Chapter Eleven
As Mike’s meeting with Doug, Cuddy, and Mary was concluding, two floors below and late into the afternoon, Rico popped a cough drop in his mouth. His friends, none of whom could recall his real name anymore, all called him Rico because of his seemingly endless consumption of Ricola cough drops. Rico dialed Mike’s phone.
Rico hoped to prank Mike by pretending to be the wealthy shareholder Lady Nicklebottom, who would threaten to sell her stock and plummet the company into further financial disarray if the upper management team wasn’t immediately mobilized to help her search for Mr. Wuzzums, her Yorkshire terrier. Per the storyline Rico had coined, Mr. Wuzzums had run off with a fuzzy poodle in a relationship all about the dirty love. Unfortunately, Mike’s phone could be heard ringing, signaling Mike wasn’t in his office. Rico really wanted to know why Mike was summoned to the rarified air of the sixth floor. Mike’s continued absence further piqued Rico’s curiosity. HR typically liked to parade the newly fired around the floor, cardboard box laden with personal effects in hand, for a quick lap of shame before escorting them from the building, and Rico hadn’t seen Mike since late morning.
Contrary to Wayne’s belief Rico wasn’t Puerto Rican. This was evident the first time anyone met him. He was a little over six feet, light skinned, lanky yet well muscled, with the gift of a handsome jaw line, and an easy going demeanor. His long sandy-blonde hair hung to his shoulders, framed his face, and accentuated his luminescent blue eyes. With his looks, and mostly easy going disposition, Rico didn’t want for female companionship.
That Rico was occasionally called crazy had nothing to with him setting in motion the events that ended with Alan’s jump. Nor was it related to the first time he caused the building to be evacuated, in the spring of 2006, to the smell of burnt fish. On that fateful day Rico was pretty stoned when the alarm sounded– it being the equinox of April 20, at 4:20 pm in Room 420. And four twenty being the widely recognized moniker of pot smokers embracing pot and pot culture.
A half a year before Alan’s jump, Rico, and a handful of the company’s customer service reps met in conference room 420. An equinox wasn’t an equinox without the special conference room; hence Rico booked the reservation the minute the system allowed for it. Rico’s cryptic invitation gave no indication to the purpose of the meeting: Dave’s Not Here. To gain entry invitees knocked on the door and announced, “It’s me Dave.” In response, those in the room shouted, “Dave’s not here!” and opened the door. To the meeting Rico brought a vaporizer, bag of natures finest, and a lighter. An hour later the attendants departed the room, high as kites, to finish the remains of the work day.
After the meeting Rico longed for a dish one of his many ex-girlfriends had introduced him to, Puerto Rican fish soup. In anticipation of the equinox, and its resultant munchies, Rico brought the necessary ingredients for sopón de pescado to work. Equinox concluded, Rico lovingly assembled the dish, placed it in the microwave, promptly forgot about it, and wandered off to the vending machine. It wasn’t until the fire alarm sounded he vaguely remembered he was making soup.
Nonetheless, neither Rico’s masterminding the four twenty equinox, nor the subsequent piscean disaster, played a material role in Rico’s co-workers and friends calling him crazy. Rico earned the epithet when he stepped in goose shit on his way into work and returned, twenty minutes later, with a golf club and brained a goose half-way between the reflecting pond, upon which The Board was deep in thought, and the smoking area. Given the detente between man and geese on the corporate campus the goose felt pretty blindsided. The mate of the dead goose looked up in disbelief, and then flew off angrily, honking in recrimination. At the goose’s final honk, The Board looked up from their tight huddle, en masse, and saw what had transpired.
Seeing the dead goose on the path, The Chairman spoke in his sonorous voice, “That’s some cold shit, brother. Staving that mofo’s head with the one wood. Damn!” Contradicting his words he nodded in approval, for he too had stepped his custom snakeskin shoes in goose shit.
Staring directly at Rico several of the board members followed The Chairman’s lead and imperceptibly nodded their approval, for they too had stepped in the nasty green paste. The huddle of management then reformed, tight and near the water, and resumed its discourse. Law enforcement was in unanimous agreement that their conversation would be very tough to record, from any distance, with enough quality to be court admissible.
