Hangdog Harry
BY MJ MALLECK
Photo by Harshil Gudka/Unsplash.
When I quit that job I thought I’d never have to see him again. That I would never feel so subordinate, so condescended to. Then, lined up for the six a.m. Greyhound to Head Office I’m jolted awake. He’s here, freezing his ass off with the rest of us plebes.
His face is one you can’t forget, even after twenty years, even in the winter dark. A face twice as long from nose to chin as to top. Alert, cruel eyes camouflaged by droopy lids. Behind his back, we underwriters called him Hangdog Harry. Senior Vice President Harold Smythe, retired now, not wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, not carrying a briefcase and smiling to see the bus pull up. He’d had a company driver back in the day.
Seeing Mr. Smythe climb into the bus ahead of me made my gut clench. Did he spot me in line? Shame at my amnesia heated my cold cheeks. When the driver tapped my phone, I almost dropped it onto the concrete.
That early I like to sleep at the back of the bus, where the vinyl bench runs three seats across. As luck would have it, Harold had sat in the second row, beside the window. He looked clear up at me, lifted his shopping bag off the aisle seat and set it on the floor. I had to sit down.
“Mr. Smythe. Nice to see you again.”
“Robert Graves Jr., from the Underwriting Group. Am I right?”
“That’s right, sir…can’t believe you remembered. You’re retired now I’m guessing?”
“Retired, Rob, yes, for quite some time.”
The instant I’d recognized Mr. Smythe, outside on the platform, I’d remembered Shauna. You’d think you’d never forget. I’d let Shauna go years ago, until the basset-hound-face of Smythe’s brought her right back to me.
I’d met the two of them at the same time, at an underwriters’ retreat in Collingwood. Dad had loaned me his overnight bag, joking his boy was getting let out of the cage. Insurance work was lived nine-to-five in a cubicle, anchored by a desktop IBM loaded with WordPerfect and LOTUS123. It was a heady time to be an underwriter. I had my own three-digit extension. All those beige file folders kept under lock and key. There was no working at home, and no algorithms. Even run-of-the-mill cases needed my signature of approval.
At the retreat, Harold Smythe, a career big shot by ’98, was first on the agenda. He made us watch him slowly remove his jacket, carefully roll up his linen sleeves. He held his jaw slack, kept his mouth neutral, his eyes crinkle-free. His opening words were stone-smooth, polite. I knew two poor saps he’d summoned to the top-floor when their files went to court. Mr. Smythe was an aggressive S.O.B.
I’d thought about moving farther back from the podium, but I wanted to sit beside Shauna. I was her technical advisor, and until that retreat we’d only spoken by phone. Her voice was soothing like my mother’s had been, clear amber like maple syrup coating pancakes. Her voice fit the sweetness that I saw of her that day.
When we’d all checked in, the desk clerk had handed Shauna keys to a full suite. Joyce teased her, “What’d you do that I didn’t?” Shauna’s pretty neck flushed. “I’m the only one here from the field,” she said, “and you girls were already paired up.” Joyce laughed, and we all did. We knew the company would have piled us into one big dorm room if they thought it’d save a dime.
On the Greyhound the aisle cleared of shuffling zombies and the heater at my feet switched on.
“The wife finally retired this year too,” said Mr. Smythe.
His wife, Linda, had been on my team, but when she and Harold got engaged, she transferred to another insurer across town. Linda made the rest of us look like slackers, coming in early and staying late. I heard she got promoted to Assistant VP, and then became a Rotary Club member. Joyce had rolled her eyes, “Letting her touch the glass ceiling.”
The bus driver signaled and slid us into the fast lane as a chorus of light snores began. I kept my tone casual and my voice low, hoping to get through the niceties with Harold, then doze off.
“How does Linda like being a lady of leisure?”
“Oh, no, she’s got a lot on her plate, Rob.” Harold shifted towards me, his eyebrows animating that long drawn face and the timbre of his voice rising. Mentally, I kicked myself for asking him a question. Crammed so close, I couldn’t look away.
During Harold’s Collingwood lecture, Shauna had turned away from me to give his booming voice her full attention. The pantyhose pulled taut on her thigh shimmered. We could all see the rumour was true; she had a crush on Harold. She’d left the breakfast buffet and come back with fresh lipstick, and now as he spoke, she bounced her crossed leg. I tried to figure it. Shauna was super intelligent, and she was gorgeous too. What was there to like about Harold? That fall, after what happened, Joyce tearfully explained to me that women thought Harold’s salt and pepper curls looked a bit like Richard Gere. I hadn’t even seen Pretty Woman.
