Pink Slip Party (29 page)

“I have another problem…” I say, thinking about Ferguson, the Maximum Office break-in, and Kyle’s advice that I turn myself in.

Dan Schmidt, who is mentally billing me by the hour, nods for me to continue.

I give him the Cliff Notes version of Maximum Office — including my relationship with Mike and his double life, the prank break-in gone awry, Missy’s disappearance, and the missing payroll money.

“I have to say, Jane, that you’re one of the more interesting clients I’ve had lately,” he says when I finish.

“Is that a compliment?” I ask him.

“No. It definitely isn’t.” He sighs.

“Let’s take care of the charges that are actually filed against you at the moment,” he says. “I’ll tap some of my sources in the D.A.’s office and see what I can find out about the case. In the meantime, stay out of trouble, all right?”

“What’s this going to cost me?” I ask him.

“No charge,” he says, waving his hand. “Kyle Burton and I go way back.” I wait for him to elaborate but he doesn’t. Instead he stands, showing our meeting is over.

I am thinking about why Kyle would ask one of his friends to represent me for free, when I look up and see a billboard advertising an agency to help people get out of debt. “Getting evicted? Over your credit limits? Maxed out? We can help!”

For the first time, I realize this ad is speaking directly to me. I am its target audience.

I decide this is the first step on the path to financial solvency, and while I’m doing responsible things (like consulting with a defense attorney), I might as well start tackling my debt, too.

Credit Counselors U.S.A. is located in a strip mall, crowded in between an adult bookstore and a Weight Watchers. I can see the business logic: put all the things you’d be embarrassed to be seen going into in one place, a one-stop trench-coat/sunglasses sort of place. That way, if you lost your nerve, you’d have nowhere to easily hide. No Subway. No 7-Eleven. Each hiding alternative is worse than the storefront you’re supposed to go to in the first place.

Inside Credit Counselors, there are cubes jammed into what I can only guess used to be a Domino’s Pizza, since there’s still red and blue paint along the walls and an ordering counter up front where you’re supposed to sign in.

“Been here before?” asks the woman behind the counter. She’s wearing frosted pink eyeshadow and bright white lipliner. Over her head is a large poster that shouts “Be Debt Free!” It has a bald eagle soaring on it.

“No,” I say.

“Fill out these,” Frosted Pink Eyeshadow tells me, handing me a hot pink clipboard and pointing to a suspicious-looking brown and tan plaid couch that serves as the waiting area.

Reluctantly, I sit. I wish there were an equivalent of paper toilet seat covers you could put on communal couches and chairs in waiting areas, especially waiting areas in government buildings and credit counseling offices. I can only guess, in terms of clientele, that I’m the upper echelon.

I turn my attention to the forms, speeding through the name and address stuff, not bothering to use an alias. I assume this won’t help me in court if I claim to be more than one person.

I pause at the line that reads, “Total Credit Card Debt: _____.”

Being an art major, I have never been good at math. I have only been good at getting out of math credit requirements.

Let’s see. I have four credit cards, all currently at their limits, which, given the additional credit lines opened, probably puts my current debt at somewhere near…well, five figures certainly. I round down to be safe. $15,000 sounds like a good number. I’ll go with that.

Next line says “Other Debt.” Hmmm. Including back rent? I skip that one.

“Any late payments?” I check “yes” and put in parenthesis “all.”

Current monthly income? I write, “Varies.”

Hmmmm. Even with my poor math skills I know that can’t be good.

“Jane McGregor?” calls a woman with rather severe bangs chopped straight across her forehead. “I’m Sheila. Nice to meet you.”

Sheila doesn’t shake my hand. She keeps her hands firmly in her pockets. I try not to take this personally. I’m sure after a while, you might begin to think that credit card debt is contagious. Or maybe she knows something I don’t about that brown couch in the waiting room.

“Please, take a seat.”

We’re sitting in her tiny cube. It’s the tiniest cube I have ever seen. There is not even room for a full desk, only a half desk, and my chair juts out into the main part of the room.

“I’ll take those forms,” she says. I hand over the clipboard. She reads it, remaining expressionless.

“How many late payments do you have?” she asks me.

