Lightning Rods (12 page)

So Lucille got through the first few weeks without any serious difficulties, and then Joe introduced the skirts. For some reason just the fact of wearing the skirt felt more protected somehow. From her own point of view, it was definitely an improvement. But the fact that she’d gotten through those first weeks without it meant she knew she could do anything, and that’s always a good thing to know.

The other early lightning rods found the practicalities of the job harder to adjust to. In later years, looking back on their experiences, a common theme was a feeling that they had been inadequately prepared. Basically Joe had just demonstrated how the message would appear on their screen and then taken them back to the disabled stall and demonstrated how the transporter worked, and that was
it
. Lucille by that stage had put it all behind her and was making a million a year as a litigation lawyer, but every once in a while she would pick up a paper and see a story about someone who hadn’t been able to put it behind her. Someone who had spent an unpleasant three weeks back in 1999 and had never recovered from the shock. Well, just reading between the lines Lucille could tell that this was someone who should never have gone in for that kind of work in the first place. If anyone had asked her, which they hadn’t, she’d have said it was a job where you definitely
needed
strength. To put people without that strength in the line of fire was just asking for trouble.

WORD OF MOUTH

What Joe would explain, when later confronted with this kind of criticism, was that at the outset the success of the facility was by no means the foregone conclusion it might with hindsight appear. In an ideal world he would obviously have wanted to spend more time making sure no one was doing anything she didn’t feel comfortable with. Unfortunately our world is very far from ideal, sustainable client development was absolutely vital to the success of the business, and it was up to him to singlehandedly pursue that goal for
all
their sakes. Regrettably, he had had to make some difficult decisions. If the ship went down, they would all go down with it. So he had to make some tough choices.

So while the early lightning rods were going through a period of adjustment, Joe was back out there gunning for the product. He had sent out some more letters while the builders were working, and he had made some more pitches. Just the knowledge that he had actually made a sale and that installation was underway gave him an edge. You can fake confidence in the sense that you can put on a good show, but what you can’t fake is the inner confidence that comes from success. Because no matter what you say to the customer,
you
always know the score. If the score is Sales: 0, let’s face it: you’re going to have to put on one hell of a good show.

One thing that really boosted his confidence, anyway, was that about a month after he introduced the short skirts he got a couple of calls from some guys who played golf with Steve. Joe had been absolutely right: Once Steve had committed to the project he had wanted to convince himself he had done the right thing.

In a lot of ways, obviously, he would have been better off just keeping it to himself, but that’s not the way people work. It’s lonely at the top; a guy who has made a big decision like this wants other people to make that decision too. So Steve had told a buddy of his, an older man who shared Steve’s conservative instincts and was not really comfortable with the mores of the younger generation.

“We’re businessmen, Al,” Steve had said. “At the end of day, we’ve got to be realistic. We’ve got to deal with people the way they are, not the way we might like them to be. If we can’t do that, hell, we might as well retire right here and now.”

The way Joe knew Steve had said this was that Al passed it on to explain his own reason for calling. Al had gone on to explain that he wasn’t ready to push up daisies yet, and that he appreciated an honest approach. It was like a breath of fresh air. “Let’s call a spade a spade,” said Al.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Joe.

So Al had made an appointment for Joe to come and see him at a mutually convenient time.

Steve had also spread the good word to an up-and-coming younger businessman, who by the sound of it had said something that Steve had taken to imply that his management style was somewhat dated. Again, this is really not a good reason to go sharing information of a relatively delicate nature, but as it turned out no harm had been done. The kid called Joe and explained that he was opening a new office in Kansas City. Some of his key players from New York would be going over to get things started. The way he saw it was, their style might come as something of a shock to people from the Midwest; the last thing he wanted was for people to get their backs up just when they were supposed to be working together as a team. If he could get some lightning rods in place it might ease the tension, as well as making it easier on the out-of-towners.

“You bet,” said Joe.

“The way I see it is, now’s the time to get the installation in place, so it’s there when the office opens.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Joe.

“I think it plays better if we fly ’em in. It’s all fairly new, and I can see some problems if we try to recruit out in Kansas. Ever been to Kansas?”

“I was saving it,” said Joe.

“Great place.
Great
place. And some really great people. But they’re not what you would call sophisticated, you know, they see stuff on TV that they wouldn’t necessarily expect to come across in real life. You know? I mean, that’s why I think these lightning rods would be such a great idea in the first place. No point offending local sensibilities. But if you start recruiting locally it kind of defeats the object. Any problem getting staff to relocate?”

“No problem at all,” said Joe.

“Great.
Great
. So when can we get you out to the Big K? This weekend suit you?”

The Big
K
? thought Joe.
Give
me a
break
.

“Suits me just fine,” he said.

That’s sales for you. One minute you’re killing yourself just trying to get your foot in the door. The next minute someone is chasing you down the street because their mother’s uncle’s cleaning lady told them something about the product that made them feel life without the product would not be worth living.