The goose’s demise began long before Rico’s unfortunate step. It could be argued the goose was ‘a dead man walking’ when Rico arrived at work, unhinged, after having to forego butter on his daily, morning toast. It was a tough start to Rico’s day when he couldn’t trust the butter in his refrigerator; although, no tougher a start than for that of the goose.
The mistrust of dairy began the night before when Rico’s roommate, who was entertaining his girlfriend in his bedroom, stepped into the living room naked except for a small washcloth covering his boner, and asked Rico and his friends if any of them had any personal lubricant they could spare. Rico and his friends instinctively withdrew their feet from the naked man and writhed on the couch, upon which they sat, to put as much distance between him and them as possible. As they scrambled they screamed at him to point it somewhere else. Finally, Rico told him to get the hell out of the living room; they didn’t have any personal lubricant in their pockets. Answered in the negative his roommate high tailed it back to his bedroom, ass exposed like a baboon.
When Rico awoke early the next morning, with enough of a hangover to piss him off, but far short of that requiring a personal day, he popped a couple of pieces of toast in the toaster and began picking up the dead soldiers that littered the small apartment. He cleaned until the toaster popped the toast up. As was his morning ritual, Rico threw the toast on a plate, opened the fridge to get the butter, and immediately came to know everything which was wrong with having a roommate at his age.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Rico shouted in the direction of his roommate’s closed bedroom door. Finger marks marred the stick of butter, as if someone had hastily swiped their hand through the butter; butter as a personal lubricant? Rico wasn’t certain what happened, nor were his convictions ever proven, but the combined effects of realizing he couldn’t trust the butter and choking down dry toast for breakfast while his head pounded were cited in his defense as causal factors in the goose’s death by blunt force trauma.
In the post-mortem, Human Resources conceded Rico had been under a lot of stress, and that it was unfortunate timing The Board was reflecting at the time of his crisis. As a result, some punitive action was necessary. When the dust settled Rico ended up with one hundred hours of court ordered anger management, and the widely held perception he might be a little crazy.
Rico was no dummy. He never disclosed how freaking great it felt to kill the goose. Even more prudently he didn’t elaborate on his logic that if it felt that great to brain a goose how great it would feel to brain, in descending order of joy, his roommate, those in charge and select co-workers. In this post-9/11 world some thoughts are best unexpressed, even in the safety and confines of the corporate psychologist’s anger management session while resting in a supine position on a ridiculously comfortable leather couch.
In addition to the requisite therapy, the Department of Wildlife gave him a life ban on goose hunting. The wildlife agent privately conceded he too hated those damn geese and made Rico retell the story a couple times. The agent excitedly rubbed his hands together when Rico detailed the look in the goose’s eye when it realized the détente’ was off, and it was about to get brained with the Big Bertha.
None of these events phased Rico. Rico didn’t care about anger management or goose hunting. The requisite anger management courses got him out of work, the geese weren’t a staple of his diet, and hunting wasn’t his passion. Rico held an undergraduate degree in literature, an M.B.A. in international
finance, but a passion for music.
Rico’s high school’s talent show sparked his musical passion twenty some years ago. The third act of the program, James and Friends, was listed as a tender smash up of Olivia Newton John’s, Have You Never Been Mellow, and The Captain and Tennille’s, Muskrat Love. After the second act, a power ukulele folk trio, completed their rousing rendition of the Kingston Trio’s, Low Bridge, the house lights darkened. Inside the bible black, packed auditorium, movement could be heard on the stage but not seen; the bump of a cymbal, footsteps, cords sliding on the wooden stage, hushed murmurs, girl’s voices.
Minutes later a sole spot light lit James as he stood before a microphone in the center of the stage. His hair, a brindled pattern of blondes, from near white to dark brown, hung in greasy, grapevine-like strands to his shoulders. Disheveled and skinny, with nicotine stained hands, stovepipe black pants, and converse high tops, his dilated pupils would have warranted his exiting the vehicle during a traffic stop. From James’ road worn and scarred telecaster guitar a cord ran to a ridiculously oversized amplifier. James began to play slowly; a finger style interpretation of the Australian singer’s hit. At the end of the fourth measure a pregnant pause ensued.
The audience thought he’d forgotten the chords, or stalled at the point the vocals began. Shouts of, “Come on James, do it!” rang from the packed auditorium.
