Manhattan Life
Phil Wohl
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Phil Wohl
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It was a rite of passage each year at Manhattan Life Insurance Company. The golden doors would open every summer to a new crop of bright-eyed college students, all of which were over-qualified for a job that required little more than a high school-equivalent GED and a fully loaded MetroCard.
The New York Times Classifieds section posted the following as, just as it had done the third Sunday in May the previous 22 years:
MANAGEMENT TRAINING PROGRAM
Only the best and brightest recent college graduates
need apply for this prestigious Management Training Program
with this Fortune 500 company. Competitive salary and benefits.
Call 212-555-2424
Manhattan Life Insurance Company
Your life is in our hands…
ONE
It was one of the few post-college interviews containing an imbalanced talk format: 20 minutes of classic face-to-face interviewing followed by a one-hour, times psychological profile test.
The word “test” stirs up various emotions in different people. Ken Bunning spent his entire 21 years passing one test after another with flying colors. From his first exam in the pediatrician’s office checking his ears and reflexes, to his last final at George Washington University, Ken was all about giving back what he was asked for.
Barbara Gray had passed many of the landmarks in her life by simply standing in place and letting people admire her good looks. These people, especially men and lesbians thinking they had a shot, were more than happy to let Barbara pass go even if her work was less than exemplary. The bright fluoride smile, sparkling blue eyes, and the body even a mannequin would be envious of, made the test portion of the interview an unneeded exercise for Training Coordinator Maureen Stewart, who simply stated was a same-sex advocate.
Next in the room was Jeanine Cary, cheerleader, class president and constant organizer. Her jet black hair was as big as her personality, and her blue eyes told no lies as her sincerity really came through in the interview. But it was her 4.0 cumulative average and tremendous attention to detail that made her hiring a virtual certainty.
Henry Moore had absolutely no problem on the 20-minute interview. In fact, Maureen Stewart had rated him the highest of all the 125 male candidates she saw during the three weeks of interviews. His test score, however, was another story. It was a good thing for Henry that there really weren’t right or wrong answers to each question, as his score indicated he was a sensitive person that would be a great team member, and prefer a collaborative atmosphere to individual work.
Stewart sat in the conference room going over the candidates with her partner in time at work, Kathy Melvin, when she said, “This guy does not fit the profile of an underwriter but I think I can mold him.”
“Are you sure he would comply?” Melvin asked, knowing that straying outside of the acceptable parameters of the search criteria usually ended with a predictable conclusion.
“I will whip that boy into shape. He may be tall, but I will wear him down.”
Stewart had seen her share of candidates come and go in her 25 years with the company, and liked a good challenge every now and then to keep things fresh. As much as she tried to inhibit her personal feelings when evaluating potential candidates, she did let a few ‘wild cards’ pass through each year. It made her job more enjoyable to see a round peg aimlessly being tried to jam into a square hole.
The Manhattan Life Management Training Program had ebbed and flowed in size over the years, and currently stood at 20 people. In reality, however, only a couple of people would actual remain with the company and ascend to the management level within the company.
“This one is a guaranteed winner!” Stewart said to Melvin as she pulled Jeanine Cary’s paperwork.
“I’m with you on that one, but this one will probably work in pharmaceutical sales,” Kathy replied as she pulled Barbara Gray’s file.
“This guy is headed to be a buyer at Macy’s,” Melvin said when faced with Ken Bunning’s information.
But when Stewart picked up Henry Moore’s file, she drew a blank. Kathy stopped long enough to say, “I’ve never seen you so stumped about a candidate before.”
Stewart’s pained smile turned to a scowl as he fiery, auburn-dyed hair seemed to catch fire for an instant.
“This one… this one can be anything he wants, but not a manager at Manhattan Life.”
Melvin was confused, “So why bring him in?”
Stewart smiled a more devilish grin, “We’ll both enjoy the challenge.”
TWO
It was mid June and a bizarre mix of relaxation and anxiety enveloped even the most laid-back recent college graduate - all except Henry Moore, who was happy to have some time off for a change. It had been a grueling four years with a full course load, a major in business and a minor in English, participating on two intercollegiate athletic teams, and discovering new and inventive ways to both drink beer and convince girls to relax their dress codes.
Henry had only interviewed for one job since graduating, pinning his hopes on a position he cared little about and wouldn’t mind being passed over for.
“Did you send a thank you note for that job you interviewed for?” his mother asked one late afternoon as he snacked furiously while she prepared dinner.
“I sent an e-mail,” he simply replied.
Rita Moore was disturbed by the flippant response, but that was just part of her know-everything personality.
“E-mails are so impersonal. I always send letters.”
Henry thought to himself, “Well maybe that’s the way they did it back in the days of the Pony Express.”
“Did you check the messages?” his mom asked.
His parents still had an answering machine, preferring garbled messages to the new-age clarity of voicemail.
“I haven’t checked my cell phone, because I fell asleep on the float in the pool.”
Rita rolled her eyes, “Enjoy the life of leisure while it lasts, because you’ll be working for the next 40 years of your life if you’re lucky.”
Henry came back to reality for a brief moment, “Wow mom that sounds like fun!”
“My son, your days of fun are almost over,” as she put her arm around him.
He left the room with a few processed snacks in tow and then checked his cell phone voicemail. There was a message from Maureen Stewart, who rarely ever called candidates directly, preferring to have Kathy Melvin perform the mundane task.
Henry smiled, “The fun isn’t over just yet, mom.”