“All of them,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

“It means all the bills I ever receive are late,” I say.

“Give me a number,” she says.

“Twelve,” I guess.

She looks at me a moment then types in the number without saying anything. I feel like I am in the student health clinic on a college campus and the nurse suspects I have a venereal disease.

She’s clicking away on her computer. She has many sets of brochures on her desk. They scream out titles like “Create a Budget!” and “Nine Rules to Money Management” and “Bankruptcy IS NOT the Easy Way Out.”

I haven’t given much thought to bankruptcy before. That might be the answer — if big corporations can do it, why can’t I?

“OK, I have your credit report here,” she says, after a moment.

“That was quick,” I say. I figured there would be much more on it. That it would take years to pull up. It would have my mug shot on it like a rap sheet, along with all the times I pretended that I lost my Nordstrom’s bill.

“Hmmm,” she says, looking it over. She’s jotting down notes. “All right,” she says, ripping off the top of her Post-it note pad and handing it to me. “This is what your debt actually is, according to these records.”

I look at the number and blink.

“Is that a two or a one?” I ask, hopefully.

“A two,” she says.

She’s written down: $28,527.80

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” she says.

That’s almost a year’s salary.

“That’s more than I thought it was,” I say.

“It usually is,” she says briskly, taking back her Post-it note, and sticking it to the top of my file. My heart is beating a little faster, and my palms are beginning to sweat.

“Right, well, first, we’ll consolidate your loans and come out with a figure, roughly…” Her nails are clacking against her calculator buttons. She’s so quick I can’t tell what she’s entering. “Four hundred and fifty dollars a month,” she says.

I cough.

“I think that’s a little out of my price range at the moment,” I say.

“Well, if you raise the interest rate and extend the loan, I could drop the payments to…” She continues clacking. “Three hundred dollars even.”

“How long would I have to pay the loan?”

“Well, probably for fifteen years,” she says.

“Ouch,” I say.

“Let’s get to work on a budget,” she says. She gives me a handout that says “Get Back in the Black!!” with two exclamation marks.

At the top of the list is “Know Your Finances.”

“I think we’ve covered this,” she says. “Let’s move on to ‘Set Reasonable Financial Goals.’ ”

“Did I mention that I was an art major and that I am no good at math?”

Sheila doesn’t say anything.

“Just looking at an Excel document makes me sweat,” I say.

Sheila looks at me, expressionless, without giving me so much as a weak smile of social obligation.

I can tell this is going to be a long afternoon.

You know you’re in trouble financially when even a paid credit counselor can’t seem to work out a budget. Sheila has been staring at the figures on her Excel spreadsheet for the better part of a half hour and she still can’t get them to work.

“How did you do this to yourself?” Sheila asks me.

“Low self-esteem,” I say.

I decide that no matter how hard it is, I’m going to make a budget and stick to it this time. The last time I was responsible enough to think about a budget, I made one out and then stuck it in a desk drawer and never gave it another look again. This time, I’m serious, I think.

And because I am no longer too proud to take a job beneath me, I end up taking up offers of dog walking which come in through Mom, her coworkers, and Todd. Pretty soon I have three or four regular customers, and while it doesn’t pay as well as my temp job did, it also causes less chronic depression.

With my meager cash earnings, and not paying rent for a while by laying low with Dad, and by avoiding restaurants, taxis, shoe purchases, and any new make-up, I just might get out of debt within my lifetime. I have actually learned how to save money, instead of instantly blowing it the minute it hits my hot little hands. If I’ve learned anything from being fired, it’s that the financial experts really aren’t joking about the necessity of having savings.

I now earn my money $20 at a time scooping up poop from hyperactive terriers. You don’t know what sacrifice is until you have to follow around dogs with plastic bags all afternoon. I think this is what’s called paying my dues.

I am making progress, albeit slowly, toward becoming a responsible adult. Kyle, I think, would be proud, even though I haven’t heard from him since I saw him in my dad’s kitchen. I finally work up the courage to call him. I leave a message thanking him for his help with my legal troubles and apologizing again for my bad behavior.

The phone rings almost as soon as I put it down, and I snatch it up, hoping it’s Kyle. It’s Steph.