Mr. Smythe had made the two-hour drive north to tell us that we weren’t doing a good job. He didn’t say it quite that way, of course. He eased into it. Talked about the competition, the Holy Grail of chasing profitability in a tight-margin business like disability insurance. Talked at us like we were idiots, moved out from behind the podium, pushed his sleeves higher, clicked through colourful Harvard Graphics slides. His loud voice explaining, in simple terms, the actuarial formulas behind our caseloads.
Finally, we, like him, were all long faced. Ready to drink the Kool Aid of limiting pay-outs to the horribly disabled who faced fucked-up lives.
The Greyhound barreled down the 401, weaving in and out of the passing lane. Sleeping heads swayed right to left. The floor heaters blew, and people coughed and shifted in their seats. I kept my eyes on my knees. Harold was explaining Linda’s work on the Board of the Humane Society.
“The stats are there, Rob, shocking to see. You wouldn’t believe how many stray cats and dogs they pick up every day. Yes, some of them, a small percentage, are just pets who’ve run away, who are lost. But when the owners don’t license them or collar them, they aren’t doing themselves any favours. I had no idea what we’re dealing with; until you start looking you really don’t see the strays.”
He paused for effect, his hand smoothing a brow without a wrinkle of remorse on it, his thin lips snarling up at the edges. Hangdog.
“They put them down,” he boomed, “if they aren’t adopted within a week. That’s the protocol, though it costs money to do it. More than to feed them, you know. Hell of a business model.”
At the retreat, the rest of our agenda didn’t include Mr. Smythe, who told us he would rush right back to Head Office now that he’d given us the big picture. Our manager shook Harold’s hand and thanked him while we applauded, Shauna a little louder than the rest of us. Harold nodded in agreement at our enthusiasm, encouraged us to “take his ideas and run with them” and stepped out of the room.
The women on our team weren’t afraid to show compassion; their reluctance to dump clients. They told hard-luck stories about home visits to bed-ridden roofers and stiff-necked rear-ended accident victims. Joyce’s eyes watered but there were no tears.
Shauna got into a scuffle with our manager. The rest of us had convinced him that Harold’s quotas were too aggressive, that they violated the corporate values embossed across our faux-leather binders. We had him backpedaling, redrawing targets, agreeing to exceptions.
Shauna was incensed and dug in her heels. She told him “That’s not what Mr. Smythe said to us this morning.” She was indignant. “Harold expects us to do better than that.”
Lucky for us, the targets came down, but I felt bad for Shauna. It was painful to watch our manager patronize her. He’d thanked her for “keeping us honest” and told her he would ensure that Harold and the team were “seeing eye-to-eye.”
Outside the bus windows the sky brightened and like magic the CN Tower rose across the edge of the lake. As we rounded the shoreline the sunlight moved over sleeping faces, some with eye masks in place, others hidden under coat hoods. Twice the guy in front of us turned around and glared through the crack between the seats. Harold didn’t pause.
I’d roomed with George Savopoulos at the retreat, and I hung back in the chalet’s main hall to give him a chance to use the john in private. Twenty minutes after the others, I cut through the gravel parking lot. A stocky guy in a double-breasted jacket leaned up against a black Town Car. He was smoking a cigarette, one driving glove laid on the hood. What a life, I’d thought, driving assholes like Harold around. At least he wouldn’t have to listen to that blaring voice. I imagined Harold didn’t bother to chat up chauffeurs. At the time, I didn’t even think why the hell is his car still here? Hasn’t he left already?
When Shauna didn’t show up for lunch, it gave Joyce a chance to joke about our debate, about her “carrying a torch” for Mr. Smythe. We’d all laughed.
“The wife is on three Boards,” Harold brags, still talking to me about Linda. “These non-profits are hungry for people who can work with numbers, even though half of them don’t have the funds for putting any real systems in place. It’s frightening to see, or not to see, where the money goes. Not like the audits we’re used to, Rob. Show any interest, give them a dollar, and they want you to be the Treasurer, and then a few years after, the Chair. I don’t have the heart for it, but she does, she wants to keep busy.”
In the moment he paused to breathe, eyes glared at me through the seat gap in front of us.
“Shut the fuck up, man, we’re trying to sleep.”
My face flushed. Mr. Smythe sneered and flicked three fingers in the general direction of the spokesperson. Then he leaned close, turned to me so his shoulder blocked that opening. His breath smelled like my kitchen when I run vinegar through my plugged coffeemaker. He’d be walking over to Princess Margaret, he confessed in a whisper, to see his brother who was getting treated for cancer. (Prostate? I didn’t quite catch it. I was still reeling from watching Mr. Smythe get told to shut the fuck up.) He said it was a surprise visit, he wanted to show up and make sure they were doing their jobs. He kicked the bag at his feet.