Looking up from his guitar, a smirk of deception broke onto James face. As his trickery unfolded an unseen drummer, and a bass player, with hair so long and chaotic his face could not be seen, began a tribal and repetitive pattern. James turned the volume knob on the guitar fully to the right, and as feedback squealed from his amp he dropped all pretense and laid into the starting riff to the Tubes’, White Punks on Dope. The rafters shook from the noise, and the audience sat in shock.
From nowhere, and to James’ left, long before Nirvana used them so effectively in Teen Spirit, a half dozen of the scuzziest cheerleaders suburban America had ever seen stormed the stage. These disjointed recruits from the smoking area, perpetual stoners, many of whom were unaware they were currently pregnant, began a bizarre cheer. James sang with angst, lamenting wasted youth, absentee parents, and the boredom that comes with ridiculous wealth.
A right wing conservative Christian who sidelined as a preacher for extra cash, the Prinicpal sat at the back of the auditorium riding shepherd over his flock. At the moment he realized James’s con he prayed for help, his voice ripe with fear, “Sweet Jesus help us! Satan has descended!” The Principal jumped up, and ran from the back of the auditorium to cut the power and lay hands on.
James was moving into the second verse when the Principal made the stage. The Principal was certain a master switch cut all power, but uncertain its location. Running back and forth at the back of the stage, while James sang, he searched in vain. Blocking whatever switches and plugs lay behind the stage was a massive curtain. The Principal ran his hands madly up and down the curtain. “Cut the power! Cut the power! Satan is amongst us!” James and Friends played on.
As he searched for the off switch a dilemma ensued; James had begun to disrobe. James was trying to pull his pants down with his right hand while his left held the microphone into which he sang, the song now carried by the drummer and bass player. In an effort to fix two wrongs, the Principal picked James up by the back of his pants and dragged him along like a puppet. James’ toes raked the stage, microphone in hand, as he sang. The Principal continued his frantic search for the off switch.
When the Principal found the switch James realized the jig was up and abandoned the microphone. He grabbed his pants with both hands and pulled them below his hips. The Principal was losing the battle, his one hand no match for both of James, and in a second James would stand naked on the stage. Unbalanced by James’ extra effort, he, and the Principal, fell into a pile on the stage locked in mortal combat over the destiny of James trousers.
As the packed auditorium breathlessly watched the battle between good and evil, with the bass player running the rhythm, drummer pounding the backbeat, and cheerleaders disintegrating into chaos, the crowd rose and gave a standing ovation. In the audience, near the front row and to stage right, sat Rico with his twelfth grade girlfriend. The young lovebirds, quietly holding hands, watched in awe. Rising to their feet with the rest of the auditorium, and overcome with emotion, Rico’s girlfriend let go of Rico’s hand, flashed her tits at James, and declared, “I love you James!” That was the first and only time Rico saw her topless, and as he stared at her pert, young breasts the power of music became obvious. Rico knew music was his calling.
At the next talent show the Principal sat on the stage, his hand resting nervously on the kill switch. James was not at the school. He was touring Europe with Skinny Puppy. Rico’s ex-girlfriend was with him.
Years later, in the mid-1990s, Rico graduated from a state college with an undergraduate degree in literature and then worked a few years for a small lawn sprinkling business. The work was physically taxing, but, surprisingly enough, mentally challenging. On new installations the margins were so tight the simplicity of the design, in which fewer materials were required, determined the profitability of the job. On service calls, especially for sprinklers for which the blueprints didn’t exist, good detective work could save hours of back breaking labor and prevent unnecessary confrontation. Customers weren’t keen on paying large bills when their well manicured lawns were turned inside out. Looking back, Rico realized the competence of his old boss, Marc. He rarely underbid jobs, took full accountability when his company screwed up, and was careful to treat everyone with respect. He also worked like a Chinese rice farmer; fourteen hour days in the good weather, and twelve hour days rebuilding the equipment in the foul weather. Rico sometimes wondered how the executives he served under would fair running a restaurant, construction company, or lawn care business. Jobs with low barriers to entry immediately weed out the incompetent. His guess was they would be out of business in a few months.
