Soft Serve
I was just putting the finishing touches on a spreadsheet purporting to show how I’d saved Grinnel a chunk of change, when I heard my buddy in the adjoining cubicle banging some desk drawers around. I turned to see him tossing files into the garbage, and piling his family pictures and chotchkes into a box. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked in alarm, although I had an idea it had something to do with this morning’s client. He stopped the frenetic activity just long enough to give me the hairy eyeball. His curly mop was sticking to his forehead, and his nose looked like it had been recently blown.
“Giscard D’Estaing just gave me the boot!” he stage-whispered at me, smirking and thumbing over his shoulder to the corner office. Giscard: that was our moniker for the manager of this department. He’d earned it by suggesting that every woman on the floor was hot for him, and by his strange substitution of French for some everyday words-- like when he’d say, “that report on Kimmerling’s last shipment has to be sur mon bureau by 3 pm at the latest”. We’d always snicker as he walked away, “trez bee-yen, mun seenyure !” and guffaw into our rancid coffee cups. I knew Giscard was mean, but would he really do this to Rick, our loyal, if a bit lazy, but not more lazy than the average employee, Grinnel’s Funnel Shops clerk?
Grinnel’s was a distribution point for soft ice-cream makers, both assembling and distributing them. My job was to use a 1950’s algorithm to calculate what new parts we had to order after receiving requests begging for them from the vintage assembly floor (the manager wasn’t so old, but the operation sure was). The calculation had something to do with current inventory – I wasn’t using the Just-in-Time method, rather the Just-to-Keep-Them-Off-My-Back method. It was this fancy accounting, explained in the fanciest terms, that kept me on Giscard’s Favorites list.
But Rick’s job was more grueling than mine. He was a ‘relationship manager’ who handled client calls, often fielding complaints about the operation of the machines. In this way he had to balance the customer service we so brilliantly supplied, with his own weak-kneed ego. I encouraged him to have them make love to him by the end of these conversations, but it didn’t always go so well. That morning I had heard him say, with some emphasis on the wrong word, “Then get your own fucking State of the Art Mr. Softee replacement !” to a client who must have been a roadie, as we called those trucks. I was just happy to know that somewhere in America, an annoying jingle had been stilled.
I jumped on this recent memory. “Did it have anything to do with the Roadie call you got this morning?”
“Nah…..” Rick looked deeply into the box he was loading, as if the answer were in there among his Plexiglas Number One in Customer Service awards. “Mike, it’s just too messed up to go into right now. Suffice to say, the Master doesn’t want to see my face on these premises again. You get yourself over to the house tonight and we can cry into our beers about it”. And like the laborer he was, he shouldered the box and headed over to the elevator. I watched him drive away in that car he bought last month, wondering how much of it he still had to pay for.
By now the rest of the floor was standing around staring over their cubicle walls, itching to ask me what had happened. I identified them easily as creepy coworkers who relished the misfortune they narrowly escaped, which Evil had magically skipped over them and landed on Rick. So I announced purposefully, and in a 360-degree manner, “Mind your own business, idiots.” and they servilely sat down again.
That night I went around to his house. Merrill opened the door, a cute little girl in sweats and her super-straight hair held back by bandanna – well, you might say not so girlish now that she must be in her 40’s. Money doesn’t seem to have affected her choice of career (music teacher) or her mode of dress, so I reasoned that Rick’s job loss wouldn’t unduly strain their relationship. “Glad to see you, Mike” she said, without looking very glad at all. I said, “Grinnel’s won’t be Rick’s last job, I guess” and she answered, “Let’s hope not, it wasn’t my choice for him in the first place.”
She led me into the living-room, where I noticed the cat curled up on the piano bench and newspapers all over the coffee table. Rick was sitting staring at the TV while not seeming to really see the basketball game being broadcast. He turned it off when he saw me, and offered to get me a beer. I declined, saying “Sure kid, but first tell me what happened to you-- I’ve been hatching all kinds of ideas all day and fighting off the press”.
Merrill arranged herself in the window seat, hands in her lap and an unnaturally patient expression on her face. I took a seat on the couch next to Rick, who started to explain. He seemed kind of stupefied, but he’d clearly been processing his change of fortune over the last few hours and was ready to report.
“I got a phone call this morning from Curtiss Cookies, that store in D.C. that signed our contract in November, but refused the maintenance agreement. Remember them?” I nodded to show that I did, although I wasn’t as interested in his arrangements as he supposed. “Well, since they didn’t buy the maintenance, they didn’t clean it right. And since they didn’t clean it right, it started cranking out powdered shit instead of soft serve. Herbert, the guy who owns the place, called up this morning and had the balls to blame me!”
