He picks up the phone and dials Jake Rosenfarb to see if he wants to hit some tennis balls. Maybe lovely Rita, the Rosenfarb better half, who trades her husband blowjobs for jewelry, will let him out tonight. He’s been kicking Overman’s ass for months, but tonight the Mercedes salesman extraordinaire is firing on all cylinders, recharged by his blossoming relationship with the receptionist. He will even spring for the post-victory beer and sandwiches so he can tell Rosenfarb about the portending revelatory moment with Maricela.
Rosenfarb answers his cell phone. “Yello?”
Why do people say “Yello?” Overman wonders.
Rosenfarb is out in the field, installing electric blinds in some yenta’s pool house. He’s had his own window treatment business for twenty-four years and loves to boast about being his own boss. Overman knows the real story: his clients treat him like shit and after that, he goes home to get abused by Rita.
Rosenfarb says he wants to play. Rita has her book group tonight and it is imperative that he gets out of the house. It’s either that or listen to twelve Botox survivors in a gated community discuss Oprah’s latest selection, something about women suffering in Afghanistan. They agree to meet at the courts at 7. Overman surmises that even though Rosenfarb might lose, it will still be more enjoyable for him than listening to that phony whining about the injustice of wearing burqas. Who are they kidding? If Prada designed them, the entire book group would snap them up.
Overman gets onto Valley Circle and sees the 101 choked with traffic in his direction. It has been such a refreshing, renewing day up until now. If only there were an alternate route. But there really is no other way to travel from the West Valley to mid-Wilshire. He creeps down the ramp and onto the freeway. Overman moves a lane to the left, hoping that as he gets into the flow of traffic, sluggish though it may be, he will be able to relax and reflect on the positive events of the day.
Almost immediately he is behind an anxious eighty year-old of indeterminate gender and being tailgated by some yahoo in a Roto Rooter van. He crosses one lane to the left and gets honked at by a teenager whose text messaging he has rudely interrupted. For no apparent reason, the guy in the left lane driving the Ford F-150 gives him the finger. Now he’s behind a meatpacking truck and a cloud of diesel exhaust. It is putting a serious crimp in his evening. All cars come to a standstill. Overman wishes he could have his own HOV lane that would whisk him home. It would give him the space to breathe in his recent good fortune and imagine more positives in the Overman future. His eyes close for a split second, mid-reverie. When he re-opens them, traffic appears to be easing up.
The meat truck in front of Overman moves to the right lane. The tour bus ahead of the truck goes left. The Taurus just beyond the tour bus inches to the right. The Corolla in front of the Taurus moves left. Overman starts to pick up speed. He’s cruising. It’s turning out to be a decent drive home after all, Overman regaining the indescribable feeling he had at work. Why shouldn’t he feel good? He wouldn’t be the first person on earth to turn around his life and change for the better. There were countless stories about gang leaders and career criminals, who, against all odds, became productive members of society, achieving professional and personal goals they had never dreamed possible. Even at a beaten down fifty-five, Overman believed he still had a shot.
A mile or two later, the car salesman realizes that the traffic jam is still very much on: it’s just his lane that is clearing out. One by one, each car gets out of the way for his Mercedes and he is breezing his way home. The notion of a beautiful twenty-six year-old being interested in him was one thing, but parting the 101 like some low-rent Moses? Rosenfarb will never believe this. He didn’t believe it himself. Otherworldly phenomena were for psychics and movie franchises, not bottom-feeding car salesmen. More likely, this was one of those positive state-of-mind deals where a person is able to block out the annoying stuff, turning negative encounters, e.g. traffic jams, into the illusion of pleasurable ones like lanes clearing. Yet the notion of positive thinking was as foreign to Overman as Kabbalah or Voodoo. He felt at once exhilarated and nauseous. The unknown was navigable, but now that it had morphed into the bizarre and unexplainable, he was no longer on such firm footing.
As Overman arrives home and pulls into his parking space, he realizes he is hyperventilating. He has never before experienced anything supernatural, spiritual or lucky. Religion left him cold. To Overman, clinging to ancient beliefs was a tasteless cocktail of quaintness and science fiction. Naturally, he had heard over and over again about his “bad karma,” which he had surely earned from the poor life choices that flowed out of him like water. But as Overman had observed, existence for most people was, by necessity, secular and mundane. The bulk of it was spent going to work, paying bills and trying to keep the kids away from STDs and crack pipes. If God spoke to humankind in dreams, visions, or via the burning bush, and there were revelations to be had, he had never seen evidence of it.
He stumbles out of the car, now enervated from his startling brush with the fantastic. Apparently the unexplainable could be quite exhausting. It dawns on him that if he can’t get his energy back, Rosenfarb will kick his ass as usual. Perhaps then things would go back to normal. The receptionist would forget him, he’d have to wait in traffic like everybody else and Ira Ethan Overman would resume his uneventful march toward death. He was deeply conflicted, excited by these strange new developments, yet spooked as to why they were happening to him of all people.
Decked out in color-coordinated Nike tenniswear, Rosenfarb was working his hamstrings as Overman sauntered up to the court. The window man always liked to make a big show of how limber he was, then follow it up with the acid aside that Overman did not stretch enough. This never failed to rile the nerves and send Overman into an early tailspin, an important gambit because Rosenfarb hated to lose. Who could blame him, really? After a day of client and spousal battery, what could be worse than being defeated by an out-of-shape car salesman whose entire being reeked of defeat? Rosenfarb would drop maybe a few sets a year, but they always played two out of three, and only once in the last seven years did Overman win a match. Now Jake was hopping up and down like one of those ingénue Sharapova types. In a few moments he’d be grunting ecstatically with every stroke. He looked like a dope but felt like a champion. Overman shook his hand and took his racquet out of his bag.
“Aren’t you going to stretch?” Rosenfarb asked, by now a parody of himself.
“I stretched at home,” Overman lied, fooling no one.
They began their usual warm-up, half-volleying at the service line. Rosenfarb recounted his day, not bothering to ask whether Overman wanted to hear about it.
“Hunter-Douglas didn’t have the Duettes ready, but I look like the schmuck.”
You only look like the schmuck if you are the schmuck, Irma Overman used to say. It certainly seemed true in the case of Rosenfarb. Wait till I tell him about my day, Overman thought, deciding it would probably be best to save his Maricela bombshell for later.
They move back to the baseline, warming up groundstrokes and taking serves. Rosenfarb hops around again, preening like a moron. He spins his racquet, Overman calls “up” and like clockwork, the “W” on the grip faces down. Rosenfarb elects to serve, swaggering back to the baseline like the cock of the walk.
Rosenfarb’s serve is much like everything else in his distorted worldview. He thinks of it as a gorgeous, searing weapon when it is, in fact, a pedestrian stroke that meanders over the net. When Overman effortlessly returns the serve, Rosenfarb counters with an unspectacular shot back, Overman tries to put it away, Rosenfarb hits another mediocre shot, then Overman hits it out or into the net. More often than not, such is the pattern. Consumed by boredom, Overman succumbs to Rosenfarb’s tedious style of play and makes an unforced error. Meanwhile, Rosenfarb feels like Roger Federer. It is beyond annoying, but literally the only game in town, because Overman doesn’t have anyone else who wants to play with him.
“These go,” Rosenfarb announces, holding