There’s something you should know about Jellwagger. Like his hero Bruce Willis, he didn’t die easy. In fact, while Jellwagger didn’t ostensibly have much in common with Bruce’s Die Hard hero, NYPD Detective John McClane, they did share a few parallels. For one thing, they both got beat up now and again by giant thugs, as you saw at the end of the last episode when Neckman was pounding the shit out of our guy. But he didn’t stay down for long. Nope, not this Jellwagger. Just like McClane, he bounced back and then some. The only slight difference was that McClane’s bouncing back meant shooting everyone and blowing everything up. For Jellwagger it simply meant being able to get up in the morning and go to work.
And that’s what he did, although at first it was agony. He had a terrible time sleeping that night, what with his ribs bruised and throbbing so that the very act of breathing was torture. I’ll spare you the details of how long it took him to drag his deflowered ass out of bed, through the shower, and into his work clothes. Suffice it to say that, after one of the longest, hardest nights and mornings he could remember, our man Jellwagger made it to work on time. No one, including his boss Betsy Seth, suspected anything was wrong.
Jellwagger had no idea what he was supposed to do tonight. Carla had said she wanted him to start spying on her former man, but she never gave him any details. Honestly, Jellwagger didn’t care. What more could they do to him? Scratch that. There was plenty more Neckman could have done, which seemed like he would have done had Carla not specifically ordered him to spare Jellwagger’s gorgeous face. Still, Neckman would actually have to show up on Jellwagger’s ragged doormat and threaten his face for Jellwagger to give a shit. Otherwise, he was looking forward to a nice quiet day at work, followed by a nice quiet evening of being swallowed up by his green couch while he feasted on microwave popcorn and beer. Which Bruce movie should he watch tonight? Not Death Becomes Her, that’s for sure. Jellwagger had to be in a particular mood to enjoy that, one of those moods that defy description. The same went for Breakfast of Champions. No, tonight he wanted something that could pump him up to do more work on Exit the Danish. How about Tears of the Sun, in which Bruce plays a Navy SEAL ripping shit up in sub-Saharan Africa? It got terrible reviews, but of course Jellwagger zoned out that nonsense, went and saw it and, predictably, had a blast (pardon the pun). What’s more, Tears of the Sun was probably closest in theme to what Exit the Danish would be about: a kick-ass American hero who travels to a foreign land to help people whose language he doesn’t speak a lick of and whose culture he hasn’t a hope of grasping. Meanwhile you’ve got certain fellow Americans who purport to be on his side but then betray him. For his screenplay’s purposes, Jellwagger wasn’t going to make the Bruce Willis character a Navy SEAL. Because if he did, it wouldn’t be a far fetched idea that he’d whoop Denmark’s ass. Nah, he had to be someone more ordinary, someone more like the billions of people who’d flock to this film. Let’s face it, there just aren’t that many Navy SEALs in the world.
Should he even be military? So far Jellwagger had only written the first fifteen or so pages and was already having doubts about the way he’d set it up so far. The Bruce Willis character, John Lane, was an army mechanic with a passion for antique firearms, such as Revolutionary War muskets and so on. The antique firearm thing he didn’t have a problem with, because by the end of the film John Lane will have led a revolution against Denmark. He himself will create the kind of history of which he’s been such a passionate scholar. And because he was an army mechanic, John Lane wasn’t exactly illiterate when it came to modern weaponry either. As for his family? It was a disaster zone. John and his wife Holly have been married for twenty-some-odd years and weren’t so much a couple anymore as roommates. To make matters hairier for the politically conservative John Lane, his daughter just finished her first year of college and has decided she’s a lesbian. Bottom line? John Lane’s family was falling apart. He wanted to do something about it and figured the best cure was a trip somewhere far away where none of them ever thought they would go in a billion years: Greenland.
And that’s where things would get even hairier. First, for a bit of levity, the Lane clan would experience a bit of culture shock, not just because they’ve never met Inuit people before, but because they honestly thought Greenland would be, you know, green. But of course it isn’t. That would be Iceland. The dude who named those two chunks of land Greenland and Iceland had an ironic sense of humor. That’s where the humor would come from in the film. That was important to Jellwagger, to mix in some levity with all the blowing shit up.
From there things would get hairier still. Jellwagger hadn’t gotten that far yet, but the way he had it mapped out showed John Lane getting to know some activists who use the same hotel where the Lane family is staying as a secret headquarters. These activists are in essence trying to get their government to toss off the Danish yoke. The Danes, for their part, don’t start off the film as bad people. In a way they’re kind of like Hans Gruber, the bad guy from the first Die Hard. They’re three-dimensional people with their own history and points of view and, if you were to tread a mile in their moccasins, you might even be on their side. But they’re bad guys, and as such, they’re desperate to retain Greenland as a colony at all costs, even if it means murder. After getting to know this one activist, a young woman about the same age as his daughter, and with whom his daughter falls in love, John Lane comes back to the hotel after a night out with the family to find the poor young Greenlander with a bullet square between the eyes, her naked corpse rotting in the bathtub of John’s room. That scene marks the end of act one, which meant theoretically Jellwagger had another fifteen pages to go before he got to it. So if he decided to change John Lane’s career path, he could do so without drastically altering anything he’d written thus far. The more he thought about it, the more Jellwagger wanted to take John Lane out of the military altogether. He really should be someone the audience could identify with, and most people on this planet simply do not go into the military. It’s a fact. How about a college professor? A Ph.D. or something? Not many people achieved that status either, yet everyone loved Indiana Jones, a Ph.D. in archaeology. Nah, Jellwagger thought it would be too derivative if he made his hero a doctor. What kinds of careers have heroes never had? How about something in retail? Maybe John Lane worked at Wal-Mart. He could work in the department that sold cleaning chemicals, which meant that when he’s in Greenland, he’d know which chemicals and combinations thereof would be the most flammable and therefore most effective as weapons against the invading Danes. Yeah, that sounded good. Wal-Mart gets bad press now and again for various things, such as wages and whatnot, and coming into towns and putting ma and pa shops out of business. So they’re an underdog, as is John Lane, a twenty-some-odd year veteran of their staff who has never taken a sick day in his life and busts his ass and is sort of an unsung hero of the company. Then he goes to Greenland, leads the Inuit revolution, and comes back with a promotion and a healthy raise waiting for him. Hell, why not just have him promoted to head of his store? It’s the least the Wal-Mart executives could do for this modern-day George Washington.