Forty thousand dollars seemed like a lot of money when he first heard the amount. It was a considerable sum considering that he lived with his parents rent-free and drove a car that was already paid for. That plentiful salary would be divvied up between commutation expenses, gas for his car, and the remainder would be utilized for going out on the weekend. There was little or no room in Henry’s plan for a budget, which also meant that the bank would only serve as a means to house his money before he burned it up.
Henry’s dad, Ethan Moore, was so happy that his only son got his first job that he immediately took him to Syms to buy a few suits. After selected a few winners and then having the resident tailor hem the garments, Ethan took a few moments to reflect on the car-ride home.
“I remember my first job out of college. They had me teaching kindergarten kids. I didn’t know whether to change their diapers or run them around until they passed out on the floor. No suite required for that job.”
“How much did you make?” Henry asked, cutting to the chase.
“I think the City of New York paid me the staggering sum of twenty-thousand, four-hundred dollars.”
There was a certain pride for a son making more than his father, but the euphoria was short-lived.
“Or course, with cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into about forty-two thousand and change today.”
Father then looked over at son in a “Not yet junior” glance.
The news of the job came on Tuesday, giving Henry the rest of the week to relax before starting his working life the following Monday. While most parents encouraged their grown children to do internships while in college, Ethan and Rita Moore directed their son to enjoy the fun ride while it lasted. They had years of experience that taught them that work was anything but fun, and that was why some poor schmuck coined all that labor and toiling ‘work.’
When you’re 21 or 22 the sheer gravity of anything lasting “for the rest of your life” leaves too much by the shoulder of the imagination highway. Mortality and the sweet struggle of the commute is not a known commodity until it is experienced first-hand. There really is no substitute for experience in life, and Henry and his co-workers were about to start the long, arduous road toward experience… no matter what your friends and family tell you… no matter what wisdom you glean from books and magazines… no matter what your smart ass thinks is a rational thought… no matter how much you try to avoid the pain that activates the experience… there really is no shortcut.
Instead of going to the beach and getting sand wedged in her thong bikini, Barbara Grey decided to enhance her unnatural skin tone by planting herself in a bed that emitted ultraviolet lights. Tanning, she said, gave her a “glow” that never seemed to fade.
Barbara’s parents had been divorced for nearly 10 years by the time she walked through the revolving doors of Manhattan Life. She had been shuffled back and forth from her mom’s house during the week and her dad’s apartment on the weekend, unless she had a cheerleading competition or practice. Mom was an ex-cheerleader that took her splits and tumbles quite seriously.
Barbara, or “Barbie” as her friends called her, was so trained to all of the running in her life that most men only lasted a short time with her and were thrust off the bucking bronco. She was as unsettled as a drunk walking to an AA meeting and passing a bar along the way. There had been a stable of guys, mostly football players and juice-heads that wound up playing tonsil hockey with Barbara in high school and college. Most of these guys got to second base and were running so fast that there was no stopping them going to third base, but there wasn’t a single guy that was able to go the distance and round the bases. They all claimed to their friends that they “went deep,” but all the lot of them displayed was “warning track power.”
Barbara’s parents weren’t religious and she did not ascribe to a vow of celibacy, so it was anything goes but… she would not “right the hall pass,” let “Tab A be inserted into Slot B,” give in to the temptation of the “vertical cha-cha,” or put the “sprinkler in the cave.” She also wouldn’t let any guy fuck her for reasons beyond her conscious comprehension. Her unconscious, however, revealed a desire to have control of just one thing in her life.
“You have to pick of the state schools,” her mother Sandra Joe said to her during her senior year. “Your father won’t pay for that fancy college you want to go to.”
It was Barbara’s life-long desire to go to the University of Southern California and cheer her way on to the legendary squad. She had idolized USC cheerleaders from the minute she saw the future pin-ups on television one afternoon when she was only five years old. But, instead of the USC Trojans, it has to be the SUNY Albany Great Danes. The acceptance letter and cheerleading tryout invite from USC spent a few months in a landfill in New Jersey before being recycled into toilet paper, because Barbara never knew of the letter’s existence.
Jeanine Cary’s mother, Maria, was about as Italian as a heaping bowl of pasta with meatballs, but her dad was one of the whitest men you will ever find on the planet. Michael Cary didn’t have an ethnic bone in his body, preferring to fall back on his Caucasian roots over the little town in Ireland his ancestors sailed over from. He didn’t drink or smoke, but he did have an aversion to a good game of poker on a Friday night.
Mom was a homemaker and dad was an engineer at a local aerospace company. Jinny’s unbeatable combination of mom’s street smarts and dad’s book smarts made her a natural-born leader. Her only Achilles heel was her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Tommy Calhoun.
Tommy was mostly on-again while the two attended Massapequa High School, but had sunk to off-again status once Jinny enrolled at Stonybrook University in their medical program. Her grades in high school could have taken her to just about any college in the country, but dad had his heart set on the tuition break he got from SBU through his company. That combined with the scholarship she earned, and her four years were basically free.
Tommy Calhoun spent one year at Nassau Community College and then decided that his special talents would be better served in the landscape design and snow removal field. So, you could see how he would be a real pain in the ass during droughts and warm winters. When the grass didn’t grow and the snow didn’t fall, the visits out East started piling up.
“Tommy, you have to call before you come out!” Jinny would say in a tone of voice reeking of frustration, as she was trying to study. She quickly decided that both the medical field and Tommy Calhoun were not her calling, so she switched majors to Business Administration and decided to date other guys for a few years. Jinny was one of those girls, and we all know them, that kept a semi-fictitious boyfriend around so that she didn’t have to fully commit to anyone else. When things were about to get serious, she would always fish out Tommy’s name from the scrap heap.