PASTURES NEW

Joe flew out to the Big K that weekend to look at the new office and make arrangements for installation of the transporters and what have you. He should have been walking on air. Another sale, further easing of cash flow situation, what more could you ask? But the fact is that the whole time he was flying out to Kansas City the issue of the disabled toilet kept getting at him. He’d tried to get it out of his mind, but it just kept coming right on back. It was like the old roll-down blind debate, only magnified by a factor of a thousand.

He got in late Friday night. All he had was his carry-on luggage, so he went straight to the shuttle service that connected up to the Hilton. At this stage in the game he certainly couldn’t afford to stay at a Motel 6, with all that implied about cash flow being a cause for concern; no, the Hilton it had to be. At least his suit would look right at home.

Then a funny thing happened. He was standing in line for the shuttle, and the person ahead of him bent down to get something out of her suitcase, and he realized that the person standing in front of her was a dwarf. The guy couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. If that. He wasn’t really doing much of anything, just standing there being short. Then the shuttle bus drew up beside them.

The thing was, never having actually come across a dwarf in real life before, and only having seen
Time Bandits
a long time ago, Joe had never realized just how short a dwarf’s legs can be. The shuttle bus had a fairly low step, but it was
way
too high for that dwarf. Well, obviously the guy had had to deal with this type of situation before, he just took hold of the pole in the middle of the door and swung himself right on up, no problem. He had to hand the driver money to put in the fare dispenser, which was also
way
too high, and then he went back into the bus and he had to swing himself up
again
just to get onto one of the seats—what kind of a way is that to go through life?

Joe paid his fare and then he went back into the bus and sat down, a long way from the dwarf. One of the first lessons you learn in life is to avoid men of below-average height. There’s something about being short that makes a man feel he has something to prove, say he stopped growing at 5'6", a couple of extra inches would have made all the difference, instead of going with the flow he tends to be aggressive if not downright mean. Take away another couple of inches, and you’re into mean son of a bitch territory. Take it right on down to 3'11" and God only
knows
what you’re up against. Best to keep a safe distance.

Anyway, the bus pulled out, and Joe’s mind reverted to its bête noir: the disabled toilet. And the thing he suddenly realized was that the disabled toilet would be
way
too high for someone like this dwarf. No better than any of the other toilets, in fact, except that it had a rail he could use to climb up onto the seat. And if you stop and think about it for a minute, when was the last time you saw a toilet with a
dwarf
icon on the door? Well, what kind of world do we live in when we give people no option but to climb up onto the seat whenever they need to answer the call of nature?

Joe was still thinking this indignantly when one of the other passengers, a big fat guy with a paunch, decided to pick on the dwarf. The fat guy had also had to sit at the front of the bus, on one of the long seats that back onto the side rather than facing the front, because it was the only seating that would accommodate him comfortably. Not that the guy was so big he couldn’t take the
width
of the other seats. He was big, but he wasn’t
that
big. No, the problem was the distance between the seats was such that a guy with that size of paunch wouldn’t have been able to squeeze it in between the seat he was sitting in and the back of the seat in front. So the guy was sitting up front, where he had a whole aisle to let the paunch breathe freely, and he was sitting facing the dwarf, who was reading a book.

Fat Guy: “Watcha reading, big guy?”

Joe was thinking I don’t
believe
it. I
don’t
believe
it.
Big guy
? What kind of insensitive pig comes right out and says something like that to someone you
know
has got to be sensitive about his
height
? It wasn’t even that the guy was out to torment, looking at him you could tell he thought he was just being friendly.
Jesus
.

Joe waited for the dwarf to pull a switchblade and sling it straight into the unsuspecting paunch. Or stamp his heels to reveal a line of razor blades in the soles of his shoes. Wanna try a little kick boxing,
big guy
? the dwarf would say, and before the guy knew what hit him the dwarf would be in the air, slashing out—

“
The John Foster Dulles Book of Humor
,” said the dwarf.

“Huh,” said the guy. “Any good?”

“I’m only up to page two.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, John Foster Dulles is not someone I would have tended to associate with humor. Or anything else, come to think of it.”

“That’s a mistake a lot of people make. There’s a lot more to JFD than meets the eye.”

JF
D
? thought Joe. JF
D
?

“Is that a fact. The name’s Paul, by the way.”

“Ian.”

“Pleased to meet you, Ian.”

Joe was wondering why it was that Kansas had never acquired a reputation for being strange. If somebody can go around calling John Foster Dulles JFD and nobody bats an eyelash you have to ask yourself what are the
rest
of them like? And no sooner had he asked himself why word hadn’t gotten out than the answer came to him, just like that. The reason nobody knew about it was that normal people never came to see what was going on. Not realizing what the state had to offer they went elsewhere for their kicks. People from out of state tended not only to
be
but to
stay
just that: out of state.

“People tend to not know a lot about him. The fact is that he was quite an interesting guy, it’s just that Ike hogged the limelight.”

“Ike?”

“Eisenhower?”

“Oh, right, right. Right.” There was a short pause. “You know,” said Paul, “history was never my strong point, but for some reason I always thought Eisenhower’s first name was Dwight. Am I getting him mixed up with someone else?”

“Ike was a nickname,” said Ian.

“
Oh. I
see.”