And of course there’d be a lot more. There would have to be if this sucker was going to be a two-hour flick. Yeah, he had oodles of ideas for the script, that Jellwagger, and it just killed him to have to spend his days under fluorescent lights typing in the names of people who had more money than he would ever have. Still, Jellwagger was a creative guy. He could figure out ways in which he could make the most of the eight hours so that he could not only do his job but could also work on his own writing. In a manner of speaking, that is. A prime example of that was listening to the audio book for Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud, read by Bruce Willis. By listening to Bruce Willis talk all day, Jellwagger could get down pat things such as his speech patterns and inflections, perhaps pick up on things he didn’t notice watching the films. That would, in turn, inform the dialogue he wrote for John Lane in Exit the Danish. For example, listen to how Bruce reads the opening of chapter five: “Psycho-analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate. The neurotic creates substitutive satisfactions for himself in his symptoms, and these either cause him suffering in themselves or become sources of suffering for him by raising difficulties in his relations with his environment and the society he belongs to. The latter fact is easy to understand; the former presents us with a new problem. But civilization demands other sacrifices besides that of sexual satisfaction.” Jellwagger couldn’t help smiling as Bruce said that second to last sentence. He read it the exact same way he said “Welcome to the party, pal!” in the first Die Hard. He didn’t yell as loud, but he did raise his voice with the same sort of tone. Speaking of that line, Jellwagger was going to have a scene in Exit the Danish, perhaps when the head Danish bad guy arrives, where John Lane would say: “Welcome to the party, pal!” Jellwagger didn’t know why Bruce hadn’t said it in his other films, just as Arnold always found an opportunity to say “I’ll be back.” Even in Twins, for Christ’s sake. And so with any luck, Jellwagger would help make “Welcome to the party, pal!” Bruce’s new signature line in every movie he’d make from now on.
Jellwagger was in the middle of rewinding his audio book to hear Bruce read that one bit again from the middle of chapter five—“It is clearly not easy for men to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfortable without it.”—when his boss Betsy Seth walked up to his surround. “Come, Michael.”
The order to “Come” meant to follow Betsy to her office. Betsy was a beautiful fortysomething Latina. She wasn’t hot. Calling her hot made her sound like one of those dime-a-dozen models populating fashion magazines and whatnot. No, Betsy was far too classy for that. She was beautiful, gorgeous, but definitely not hot. And she wasn’t beautiful because she looked younger than her years. She was in her forties, and that’s pretty much how she looked, complete with a few lines around her eyes. One part of her beauty came from her well-toned body courtesy of years of yoga, but just as much of it came from her comfort in her own skin. She was one of those gals who gladly told you her age if you asked her, which was all but unheard of with most people. In fact, Jellwagger hadn’t even asked her how old she was. She told him during his welcome lunch four years ago, but because it was four years ago, he couldn’t quite remember the number.
Yet another aspect of Betsy that gave Jellwagger a wood man every time without fail was when she summoned him to her office. It meant a nice long leisurely stroll along the entire length of the floor to her big bright corner office facing north and west. Jellwagger would point his eyes at the paintings on the walls or the fluorescent lights above, all in a concerted effort not to let any of the administrative assistants catch him checking out Betsy’s ass. And yet her ass would be the only thing he’d be paying any attention to thanks to his peripheral vision. God bless peripheral vision.
As for what Betsy may have thought of him, Jellwagger didn’t delude himself into thinking he amounted to anything next to her husband. Danny Seth was just the kind of guy you’d imagine a gorgeous professional Latina would end up with: a tall, dark, strapping, professional (he was a dentist) stud. Jellwagger had met him a few times at various company functions, such as the annual holiday party. The first time they shook hands, Jellwagger thought Danny was trying to turn his finger bones into powder. He was never sure if that was intentional or not, that perhaps Danny was trying to tell him that Betsy was his and if Jellwagger tried anything, he’d twist him into a pretzel, bake him, sprinkle him with salt, lather him with mustard, and feed him in pieces to the firm’s partners. Just before they shook hands, Jellwagger had snuck another of those peripheral glances at Betsy’s butt, and ever since then, he wondered if Danny had caught onto it and that was why he’d given our poor Jellwagger the RoboCop handshake. At any rate, even if Jellwagger never saw Danny Seth in person ever again, which would be all right with him, he would still have to see his smile next to Betsy’s as well as their two teenage kids’ every time he came into Betsy’s office, as he was doing right now.
As for their professional relationship, once again Jellwagger didn’t kid himself into thinking she regarded him as anything more than an ant. In the marketing department, the data entry clerk was the lowest totem on the pole. In fact, if a real totem pole were to be constructed to represent Powell and Powler, Jellwagger wasn’t sure he’d be on it at all. If it wasn’t bad enough that he was a peon, what made it worse was that many of the attorneys looked down their starched and pressed noses on Betsy Seth and her people altogether. Many of those old codgers have had the same clients since time immemorial, and those clients once in a while referred new clients. So really, what was the point of a marketing department?
Bottom line? If Powell and Powler were a planet, and the attorneys were the clouds, and the marketing department was the dirt, then our man Jellwagger would be the fungus festering underneath the dirt.
Betsy sat down across from him and crossed her legs and gave him that assessing look she always gave people during meetings, tilting her head slightly so that her flowing and fragrant hair draped like a black curtain on one side. “How’s everything, Michael?”
“Okay, I suppose. Different day, different data, same feeling about it all. Thanks for asking, Betsy.”
“You have to stay late tonight.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh fun!”
