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uncertainty adjusting to Kammegian’s pitch, my old sales adrenaline had taken over. Without cocaine and booze, my head was clear. I was like a dog with a rag in its mouth. I refused to hear ‘NO’. I’d cut the quantity, give a dollar off per cartridge as a discount, defer the shipment, propose an eighteen-month price freeze, whatever it took—then CLOSE the deal. My success ratio of pitches to sales was higher than it had ever been. I had twenty-six cold-call deals for the week,tops in the company. Twelve hundred and seventy dollars in solid commissions. Already Frankie Freebase was bragging that he’d discovered the new wonder mouth on the sales floor.
    Then, finally, Jimmi bled out. It was Friday morning. She had no deals at all before the break. Sitting together in her car in the parking lot at lunch, I sipped my coffee and watched her chain smoke and drink Pepsis. In boiler rooms, you have it or you don’t. ‘You buy their tears, or they buy your toner!’
    Furious and sobbing, she grabbed me around the neck. She’d never make quota. She knew it. Today was her last day. All I could say was, ‘I’m sorry, Jimmi.’ It was then that I realized something: I would do anything to keep her around, help her save her job. Anything at all.
    Half an hour later, in the middle of a sale, the solution came to me. A plan. For the next three hours, I dialed my ass off, slamming DP Managers and stock clerk mooches, cutting prices, pushing partial boxes of ribbons, whatever it took. At ten minutes before the last order pick-up of the day, I had six fresh sales in my desk tray. They were small deals, but the size didn’t matter. Scooping them out, I erased my own name, then wrote ‘Valiente’ and Jimmi’s Orbit ID number on four of the orders.
    I got up to go to the crapper, and on my way passing her desk I slid the pages into her ‘out’ basket. I knew they would put her at quota and save her job.
    After I returned from the bathroom and a smoke, I was at my desk totaling my commissions when I felt the thud of a thick eraser against the collar of my shirt. Behind me the blazing Siamese eyes held nothing back. ‘Thanks, babee,’ Jimmi cooed. Then, as an afterthought, she grabbed her crotch. ‘Wait, vato,’ she whispered, ‘I suck your dick for free.’
    We both laughed.
    At five o’clock she was still on the phone, so I decided to go to the bookkeeper’s office to ask for an advance. I had won the cold-call bonus for the week: two hundred and fifty dollars.
    New Incubator people were normally required to wait an extra seven days to get their first check because of the lag time in verifying orders, but, because I needed the money and because I had won the contest, I’d convinced Frankie Freebase to ask Kammegian for an exception and get me a thousand dollar advance.
    It took almost half an hour for me to collect the money. Tilly, the payroll lady, kept ringing Kammegian’s line, unwilling to cut me the check and cash it without the boss’s personal okay. I didn’t mind waiting. I’d had my biggest telemarketing week in years. Twelve-hundred-and-eighty-six dollars for five days work. Take home. No taxes were deducted, because Orbit paid all its phone people as Independent Contractors.
    Tilly finally got through to Kammegian and obtained his okay. I signed the pay vouchers. She only had enough money on hand to cash my two hundred and fifty dollar bonus, so I was given a payroll check for the rest.
    I was leaving Payroll when Doc Franklin walked in. Orbit’s top salesman. We hadn’t met yet, but I had heard about him from Frankie. My supervisor, with a sneer, let me know that Doc would be easy to recognize. His trademark at work was his crazy hats. The man behind me in line sported a thousand dollar business suit topped off by a leather WWI aviator’s helmet, complete with a beanie propeller.
    Tilly introduced us. Franklin’s smile was ear to ear. Honest and friendly, not filled with grease like Kammegian and