand – Martin's hand.
People from the factory floor were in and out of
his office all day, giving Martin a quick wave or
a smile. Mr Cordwell, the owner, would
occasionally drop in and talk to him about
fishing or taking the family out on the lake that
weekend. Martin would nod, then Mr Cordwell
would go to the bathroom (the only entrance was
through Martin's office), and then he'd come
back again and toss the paper towel he'd used to
dry his hands on to Martin's desk. They were
heady times, the Cordwell days – peaceful times.
That was before the Germans came in and made
Martin hire an assistant. It was never the same
with the old man gone.

Before Unique, he'd had his desk on the far
wall, away from the toilets (she had changed that
the first day). The view was better over there
because you could see out the window to the
factory floor. It gave you some sense of being
part of a group. At times, Martin had glanced up
and seen them all standing at their stations and
thought, 'Ah, my colleagues.' Now, he kept his
head down for fear of Unique misinterpreting his
glance and shouting, 'Don't even think about it,
fool. You ain't got the vocabulary to read this
book!'

Unique was staring at him. 'I asked you a
question, Fool.'

'What?' Martin asked, painfully aware that he
had become so accustomed to being addressed as
'Fool'. He was even beginning to think of it as a
proper noun.

'I said, where is Sandy?'

Martin glanced out the window. The stairs
leading up to the executive office were empty.
Usually, Sandy came down to use the bathroom
and check in with Unique before work started. It
was odd that she wasn't here, especially since last
night's episode of
Dancing With the Stars
had
been particularly competitive. Even the judges
had been shocked.

Unique craned her neck, trying to see up the
stairs. 'Who's that?'

Martin was thinking the same thing. He saw a
foot appear at the top of the stairs. It was clad in
a white tennis shoe. His gaze followed tan hose
up the calf to a below-the-knee beige skirt. Who
did that calf belong to? A beauty queen? A
salesperson from a pulp goods distributor? The
woman started to walk down the stairs, and he
was reminded of the beautiful passage from
The
Great Gatsby
when we first meet Mrs Wilson . . .
'
She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout,
but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as
some women can.
'

'Uh-oh,' Unique said. 'This ain't good.'

'
Her face . . . contained no facet or gleam of
beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible
vitality about her as if the nerves of her body
were continually smoldering.
'

'What's wrong with you, Fool?'

Martin became aware that his mouth was
hanging open.

'That's the police.'

Unique pronounced the word with two
syllables: po-lice. Martin glanced around the
room at the boxes stacked high to the ceiling as if
he could detect some theft. Southern had been
broken into once before. In 1996, just before the
Olympics, hooligans had busted the back door
and papered the entire factory floor. Martin had
been the first to discover the crime; he could still
remember the sense of abject violation he'd felt as
he'd picked 2300 from the machinery. Had it
happened again? Who had dared to target
Southern Toilet Supply this time? What
rapscallion had breached the sanctity of a small
American business that was owned by a multinational
conglomerate?

On the stairs, he saw that there was a man
behind the woman, a gray-haired, square
shoulders kind of guy who probably wore
cologne and winked a lot to make his point.
Rounding up the end of the group was Norton
Shaw, whose face was scrunched up like a fist.

'Uh-oh,' Unique repeated. 'Norton don't look
happy.'

Martin was standing, his fists clenched. Who
had attacked this simple little business? What
had they done this time?

The door opened. The woman stood there,
light pouring in all around her. Her blonde hair
had been permed too much, or perhaps the
winter weather had split the ends. There were
tiny splotches of dry skin on her face and what
looked like the last throes of a pimple in the
crevice of her right nostril. She was older than he
had first guessed, probably in her late forties,
which somehow made her more beautiful (even
as a boy, Martin had always been attracted to
older women). There was just something about
her – some kind of inner beauty, an air of
knowing – that commanded attention.

She took in the office, the stacked boxes, the
potted succulents. Behind her, the man asked,
'Are you the twat?'

Unique barked a laugh that made Martin's
eardrums hurt. 'That's him. That Fool over
there.' She pointed a long red fingernail his way.

Norton Shaw gave Martin a wary glance
before turning around and wordlessly heading
back up the stairs.

The woman took a wallet out of her jacket
pocket. She flipped it open to show Martin a gold
badge. 'I'm Anabahda.'

Martin squinted at the ID above her badge,
trying to put words to the sounds he had heard.
She closed the wallet too fast, though.

'This is Detective Bruce Benedict, my partner.'

The man winked at Martin, but his focus was
squarely on Unique, taking in every inch of her.
She smiled at his attention, practically batting her
eyelashes. With his slicked-back hair, expensive
suit and purple silk tie, he reminded Martin of a
character from a Stuart Woods novel. And, like
the typical Woodsian character, he carried
himself as if every woman he met wanted to give
him a blowjob.

'You're Martin Reed?' Anabahda asked.

'Yes.' He added, 'ma'am' to let her know he
respected her authority. 'Are you here about my
car? I hope you've caught the vandal.'

'Why don't we go somewhere and talk? Your
boss said we could use the conference—'

'You got a card?' Unique interrupted.

Martin smiled at Anabahda. 'You'll have to
excuse—'

'Fool, these are detectives. They don't send
detectives when somebody twats up your car.'
She snapped her fingers at Benedict. 'Gimme
your card.'

The man gave his partner a knowing, lopsided
smile as he handed his card to Unique.

'Homicide!' she screamed, nearly falling out of
her chair. 'Martin, you don't talk to Homicide
cops. My cousin talked to them once and he got
sent to jail for twenty years!'

Anabahda asked, 'What's your cousin's
name?'

Unique's face went blank. She picked up her
purse. 'I think I left my oven on.' She scampered
out the door, only the lingering scent of garlic and
mocha latte indicating she had even been there.

Martin swallowed. He was alone with her
now, except for Benedict. 'Can I see your card,
please?'

She took out her wallet again and dug around
in one of the pockets. 'This is just routine questioning,
Mr Reed. There's no reason to worry.'