Wednesday morning, 9:16 AM. When I enter the office, Wren pops up from behind her desk.
"Hi, Phil. Can I get you something to drink? A coffee? water?"
"No, thanks, I'm good."
She motions for me to follow. It's a good thing I know my way, I can't keep up with her.
I find her waiting for me in the conference room where Carl is seated. He comes around the table, his hand extended. Cheerfully, he slaps my shoulder as we shake hands.
"Can I get you a refill, Carl?" Wren asks.
He shoves his oversized coffee mug into her hands then turns to me.
"You're looking well, Phil. Dropped a few pounds, I see."
Dropped a few pounds since he saw me a couple of days ago? Hmmmm.
My eyes go from Carl's friendly, smiling face to a ghoul of a man, seated at the far end of the table. His creased face looks as though it would crack if his thin lips ever formed a smile. On his forehead, I notice two protrusions, like horns trying to push through his thin flesh.
Carl makes the introduction. "Phil, this is Douglas Glerk. From the firm."
I smile. "Nice to meet you."
No response. He narrows his eyes at me as I approach offering my hand. He remains seated, his bony hands folded on the table.
"Recovering from the flu," he grumbles.
I notice that the whites of Glerk's eyes are not white, but blood red. I wince.
"Just had Lasik about an hour ago." He blinks briskly.
I smile politely. Carl gestures to an empty chair across the table. As I slide into my seat, I realize that I am the subject of the good cop/bad cop routine.
Wren slips in, deposits a fresh mug of coffee in front of Carl, then darts away. Carl busies himself at his laptop.
Glerk thumbs through a stack of papers, squinting at the documents. In a guttural voice that calls to mind demonic possession, he growls, "Seems to me, Mr. Robiski, that the intelligent thing would have been to consult legal counsel before trying to organize a class-action suit against Trollamex."
"Class action suit?"
"Even a law school flunky would surely have advised you that you cannot sue for damages allegedly caused by some fictitious product."
He flips a page and, with the yellow fingernail of his index finger, underlines the name, Tiger's Teeth.
"I believe you referred to it as Tiger's Teeth."
"Right. That's the name of the product."
"What product?"
I turn to Carl who is immersed in his computer, then back to Glerk.
"Tiger's Teeth is the weed killer that Trollamex produced and marketed. You know that."
"I find no record that a product by that name ever existed."
Clearly, Carl does not have my back. He's intent on diverting his eyes and slurping his coffee.
"Hot," he says under his breath.
"Listen, Mr. Glerk. I've got twenty-eight people willing to testify that they have actually used Tiger's Teeth."
"With a little legwork, I'm sure I could find twenty-eight people who claim that they've lived on Mars."
Once again I look to Carl.
"Maybe you're mistaken, Phil," Carl adopts a soothing, good cop tone.
Glerk leans forward on the table and snarls, "I don't know what you're trying to pull here. What is it with people like you?"
Carl smiles gently. "Phil, I understand how upset you've been, after all you've been through, but--"
Glerk cuts him off. "Cease and desist immediately or there shall be legal consequences."
"Thanks for the advice, but--"
"--It's not advice." Glerk glares. A droplet of blood forms in the corner of his eye and balances on the lower lid like a tear. I can't help but stare. The intercom beeps.
Wren says, "Mister Glerk. Your wife is on line two. She's calling from the hospital. Your son--"
"Take a message." He snaps. Then back to me. "Stop your meddling nonsense this instant! This is your final warning."
#######
When I step back and take an objective look, I see what you probably see: a middle-aged guy with creeping paranoia about the world around him being largely inhabited by emotionless robotic humanoids. A guy who suffered a breakdown and went on an insane two-day rambling spree during which he was poisoned by a powerful insecticide, which brought on manic behavior and hallucinations. Not the most reliable narrator. I get that. I know that I'm prone to exaggeration and hyperbole. Guilty as charged.
But it's not hyperbole and exaggeration to say that Trollamex is an organization run by some very bad people. For the past few years, I've been working on their behalf cranking out misinformation, misdirection, and flat out lies. And I believe that the negative effects have been far more damaging to me than the chemicals that I inhaled, which have since been eating my brain.
I'll admit that in the mental health category, my score could be higher, but I'm sufficiently stable to know right from wrong. So no. I'm not okay with Trollamex hurting people and doing whatever is necessary to avoid accepting responsibility. What am I going to do about it? That's the question I'm wrestling with.
I exit the building and walk to the coffee shop on the corner. Christopher, my familiar barista checks the time and says, "Phil, my friend. It's 10:48. Que pasa?"
"The usual. Blueberry muffin and coffee."
"You got it."
He puts my muffin on a plate. "Haven't seen you around."
"It's a long story."
He serves me my muffin and coffee, which I carry to a table by the window while I consider my options. After all, I have a family to consider. Maybe the smart thing to do would be to forget this whole Trollamex mess and just move on. And maybe take Carl up on his offer to manage the new company satellite office. No question, that would be the safe play.