Jinny had so little luck with guys that she decided to give Tommy another chance just before graduation. He had finally moved out of his mother’s house and was back at Nassau Community College at night. Outer-house maintenance was somewhat lucrative, but Jinny had other plans for her man if he expected to hang on for the duration.
“If you want to marry me someday, then you have to get a degree!” Jinny insisted. No father of my kids is going to be a community college dropout!”
For all of Ken Bunning’s accomplishments in his 23 years of life, it was his failed relationship with his father that haunted him the most. More than being honored as class Valedictorian in high school, and then repeating that feat at the University of Pennsylvania. There wasn’t a day that went by when those images of his despondent father didn’t race through his head.
It was the classic tale of boy meets boy, they go to the junior prom together, dad is disgraced, won’t talk to son, dad drops dead four months later. The story goes on – dad leaves aside more than enough money for son to go to Ivy League School, son attends Ivy League School then lives with mother after graduation.
Ken is so Arian-looking and gorgeous that he would be scary in a Secret Service uniform. But this new-age German was as nice as he was handsome. He was so striking, in fact, that women couldn’t help but fall in love with him even though they knew he was gay. He was the perfect mate in every way, except for the fact that he had a strict no-vagina policy.
Maureen Stewart even summoned her last ounce of heterosexuality when she admitted, “I’d fuck that guy if he didn’t have a penis.”
Of course, it helped that she was alone in her office with her favorite companions, a bottle of double-malt scotch and a bag of dried fruit.
Ken had offers up his bleached ying-yang after college, but he decided to start where his dad finished at Manhattan Life. Dad was more clever than smart, and Ken always saw his mom as the Einstein of the family. Nuclear engineer turned mommy, Sandra Bunning always had a special connection with her only child. Once Kenneth Edward Bunning locked eyes with his mother at birth, there was no separating the two. Donald Bunning always campaigned for more children, but one was all that Sandra needed and Ken never let her down. Not even when he came out of the wardrobe closet… she was as proud that day as the day he was born.
3
It was a hot, sticky, mid-July day in Mid-Manhattan. For experienced work veterans it was just another in a string of long-forgettable days in the armpit of hell, which proved that once you’ve been in hell long enough, your sensitivity dulled to the point that you can’t differentiate the bitter cold from the scorching heat.
It had been quite a while since Henry Moore wore a suit and a tie. And it was the tie part of the getting dressed process that gave him the most trouble. Ten minutes and at least 15 failed knots, and he was on the verge of giving up until the task appeared instantly in his brain. He was told that the first day of work would be purely orientation, which pretty much went against his non-conformist stance.
In contrast, Ken Bunning was impeccably dressed and sitting in a Madison Avenue coffee shop at 7:15 am, across the street from Manhattan Life. It might have been his father’s military background that had him up so early, but it was most likely his fear that his place in the business world was about as far from corporate America and the dreaded nine to five as possible. The light gray suit with tasteful pink tie wreaked of the world of fashion, but his wrinkle-free presentation and slicked-back hair would translate into “dynamic” in any boardroom around the world. This high flyer had definitely undershot his initial post-college landing.
Barbara Grey’s somewhat revealing outfit sealed her fate at Manhattan Life even before the first training session began. Maureen Stewart conjectured that there would be no way for her to concentrate and get any work done with such a goddess around. In the meantime, she would just enjoy the view and imagine posing Barbie in a variety of compromising positions.
New situations were not Barbara’s favorite thing. She barely slept in the days leading up to day one and then changed outfits at least 10 times during her hair, makeup and outfit preparation. Barbara always worried about fitting in, primarily because she was so uncomfortable with herself. In reality, however, all she had to do was show up and smile and then wait for the inevitable waterfall of drool. The least she could have done was provide a hand towel and some mouthwash help freshen up the agape traps.
Being born for the job, Jeanine Cary was in the zone the split-second her alarm went off that morning. She had lined everything up the night before, from business suit to train pass. She was a model of calibration, from the 49 strokes it took to brush her hair, to the way she applied her standard issue, dark red lipstick – top right, bottom right, top left, bottom left.
Her briefcase was immaculate, she read a magazine instead of a newspaper on the train to avoid the black print residue. Working out one hour every night as an aerobics instructor made the walk from Penn Station to the office a routine and sweat-free event. In contrast, the sweat on Henry Moore’s body was so hot that it was, in fact, sweating.
It was 8:48 am and the last of the crop of Management Trainees were taking ID photos in the Manhattan Life lobby. The new employees trickled in one-by-one into a nearby conference room, where a continental breakfast awaited them.
“Always like to fatten them up before the slaughter,” Maureen Stewart said to Kathy Melvin as the stood and observed their new charges. Stewart used that same joke at least six consecutive years and it never failed to get a fresh, but canned chuckle out of her training counterpart.
“This looks like a decent group,” Kathy stated after a few moments of silence.
It was a classic confrontation between a person in Stewart that always saw the glass as half-empty, versus eternal optimist Melvin, who saw that same glass as plentiful and half-full.
Henry waiting in the ID picture line and then headed into the conference room when his sweaty picture was taken. He quickly assembled a plate of a bagel with cream cheese and a carrot muffin before looking for the guy he was talking to on the line.
“Hey Rob,” Henry said as he sat across the large oval table from his new friend.
“Henry! Long time no see, dude!” the modern hippy with a stratospheric IQ replied.
Rob Gross had about as much chance of succeeding in the wild and whacky world of life insurance as his friend across the table. The two guys were free spirits with ideas filling their heads that needed to breathe in the open air, not the confines of a six by six cubicle.