“My niece asked me to sort through these papers with him.” His voice boomed. “The insurer is vague about what they cover. I promised her I’d get on it. Sounds like they’re playing hardball.”
His retired voice, at its full volume, was loud without authority. He sounded to me like nothing but a deaf, petulant old man. “Not that I know anyone over at Standard anymore. But I can at least figure out what’s what. Make sure he gets what he’s entitled to.”
The bus ramped down onto Bay Street and was slowed by congestion. As we crawled along, people sat up and stretched. The woman across the aisle from me squinted into a tiny mirror balanced on her raised knees and begin stabbing at her eye with mascara. I stared down past Harold’s shoulder into passing cars, watched a driver text with his phone rested on the steering wheel.
It was months after the retreat, the ski hills of Collingwood covered in snow, when Shauna killed herself. The rumour mill said her landlord went to shush her yapping dachshund and found her with an empty vial of sleeping pills she might’ve stolen from the bathroom vanity of a client’s home. The division got a memo signed by Harold, expressing the company’s sympathy, telling the underwriters we could take time off with pay to attend Shauna’s funeral. When I went, I didn’t see Harold there.
I couldn’t believe she’d died at first. Shauna had left me a voicemail that I hadn’t returned. She wanted advice about a long-haul truck driver who claimed his pinched sciatic nerve made him unable to drive. Linda had just announced her engagement to Harold. It had crossed my mind to suggest Shauna and I meet for coffee. I was still getting up my nerve to return her call when Harold’s memo came.
Shauna’s message, that trusting sweet voice, brought me an image of her auburn hair, tucked behind one round cheek, her slender fingers tapping a pencil on the desktop in front of her.
“Robert, I’m sorry to bother you, I know you’re super busy in your new role, but I’d love to talk about this client. I suspect he’s not telling me…telling us…the truth. I think he’s a good liar. Please let me know what you would do, or when we can connect. Thanks so much.”
Five times I replayed that message, listening for a sign. Her voice never wavered. I erased it then.
Shauna’s was the second death in our department that year. One of the seniors, Ralph, had a surprise heart attack over his barbeque (opening a coveted spot, which I at once applied for and got). Death was something we didn’t talk about much. For an underwriter, death is a bonus, a way to meet your quota without having to stop cheque payments or force someone back to a menial job. A silver lining.
Harold was still talking as the bus crawled its way to Edward Street station. He hadn’t asked me where I worked, or asked me anything at all. As the bus slowed for the commuter stop at University, the scolder in front of us rose from his seat, and Harold turned toward the condo construction out the window, saying something about foreign investors and money laundering and Airbnb hustlers. I reached down for my computer bag, slung it up onto my right shoulder. My left hand dropped into Harold’s bag, and I slid sideways off my seat to stand, stuffing both hands in my pockets. Harold turned.
“This is me, Mr. Smythe. Nice to see you again, say hello to Linda for me, will you?”
The wind was up, so I kept both hands deep in my jacket as I stepped onto the crowded boulevard. Pedestrians marched in lockstep toward the glass revolving doors leading into lobbies with the requisite banks of silver elevators. Doors opening or closing, biting off chunks of humanity and spitting them out at the bottom, or the middle or the top of the heap.
I slowed and stepped under an awning to get out of the flow. When the bus turned right at the next light, I pulled crumpled papers from my pocket. I’d hoped they would be important, something Harold would need, something that would screw up his plans. At Standard we were very particular about documentation. One was from Shopper’s Drug Mart, a receipt for 2 mg. of Ativan. The larger one was a letter, folded in three. From a Dr. Scott. Looked like Harold’s brother was going to make it, lucky bastard. I didn’t feel as angry as I wanted to.
Toronto’s a clean city with a green metal garbage can on every corner. At the next intersection I stuffed the papers into the mouth of a can, waited for the little-man walking sign, then crossed the street.
MJ MALLECK is a first-generation university graduate who wrote a business blog before returning to her first love, storytelling. She grew up on the Canadian side of the US border and still likes her weather report in Fahrenheit degrees. These days she attends online classes and relies on a cadre of wonderful women writers for Zoom workshopping and encouragement. Her work has appeared in The Temz Review, Entropy, and Wrongdoing. She is working on a collection of shorts and her first novel. Twitter @MJMalleck