Instead, I take an Uber to Palmer's Hardware store. Palmer's is one of the last of its kind, a family-run business keeping its head above water and fighting to keep the doors open in the face of overwhelming competition from the big box stores and hardware chains. It's a well-tended store stocked with every sort of tool imaginable, propane grills, and plumbing supplies.
Zach Palmer is on the floor helping a customer. He appears to be in his 50's, about two hundred pounds of a man wearing Dickies slacks and an Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A thick crop of curly light orange hair covers his head like a fuzzy bathing cap.
The customer holds a coiled green extension cord. In a monotonous voice, he drones, "The label says twenty-five feet but it doesn't feel like twenty-five feet to me."
Zach checks the label. "That's twenty-five feet, alright."
"Could be false advertising. Suppose I get home and the cord is only twenty-four feet long? Or twenty-four feet six inches?"
"You could return it. Just hang onto your receipt."
"Feels awfully light for a twenty-five-footer. Probably made in China." His tone never changes.
Palmer reads the back of the label. "It says American made."
The customer shakes his head. "I hear the Chinese got trained monkeys making this stuff so they don't have to pay their workers."
Zach shrugs.
"When you think about it, that's pretty smart. Monkeys aren't gonna file complaints about poor working conditions or post photos of monkey abuse on Facebook."
There's not a hint of irony in his voice when he makes the trained monkey comment. Not the slightest smile. I have a fleeting thought that perhaps he's trying to brighten Zach's day. But no, unfortunately, that's not the case. The man is a humorless husk of a human performing a mundane task in his ordinary life. He's dead serious about the trained monkeys.
I don't want to interject myself into this discussion but it seems to me that if monkeys have the skills and intellect necessary to manufacture extension cords they can probably take pics and post them on Facebook.
"Doesn't even matter," says the customer. "Probably overheat one day and burn down the house."
"We have other extension cords."
"The other ones look even worse." He sighs and trudges to the check out counter.
I approach Zach. "I'm Phil Robiski. I called."
He shakes my hand.
"So you remember Tiger's Teeth?"
He furrows his nearly invisible light orange eyebrows.
"What are you? Like a newspaper reporter or something like that?" he asks. "You got a business card?"
He's suspicious and now on the defensive. I need to come clean.
"Look. I used to work for a company that did contract work for Trollamex, the company that manufactured Tiger's Teeth. And we found out that a lot of people got sick, apparently from using Tiger's Teeth weed killer. A lot of people."
"I didn't get sick. Of course, I personally never used the product."
"Anyway, Trollamex is responding by saying that that they never manufactured the product. That Tiger's Teeth never existed."
"Oh, it existed, alright. I'll never forget it."
"You won't?"
"I was probably about fifteen maybe sixteen at the time. It was a summer job, and me and my friend Scott were unloading a buttload of Tiger's Teeth off a delivery truck and stacking the bags in the stock room. Musta been fifty or sixty bags. Heavy, too. A couple days later, the manager tells us to bring all the bags outta the back room and load them back onto the danged truck. The guys in the truck stood there and watched then checked the stock room to make sure they got every last bag."
"You know where I might find the manager?"
"Sold the store about fifteen years ago. Heard he retired someplace down in Florida. Or maybe Arizona. Hope it wasn't Utah."
An elderly woman wearing a pink plaid jacket taps me on the shoulder.
"Excuse me," she says. "Were you gentlemen talking about an old product called Tiger's Teeth?"
"We don't carry that product anymore," says Zach.
"I haven't heard anybody mention it since I can't remember when." She adjusts her aqua-frame glasses on her nose. "My late husband, Levi, must have told that story dozens of times."
"What story?"
"The Tiger's Teeth story. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure we bought a couple of bags of it from this very store. Of course, it was Miller's back then."
"Yes, Ma'am," Zach replies.
"Well," she draws her silver hair behind her ear. "It was a few months after we'd purchased the product. Levi spread it out on the lawn and we thought that was the end of it. Until those men showed up."
"What men?" I ask.
"They were two nice men dressed in suits. They said that there had been complaints about Tiger's Teeth, so they were sent to apologize and to buy it all back. They bought our two bags at full price. And the bags were almost empty."
"Wonder why they'd do that?" Zach rubs his chin with his knuckle.
"I know it was a long time ago," I say, "but do you think you might be able to find a canceled check?
"They paid in cash. I remember that."
Another dead end.
"Did they leave a business card or anything?"
"I suppose we should have asked for identification, but we just assumed they were from the Tiger's Teeth company," she says.
"You said your husband is deceased. Was it cancer?"
"Levi? Heavens, no." She removes her glasses and cleans the lenses with the hem of her blouse. "He passed away at his Zumba class."
"Heart attack?"
"He choked on his gum. No one noticed until it was too late."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I reply.
"Well, at least he died doing something he loved."
"People say that they totally get addicted to that Zumba," says Zach.
"No, I meant chewing gum. The man loved his gum."