She recrossed her legs and sighed. How much do you think Jellwagger would have paid to be her chair right at this moment? Not even he could say for sure. “I’m sorry, Michael, but I don’t ask you for this often. Grant will be giving you all the data I need inputted into the system by end of day. They’re all prospects, and tomorrow we will be mailing them the new newsletter, which is P&P’s most comprehensive newsletter to date.”
“How many names are we talking?”
“I don’t know.” Sure, she did. Jellwagger knew better than to buy that. She just didn’t want to be the one to tell him because it was most likely some staggering number that meant he’d be here until nine o’clock or something. “Grant will give you the stack. But it’s very important. Understood?”
“Okay.”
She straightened her head and smiled. “How’s Bruce Willis these days?”
“How would I know? I was planning on watching him tonight, but you’ve wrecked everything.”
She sat forward and frowned at a piece of paper on her desk. “Speaking of things blowing up, that’s exactly what’ll happen to our department if I don’t finish this letter.” She turned to her computer and forgot Jellwagger was there.
When he got back to his desk, Jellwagger opened his instant messenger so he could ask Grant how big the coming data stack would be. The IM program said Grant was idle, which meant he wasn’t at his desk. No matter. Jellwagger had plenty of rich people to input in the meantime.
It was about an hour after lunch when Jellwagger, for the first time in his four-year career at Powell and Powler, was paid a visit by Stu the mailroom guy. Stu Dobkins was balding, borderline obese, and wore those gigantic square glasses you always see on people with no sense of style. In fact, have glasses like that ever been in style? Stu’s job, when he wasn’t in the mailroom scarfing candy that he stockpiled from the receptionist’s candy bowl, was to lumber around the firm handing out mail from a squeaky metal-latticed-grocery-store-cart-kind-of-vehicle. Jellwagger would see Stu pass all the time. He always had stuff to deliver to the marketing department, just never to Jellwagger. Whenever he passed by, he never looked at Jellwagger. And he never smiled, which was why, when he did both on this occasion, it freaked Jellwagger the hell out.
“I have a package for Michael Johnson Jellwag!” he announced with an exaggerated flourish of his pudgy arms, one of which ended in a bulging yellow envelope. He frowned at it. “Why, gee! I don’t believe I know a Michael Johnson Jellwag. Is this some new person? Ha ha!” He gave Jellwagger a sidelong glance and smiled with utterly hideous teeth that were crooked and colored with a shade of rot somewhere between brown and black. “Just kidding, Jellwagger. I think I know who you are. Ha ha!” He handed Jellwagger the package. Where the return address should have been were the words Just Because.
“Who’s this from?”
“Just Because.”
“’The hell’s that?”
“Ha ha! I’m sorry, Jellwagger. You know, they did tell me you were a funny guy. Funny strange, not funny ha ha, mind you.”
“They who? The people who sent this?”
“I told you I haven’t a God damned clue who sent that, didn’t I? I mean people in this firm told me. Everyone told me. Ya know? Everyone knows Jellwagger. You’re Jellwagger.”
Jellwagger felt around the envelope with both hands. It felt like a multi-page document along with something bulky and hard. Something the size of a cellphone.
“Seriously, though,” Stu went on. “You get a promotion?”
Who could this be from? Jellwagger thought like the Dickens but drew a blank.
“Hey Jellwagger, I’m speaking to you. Ya know, I may just be a mailroom clerk at whose expense you can make fat jokes ad infinitum, but when I speak to you, it’s only polite you answer.”
“Why would I have gotten a promotion? Did you see a company-wide e-mail announcing that I’d gotten a promotion, an e-mail complete with my educational background and my hobbies, which no one would care about, and which include an insatiable appetite for microwave corn, ice-cold imported beer, and Bruce Willis films? Have you seen anything like that at all in your inbox?”
Stu pushed and pulled the mail cart a few times while he pondered the question. Just when Jellwagger was about to jump up and grab the balding blob by the lapels of his butt-ugly dung-colored shirt, Stu said: “Yeah.”
“Yes? You have seen such an e-mail? Could you forward it to me?”
“No. I meant, yeah you’re right. I haven’t seen that e-mail.”
“Could it be because I haven’t gotten a promotion?” Dumbass, Jellwagger would have killed to add out loud. Why couldn’t he have a woman like Betsy?
Stu stopped pushing and pulling his cart and flashed another of those sidelong Frankenstein smiles that made Jellwagger want to knock him back into the pre-Jenny Craig era. “Then why are you getting this envelope, Jellwagger? What’s it for? Who’s it from?”
“Einstein! That’s what I asked you!”
“All right, Jellwagger. Cool off. Don’t be such a Jellwagger. I’m just having fun here, you know. I know you didn’t get a promotion, which is why I’m wondering about this. Since when does anybody send you anything? Actually I think it’s kind of cool that I get to visit this part of the firm. You see these paintings along the wall here? Seriously, Jellwagger, you’re probably the only person on the whole entire planet who gets to see these paintings every day. I mean really. You ever get to see other parts of the firm? It’s a huge firm, Jellwagger, did you know that? Anyone ever take you on a tour? I hope not. Because then you’d see the paintings on the walls in other parts of the firm, and they’d make you think the ones right here are ugly. And once you know you work in the part of the firm that has the ugliest paintings, it makes you resent working at the desk you’re at now. You become bitter and resentful.” His cart squeaked as he pushed it away.
The package was from Carla. That bulky thing the size of a cellphone turned out to be just that. It didn’t look remarkable really. The differences between it and his current cell was that this one was black instead of silver, had more buttons, and didn’t fold up. The remainder of the envelope’s contents included photographs of and documents about her ex-husband, Pat Dinner. Included in the documents were a CV as well as a letter from Carla to Jellwagger which, among other things, listed Pat’s Beverly Hills address and reiterated the importance of this job. She also, more than once, mentioned that Pat’s house used to belong to her. In case Jellwagger didn’t believe her—because it was quite a stunning house—Carla insisted he check his firm’s files to confirm that. She also had a few words about the cellphone. First and foremost she wanted him to know that it was brand-spanking-new and that she had gotten it specifically for him and that any usage would go on her bill. Jellwagger shook his head and scoffed as he read that. As if that was supposed to make him feel better. When Carla looked at this thing, she may have seen a gift. What Jellwagger saw was servitude. The cool thing about this cell, Carla went on as if she thought Jellwagger would be psyched by now, was that it doubled as a walkie-talkie so she could talk to him at a moment’s notice. You see what I mean about servitude? It was also a camera, which she encouraged him to use as often as he wanted to score shots of Pat Dinner in action, whatever that meant.