“But you’re not responsible for it, since they didn’t ask for maintenance.”
“Right, but then they claimed the machine wasn’t even installed right, so I had to pass that on to Giscard.” The cat, a great over-fed, brown-and-white marbled thing, had leapt off the bench and glided over to Rick. Rick started stroking it therapeutically, until we could all hear it gutturally purring.
“Giscard came out to my desk to find out what happened. Now I hear they’re planning a lawsuit-- one of their customers got sick and is suing them, so they’ve turned around and sued us. You know, you may lose your job, too!”
I received this news skeptically. Grinnel’s needed me to keep manipulating the inventory. “Rick, it doesn’t sound bad enough yet, what am I missing?”
Then he nodded his head down, pursed his lips and stared at me over the rims of his glasses. “So Giscard came out to me and told me that stuff about the lawsuit, and then he said, like we had been best friends for years and were just shooting the breeze over a hard case, ‘did you ever meet Herbert’s wife, Bette ?’ and of course I did, six months ago you know, we make these contracts in person, we inspect the shop and vet the number of machines we can sell them.
“It was a slow day at Curtiss. She made me go behind the counter with her and gave me a taste of their stuff from the old machine, and it was pretty good. Chocolate with almond sprinkles I still remember! That Bette, she wouldn’t leave me alone—while I stood there licking the thing she kept getting real close to me, talking about Herbert’s sad sack business deals and how she could make a profit if he just stayed out of her way. Then she really came on to me, talking about my hair cut and shit like that, playing with me. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
I chanced a look at Merrill. She was still stolidly sitting in her seat with a neutral expression.
“I told Giscard right away, hey-- Bette’s a looker and sick of Herbert. And that was it, an hour later he called me into his office and told me it was over. Turns out I needed to keep my mouth shut about our clients, since Bette had told someone else – I found out later he meant his wife, that this shop is gonna fail because of this ice cream machine I sold her.
“And then 10 minutes later Sal comes over, and tells me this Herbert is Giscard’s wife’s brother. So I’m supposed to believe the brother-in-law asks him to fire me for not selling them a maintenance add-on?! I don’t believe it. I think Herbert’s got a good reason to suspect Bette’s fooling around, and Giscard fired me because he’s the one she’s fooling with”.
I said I’d take that beer now. I thought I could work this to Rick’s advantage, but we’d need Bette’s cooperation and a labor lawyer.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Raising their Voices
Dies Irae, Dies illa! The Latin exhortation echoed thru the soaring apse. Rows of chest-swelling singers, expressions consistent with the words they sang, looked fiercely at the woman who jabbed her baton in the air and hopped up and down on the balls of her feet. All their attention was fixed on this very short woman : Day of wrath, day of anger; who thinks to herself, we have been listening to this for centuries and damn if it still isn’t one of the most heart-stopping moments in music.
They were sweating in the August morning heat, faces shining with the effort to stay on tune and in tempo. Tenors perhaps a bit weak, but three or four basses making good. So even if they didn’t sound professional, Merrill believed they were ready. The Requiem called for the sweetness of newborn innocence, followed by an awakening to all the evil in the world, and ending with a triumph over that evil. It was really happening, she was sure that this time the devil had been summarily routed.
She had held a series of auditions which had yielded a couple of sopranos pure enough to belt out et lux perpetua, and a set of altos who typically declined to sing tenor. The real tenors were always straining to reveal their inner Pavrotti.
A trained voice came from a busty 30-ish blond woman, who was sporting tight denim and a blinding collection of crystals and sequins. She contradicted Merrill's expectations by singing a surprisingly accomplished Medieval French song; but she then asked, “will we be doing any new music?” by which Merrill supposed she meant Adams or Reich or something along those lines, so she just said, “Mozart Requiem. Can you come back on Friday, please?” which fortunately she did: she came back in another distracting ensemble, but sang like an angel and so was quickly assimilated.
They wouldn’t be having the Vienna Philharmonic with them, either. There would be only 2 rehearsals with the local professional musicians, and only piano accompaniment until then. Her assistant scheduled the bona fides and made sure they cleared it with their unions and that their dues-portion was implicit in the fee. This assistant, Clara, her right and left hands come to think of it, took care of 4 first violins, 4 second, 5 violas, 2 french horns and the rest. Merrill personally saw to the hiring of professional singers for the solo bits. An ethereal soprano, boyishly handsome tenor, and robust bass had been signed-- Clara officiating over the contracts. These singers were almost nobility, running all day between opera auditions and teaching gigs, still expecting their big break to come from other more important performances. As Diva and Divos, they would have to attend only one rehearsal. That’s why they did the classical repertoire, because these Mozart bits were imprinted in singers DNA, so truly they didn’t need to practice their entrances. Moreover they were relieved not to be subjected to the cacophony of community chorus past the minimum requirement.
