Dying to Call You by Elaine Viets Page A

Nick panhandling for sure.
    Nick sat down at his computer and made a call, then threw down his phone and said, “They hate me. Everybody hates me. I can’t get any sleep. My roommate was drunk and he kept me awake all night. How am I going to sell if I can’t sleep?”
    “I’m sorry, Nick,” Helen said. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
    By twelve thirty, Helen had been insulted one hundred and twenty-six times, propositioned twice, and hung up on sixty-three times. Some woman in Oklahoma blew a police whistle into her phone. Helen’s ear was still ringing from that. She put the whistle woman on CALL BACK. She’d be pursued by septic tank calls till her last breath.
    Helen managed to make two sales, one in Maine and another in Kentucky. It wasn’t enough to get her into survey heaven, but at least her job was safe for the day.
    Nick had not sold anything. Helen was not surprised.
    When he did sit down at his phone, he argued with the callers. She heard him saying, “Listen, lady. I’m trying to tell you something. I can save you thousands in septic-tank bills.
    Lady, please don’t say that.”
    He hung up his phone in despair. “It’s over. I didn’t sell anything again. That lady just told me to fuck myself and die.
    I can’t take all this hate with no sleep.” He put his forehead down on his sticky desk. It was five minutes to one.
    “Nick!” Vito called. Nick sat up with a trapped, panicked look. He knew the end was coming. He hunched his skinny shoulders and went up front. Vito’s firings were always done in public.
    “Nick, you haven’t had a sale in two weeks. You’re out of here.”
    “Please, Vito,” Nick said. “Give me one more day.”
    “I can’t waste space on losers. And I can’t have you bothering the help. You’re out.”
    “I’ll lose my home,” Nick pleaded.
    “I gotta have sellers. Get lost.”
    Nick left. She saw him sitting next to the smokers’ trash can at the entrance, weeping. He didn’t notice he was sitting in a pile of cigarette butts. Helen averted her eyes and walked past him, then wondered if she should go back and give him some money. Would it be an insult, reducing him once more to a homeless beggar?
    In their world, money was never an insult, Helen decided.
    She found twenty-two dollars in her purse, and gave it all to Nick. “Here, buddy. Dinner’s on me.”
    He would be panhandling soon enough.
    At the Coronado that afternoon, Margery was drinking a screwdriver by the pool.
    “I thought you’d be high on life,” Helen said.
    “OK, I admit it. Fred and Ethel are getting on my nerves, too,” Margery said. “But they pay the rent, they aren’t weird, and they aren’t conning anyone—unlike some of my previous tenants.”
    “I’m beginning to miss the con man,” Helen said. “At least he never lectured me on the joys of clean living. How long are they staying?”
    “For the season, at least. They signed a lease through March.”
    March seemed a long time away, especially when Fred and Ethel came bouncing through the gate, looking preternaturally chipper.
    “We had a lovely lunch on Las Olas,” Ethel said. Helen could just imagine what the exclusive Las Olas restaurants made of her gold tennis shoes and I LOVE FLORIDA sweats printed with maps. The state looked even bigger stretched across Ethel’s rear end.
    “It was lovely till some bum asked us for money,” Fred said.
    “I told him to get a job,” Ethel said. “I don’t know why those people won’t work.”
    Helen saw Nick sitting by the trash can, crying for his lost job and soon-to-be-lost home.
    “Because you people hung up on him.” Helen stormed off, slamming the gate. She heard Ethel say, “What set her off?”
    I can’t take any more misery, Helen thought, as she wandered aimlessly around her neighborhood. The walk did not comfort her. The neighborhood was disappearing. The exuberant Art Deco apartments and affordable cottages were being torn down for overpriced condos.