86'd: A Novel - By Dan Fante Page 0,1

day I finally had a chance to look it over. So, okay, first, let me say that I like your stories. As you might guess I get many requests from people to read their stuff. And most of it, truthfully, regretfully, is crap. Plain and simple. Just crap. But Until the Fat Lady Sings is the real thing. Stories from the gut and from the heart. I was moved—more than once. You can be proud of your manuscript, Bruno. I remember you saying that you got discouraged. Well don’t! You’re good and you’ve got what it takes. Keep writing no matter what. Never stop. Never give up.

I hope we bump into each other again sometime soon.

Thank Christ. Thank God for the miracle of Hubert Selby, Jr.

I’d followed Selby around Los Angeles for months—stalked him even—gone to half a dozen of his readings and appearances—and finally, sober that night, I’d worked up the courage to ask the great writer to have a look at my story collection.

After his reading that night, behind Midnight Special Bookstore, in the parking lot as he was getting into his car, I’d approached Selby with my manuscript and asked if he would mind taking a look. He recognized me from the audience that night. I’d been the guy who’d hogged the Q & A time, asking more than my share of questions.

The thin old cynic smiled, patted my shoulder, then wheezing in a drag from his black Sherman. “Sure kid, I’ll read it over and get back to you. Don’t worry. Your stuff’s in good hands.”

Again I pressed the save button on my phone. Selby’s message was all that I had now, all that was keeping me from black madness.

two

I have no idea why I am crazy and angry and edged-out most of the time and why alcohol and painkiller pills and Xanax-type stuff are the only things that help to keep me remotely calm. I have no idea why I experience life as pointless and screwed and I know that most people don’t pour a cup of bourbon into their milk and oatmeal in the morning. That’s just how it is.

After the publication of Until the Fat Lady Sings was postponed indefinitely I decided that I needed a change from the telemarketing industry. For months I had been hawking risk-free Pinkerton burglar alarm installs out of a cave: a windowless, industrial, cinderblock office in Manhattan Beach. A hundred calls a day to set five realistic sales appointments. Torturous, brutal shit.

Behind the workload quota and hitting the juice too hard I’d developed attitude problems and begun showing up late for my 5:30 a.m. shift.

Me and Kassim, my boss, had disliked each other from jump street. The prick was a former math professor from Tehran with a Godzilla ego. He spoke three or four Middle Eastern tongues but his combined English syntax and cultural grasp of anything American equaled shit. Each time—especially with other people around—when I’d ask the jerk if he wouldn’t mind speaking more slowly, or repeating what he’d just said, Kassim would consider that I’d challenged his authority or was somehow mocking him. His expression would blacken and he would glare at me murderously.

Things came to a head near quitting time one Friday afternoon. The office’s ceiling intercom blasted: Bruno Dante—Bruno Dante—to Kassim’s office. Now. Strike one.

Once there, I was ordered to sit in the outer waiting room for half an hour and watch as the rest of the staff came and went, picking up their paychecks. Strike two.

Finally, in front of Kassim’s desk, his henchman, the telemarketing manager, Gretchen—the hugest deep-fried, ass-kissing, hogface, grease-soaked twat to ever sit in an office chair in Los Angeles—handed me my call records as evidence. Turns out that Professor Kassim and blubbergirl had been monitoring my phone work over the last several shifts.

Kassim began waving his copy of my stats. “Dree bersonal kallz ober de lass doooo daze. Und fourrr dimez, diss sheeeef alone, jou hab borgodden do hoffer de flee Dizzylannn teekets ah de enn off your prezendadion.

Gretchen stood by wheezing, nodding sycophantically at whatever additional unpronounceable broken English mumbo jumbo snot came from her boss’s mouth.

I looked at her for a clarification. “So I’m fired, right?” I said. “Is that it?”

“Correct,” she oozed. “Terminated, as of today.”

Strike three.

Refusing any more eye contact, Kassim handed pigass a sealed envelope. My paycheck. Blubbergirl passed it to me.

Before leaving, I stuffed the check into my pants pocket then tossed my headset on to his desk. Then I leaned