It was a late-summer performance evening. Tickets had sold at the door to the upholders of Culture in the town, a respectable showing that filled the pews with the educated and the religious. The vast protective space stretching between those in the pews and those in the choir, ensured that any motivations for attending were unimportant. For the most part the audience sat in politeness, straining their necks to see the beautifully attired, locally famous soloists who sat patiently with hands folded in their laps. Now the oratorios came and they stood up, this was a chance for the rest of the choir to stop rustling their scores and allow the silences between the phrases to be heard. Here were the fruits of their labor : a trumpet playing out and joined serially by the bass, tenor and soprano soloists, Tuba mirum spargens sonum, and then all three stars joined to agree,
On their background mounts, she could see the choir enraptured by this harmonization, this sudden statement of Truth that would bring the audience to tears.
The late afternoon sun was still illuminating the stained-glass windows, and the dust motes in the upper reaches of the church also had their infusion of light, so that an ambient presence (Mozart?) seemed to be in there with them. Recordare, Jesu pie / Remember, blessed Jesu, That I am the cause of Thy pilgrimage, Anyone not so moved must have been checking their email, not listening with ‘open heart’ as they say in yoga practice. For this was a meditation across time; generations had heard the same story and derived their meanings from it. We were only waiting for these instructions, she thought to herself, holding ourselves ready for the expression of it to others.
They were sweating in the August morning heat, faces shining with the effort to stay on tune and in tempo. Tenors perhaps a bit weak, but three or four basses making good. So even if they didn’t sound professional, Merrill believed they were ready. The Requiem called for the sweetness of newborn innocence, followed by an awakening to all the evil in the world, and ending with a triumph over that evil. It was really happening, she was sure that this time the devil had been summarily routed.
She had held a series of auditions which had yielded a couple of sopranos pure enough to belt out et lux perpetua, and a set of altos who typically declined to sing tenor. The real tenors were always straining to reveal their inner Pavrotti.
A trained voice came from a busty 30-ish blond woman, who was sporting tight denim and a blinding collection of crystals and sequins. She contradicted Merrill's expectations by singing a surprisingly accomplished Medieval French song; but she then asked, “will we be doing any new music?” by which Merrill supposed she meant Adams or Reich or something along those lines, so she just said, “Mozart Requiem. Can you come back on Friday, please?” which fortunately she did: she came back in another distracting ensemble, but sang like an angel and so was quickly assimilated.
They wouldn’t be having the Vienna Philharmonic with them, either. There would be only 2 rehearsals with the local professional musicians, and only piano accompaniment until then. Her assistant scheduled the bona fides and made sure they cleared it with their unions and that their dues-portion was implicit in the fee. This assistant, Clara, her right and left hands come to think of it, took care of 4 first violins, 4 second, 5 violas, 2 french horns and the rest. Merrill personally saw to the hiring of professional singers for the solo bits. An ethereal soprano, boyishly handsome tenor, and robust bass had been signed-- Clara officiating over the contracts. These singers were almost nobility, running all day between opera auditions and teaching gigs, still expecting their big break to come from other more important performances. As Diva and Divos, they would have to attend only one rehearsal. That’s why they did the classical repertoire, because these Mozart bits were imprinted in singers DNA, so truly they didn’t need to practice their entrances. Moreover they were relieved not to be subjected to the cacophony of community chorus past the minimum requirement.
It was a late-summer performance evening. Tickets had sold at the door to the upholders of Culture in the town, a respectable showing that filled the pews with the educated and the religious. The vast protective space stretching between those in the pews and those in the choir, ensured that any motivations for attending were unimportant. For the most part the audience sat in politeness, straining their necks to see the beautifully attired, locally famous soloists who sat patiently with hands folded in their laps. Now the oratorios came and they stood up, this was a chance for the rest of the choir to stop rustling their scores and allow the silences between the phrases to be heard. Here were the fruits of their labor : a trumpet playing out and joined serially by the bass, tenor and soprano soloists, Tuba mirum spargens sonum, and then all three stars joined to agree,
A trumpet, spreading a wondrous sound
Through the graves of all lands,
Will drive mankind before the throne.