Speaking of Pat Dinner photographs, one was a cutout from a portrait that had included Carla in the original judging by the pale hand that was unmistakably hers resting on his lap. The other shots looked like they’d been taken furtively, including one outside a Ralphs grocery store. Jellwagger was quite simply amazed that a woman as young and gorgeous as Carla would waste her time with an old codger like this. Actually Pat Dinner wasn’t all that old. Thanks to his CV, Jellwagger knew that he was exactly forty-seven years old. But that’s just it: Forty-seven? What was a woman Jellwagger’s age doing with a guy like this? And it wasn’t that he looked young either. The frosting on the sides of his otherwise black hair as well as his gray goatee more than betrayed his age. He was also forming a second chin commensurate with the love handles. In a way he was sorry Carla had cropped out the other half of the portrait photo. Jellwagger would have loved to see the two of them side by side. Not just for the entertainment value, but also to fill in the gap that his imagination couldn’t. He simply could not imagine a gal like her with a dude like this. That hand sticking out in the cropped photo didn’t help either. In fact, if anything, it only gave Jellwagger the creeps, so he slid it back into the envelope. Dude must have been loaded. His CV listed his profession as Financial Consultant, but for Christ’s sake, if there was one job title that could mean absolutely anything, it would have to be that.
“Pat Dinner got his MBA from USC’s Marshall School of Business,” came Grant’s voice from behind him. Jellwagger just about fell out of his chair, but Grant didn’t seem to notice. He continued reading the CV, then looked at the photos. “I’ve seen that gentleman before, haven’t I?” He furrowed his brows at Jellwagger as if expecting an answer. Jellwagger was still recovering from Grant’s scaring the bejesus out of him and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “Is this something from Betsy?”
“What?”
“I assume you’re entering this gentleman as a new client. Because I’ve seen him before. Something involving a case we just finished, right?” He looked at Jellwagger again.
“This is from Betsy.”
“Yeah. Yeah. And what was the nature of our firm’s representing him? In other words, what sort of case was it?”
“I’m-I’m not sure. Betsy just gave this to me.”
“Just now?”
“Earlier.”
“And what’s that?” Grant said when he flipped over the envelope so he could read the front. “Just Because.” He examined the envelope for a few seconds while Jellwagger tried not to go bonkers. Nothing else was written on the front of the envelope besides Just Because and Jellwagger’s name, but watching Grant, you would have thought he was trying to discern something else written in invisible ink. “Just Because. Just Because.” His eyes darted to the cellphone. “And that thing?”
“That’s mine.”
“It came with this?”
“I just got it. No, it’s mine.”
Grant’s eyes hovered back and forth between the cell and the envelope for a sanity-taxing eternity. “Okay,” he said a little too loudly for Jellwagger’s paranoid comfort. “Well. Speaking of Betsy, I know she told you about this.” He dropped a phone book-sized data stack on Jellwagger’s desk.
“No fucking way.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“I asked her how big it was. Oh whatever.”
“It’s thirteen hundred contacts.”
Jellwagger’s chest tightened.
“And they all need to be entered before you leave. Hey, just think about all the overtime you’re going to get.” He marched away. Would Grant really go ask Betsy about the package from Carla? Nah, Jellwagger knew better. Grant’s passion was and has always been his post-post-post-modernist sculptures. His job here was just that: a job. It kept the pasta and bread on the table while he kept his creative muscles toned.
Jellwagger turned back to the data stack. Unbelievable. He didn’t give a flying fuck how gorgeous and classy Betsy Seth was. For her to do this to him on this day of all days, when he was indentured to some stupid carrot top with shitty taste in men, was simply unforgivable. If and when Betsy ever did call him into a meeting again, Jellwagger would go, but he wouldn’t talk to her. In fact, he would avoid looking in her general direction for as long as he lived.
Jellwagger slapped on his earphones and listened to Bruce Willis continue with chapter five of Civilization and Its Discontents (“If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man’s sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization.”). Oh who cared about Betsy fucking Seth? She wouldn’t care if he never gave her the time of day. She had a tall hot stud at home to give it to her balls deep on a nightly (and probably morning) basis. Today was the first time he’d met with her in ages. Most of the time Jellwagger could go an entire week without seeing her.
An eternity later, around nine o’clock or so, when the firm was long since empty (even the cleaning crew had come and gone), Jellwagger still had about a quarter of the list yet to go. There was nothing for it. He didn’t want to chance not doing Carla’s bidding, as much as he hated the thought of letting down Grant and Betsy. He’d never been late for a project in his life. But wait a second. Perhaps being late with this project was the perfect way to get back at Betsy. At some point the tight-ass would have to realize that our boy Jellwagger was only a homo sapien.
On his way out he had to make a pit stop, and that’s when he heard the unmistakable sound of Grant yelling. Where the hell was it coming from? It obviously wasn’t coming from Grant’s desk because Jellwagger had walked by it on the way to the can and no one had been there. No, it was coming from inside one of the closed offices toward the opposite end of the floor.
“Oh my God!”
Yes, that was clearly Grant, and he clearly sounded in trouble. “Grant?” As Jellwagger jogged along the carpeted corridors, he imagined finding Grant with a hacked-off arm or something, bleeding all over the place and costing the firm millions of dollars in carpet damage. Jellwagger’s heart hammered like it did when Grant scared him out of his chair this afternoon. He rounded a corner and heard from the second door on his right:
“No! No! Yes!”
“Grant?”
Jellwagger opened the door and came upon a scene that would haunt him until the end of time.