Still unsure of what to do with his life, Rico decided to leave manual labor and the sprinkler trade behind. He applied to, and was accepted by, a top tier M.B.A. program. The closer he got to corporate work, the less enthused he became. His disillusionment with the corporation came as he sat in class listening to his professors. Self proclaimed experts, with little or no actual work experience, who droned on about sure fire ways to make money, and lots of it. At the heart of this growing alienation was his realization that, on his current path, he’d be running a business for shareholders with whom he had no allegiance other than his pay check, while he sought to drive out local proprietors whose shops made cities unique. He understood the arguments that options and equity aligned shareholder interests and that consumers vote with their dollars. Rico didn’t buy the argument. He believed that most people didn’t realize, weren’t bright enough to understand, or were simply wrong when they shopped on price without regard for the impact these decisions had in their hometowns, and drove America toward a bland and homogenized existence: No town different than any other.
As his disenchantment grew Rico continued with his classes, but began to perform with growing regularity at a number of local coffee shops and bars. He realized his passion was music and made a run at paying his bills by playing whenever and wherever he could. He was often found in the afternoons busking off Michigan Avenue for the fifty bucks he could make.
Rico found it fulfilling to own the creative process, and he loved not having to report into anyone. On rare occasions he wrote the songs he played, but mostly played his favorite covers. On the covers he often re-voiced the chords to his liking and flipped the arrangements to reinterpret the original. His favorite was revisiting old funk and disco standards and arranging them for a sole acoustic guitar. The juxtaposition of a grungy, long hair playing a bare bones cover of a song most recognized, like, How Deep Is Your Love, was generally well received.
&n
bsp; When Rico graduated from business school in the late 1990s, with unemployment rampant, he took to playing music to pay his bills and skipped out on the big money M.B.A. job he might have scored. The money he saved while working construction with the sprinkler company paid for his business degree. He ran the math and if he could bring in $200 a week, and work part time at a restaurant for the food perks, he could easily tread water and remain financially solvent. His apartment was a cheap dump decorated with a few beat down couches, a small TV, radio, and milk crates repurposed as end tables, book cases, and speaker stands. That, and a handful of guitars, amplifiers and recording equipment, plus an old white van, was all he owned. Being beholden to no one gave him sole control over his life’s choices, and let him decide the level of suffering he’d accept for his art.
A couple of years ago Rico found it increasingly difficult to pay his bills on the coffee shop circuit, the traditional venues musicians used to build an audience. People can only tolerate so much change and Rico knew the key to a successful show was to intersperse his originals, which typically found couched enthusiasm, with widely recognized covers. Most of the shops where he played, and built a following, were discontinuing their music programs under pressure from the performance rights organizations to pay exorbitant licensing fees or face lawsuits. The law required royalties be paid the original artist, regardless of whether the venue or musician received payment. As a result, it was easier for the coffee shops and bars to let the music go than it was to pay into a dysfunctional system, or face fines that ran into the thousands of dollars. No one made any real money on covers played by coffee shop musicians; hence, there wasn’t any money to pay royalties.
As much as Rico lamented his troubles finding venues to let him play, his life, for the most part, had been one free from sickness, heartbreak, and loss. Growing up without a mother, he’d never missed her. The closest to sadness he’d come was the passing of his much older father, a strange affair involving a bus and dozens of Japanese tourists. His father’s death wasn’t unexpected given his age, although the way in which he died was a bit of a shock. Rico had been through some lean times, but he’d never gone to bed hungry or cried himself to sleep. He was the one person from whom the proverbial grieving Buddhist mother could have borrowed mustard seed. Without the empathy life’s struggles brings, a veil sat between the songs Rico could have written, had he truly experienced hardship, and what he wrote; uninspired originals, tepid and thin, that never won the audience over. With nothing of any consequence to say, Rico resigned himself long ago to playing covers and telling other peoples tales.
As Rico approached his fourth decade, squeaking a living from his music, he realized there might be an easier way. A friend of a friend told him G.O.D. was hiring, and the pay was reasonable. Rico figured he’d latch onto a regular salary, carry health insurance for the first time in his life, and use G.O.D.to underwrite his musical aspirations. Rico’s purpose at G.O.D. was entirely self serving. He harbored no ambition to move up the corporate ladder.