The late afternoon sun was still illuminating the stained-glass windows, and the dust motes in the upper reaches of the church also had their infusion of light, so that an ambient presence (Mozart?) seemed to be in there with them. Recordare, Jesu pie / Remember, blessed Jesu, That I am the cause of Thy pilgrimage, Anyone not so moved must have been checking their email, not listening with ‘open heart’ as they say in yoga practice. For this was a meditation across time; generations had heard the same story and derived their meanings from it. We were only waiting for these instructions, she thought to herself, holding ourselves ready for the expression of it to others.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Yotvata
On the Kibbutz the volunteers were treated with benignity. Sometimes they served as a distraction for marriages that were getting ground down by habit and routine. They provided new intrigues for the community, or worse, caused episodes of domestic violence that pulled in the local police. They could embarrass the kibbutz.
But the volunteers were almost always nubile Scandinavian Hebrew stutterers, willing to accept the original radicalism of the settlers and happy to work at menial jobs that the Members no longer felt obligated for. The Members felt their cherished ideals had been realized a long time ago, and they were content now that other people, either the tourists/volunteers, or salaried men from the surrounding Arab villages, could clean the toilets, pick oranges, and look after the original Founders who were now forgotten in their old-age home and only brought out on special occasions commemorating National This or That Day.
An English volunteer named Sarah arrived in April of that year, and an American named Caroline came in June. They had been assigned to Yotvata, a real factory-town type of kibbutz in the southern Negev, on the border of the Sinai near Eilat, that produced the most delicious yogurt and cheeses distributed all over the country. Because it was a relatively young kibbutz that ran a lucrative business, and because it had been founded by English-speakers, the whole package made a fine impression on a young woman who might decide to stay -- who might actually find a man there and produce more Members for the kibbutz (of prime concern since many of the young people had lost the revolutionary ardor of their grandparents and were mostly leaving for Tel Aviv). Of course Sarah didn't care which kibbutz she was assigned to, she had been jobless for 2 years in Manchester, so that now it just seemed miraculous that an adult could join a society that would look after all her physical needs, and demand so little in return. She only mentioned to the Association coordinator, “you mean I won’t be milking cows? “
But when Caroline arrived in the volunteers’ trailer compound in June, she said to herself, "What a motley crew of rejects from their own countries!". There was a pair of young attractive Swedish women, but there was also a surprisingly old American man in his early 30’s, who had been a roadie for the Rolling Stones. He held court and the others fawned. He professed to being more Jewish, in the sense of knowledge and observance, than was probably the case. There was also a smallish, dark, oily-skinned South American man who wanted to sleep with her on the night of her arrival; he seemed a sybarite and could not positively be interested in her for anything else. And there were other assorted Searchers, she would compare experiences with them over Maccabee beers in the bomb shelter that was fixed up for that purpose, with U2 blaring out of the sound system every night.
Caroline didn’t meet Sarah because Sarah was no longer there. Shortly after Sarah started in the volunteer group she had met a kibbutznik named Mike and set up house with him. They were just then discussing a trip to Manchester to introduce him to her family. Sarah’s non-Jewish blondness and bubbling enthusiasm had attracted enough attention so that she was absorbed effortlessly into the stream of the community. The kibbutz management was stroking her and her fiance, petting them with encouragement so that they could become future managers of the factory. Mike was not religious enough to care that she wasn’t Jewish, and he had excelled at University without wanting to abandon Yotvata. Sarah had a job in the little Kibbutz grocery store, a trusted position at the cash register-- fortunately not a new skill she had to learn.
Caroline reported to her work in the parking lot of the factory. She wondered, where did the dairy come from ? All she knew was the source of the plastic crates, the holders for little yogurt containers 10X10 that made up her job. They came off big semis; and she had to load them on hand-trucks so that they could be loaded onto two conveyor belts that started out there in the lot. As she stood in front of the belts, in a miasma of hot, sweet yogurt smells, a truck was on each side of her. She had to take a crate in each hand and push them onto the belt. She had to do this for the entire work shift, lasting 3 and a half hours. Her glasses steamed up, her thin arms were shot thru with fatiguing strain, she had plenty of time to muse about why she had attended an Ivy League college. After the first day she felt like she had been on a canoe trip and paddling in the wrong way. As she lay on her back that night and listened to the drunken crew outside her trailer, she couldn’t feel her hands although there was a dull pain radiating somewhere in her right shoulder.
The summer in that oasis was predictable, it never rained during the season. In her free hours after dinner, Caroline liked to walk down the sandy sidewalks to the end of the road, past the cultivated cactus landscaping and beyond the final street lamp to the darkness of the desert that was wrapped around the ordered little houses and meeting halls. She hoped to see Ibex or some kind of dramatic fauna (were they even in Israel? she wasn’t sure and wanted to visit the little library tomorrow). The neat border of sidewalk and the lamplight might have warned them away. There was an incongruous silence over the hills of sand and stone that she strained to see into, a holy emptiness out there that pricked her breath and almost sucked her off the corner.