Gross completed the SAT in 11th grade with a perfect score. Then he went to college and discovered the natural serenity of herbal remedies. The copious buzz achieved off some good shwag transcended Rob into another realm. Actually, the other realm was Yale University in Connecticut, which was in a neighboring state that was drivable from his parents’ home on Long Island. Even with the clouded brain, Rob finished with a 3.98 GPA, because he slept through a mid-term his freshman year, causing the only blemish in an otherwise spotless academic record.
Henry did not have the slightest clue that Rob was so brilliant. Besides, he didn’t look like much in his mis-sized suit, cheap tie and unkempt Jew-fro.
An Asian guy who had a minimal command of the English language sat next to Rob. After the three guys got done bowing to each other in silence, Henry reached his long arm across the table and offered his hand in greeting, “I’m Henry, and this is Rob.”
The polite guy nodded, as if somebody had driven him straight from a crowded plane to Sixth Avenue.
“Chu,” he said.
“Bless you,” Rob said as he looked at Henry and added, “Did somebody sneeze?”
Rob’s jokes were usually for an audience of one, with personal amusement through the use of corny jokes always on the bill.
“The recruits were given a few more minutes to eat and then were ushered into yet another conference room. Maureen Stewart walked in front of the room like a coach about to give a rousing halftime speech. She introduced herself and then her partner in crime, Kathy Melvin.
“This morning we will give you a general outline of our Management Training program and the opportunities and potential pitfalls of being a Manhattan Lifer. After lunch we will split you up into two groups of ten. Kathy will train half of you on the art of claims adjustment and I will school the other half of underwriting practices and procedures. You will remain in these groups for the next six months while you learn the ins and outs of our little business. She looked around the room, “Are there any questions?”
The room had turned so tense that Henry was definitely intrigues by the possibility of being the first person to ask a question, any question! But his desire to swim against the tide was only trumped by his aversion toward trouble. He viewed his subtle interjections in the college classroom as necessary transitions in an otherwise unbearable flow of disconnected thoughts. To him, a class should be one cooperative effort, not a singular pursuit to orate every possible word combination in the English language.
Stewart looked over at Henry, basically daring him to speak. He slowly picked up his hand and then smoothly veered off to scratch the side of his head. The battle of wills was on and only one side would emerge victorious and enriched from the confrontation.
4
Henry ate lunch with Rob and a few other people that sat out their table. Manhattan Life had its own cafeteria on the second floor of the 44-floor building. The group was told to report back to the 24th floor after lunch, where the receptionist would guide them to a nearby conference room.
“There’s no way they are gonna’ put us in the same group,” Rob said to Henry.
“Why do you say that?” Henry asked.
“Dude, did you see the way that woman looked at you?”
Henry laughed, “Yeah.”
“She was just daring you to ask a question.”
“I already knew where the bathroom was…” Henry said as he took a bite out of his hamburger.
“That’s what I was going to ask!” Rob stated.
Henry nodded in agreement, “Then I see your point. Only one wise-ass per class.”
“Yep,” Rob replied.
There was no way Henry could endure six months of the kind of malaise he witnessed at the lunch table. While Rob + Henry = PARTY, the subtraction of some of the other stiffs at the table signaled a whole lot of head-bobbing while fighting to stay awake.
Maureen Stewart was proud of her list, because she put at least a week of thought into its contents. It was probably one of the grossest misuses of company time she had ever been party to. She went through draft after draft of legal pads until her wastebasket was full most nights.
She knew right from the first moment of the first day that Rob Gross and Henry Moore, the two class clowns, would have to be separated. Together, they would be an unstoppable force of comedy, but apart, they could hopefully be contained.
Most of the trainees to a few too many items on the lunch line, and this increased weight differential would inevitably cause after lunch grogginess syndrome. But before total lethargy set in, Stewart stood in front of the class with a focus on separating and slicing, dimming hopes of any unity that still existed. Instead, a competitive process would be launched where 10 versus 10 began, only to manifest itself into a full-out war of attrition over time.
Rob and Henry were bummed at hearing they were placed in different groups, because they both instinctively knew that intense boredom would be ever-present. The lists of classrooms were handed out to the Management Trainees and then Maureen Stewart read it out loud just in case the college graduates had trouble interpreting data. Henry glossed over the list and, within a few minutes, he was slapping Rob’s hand and shuttled into Conference Room B with nine other newbie’s.
Kathy Melvin stood in front of Henry’s group and introduced herself. She then proceeded to the awkward, but obligatory “Now let’s go around the room and find out who you all are.”
Mr. Chu was first, “My name is Chu Ng…” and that was about all Henry heard. He looked around the room and witnessed faces etched in stone, not the tears of hilarity that he expected. His mind was screaming to say, “Chu Ng? Chewing? What is his sister the lawyer name, “Sue? His vampire cousin, Bite?” He could have gone on all day but he was third in line and had to start preparing.
“My name is Henry Moore…” and Jeanine Cary thought, “and you need to kiss me real hard.”
Barbara Grey took a different route, “and I have a huge dick.”
Ken Bunning internally added, “and I have the cutest little dimple on my chin.”
Even Kathy Melvin chimed in, “and I will be looking for a new job in six months.”
Ken Bunning and Henry sat next to each other on one side of the table, and Jeanine and Barbara sat across from them – Barbara directly across from Ken and Jinny across from Henry.
“I am Ken Bunning… “
Henry: “and I am the best dressed man in the entire world!”
Jinny: “and I’m prettier than any girl at this company.”
Barbara: “and I look good now, but you should see me naked.”
Kathy: “and I will be the wealthiest person in this room one day.”
