Three
When he got back upstairs he calculated he had about ten minutes remaining on his break, and he was anxious to get a look at those papers, but as soon as he got to his spot at the table, his boss came sneaking up on him again, quiet as can be and practically crawling up under his armpit. He had to squirm to wriggle free of her little head. He wanted to say her name but forgot what it was. Glenda? Gwen? No, Gabby.
"I hope you enjoyed your lunch," she was saying, and he had not idea how she could even conceive of that notion. Enjoy that? Enjoy? What were these words that had nothing to do with one another?
"I noticed your quota is, mmm, okay," she continued. He felt like he was flailing his arms about just to disentangle himself from her encroachment. Had she never heard of personal space? She was practically ensconced in his chest hair!
"But your customers are shall we say bottom feeders generally," she remarked.
"They just want to get out of the tax," he said.
"We have generous upsell opportunities," she reminded him. "You could work on the script a bit more, you know. Here," she slithered somehow around him and tapped on the monitor in front of him.
"It never hurts to mention the sea levels," she said. "As they rise, so do the premiums, you know."
He knew. It was how the law worked. Everyone's individual carbon footprint was tied to local environmental factors, and even though they were miles and miles from any coast, the sea level situation somehow affected the local penalties. That and the glacier melts and the massive tunneling required to keep nearly all the major cities in the world afloat, you wouldn't want to have to put the skyscrapers on stilts now, would you? Everybody plays a part.
"Everybody plays a part," Gabby said, "and their accelerated contributions could lead to future reductions, after all."
The operative word there was "could". In fact, no one knew if the oft-promised rebates would ever kick in, because the environmental adaptations grew more expensive by the month, and forecasts were continually undergoing revision. Eugenio was under the strong impression that the whole thing was a scam and a lie and chances were that outfits like Eco None were owned by the big oil companies anyway, and their stupid logo with the White Nun holding that glimmering watery cross was nothing but a cruel and deliberate hoax. Sure, the world was going to end any day now, but pay up, motherfuckers, pay up now and pay up big. Eco? None! That was more like it.
"Yes, ma'am," Eugenio sighed. "I'll be sure to work on the script a bit more."
And his break time was over. He hurried over to the clock and punched back in, then hustled back to his spot as the phone beeped and he sold somebody some bullshit they didn't need and probably couldn't afford, but it got them out of the penalty with the possibility of a future rebate, of course not guaranteed.
He worked his voice off all afternoon. It went smoothly enough, the phones off the hook pretty much because the Always News was barking at people from every direction that day. Apparently there'd been a catastrophic collapse of the Great Northern Rift or something like that, he didn't know for sure. Customers were talking about it but they all called it something different. Somewhere in the North Atlantic, or was it the South Pacific? It was Big News, that was all, and the penalty was going up by the end of the week, not to mention the deadline, so you'd better get on the horn and lock in your offset bargains now, and they did. That afternoon it was all business and Gabby was in her counting house, adding up the digits.
Eugenio didn't even get a sideways glance at the pile of scrap paper on his table until it was time to punch out. Then he gathered it all up, and the trinkets too, and stuffed the whole set into his sweatshirt pocket, punched out and made his way to his beat-up old Honda. He didn't talk to anyone on the way out, or even look at them. He'd had enough for one day. All he wanted was to get the fuck home and have a glass of ice cold milk. That was excitement enough for Eugenio. But the whole damn flock was leaving at the same time, and even though there seemed to be no one and nothing but empty fields around for miles, he knew that the two-lane road out of there was going to be jammed up for miles somehow, so he sat back in the driver's seat, pulled all the stuff out of his pocket and set it all down on the passenger seat beside him. The mermaids tumbled onto the snail and the spider and together they nearly crushed the little paper hat before he snagged and rescued it.
The papers were a mess. They were all shapes and sizes and colors, about twenty pieces of paper, some big, some small but all covered with the same miniature scrawl that was hurting his eyes just to focus. He picked one up at random, a creased and semi-crushed yellow legal pad sheet, and had to adjust the distance from his face a few times before he could make out a few words. He read,
"I'm just staring at them trying to figure out where the fuck did these assholes come from. It's like they're a fucking collectible set. Every single one of them has one and only one distinguishing feature. Otherwise they are the same fucking asshole. Like Bob over there, with the stupid blue shades. You're inside, Bob. Take off the fucking sunglasses!"
Eugenio was stunned, and dropped the paper onto his lap. Oh my god, he thought. Is this Richie or is it me? He was almost afraid to read any more, but sat trembling in his seat for a couple of minutes. Then he picked up another one, a small scrap of plain unlined brown paper which he recognized as coming from the same kind of notepad they'd given him at orientation the day before.
"It's that stupid Tina again talking about that show. If I had a chicken leg I'd stuff it right down her throat. Wait, I do have a chicken leg! Too bad it's so small. I hate her. I hate Randy and Billy and especially JoAnne. Hey, JoAnne, my name is not Richie, okay? My name is Alejandro Martinez! You want to talk to me you call me by my name!"
Again, Eugenio had to drop the note as if it was on fire. Alejandro? And here they gave him the name Alex! Who was this guy? Eugenio knew he had to find out. With a name like Alejandro Martinez he wouldn't be too hard for Eugenio to track down. He thought he even recognized the name. He knew some Martinezes for sure in any case. Maybe he'd even known this Richie guy. Alejandro, that is, but he couldn't remember right off. He was going to have to do some more reading, but not now, not yet. He was already feeling like a ghost of himself. Might as well hit the road and do the traffic thing, he decided. Deal with this shit later on.