“Where have you BEEN?” Steph exclaims, harshly, as if I have been deliberately avoiding her.

“It’s a LONG story,” I say, too weary to begin to tell it.

“Forget it. Look, something serious has happened,” she says.

“Are you and Ferguson eloping?” I ask.

“This is no time to be joking,” Steph chides. “Ferguson is in jail. He was arrested. This morning. At Maximum Office.”

“What?” I echo, sitting up in bed.

“They think he masterminded the break-in,” Steph wails.

“Ferguson couldn’t mastermind an escape from a paper bag,” I say.

Steph ignores me.

“He used his one call from jail to call me — isn’t that romantic?” she sighs. “We’ve GOT to help him.”

“You mean turn ourselves in?” I say.

“What are you
crazy?”
she hisses at me. “Of course not.”

“What are we supposed to do then?”

“I’ve already got friends working on finding him a lawyer,” she says. “In the meantime, I have an idea and I need your help.”

“I don’t know if this is going to work,” I say, skeptical.

Steph and I are sitting in my parents’ living room with several dozen pieces of poster board and giant permanent markers in front of us.

“It will work,” she says.

Steph’s plan involves making a few dozen “Free Ferguson” signs which will be held by members of an extremely radical, anti-corporate protest group during a march outside the county jail.

“World Trade Organization protestors are championing Ferguson’s cause,” she tells me.

“They condone company embezzlement?”

“If it’s in the name of slandering overpaid executives, then yes,” she says. “I made a few calls. I think I’ve gotten some local media interested.”

“Aren’t these the same people who completely demolished Seattle?”

“Right. I’d say it’s best not to mention how much you like Starbucks, Jane,” Steph advises.

It takes us the better part of the afternoon to make the signs, and then when Dad sees what we’re doing, Steph spends the evening convincing him that it is a good idea. Dad insists, however, that we do it during the lunch hour so Todd can be my chaperon and make sure that no drugs are involved and that we both aren’t carted off to jail.

At the front of the courthouse, I discover that somehow Steph has managed to assemble fifty-odd protesters, some of whom are under the mistaken impression that Ferguson worked at the McDonald’s corporate headquarters instead of Maximum Office. Others think he used to work at Starbucks.

“Whatever gets them here, I don’t care,” Steph says when I ask her about the deception.

The protestors are all wearing what looks to be homespun clothing — no name brands, and poor-fitting shirts. None of the women are wearing make-up of any kind, and more than a few of them have tattoos with a big X mark through WTO. They have backpacks made of hemp with bumper stickers that read “I am not a corporate slave.”

“Is that a Gap shirt?” asks a woman standing next to me. She smells like an elephant.

“No,” I say. Technically, it’s Banana Republic. “I got it at a thrift store,” I lie.

“Oh,” she says, her hostility dropping four notches. “Good.”

She is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a riot-torn Seattle street on the front.

I feel like I’m an undercover cop in prison. One false move and I’m dead. I shift my hand so it’s covering the Gap tag on the back of my khaki pants.

“Listen up, folks,” Steph says, using a bullhorn. I have no idea where she got a bullhorn. “The local camera crews will be here any second. I want us to form two lines and be orderly. Everybody take a sign.”

Todd has not yet arrived. I hope he doesn’t show. His Eddie Bauer leather loafers alone might get him killed.

Steph gets on the bullhorn again.

“Now, we want to keep things peaceful here,” she says. “But we also want everyone to know about the injustice of jailing a person for using nontraditional channels to protest the strangle-hold corporate America has on our freedoms.”

Steph is good. I had no idea she was this good.

“We’re tired of being pushed around,” Steph shouts.

A few other people shout back. They are getting riled up.

“We’re tired of corporate America making itself rich while they make the rest of the world poor!”

“That’s right, sister!” shouts a guy in the back.

It’s beginning to feel like a church revival.

“Men like Ed Ferguson should be listened to — not jailed!”

“Dead right!” yells someone else.

I wonder how these people get by without having jobs. Or wearing designer labels. The woman who smells like an elephant raises both arms to cheer Steph, and shows a small forest of underarm hair growth.