Chu: “and my smelly sister, Fart, would love to go out with you!”
“My name is Jeanine Cary…”
Henry: “and I need Henry to lick my neck and behind my ear.”
Ken: “and I really must invest in better quality eye shadow.”
Barbara: “and I’ve never had a lesbian experience.”
Chu: “and my brother, Pant, would be breathless to meet you.”
Of course, there was lots of interest in Barbara.
“Hello, my name is Barbara Gray…”
Henry: “and I am the sexual key to the universe.”
Ken: “and I deserve to be worshipped.”
Jinny: “and I slept with every girl in my sorority.”
Kathy: “and I will eventually sleep with my boss to get ahead.”
Chu: No thoughts, just wood.
And no, he didn’t have a relative named after an act of sexual release. The family had to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere was when teenage Flame came out of the closet and was arrested for arson on the same day.
5
Hour after hour of senseless instruction went by as if the instructors had concocted some sort of insurance endurance test. It was quite apparent who in the group had trained for the marathon of all irrelevant marathons. While Jeannine Cary had spent days and nights preparing for this very moment, Henry Moore had purchased the equipment but had done little else. His was a world of interaction and reaction, not isolation and resuscitation.
Isolation was bar far the worst condition in Henry’s world. Without interaction, he was forced to shift to a world of daydreams and phantasmagorical possibilities. The stimuli in front of him was two really hot females that would rather have taken a swim in the pool with him in a secluded location with the lights on under water on a hot summer night. But the scenario was still raw and had to be further developed…
Jinny was focused but found herself in a pair of skin-tight cut-off jean shorts and a bikini top. Somehow, Henry had penetrated her defenses and synchronized first Jinny and then Barbara into the daydream.
“Barbie, you want something to drink?” Henry asked as he opened the glass-front fridge in the dream kitchen.
She replied, “I’m so hot,” as she took off her t-shirt to reveal the top-half worthy of a Playboy bunny.
Henry fumbled a can of soda on the floor and it started spraying everywhere.
“You ready to explode, too, Hank?”Jinny asked.
“Yeah, I need to give this some air,” Henry said as he slid out of his basketball shorts.
The dream in Henry’s mind has his back to the view while the girls looked shocked but happy.
Barbara turns to Jinny and says, “That should keep us going for a while.”
Just then, in the world that was actually real, Kathy Melvin circulated a handout and Molly Brower, a tall and thin drink of water sitting next to Jinny said, “That should keep us going for a while.”
The three daydreamers snapped out of it as if they were prompted by the command of a hypnotist. The two women looked across the table at Henry, who returned their look in kind with a devilish smile. Barbara excused herself to get some air, Henry was firmly planted in his chair waiting for the erection to subside, and Jinny simply sat in a pool of heat while focusing on the new material. It wasn’t like Jinny to make a scene. She never had a day of detention in high school only saw the inside of a principal’s office to pick up her annual perfect attendance award.
The first week of training was just a warm-up for the widespread boredom that was to come. Most of the trainees had an inkling of the uselessness of work when they were forced to trek into the city with their parents when they were younger. The slow crawl of these days seemed like a pleasure cruise when compared to the day-to-day grind of the commute into the big city.
Friday came almost by surprise, but no one was questioning the significance of surviving through an entire work week. The only thing that could have made it more palatable would have been a check received for all of that sitting, but that would have to wait for the following week. Another five days to conquer, another mountain of unfulfilled curiosity to breach.
“A bunch of us are headed over to the Seaport, do you want to come?” Rob asked Henry at lunch on Friday.
Since Henry was a dumb-ass and his New York City adventures rarely strayed past the range of lower Central Park to Madison Square Garden, he nodded in general agreement and waited for his hazy friend to clarify.
“Oh, the South Street Seaport, its downtown near Wall Street.”
Henry raised his right hand and formed an “Okay” sign as he ate his home-made peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“You must really like peanut butter,” Gretchen Muller interjected.
Henry nodded and then tried to clear space in his mouth for words, but they were glopped in a wedge of chunky peanut butter. He put up his index finger to signal the potential waiting time for a response.
“I’ve been eating it almost every day since I was four,” Henry stated and then took a drink of milk. “For some reason, it goes down much easier with a tall glass or a carton of milk.
Henry was dying to ask a full series of questions about the Seaport, but was afraid to dive into the shallow end of the pool where the little kids had heavy bathing suits and the water was warm and murky.
He was never comfortable with the unknown, not that anyone is really comfortable with being unsure of their surroundings. Henry came from a world where the default answer to everything was “No,” while “Yes” was a response reserved for the holidays and special occasions. This was also a time of year when all of the other people that said “No” would gather, proving that two negatives multiplied really do create a positive.
Five o’clock mercifully came and the fictitious white-collar whistle blew, signaling the end of the day and week. Sixteen out of the 20 people in the program ventured out to the subway and filled up the better part of a car. Chu was meeting his sister Nosh for a bite to eat, Carla Penters was an extreme introvert and hadn’t spoken in at least six months – save for the interview, Grace Summers had a boyfriend and they were in the having sex like rabbits stage, and Andrew Collins parents had a house in the Hamptons and he was headed out East.
Henry looked at Rob and then turned to Ken and said, “That was the longest week of my life.”
Ken smiled and replied, “Tell me about it.”
Normally Henry would have spoken directly to Rob but he decided to converse through Ken. He turned around and looked at Rob, smiling, and Rob returned the smile with a wry smile of his own thinking, “This guy knows how to work the room.”
