The Salesman
The excerpt below opens The Salesman, a satire on government efficiency written in 2016 and submitted in 2024 for publication. The good folks at Waxing and Waning are publishing the short story. Go ahead and pre-order their March issue to see where Paul lands.
Paul Winter races a million miles an hour over the hot Mojave asphalt to close his next sale. Nothing slows down his square black sedan. Not a fat green caterpillar. Not a desert tortoise. Not potholes. And not the five thousand Kelvins rising to the stark sky that sends the scorching heat back to earth hotter than before. Judgement! Sweet steel-belted tires rush toward that unvanishing point in the hazy liquid distance. Paul wipes his thick brow. Dusty kerchief? No, sweaty and grimy. White when he started the day. In a motel. Behind a motel, boiling in his car, if he’s honest. And today he’s honest. He has to be. It’s sales day. Close or be closed.
Paul’s big hand rests on a tall, drab grey case in the passenger seat. His thumb fingers the golden “SH7000” stenciled on top. He lost his ring finger in the war. Not even the shattered nub remains. Wearing his great-grandfather’s US Army Ruptured Duck ring on his pinky cured the phantom finger; made it go away. The ring transcended superstition into conviction; Paul never goes without it. His tie? Polyester. His feeling: indiscernible. Indigestion? Intolerable.
X10H395 is his target school. Blind designations guarantee no biases. Blind designations guarantee equal, enthusiastic, exceptional sales. Blind designations are efficient. And efficiency is king. That’s the government’s line, anyway. So the government contracted DeKline Pharmaceutical to sell the line, and DeKline invented a process and device to optimize efficiency. Its sales manual begins and ends with: 100% efficiency is 100% happiness.