Grant Prossich, senior data entry analyst for Powell and Powler, was bent over a huge desk with his slacks pulled down to his ankles but his shirt and tie still on, while Stu the mailroom blob, similarly half-attired, was standing behind him like some gargantuan balding wave about to crash down but never doing so, instead thrusting back and forth and making Grant cry out for his mama.
To be continued...
And that’s what he did, although at first it was agony. He had a terrible time sleeping that night, what with his ribs bruised and throbbing so that the very act of breathing was torture. I’ll spare you the details of how long it took him to drag his deflowered ass out of bed, through the shower, and into his work clothes. Suffice it to say that, after one of the longest, hardest nights and mornings he could remember, our man Jellwagger made it to work on time. No one, including his boss Betsy Seth, suspected anything was wrong.
Jellwagger had no idea what he was supposed to do tonight. Carla had said she wanted him to start spying on her former man, but she never gave him any details. Honestly, Jellwagger didn’t care. What more could they do to him? Scratch that. There was plenty more Neckman could have done, which seemed like he would have done had Carla not specifically ordered him to spare Jellwagger’s gorgeous face. Still, Neckman would actually have to show up on Jellwagger’s ragged doormat and threaten his face for Jellwagger to give a shit. Otherwise, he was looking forward to a nice quiet day at work, followed by a nice quiet evening of being swallowed up by his green couch while he feasted on microwave popcorn and beer. Which Bruce movie should he watch tonight? Not Death Becomes Her, that’s for sure. Jellwagger had to be in a particular mood to enjoy that, one of those moods that defy description. The same went for Breakfast of Champions. No, tonight he wanted something that could pump him up to do more work on Exit the Danish. How about Tears of the Sun, in which Bruce plays a Navy SEAL ripping shit up in sub-Saharan Africa? It got terrible reviews, but of course Jellwagger zoned out that nonsense, went and saw it and, predictably, had a blast (pardon the pun). What’s more, Tears of the Sun was probably closest in theme to what Exit the Danish would be about: a kick-ass American hero who travels to a foreign land to help people whose language he doesn’t speak a lick of and whose culture he hasn’t a hope of grasping. Meanwhile you’ve got certain fellow Americans who purport to be on his side but then betray him. For his screenplay’s purposes, Jellwagger wasn’t going to make the Bruce Willis character a Navy SEAL. Because if he did, it wouldn’t be a far fetched idea that he’d whoop Denmark’s ass. Nah, he had to be someone more ordinary, someone more like the billions of people who’d flock to this film. Let’s face it, there just aren’t that many Navy SEALs in the world.
Should he even be military? So far Jellwagger had only written the first fifteen or so pages and was already having doubts about the way he’d set it up so far. The Bruce Willis character, John Lane, was an army mechanic with a passion for antique firearms, such as Revolutionary War muskets and so on. The antique firearm thing he didn’t have a problem with, because by the end of the film John Lane will have led a revolution against Denmark. He himself will create the kind of history of which he’s been such a passionate scholar. And because he was an army mechanic, John Lane wasn’t exactly illiterate when it came to modern weaponry either. As for his family? It was a disaster zone. John and his wife Holly have been married for twenty-some-odd years and weren’t so much a couple anymore as roommates. To make matters hairier for the politically conservative John Lane, his daughter just finished her first year of college and has decided she’s a lesbian. Bottom line? John Lane’s family was falling apart. He wanted to do something about it and figured the best cure was a trip somewhere far away where none of them ever thought they would go in a billion years: Greenland.
And that’s where things would get even hairier. First, for a bit of levity, the Lane clan would experience a bit of culture shock, not just because they’ve never met Inuit people before, but because they honestly thought Greenland would be, you know, green. But of course it isn’t. That would be Iceland. The dude who named those two chunks of land Greenland and Iceland had an ironic sense of humor. That’s where the humor would come from in the film. That was important to Jellwagger, to mix in some levity with all the blowing shit up.
From there things would get hairier still. Jellwagger hadn’t gotten that far yet, but the way he had it mapped out showed John Lane getting to know some activists who use the same hotel where the Lane family is staying as a secret headquarters. These activists are in essence trying to get their government to toss off the Danish yoke. The Danes, for their part, don’t start off the film as bad people. In a way they’re kind of like Hans Gruber, the bad guy from the first Die Hard. They’re three-dimensional people with their own history and points of view and, if you were to tread a mile in their moccasins, you might even be on their side. But they’re bad guys, and as such, they’re desperate to retain Greenland as a colony at all costs, even if it means murder. After getting to know this one activist, a young woman about the same age as his daughter, and with whom his daughter falls in love, John Lane comes back to the hotel after a night out with the family to find the poor young Greenlander with a bullet square between the eyes, her naked corpse rotting in the bathtub of John’s room. That scene marks the end of act one, which meant theoretically Jellwagger had another fifteen pages to go before he got to it. So if he decided to change John Lane’s career path, he could do so without drastically altering anything he’d written thus far. The more he thought about it, the more Jellwagger wanted to take John Lane out of the military altogether. He really should be someone the audience could identify with, and most people on this planet simply do not go into the military. It’s a fact. How about a college professor? A Ph.D. or something? Not many people achieved that status either, yet everyone loved Indiana Jones, a Ph.D. in archaeology. Nah, Jellwagger thought it would be too derivative if he made his hero a doctor. What kinds of careers have heroes never had? How about something in retail? Maybe John Lane worked at Wal-Mart. He could work in the department that sold cleaning chemicals, which meant that when he’s in Greenland, he’d know which chemicals and combinations thereof would be the most flammable and therefore most effective as weapons against the invading Danes. Yeah, that sounded good. Wal-Mart gets bad press now and again for various things, such as wages and whatnot, and coming into towns and putting ma and pa shops out of business. So they’re an underdog, as is John Lane, a twenty-some-odd year veteran of their staff who has never taken a sick day in his life and busts his ass and is sort of an unsung hero of the company. Then he goes to Greenland, leads the Inuit revolution, and comes back with a promotion and a healthy raise waiting for him. Hell, why not just have him promoted to head of his store? It’s the least the Wal-Mart executives could do for this modern-day George Washington.