Henry always attempted to use humor as an icebreaker, whether the situation was as tight as a Management Training Program or as loose as two bodies of lust going at it on a couch, although he tended to be less of a comedian when he had a bulge in his pants.
Ken had developed a soft spot for Henry, and not the kind of soft spot that involved scented oils and role play. The only part of Henry that Ken was attracted to was his heart. It was rare for him to open up to people, but it was difficult to avoid getting close when you worked in tight quarters with people.
There were a few guys on the other side of the subway car that had passed their bar-hopping peak, but apparently they missed the memo. In the 20-something world of the South Street Seaport Friday night scene, 30-somethings were seen as outsiders needing to be jettisoned to the suburbs.
Fresh out of college was a bit too soon to be running out to the Jersey Shore. Money supply was about as tight as a pair of pants from high school, and the trips to the Seaport and a local bar on Saturday night were about as much as a limited budget could withstand without mooching off parents.
“Let’s start with the oil can,” Rob said as he walked up to the first bar he saw. Mulcahey’s Pub was a typical, sticky floor, dark wood bar, and overpriced drinks establishment. Eight dollars for the giant Fosters Lager can seemed reasonable because most of the guys could drink only one and be done for the night. The Australian brew also packed a punch, especially when sliding down a throat to an empty stomach.
A few of the girls came in for a beer, as the college days still held on tight before releasing the female population to heightened maturity and responsibility. The people that weren’t drinking had little chance of long-term survival. Ken Bunning and four other women were gone within a half-hour. Ken was meeting with other friends in The Village at 7:00 pm and managed to scoot out of the Seaport virtually unnoticed. It would be his first, and last, appearance at the Friday gathering.
Meanwhile, inside of the bar, any remnants of working at an extremely tedious job were sent out to sea in the endless oil can. It was probably early enough to complain about a job without repercussions.
“You guys got the better part of the deal. That Maureen is gonna’ shove a stick up my ass next week,” Rob said to Henry, who was standing close to his daydream sex partners, Barbara and Jinny.
“Yeah, I don’t think she like me much either,” Henry yelled back at Rob through the loud music.
Barbara was especially vulnerable when she drank and was starting to feel like attacking Henry to see what he was made of. This made her nervous and looking for a door to exit from at the first bathroom break. She would rather endure another lonely night with her vibrator than start off work on the wrong orgasm.
“You guys want to go inside and get something to eat?” Rob asked. “They have a whole food court in there,” Rob added as he pointed across the cobblestone square.
Jinny replied, “Definitely,” but Barbara looked at Jinny and said, “I have to go meet my boyfriend.”
That was girl-code for, “If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to rip Henry’s clothes off!”
Jeanine Cary had mastered the art of holding out. She had denied herself real pleasure on so many occasions over the past four years that reflex was abstinence over attack. Conversely, Barbara Grey was the terminator – when she locked a target she always finished the job, except for this night, when her boyfriend would be a battery-powered falic symbol she hid in a box in her closet.
Only two of the 20 trainees lived on their own in Manhattan: Ken lived in the up-and-coming Meat Packing District, and a little mouse named Christopher Chandler lived on the Upper Eastside with his sister, who was looking for a roommate and was happy to get some help on the rent for a change.
Christen Chandler barely said two words in Maureen Stewart’s training class all week, but she strolled over with eight other people from Mulcahey’s Pub to the common area across the street. They walked past a few food vendors and the rode and escalator up to the full food court on the second floor of the old, but modernized building.
Pizza was the fare of the day – Vito’s Pizza cut slices the size of an entire pie outside of the East Coast. Two pieces was more than a meal for most of the guys and one slice was ample for most of the ladies except 98-pound Christen Chandler, who wolfed down 3 slices.
Rob could not believe his eyes, saying to the group that was spread out over a few tables, “Where the hell is she putting that shit?”
Christen took a huge bite of her third slice and replied with a straight face, “I get coffee enemas once a week,”
It was a good thing the area in which they were sitting was fairly vacant, because spits of soda and pizza were forthcoming along with soda that streamed out of Jinny Cary’s nose. There was nowhere for the laughter to go, so it shot out of her proboscis.
Henry gathered a few napkins and quickly handed then to Jinny, who was laughing and coughing, nut mostly embarrassed. He extended his hand and gently placed it in Jinny’s shoulder, “It’s okay,” he said softly amidst the raucous laughter, “you’re amongst friends.”
Henry realized at that moment that Jinny was the girl you married, while Barbara was the girl you did everything else to. He had come across this obvious distinction many times over the past six years – the years that spanned his actual dating experience. The girlfriends he had before the age of 17 could more easily be categorized as “paper dates” rather than substantive physicality. Kissing without traveling to France didn’t rate his substantive physicality scale, but it would in present day of he got a chance to kiss Jinny Cary.
Four hours of drinking and it was time for most of the crowd to call it a night. Rob hung around with Holly Messner because the two of them lived to party, four other people wandered off to find the PATH train to take them to Jersey, and Henry was hailing a cab to take him and Jinny to Penn Station to their Long Island Rail Road trains.
It was a warm, muggy night, yet the cab driver refused to turn on the air conditioner. It must have been the fresh Manhattan smog that inspired the dark-skinned gentleman with more vowels than consonants in his proper name to roll down his window.
Jinny could have used some cool air because her clammy skin displayed the glow of toxic beverages. One Fosters’, five Bud’s and a shot of something Rob ordered caused the extremely tall Henry to feel comfortably numb, but put Jinny on the brink of the netherworld after three beers and the shot. While she wasn’t at risk to toss her cookies, her lofty thoughts and sky-high ambitions had finally come back down to a level that her inner-most thoughts were able to make an appearance.