A problem with the desert was the sand tracked into her trailer every day, the impossibility of ever sweeping it all out again.
But the volunteers were almost always nubile Scandinavian Hebrew stutterers, willing to accept the original radicalism of the settlers and happy to work at menial jobs that the Members no longer felt obligated for. The Members felt their cherished ideals had been realized a long time ago, and they were content now that other people, either the tourists/volunteers, or salaried men from the surrounding Arab villages, could clean the toilets, pick oranges, and look after the original Founders who were now forgotten in their old-age home and only brought out on special occasions commemorating National This or That Day.
An English volunteer named Sarah arrived in April of that year, and an American named Caroline came in June. They had been assigned to Yotvata, a real factory-town type of kibbutz in the southern Negev, on the border of the Sinai near Eilat, that produced the most delicious yogurt and cheeses distributed all over the country. Because it was a relatively young kibbutz that ran a lucrative business, and because it had been founded by English-speakers, the whole package made a fine impression on a young woman who might decide to stay -- who might actually find a man there and produce more Members for the kibbutz (of prime concern since many of the young people had lost the revolutionary ardor of their grandparents and were mostly leaving for Tel Aviv). Of course Sarah didn't care which kibbutz she was assigned to, she had been jobless for 2 years in Manchester, so that now it just seemed miraculous that an adult could join a society that would look after all her physical needs, and demand so little in return. She only mentioned to the Association coordinator, “you mean I won’t be milking cows? “
But when Caroline arrived in the volunteers’ trailer compound in June, she said to herself, "What a motley crew of rejects from their own countries!". There was a pair of young attractive Swedish women, but there was also a surprisingly old American man in his early 30’s, who had been a roadie for the Rolling Stones. He held court and the others fawned. He professed to being more Jewish, in the sense of knowledge and observance, than was probably the case. There was also a smallish, dark, oily-skinned South American man who wanted to sleep with her on the night of her arrival; he seemed a sybarite and could not positively be interested in her for anything else. And there were other assorted Searchers, she would compare experiences with them over Maccabee beers in the bomb shelter that was fixed up for that purpose, with U2 blaring out of the sound system every night.
Caroline didn’t meet Sarah because Sarah was no longer there. Shortly after Sarah started in the volunteer group she had met a kibbutznik named Mike and set up house with him. They were just then discussing a trip to Manchester to introduce him to her family. Sarah’s non-Jewish blondness and bubbling enthusiasm had attracted enough attention so that she was absorbed effortlessly into the stream of the community. The kibbutz management was stroking her and her fiance, petting them with encouragement so that they could become future managers of the factory. Mike was not religious enough to care that she wasn’t Jewish, and he had excelled at University without wanting to abandon Yotvata. Sarah had a job in the little Kibbutz grocery store, a trusted position at the cash register-- fortunately not a new skill she had to learn.
Caroline reported to her work in the parking lot of the factory. She wondered, where did the dairy come from ? All she knew was the source of the plastic crates, the holders for little yogurt containers 10X10 that made up her job. They came off big semis; and she had to load them on hand-trucks so that they could be loaded onto two conveyor belts that started out there in the lot. As she stood in front of the belts, in a miasma of hot, sweet yogurt smells, a truck was on each side of her. She had to take a crate in each hand and push them onto the belt. She had to do this for the entire work shift, lasting 3 and a half hours. Her glasses steamed up, her thin arms were shot thru with fatiguing strain, she had plenty of time to muse about why she had attended an Ivy League college. After the first day she felt like she had been on a canoe trip and paddling in the wrong way. As she lay on her back that night and listened to the drunken crew outside her trailer, she couldn’t feel her hands although there was a dull pain radiating somewhere in her right shoulder.
The summer in that oasis was predictable, it never rained during the season. In her free hours after dinner, Caroline liked to walk down the sandy sidewalks to the end of the road, past the cultivated cactus landscaping and beyond the final street lamp to the darkness of the desert that was wrapped around the ordered little houses and meeting halls. She hoped to see Ibex or some kind of dramatic fauna (were they even in Israel? she wasn’t sure and wanted to visit the little library tomorrow). The neat border of sidewalk and the lamplight might have warned them away. There was an incongruous silence over the hills of sand and stone that she strained to see into, a holy emptiness out there that pricked her breath and almost sucked her off the corner.
A problem with the desert was the sand tracked into her trailer every day, the impossibility of ever sweeping it all out again.
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