And of course there’d be a lot more. There would have to be if this sucker was going to be a two-hour flick. Yeah, he had oodles of ideas for the script, that Jellwagger, and it just killed him to have to spend his days under fluorescent lights typing in the names of people who had more money than he would ever have. Still, Jellwagger was a creative guy. He could figure out ways in which he could make the most of the eight hours so that he could not only do his job but could also work on his own writing. In a manner of speaking, that is. A prime example of that was listening to the audio book for Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud, read by Bruce Willis. By listening to Bruce Willis talk all day, Jellwagger could get down pat things such as his speech patterns and inflections, perhaps pick up on things he didn’t notice watching the films. That would, in turn, inform the dialogue he wrote for John Lane in Exit the Danish. For example, listen to how Bruce reads the opening of chapter five: “Psycho-analytic work has shown us that it is precisely these frustrations of sexual life which people known as neurotics cannot tolerate. The neurotic creates substitutive satisfactions for himself in his symptoms, and these either cause him suffering in themselves or become sources of suffering for him by raising difficulties in his relations with his environment and the society he belongs to. The latter fact is easy to understand; the former presents us with a new problem. But civilization demands other sacrifices besides that of sexual satisfaction.” Jellwagger couldn’t help smiling as Bruce said that second to last sentence. He read it the exact same way he said “Welcome to the party, pal!” in the first Die Hard. He didn’t yell as loud, but he did raise his voice with the same sort of tone. Speaking of that line, Jellwagger was going to have a scene in Exit the Danish, perhaps when the head Danish bad guy arrives, where John Lane would say: “Welcome to the party, pal!” Jellwagger didn’t know why Bruce hadn’t said it in his other films, just as Arnold always found an opportunity to say “I’ll be back.” Even in Twins, for Christ’s sake. And so with any luck, Jellwagger would help make “Welcome to the party, pal!” Bruce’s new signature line in every movie he’d make from now on.
Jellwagger was in the middle of rewinding his audio book to hear Bruce read that one bit again from the middle of chapter five—“It is clearly not easy for men to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfortable without it.”—when his boss Betsy Seth walked up to his surround. “Come, Michael.”
The order to “Come” meant to follow Betsy to her office. Betsy was a beautiful fortysomething Latina. She wasn’t hot. Calling her hot made her sound like one of those dime-a-dozen models populating fashion magazines and whatnot. No, Betsy was far too classy for that. She was beautiful, gorgeous, but definitely not hot. And she wasn’t beautiful because she looked younger than her years. She was in her forties, and that’s pretty much how she looked, complete with a few lines around her eyes. One part of her beauty came from her well-toned body courtesy of years of yoga, but just as much of it came from her comfort in her own skin. She was one of those gals who gladly told you her age if you asked her, which was all but unheard of with most people. In fact, Jellwagger hadn’t even asked her how old she was. She told him during his welcome lunch four years ago, but because it was four years ago, he couldn’t quite remember the number.
Yet another aspect of Betsy that gave Jellwagger a wood man every time without fail was when she summoned him to her office. It meant a nice long leisurely stroll along the entire length of the floor to her big bright corner office facing north and west. Jellwagger would point his eyes at the paintings on the walls or the fluorescent lights above, all in a concerted effort not to let any of the administrative assistants catch him checking out Betsy’s ass. And yet her ass would be the only thing he’d be paying any attention to thanks to his peripheral vision. God bless peripheral vision.
As for what Betsy may have thought of him, Jellwagger didn’t delude himself into thinking he amounted to anything next to her husband. Danny Seth was just the kind of guy you’d imagine a gorgeous professional Latina would end up with: a tall, dark, strapping, professional (he was a dentist) stud. Jellwagger had met him a few times at various company functions, such as the annual holiday party. The first time they shook hands, Jellwagger thought Danny was trying to turn his finger bones into powder. He was never sure if that was intentional or not, that perhaps Danny was trying to tell him that Betsy was his and if Jellwagger tried anything, he’d twist him into a pretzel, bake him, sprinkle him with salt, lather him with mustard, and feed him in pieces to the firm’s partners. Just before they shook hands, Jellwagger had snuck another of those peripheral glances at Betsy’s butt, and ever since then, he wondered if Danny had caught onto it and that was why he’d given our poor Jellwagger the RoboCop handshake. At any rate, even if Jellwagger never saw Danny Seth in person ever again, which would be all right with him, he would still have to see his smile next to Betsy’s as well as their two teenage kids’ every time he came into Betsy’s office, as he was doing right now.
As for their professional relationship, once again Jellwagger didn’t kid himself into thinking she regarded him as anything more than an ant. In the marketing department, the data entry clerk was the lowest totem on the pole. In fact, if a real totem pole were to be constructed to represent Powell and Powler, Jellwagger wasn’t sure he’d be on it at all. If it wasn’t bad enough that he was a peon, what made it worse was that many of the attorneys looked down their starched and pressed noses on Betsy Seth and her people altogether. Many of those old codgers have had the same clients since time immemorial, and those clients once in a while referred new clients. So really, what was the point of a marketing department?
Bottom line? If Powell and Powler were a planet, and the attorneys were the clouds, and the marketing department was the dirt, then our man Jellwagger would be the fungus festering underneath the dirt.
Betsy sat down across from him and crossed her legs and gave him that assessing look she always gave people during meetings, tilting her head slightly so that her flowing and fragrant hair draped like a black curtain on one side. “How’s everything, Michael?”
“Okay, I suppose. Different day, different data, same feeling about it all. Thanks for asking, Betsy.”
“You have to stay late tonight.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh fun!”
She recrossed her legs and sighed. How much do you think Jellwagger would have paid to be her chair right at this moment? Not even he could say for sure. “I’m sorry, Michael, but I don’t ask you for this often. Grant will be giving you all the data I need inputted into the system by end of day. They’re all prospects, and tomorrow we will be mailing them the new newsletter, which is P&P’s most comprehensive newsletter to date.”
“How many names are we talking?”
