Confessions of a Call Center Gal: a novel (29 page)

He shoots back one of his infamous
I-know-I’m-the-shit
sort of looks. “Mama Truong knows
everything.
”

“Well, spill the goods then, Mama.”

He holds his hand up eye level and appraises his work. “She and I went to the same high school, and I caught her doing blow plenty of times.”

Intrigued, I lean forward in my chair. “Tell me more.”

“That Tatiana is one skanky hoe. That hoe slept with the entire high school football team
and
cheerleading squad.”

I give him a wide-eyed look of disbelief. “No way!”

“
Way
. Girl she so
did.
That chick is one hot mess.” Truong inclines his head, like he always does when he is about to impart some juicy bits of gossip. “She works in the cafeteria downstairs because she’s got a felony record. They won’t hire her up here.
No, no, no
. That bitch is gang-sta man! She’s done time in the slammer.”

“Time in the clink? For what?” I ask, astonished.

He blows on his fresh manicure. “She stole someone’s identity, and she got busted with a DUI.”

I let out a short gasp.

Truong shakes his head. “I can’t believe
our
Mikquisha would go out with a stupid, skanky slut like that.”

I can’t believe it either. But Truong has sparked my interest. I need to satiate my ardent curiosity and find out more about this Tatiana character. “Truong, when’s your lunch?”

He glances at his Cartier. “Right now.”

“Me too. Do you want to go down to the cafeteria?”

He smiles a wicked little smile. “Hell yeah sista! Let’s go check out Tatiana the Tangerine.”

The cafeteria is buzzing with activity and we’re standing in line, waiting to be served by the Tangerine. A scruffy, unkempt man, sporting uneven side burns and a mangy twelve foot long ZZ Top beard, is queuing up right in front of us. Poor guy. He appears to be suffering from a serious case of persistent eczema. His skin is peeling and shedding all over the place.

It is now the unabomber’s turn to be served.

He lurches forward and leers at Tatiana lasciviously.

Tatiana flutters her fake lashes and flashes the unabomber a coquettish grin. “Hi handsome,” she gushes.

Um, if that isn’t full blown flirtation, then I don’t know what is. Doesn’t Tatiana realize that she’s not a waitress at Hooters?

D’oh
! You don’t get tipped at a cafeteria for being a floozie. In fact, you don’t get tipped at a cafeteria
period
.

“Hey-ya doll, I’d like some tater tots
purty
puhlease
,” the
unabomber
drawls like a Confederate Yankee.

“Comin right up, big boy,” coos Tatiana in a syrupy voice. She scoops up a hefty ton of tater tots and plops it onto his plate. “Is that all?” she asks saucily, wiggling her butt.

“Can ya get me a to-go box, sexy?” he drools. Apparently, Tatiana’s incessant flirting is not lost on him.

“Sure thing, cutie!” Tatiana winks and spins around to grab a Styrofoam box.

Truong and I gawp. OMG.

Tatiana’s low-rise jeans ride so low that her fishnet thong and butterfly tattoo is on display for the world to see.

Fishnet thongs? Why even bother wearing undies?

Meanwhile, the unabomber is panting like a dog in heat.

“Here you go, sweetsie.” Tatiana blows him a sensual Marilyn Monroe kiss before he slithers away. “Who’s next?” she chirps.

As soon as her eyes rest on me, her whole demeanor instantly shifts. It’s so palatably different that I can taste the hostility in my mouth. “What can I get you?” she huffs.

“Some tater tots,” I say politely and offer her a kind smile.

I will not judge. For all I know, she could be a very nice person underneath all that spray tan
.

Tatiana makes an irritated sound. Then she scoops up three measly tater tots and plops them onto a plate.

“May I please have more?” My tone is patient and courteous.

“No!” she sneers and thrusts the plate at me, dismissing me like I’m some sort of insignificant insect.

I remain glued to the spot, much too shaken to retaliate.

The unabomber’s plate was swimming with tater tots, and I only get a few scraps?

Tatiana flicks her stringy peroxided hair over her shoulder and turns her attention to Truong. My jaw literally drops when she gives him the same appalling treatment.

WTF?!? We have done nothing to her (well at least not
yet
; I’m fully confident that Truong can be a bitch enough for the both of us). What is Miss Tangerine’s problem? Truong and I may not be walking testosterones, but we’re still human beings nonetheless.

“What do you want?” Tatiana’s tone is sharp and rude. “Hurry up! I haven’t got all day here.”

Big mistake. Big, BIG mistake. Queen Truong takes shit from nobody! She has undeniably awakened the sleeping dragon.

“Some tater tots.” Truong narrows his steely eyes at her.

Tatiana returns his contemptuous gaze and slaps two tater tots onto a plate.

“Bitch! You better give me more tater tots,” he screams in a blood curling voice.

There is a moment of still silence in the cafeteria as several heads turn curiously to check out the commotion. Little do they know that the drama has only just begun.

Tatiana glares at Truong scornfully. Then she picks up
one
puny
tater tot and plops it onto the plate.

The tater tot drops with a sickening thud.

“There ya go!” she sneers.

Truong goes ballistic. “Now you look at me, Miss Tan-o-rexia Nervosa!”

Tatiana remains intentionally obtuse. “Fuck you, faggot,” she spits and flips Truong a birdie.

Truong flies into a blind rage. “Is that all you’ve got bitch? You give me the finger and call me an eff-ing fag? You know what? That lame tattoo of a dead moth that’s on yer back is
so
befitting! It’s what I call a
tramp stamp
. And it’s
so
nineties.”