“The breeze feels so nice on my face,” a slurred speech Jinny said as the driver zoomed up the FDR Drive.
She looked like a dog with its head out of the window, but this girl was anything but a dog. All of Henry’s instincts pointed toward protection, not aggression. The shift of inhibitions maintained its natural balance, as Henry pick up any slack that Jinny relinquished. She looked at her watch and said, “I think there’s an 11:05 train.”
Henry didn’t want to have an awkward conversation in front of a perfect stranger with a small gold crown perched on his dashboard emitting an effusive odor that could be seen as a fragrance in some parts of the world where deodorant is not sold, so he waited to guide Jinny once they got to Penn Station.
“Here, let me get some money,” Jinny slurred as Henry had already paid the man and was standing on her side of the car waiting to help her out.
“Don’t worry about it,” Henry said as he guided Jinny toward the curb while gently holding her arm. It was the same move he used with his grandmother a few years earlier.
Henry already looked up his train time and led Jinny to Track 4 before she had the chance to object to his initiative. They sat in a three-seater in the front of a half-empty train when an announcement came over the loudspeaker, alerting the passengers of the train’s destination.
Jinny picked her head off Henry’s shoulder looked at him with her fuzzy eyes, “This is not my train.”
He quietly replied, “I’m gonna’ drive you home.”
She thought for a moment and then nodded her head in agreement as she snuggled closer to him.
“Okay,” she peacefully replied before dozing off.”
The 45-minute ride was one of the more relaxing experiences Henry could ever remember. Jinny’s peaceful breathing: her effortless inhale gave way to an equally-efficient exhale, as Henry synced his own breath to merge their air flows.
Henry gently judged Jinny as the train moved closer to their stop, “Our stop is next.”
She wearily rose to her feet, finally opening her eyes as they approached the alcove in front of the doors. She was happy to see Henry at first and then said, “What are you doing here?” as she regained a shred of sensibility.
“I’m gonna’ drive you home. You’re in no condition to drive,” he replied.
She smiled and said, “Okay, you’re the boss.”
The walk from the train to the car, which was a good quarter-mile in length, would have taken the better part of an hour if Henry didn’t take hold of Jinny. He slung both of their briefcases over his shoulders and then put his arm around her to support her noodle-like legs. The fit was quite nice with her left arm draped around his waist. Her hand even slipped into his back pocket by the end of the walk, which made it even harder for Henry to not want to take her right there and then in the parking lot.
But, the gentlemen in him opened the passenger door and guided her into the seat. She was wearing a knee-length skirt and the second button on her blouse opened, revealing the kind of womanhood that kingdoms were fought over.
Henry reached around Jinny as delicately as he could for an extremely tall guy in a tight spot. Her smell was intoxicating and he was able to click the seat belt in place. Before he could stand up straight, she grabbed him by the tie and pulled him in for a wet, passionate kiss.
“Now that’s more like it!” she yelled as Henry struggled to stand upright. By the time he removed his jacket and placed it in the back seat and then sat in the driver’s seat, she was fast asleep. Any bulging thoughts he had about adding another log to the fire were quickly squelched by her tenuous condition.
He started the car and then thought to himself, “Just as well. I wanted her awake when we take it to the next level.”
It was a speedy 15-minute drive down Sunrise Highway going east to Massapequa. Henry initially got lost and then found his way through all of the streets named for states. She lived on Rhode Island Street, which was fitting for a person of partial Italian descent.
He then pulled into the driveway of number 87 and turned the lights and engine off. Henry reached for Jinny’s briefcase and said, “You’re home, Jinny.”
Her eyes opened as she attempted to regain some sort of composure, but most of it had floated away with all of the alcohol down the East River.
“How did we get here so fast?” Jinny asked, awakening from her slumber at midnight.
“There was no traffic,” Henry replied as he asked Jinny, “Do you have your key?”
Jinny clumsily rifled through her bag and fished the key out. Henry helped her out of the car and then watched as she opened the door without looking back, leaving Henry still wanting for that look of thanks. He plopped back in his car and then slowly rolled home, reveling in Jinny’s scent which was still circulating throughout the car.
SIX
Jinny awoke the next morning happy to be in her cool room and comfortable bed. She got up slowly and creeped into the light of the hallway on her way to the bathroom. Going to sleep with her makeup still caked on made her scrub extra hard to rid herself of the pain.
After a good five minutes of soaping and scrubbing, Jinny’s original soft, olive skin was restored. She went to the bathroom and then brushed her teeth. ANAL PEOPLE ALERT: Yes, she washed her hands again before brushing her teeth! Now you can relax.
Jinny walked downstairs and her mother greeted her in the kitchen.
“Good morning, sunshine. You have a good night?” as she placed a plate of eggs and sausage in front of her with a glass of freshly-poured orange juice.
“Yes, thanks mom.”
Jinny buttered her toast and then her memory decided to cascade back in slow, slippery stages.
“Did you hear me come in last night?” she asked her mother trying to sound cool.
“Yes, it was about midnight. Did someone drive you home, because your car isn’t out front?”
Jinny’s eyes widened as the missing pieces of her diluted memory locked back into place.
“Yeah,” was all she replied.
“No problem. I can drive you over to the station after breakfast.”
It was a Saturday morning, a full two days away from talking to another human being about the events of the previous night. The work relationships were still too new to risk such a personal phone call. Besides, the only person that could piece it all together was Henry, and she wasn’t about to call him. Facing him at work would surely be awkward enough.