“I don’t know.” Sure, she did. Jellwagger knew better than to buy that. She just didn’t want to be the one to tell him because it was most likely some staggering number that meant he’d be here until nine o’clock or something. “Grant will give you the stack. But it’s very important. Understood?”
“Okay.”
She straightened her head and smiled. “How’s Bruce Willis these days?”
“How would I know? I was planning on watching him tonight, but you’ve wrecked everything.”
She sat forward and frowned at a piece of paper on her desk. “Speaking of things blowing up, that’s exactly what’ll happen to our department if I don’t finish this letter.” She turned to her computer and forgot Jellwagger was there.
When he got back to his desk, Jellwagger opened his instant messenger so he could ask Grant how big the coming data stack would be. The IM program said Grant was idle, which meant he wasn’t at his desk. No matter. Jellwagger had plenty of rich people to input in the meantime.
It was about an hour after lunch when Jellwagger, for the first time in his four-year career at Powell and Powler, was paid a visit by Stu the mailroom guy. Stu Dobkins was balding, borderline obese, and wore those gigantic square glasses you always see on people with no sense of style. In fact, have glasses like that ever been in style? Stu’s job, when he wasn’t in the mailroom scarfing candy that he stockpiled from the receptionist’s candy bowl, was to lumber around the firm handing out mail from a squeaky metal-latticed-grocery-store-cart-kind-of-vehicle. Jellwagger would see Stu pass all the time. He always had stuff to deliver to the marketing department, just never to Jellwagger. Whenever he passed by, he never looked at Jellwagger. And he never smiled, which was why, when he did both on this occasion, it freaked Jellwagger the hell out.
“I have a package for Michael Johnson Jellwag!” he announced with an exaggerated flourish of his pudgy arms, one of which ended in a bulging yellow envelope. He frowned at it. “Why, gee! I don’t believe I know a Michael Johnson Jellwag. Is this some new person? Ha ha!” He gave Jellwagger a sidelong glance and smiled with utterly hideous teeth that were crooked and colored with a shade of rot somewhere between brown and black. “Just kidding, Jellwagger. I think I know who you are. Ha ha!” He handed Jellwagger the package. Where the return address should have been were the words Just Because.
“Who’s this from?”
“Just Because.”
“’The hell’s that?”
“Ha ha! I’m sorry, Jellwagger. You know, they did tell me you were a funny guy. Funny strange, not funny ha ha, mind you.”
“They who? The people who sent this?”
“I told you I haven’t a God damned clue who sent that, didn’t I? I mean people in this firm told me. Everyone told me. Ya know? Everyone knows Jellwagger. You’re Jellwagger.”
Jellwagger felt around the envelope with both hands. It felt like a multi-page document along with something bulky and hard. Something the size of a cellphone.
“Seriously, though,” Stu went on. “You get a promotion?”
Who could this be from? Jellwagger thought like the Dickens but drew a blank.
“Hey Jellwagger, I’m speaking to you. Ya know, I may just be a mailroom clerk at whose expense you can make fat jokes ad infinitum, but when I speak to you, it’s only polite you answer.”
“Why would I have gotten a promotion? Did you see a company-wide e-mail announcing that I’d gotten a promotion, an e-mail complete with my educational background and my hobbies, which no one would care about, and which include an insatiable appetite for microwave corn, ice-cold imported beer, and Bruce Willis films? Have you seen anything like that at all in your inbox?”
Stu pushed and pulled the mail cart a few times while he pondered the question. Just when Jellwagger was about to jump up and grab the balding blob by the lapels of his butt-ugly dung-colored shirt, Stu said: “Yeah.”
“Yes? You have seen such an e-mail? Could you forward it to me?”
“No. I meant, yeah you’re right. I haven’t seen that e-mail.”
“Could it be because I haven’t gotten a promotion?” Dumbass, Jellwagger would have killed to add out loud. Why couldn’t he have a woman like Betsy?
Stu stopped pushing and pulling his cart and flashed another of those sidelong Frankenstein smiles that made Jellwagger want to knock him back into the pre-Jenny Craig era. “Then why are you getting this envelope, Jellwagger? What’s it for? Who’s it from?”
“Einstein! That’s what I asked you!”
“All right, Jellwagger. Cool off. Don’t be such a Jellwagger. I’m just having fun here, you know. I know you didn’t get a promotion, which is why I’m wondering about this. Since when does anybody send you anything? Actually I think it’s kind of cool that I get to visit this part of the firm. You see these paintings along the wall here? Seriously, Jellwagger, you’re probably the only person on the whole entire planet who gets to see these paintings every day. I mean really. You ever get to see other parts of the firm? It’s a huge firm, Jellwagger, did you know that? Anyone ever take you on a tour? I hope not. Because then you’d see the paintings on the walls in other parts of the firm, and they’d make you think the ones right here are ugly. And once you know you work in the part of the firm that has the ugliest paintings, it makes you resent working at the desk you’re at now. You become bitter and resentful.” His cart squeaked as he pushed it away.
The package was from Carla. That bulky thing the size of a cellphone turned out to be just that. It didn’t look remarkable really. The differences between it and his current cell was that this one was black instead of silver, had more buttons, and didn’t fold up. The remainder of the envelope’s contents included photographs of and documents about her ex-husband, Pat Dinner. Included in the documents were a CV as well as a letter from Carla to Jellwagger which, among other things, listed Pat’s Beverly Hills address and reiterated the importance of this job. She also, more than once, mentioned that Pat’s house used to belong to her. In case Jellwagger didn’t believe her—because it was quite a stunning house—Carla insisted he check his firm’s files to confirm that. She also had a few words about the cellphone. First and foremost she wanted him to know that it was brand-spanking-new and that she had gotten it specifically for him and that any usage would go on her bill. Jellwagger shook his head and scoffed as he read that. As if that was supposed to make him feel better. When Carla looked at this thing, she may have seen a gift. What Jellwagger saw was servitude. The cool thing about this cell, Carla went on as if she thought Jellwagger would be psyched by now, was that it doubled as a walkie-talkie so she could talk to him at a moment’s notice. You see what I mean about servitude? It was also a camera, which she encouraged him to use as often as he wanted to score shots of Pat Dinner in action, whatever that meant.