Tatiana’s face contorts.

But Truong is far from finished. When Truong wants to bitch, he can bitch up a Katrina level storm. “And please do me a favor and throw on some intense Pro V repair treatment. I am sick of looking at your split ends.”

Slightly dazed, Tatiana touches her parched hair.

“And news flash! You’re no Kim Kardashian. If I were you, I’d cover up that sorry excuse for an ass. Now you take these tater tots and stuff ‘em up your nonexistent, cellulite, ricotta cheese behind!”

With that parting shot, Truong chucks the plate of tater tots at Tatiana’s face and yanks my arm. “C’mon. Let’s go, Maddy,” he commands and storms off in a fury.

As I’m being dragged away by Truong, I peer over my
shoulder.

Tatiana appears flummoxed, and for a fleeting moment, my heart goes out to her.

But she quickly recovers. Straightening herself, she pelts us with tater tots with an almost deadly precision. The flying tater tots go whizzing over our heads like hot bullets.

Okay, now I don’t feel sorry for her anymore.

Truong and I break into a run, dodging tater tots, shrieking hysterically and ducking for cover.

When we’re safely out of Tatiana’s tater shot, Truong bursts into rhyme. “There’s some hoes in this house. There’s some hoes in this house. There’s some hoes in this house,” he raps in a low, grating voice.

Gasping for breath, I tease, “Calm down, MC Truong. Now do you mean holes, hoes or whores?”

“She’s a whore,” he hisses. “But back in the hood, we say hoe!”

“
Okay.
” I snicker.

“Fo shizzle,” he foshizzes, crossing his arms.

Then he busts out chops to a different rap. “Got lice bitch? Got lice? Got Kikkoman spice in your flied lice?”

I double over.

“Westsiiide, Wu-Tang,” he grunts gangsta style. Then he flicks his scarf around his neck in a dramatic fashion, and instantly all his thug-like credibility evaporates into thin air.

“Maddy, that Tatiana is one nasty bitch. And what the hell is wrong with Mika? Why would he go out with a messed up chick like that? I’m completely gobsmacked!”

I shrug morosely. I’m gobsmacked myself.

Sometime later, I’m logging in to my computer when an alarming thought suddenly strikes me. Tatiana is a
real
threat. Ingeborg was just an empty threat, like the Weapons of Mass Destruction. As much as I tried to search, I could not find a single mean bone in her body. That girl is a true saint.

But Tatiana the Tangerine on the other hand is
pure evil.
A Kim Jong-il nuclear threat. Or is it Kim Jong-un, since he is the next successor? And then there is the older son, Kim Jong-nam. Hmm, I need to get my Kim Jongs straight.

Truong interrupts my highly charged political thoughts. “Will you fight for
Mikquisha
? I say we do! Let’s start a war, Maddy!” He pumps his fist, fired up and all gung-ho. “Hell, she’s no competition! She’s just a citrus fruit!”

“No,” I say disconcertedly.”

“Why not?” he demands.

“
I already gave up on him yesterday.”

After a pause, Truong mutters, “Yeah, that tacky tangerine will bring too much drama into your life.”

“No drama for me. I prefer to sail in tranquil waters.”

Truong begins humming the melody to Mary J Blige’s
No More Drama
. “No more pain,” he sings soulfully, hopping on board the Soul train, pointing at me.

Taking his cue, I croon, “No more game, No
draaama
.” I punctuate my words with big bends and little dips.

Consumed with raw emotion, I find myself swaying from side to side like Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles.

“
No more. No more. No more
,” Truong groans, hands in the air, belting out the lyrics in a weary, evocative manner.

“
No more drama, I’m tired of all this drama
,” I sing with raw conviction, turning up my soul meter.

Wearing a pained expression, Truong scrunches up his face and moans, “No more drama yeah,
no more, no more, no—
”

Beep!

“Thanks for calling Lightning Speed...”

Nineteen

“
W
e
die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at
every meeting, we are meeting a stranger.”

                                     
~T.S. Eliot (
The Cocktail Party
)

The words of the great poet and playwright ring loud and clear. The Mika that I thought I knew has died. He is a complete stranger to me now. All the things I believed to be true about him are thrown into doubt.

Things have sort of tapered off with us.

And to be quite honest, after that incident with Tatiana and the tater tots, I refuse to have anything to do with her. If she’s the sort of girl that Mika is into, well maybe he’s just not the sort of guy for me, friend or otherwise. I’m still cordial with Mika, but every time I see him, the air is zinged with awkwardness.

And so I try my best to avoid him. Whenever our paths cross, I make a quick about-face and take off in another direction.

Mika has yet to confront me about my erratic behavior, but he’s been withdrawn and detached. Sometimes he looks sullen, almost broody. I catch him leaving with the tangerine every day, therefore, things must be progressing nicely between man and fruit. Right this minute, in the parking lot, I’m forced to witness them yet again.

“Just look at that hoochie mama. That skirt is so short you can almost see her coochie,” says Kars with revulsion.

Tatiana climbs into Mika’s car and indeed her skirt rides up, exposing her coochie.

Hey!
That
must be how the word ‘
hoochie’
came about!

Hooker +
coochie
=
Hoochie
.

I share my epiphany with Kars and she smirks. “Makes
perfect sense. Anyway, let’s not get started on that hoochie. I know how much she bugs you.”

“I may not like her, but she doesn’t bug me
that
much. What bugs me is the fact that Mika is dating
her
.”