Henry, on the other hand, happily slept until 11 o’clock and then threw on a pair of gym shorts, a t-shirt, and then splashed some cold water on his face and hair. He walked down to the kitchen and opened a box of Cap’n Crunch and poured a half-a-bowls worth down his throat. He grabbed bottled water and looked at his dad, who was waiting at the front door, and said “Ready.”
Fifteen minutes later, Henry was running up and down a basketball court at his local park and participating in the ‘first run’ of the day. By the time the second game arrived, he had sweated out most of the alcohol from the previous night and regained his faculties enough to influence the game.
Between games, a sweat-drenched Henry sat next to his dad on a stone bench outside of the fenced-in court.
“Smells like you had a fun night,” the ex-bartender asked his son.
Henry replied, “Yeah, it was a good night.”
“Going out again tonight?” dad asked.
“Yep,” he replied as he stood up to play the next game.
“You’re not following through,” dad stated, still trying to coach a son that had moved on from childhood pursuits.
All Henry could think about was not following through with Jinny, and what would have happened if he didn’t have a conscience. While his dad was talking about shooting a basketball, Henry was dreaming about Jinny and her infinite womanly charms.
Time had passed Oliver Henry by and his son’s focus had radically changed. Although Henry would indulge his father’s sports dreams for another few years in order to help sweat the poison out that he ingested, the real party in Henry’s mind was just beginning.
Jinny was driven to get to work early on Monday morning. She walked by the Starbucks on the corner across from the Manhattan Life building at 8:15 am, peaking Ken Bunning’s interest. He sipped on a large cup of chai tea, hoping to shake a cold that he developed late Friday night/early Saturday morning while unsuccessfully making the transition from Jacuzzi to ice-cold air conditioning. The sniffles didn’t actually hit until he woke up the next morning in Javier’s apartment. Oh, how he loved his Latin men with their tan lines and limited command of the English language.
The look on Jinny’s face appeared to be a lot more interesting than the robots lining Starbucks, so he bit on the bait and went upstairs. Since Ken and Jinny were in the same training group, they also sat in cubicles within a poorly-folded paper airplane flight of each other.
Jinny was trying to keep a low profile but noticed the sickly look on Ken’s face and had to mother. Maureen Stewart, from her glass-fronted office, noticed early-bird Jinny counseling ken and flashed a brief victorious smile at her good judgment.
“Are you feeling okay?” Jinny asked as she placed her hand on Ken’s shoulder.
He was seated and looked up at her like a loving son, “I got the sniffles.”
“You got some tea, that’s good,” she said.
Ken couldn’t resist, “How was your weekend?”
The usually unflappable Jinny was now quite flappable, “You know I’m not quite sure.”
Ken perked up at the slightest hint of juicy gossip, “You’re not sure about what?”
Jinny thought for a moment about faking an urgent bathroom trip, but the beans had to be spilled.
“I had a few too many drinks Friday night.”
Ken panned, “Didn’t we all.”
“You drank too?”
Sirens went off in Ken’s head and his internal loudspeaker blared, “She’s getting off the subject, you’re going to lose her!”
“Yes, but that’s not important,” Ken stated. “What is important is what happened to you on Friday night.”
Just then, the shadow-producing presence of Henry Moore became evident from across the floor.
Jinny panicked, “Now I really have to go to the bathroom,” as she bolted out of the huge room like she was wearing a pair of ice skates on a frozen pond.
Henry was making a pre-8:30 am appearance for the first, and last, time that Monday morning. He had been thinking all weekend about Jinny and needed to see her, regardless if removing her pink lacy bra and matching panties were in his immediate future.
“Where was she off to?” Henry asked Ken as he put his briefcase down on his desk.
Ken put one-and-one together and smiled before replying, “She said something about going to the bathroom. So, how was your weekend?”
Henry sat down in his chair and spun toward Ken, who was seated behind him.
“It was pretty uneventful. Slept all day yesterday after going out Saturday night. You?”
“That sounds about right. How late did you stay at the Seaport Friday night?” Ken asked, trying to stay on the only topic he cared about on this morning.
Henry thought for a moment, “It was about 10-ish.” Then the ‘magic’ was about to happen, “We probably drank a bit too much.”
Ken didn’t even have the chance to say “We?” The door was wide open and then a huge gust of wind came along and slammed it shut.
Jinny walked back into the room after hyperventilating in the bathroom for a full 30 seconds. She got Henry’s attention by just appearing in his peripheral vision, and then she gestured for him to meet her in a conference room. The other trainees would be filling in as the clock drew closer to nine, so she wanted to take some time and have a little privacy.
Before he even shut the door to the conference room she said, “Ground rules. You can’t have this again,” she said motioning to her body.
He appeared confused and didn’t respond so she brought her guard down and asked, “Did you have this?”
Henry calmly sat down with enough of a smile on his face to be internally gleeful without showing too much outer elation.
“What do you think?” he asked, hoping for some sign of trust from Jinny.
“You did drive me home, right?” she nervously asked.
He looked slightly annoyed, “Yes, and you’re welcome.”
She blushed, “Thank you. That was so nice of you.”
He returned the blush and then a few moments of squishy silence ensued.
In a flash, memories of kissing Henry danced through Jinny’s mind as she looked at his soft lips.
“Oh my god! You kissed me!” she exclaimed.
She touched her lips as he tried to set her straight, “No, my dear, you were the kisser and I was the kissee.”
“No way!” she indignantly countered.
“Yes way!” he shot back. “I helped you in the car after basically carrying you from the train down those 400 steps. I have to tell you that you had this glow about your skin…” he said, getting off-task before quickly recovering. “But when I reached over you to put your seat belt on, you grabbed me by the tie and pulled me in…”
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