Speaking of Pat Dinner photographs, one was a cutout from a portrait that had included Carla in the original judging by the pale hand that was unmistakably hers resting on his lap. The other shots looked like they’d been taken furtively, including one outside a Ralphs grocery store. Jellwagger was quite simply amazed that a woman as young and gorgeous as Carla would waste her time with an old codger like this. Actually Pat Dinner wasn’t all that old. Thanks to his CV, Jellwagger knew that he was exactly forty-seven years old. But that’s just it: Forty-seven? What was a woman Jellwagger’s age doing with a guy like this? And it wasn’t that he looked young either. The frosting on the sides of his otherwise black hair as well as his gray goatee more than betrayed his age. He was also forming a second chin commensurate with the love handles. In a way he was sorry Carla had cropped out the other half of the portrait photo. Jellwagger would have loved to see the two of them side by side. Not just for the entertainment value, but also to fill in the gap that his imagination couldn’t. He simply could not imagine a gal like her with a dude like this. That hand sticking out in the cropped photo didn’t help either. In fact, if anything, it only gave Jellwagger the creeps, so he slid it back into the envelope. Dude must have been loaded. His CV listed his profession as Financial Consultant, but for Christ’s sake, if there was one job title that could mean absolutely anything, it would have to be that.
“Pat Dinner got his MBA from USC’s Marshall School of Business,” came Grant’s voice from behind him. Jellwagger just about fell out of his chair, but Grant didn’t seem to notice. He continued reading the CV, then looked at the photos. “I’ve seen that gentleman before, haven’t I?” He furrowed his brows at Jellwagger as if expecting an answer. Jellwagger was still recovering from Grant’s scaring the bejesus out of him and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. “Is this something from Betsy?”
“What?”
“I assume you’re entering this gentleman as a new client. Because I’ve seen him before. Something involving a case we just finished, right?” He looked at Jellwagger again.
“This is from Betsy.”
“Yeah. Yeah. And what was the nature of our firm’s representing him? In other words, what sort of case was it?”
“I’m-I’m not sure. Betsy just gave this to me.”
“Just now?”
“Earlier.”
“And what’s that?” Grant said when he flipped over the envelope so he could read the front. “Just Because.” He examined the envelope for a few seconds while Jellwagger tried not to go bonkers. Nothing else was written on the front of the envelope besides Just Because and Jellwagger’s name, but watching Grant, you would have thought he was trying to discern something else written in invisible ink. “Just Because. Just Because.” His eyes darted to the cellphone. “And that thing?”
“That’s mine.”
“It came with this?”
“I just got it. No, it’s mine.”
Grant’s eyes hovered back and forth between the cell and the envelope for a sanity-taxing eternity. “Okay,” he said a little too loudly for Jellwagger’s paranoid comfort. “Well. Speaking of Betsy, I know she told you about this.” He dropped a phone book-sized data stack on Jellwagger’s desk.
“No fucking way.”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“I asked her how big it was. Oh whatever.”
“It’s thirteen hundred contacts.”
Jellwagger’s chest tightened.
“And they all need to be entered before you leave. Hey, just think about all the overtime you’re going to get.” He marched away. Would Grant really go ask Betsy about the package from Carla? Nah, Jellwagger knew better. Grant’s passion was and has always been his post-post-post-modernist sculptures. His job here was just that: a job. It kept the pasta and bread on the table while he kept his creative muscles toned.
Jellwagger turned back to the data stack. Unbelievable. He didn’t give a flying fuck how gorgeous and classy Betsy Seth was. For her to do this to him on this day of all days, when he was indentured to some stupid carrot top with shitty taste in men, was simply unforgivable. If and when Betsy ever did call him into a meeting again, Jellwagger would go, but he wouldn’t talk to her. In fact, he would avoid looking in her general direction for as long as he lived.
Jellwagger slapped on his earphones and listened to Bruce Willis continue with chapter five of Civilization and Its Discontents (“If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man’s sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization.”). Oh who cared about Betsy fucking Seth? She wouldn’t care if he never gave her the time of day. She had a tall hot stud at home to give it to her balls deep on a nightly (and probably morning) basis. Today was the first time he’d met with her in ages. Most of the time Jellwagger could go an entire week without seeing her.
An eternity later, around nine o’clock or so, when the firm was long since empty (even the cleaning crew had come and gone), Jellwagger still had about a quarter of the list yet to go. There was nothing for it. He didn’t want to chance not doing Carla’s bidding, as much as he hated the thought of letting down Grant and Betsy. He’d never been late for a project in his life. But wait a second. Perhaps being late with this project was the perfect way to get back at Betsy. At some point the tight-ass would have to realize that our boy Jellwagger was only a homo sapien.
On his way out he had to make a pit stop, and that’s when he heard the unmistakable sound of Grant yelling. Where the hell was it coming from? It obviously wasn’t coming from Grant’s desk because Jellwagger had walked by it on the way to the can and no one had been there. No, it was coming from inside one of the closed offices toward the opposite end of the floor.
“Oh my God!”
Yes, that was clearly Grant, and he clearly sounded in trouble. “Grant?” As Jellwagger jogged along the carpeted corridors, he imagined finding Grant with a hacked-off arm or something, bleeding all over the place and costing the firm millions of dollars in carpet damage. Jellwagger’s heart hammered like it did when Grant scared him out of his chair this afternoon. He rounded a corner and heard from the second door on his right:
“No! No! Yes!”
“Grant?”
Jellwagger opened the door and came upon a scene that would haunt him until the end of time.
Grant Prossich, senior data entry analyst for Powell and Powler, was bent over a huge desk with his slacks pulled down to his ankles but his shirt and tie still on, while Stu the mailroom blob, similarly half-attired, was standing behind him like some gargantuan balding wave about to crash down but never doing so, instead thrusting back and forth and making Grant cry out for his mama.
To be continued...
