XYZ INC.

Matthew Desmond never dressed up, not even for a wedding, or a funeral. He detested suits of any kind: they were restrictive, stifling, claustrophobia-inducing, the corporate equivalent of a strait jacket. The tie was akin to a noose around the neck, so on those occasions when he was required to wear a tie Matthew kept the fit very loose.

He didn't even know how to tie one properly, so the end result was a lopsided knot that caused the sides of the length of his father's tie to kink uncontrollably. And yet, despite the irregular fit of the borrowed tie, despite the untailored sleeves and the wrinkled slacks, despite the mismatched jacket and the scuffed-up shoes, Matthew looked elegant.

As he sat in the waiting room of a prospective employer, Matthew couldn't wait for the interview to be over. The suit was itchy and ill-fitting, and he wanted to get home as quickly as possible so that he could change into his normal "uniform": ripped blue jeans, bruised leather jacket, dirty Doc marten boots, and a bootleg T-shirt he bought outside of a Fugazi concert years ago. This was the kind of attire that Matt (he hated to be called Matthew but tolerated it as much as he could) felt comfortable wearing, as if it were a natural extension of his own skin.

Regardless of his somewhat sophisticated appearance, Matt felt anything but elegant.

A woman peered her head through the waiting room door and looked over at Matt. He was the only one sitting in the room.

"Matthew Desmond?"

"Yes," he said nervously.

"Mr. Scott will see you now."

Matt rose from his seat and walked into the room, determined to show some confidence. He didn't know what kind of job he was applying for-- he only knew that it was in a warehouse. He figured it might require some heavy lifting and some hard hours, but at 19 Matt was healthy and hale, and he didn't care how difficult the job would be: he needed to have something to tell his father about by the end of the week or else it was going to get ugly.

Matt shook Mr. Scott's hand and sat down in his office. Mr. Scott was thin and tall, impeccably dressed in an Armani suit. His hair was neatly cropped and slicked back. He resembled the famous basketball coach Pat Riley, but without the telltale age lines or the intense grimace.

"Hello, Matthew. Do you prefer Matthew or Matt?" Mr. Scott spoke in a brogue that skirted between Irish and Scottish accents. Matt could never tell the difference between the two.

"I prefer Matt," he replied stoically.

"All right, Matty. You can call me Chas." Chas smiled, a ridiculously toothy grin formed from immaculate enamel. Too clean to be real, Matt thought. Maybe the accent's fake too...

"OK, Chas."

Chas Scott looked at Matt's resume. All it listed in the way of experience was Matt's scholastic path: private schools, advanced placement programs, special accelerated learning programs, very little in the vein of extracurricular activities or honors, and no post-high school accomplishments.

"Let me tell yeh wot wey do hear, Matty," Chas began, turning on the charm and gesticulating with his hands as he spoke. "XYZ Inc. specializes in deh wholesale warehouse game. Wey buy overstoke from other, moor established cumpanies, and wey hire independent cone-tractors to sell deh merchandise-- or, as wey refer to it, 'merch'-- at a coast that they decide apone. Their own-ly oh-bligation to XYZ is ta pey uss bach the wholesale coast of each item sald."

Matt was somewhat mesmerized by Chas' accent. He drifted off and stopped paying attention to his words-- the way they sounded was far more interesting than what Chas actually had to say.

"Thot means, yew are ya own boss, Matty! Isn't that grand?" Chas gave that winning smile again.

"Yeah, that's... awesome."

"Yew set yer ours, yew set yer pierce-onal goles... Oll wey care abat is gettin' money bach on our initial investment. Example: Wey give yeh a cah-mera that coasts us four and a quarter, yew sell it far five and oop... owt of thot five or whoteveh, wey tek the coast of $4.25, an' deh rest is yoze!"

"No kidding?"

"No kidding. No bullshitting. Thot's our motto here at XYZ!" Chas then pointed to a Xeroxed poster tacked to the wall. It was a red circle with a line through it, and in the middle behind the red line was a picture of a cartoon bull caught in the act of relieving itself.

Matt chuckled.

Chas suddenly became very serious, with minute undertones of that toothy smile creeping beneath. "Sew tell meh, Matty... Wot do yeh wont ta dew with yer loif? Wot interests a fine young man such as yerself?"

"Well," Matty said, matter-of-factly, "since we're not into bullshitting here... the bottom line is, my dad is getting pissed at me because I'm not going to school and I'm not working. He told me to find a job by the end of the week or I'm out on my ass. This is the first place that called me back for an interview. I've never sold a thing in my life, but I don't think it will be very hard. I'm good with words-- one day I'd like to be a writer. So I guess I could be a salesman. I'll do whatever you want, hard labor, sales, whatever. I need to make some cash, and this looks like as good a start as any, you know?"

The very definition of a shit-eating grin appeared on Chas' face as Matt finished his statement. "Matty, Matty, Matty!" Chas exclaimed, as if he'd found his soul mate or a kindred spirit sitting right before him. "I loik deh wey yeh think! There's no loying in yew, Matty..." Chas swung around in his big leather chair and pointed to another poster in his office.

This time, it was a poster of Al Pacino in the movie Scarface.

"Ever seen thot movie, Matty?" Chas pointed at the poster with pride.

"Are you kidding? I love that movie. I can quote every line."

Chas kept on smiling. "Sew can I. And there's thot line, when Sew-sah tells Tony Moan-tonnah thot he loiks him because there's no loying in him... Ya no it, roight?"

"Yeah, right before he hangs F. Murray Abraham from a helicopter!"

"Right-o!" Chas got up from his chair, dizzy from the vibe that he was getting from Matt. "Same with yew, Matty! No loying in yeh..."

Chas quieted down and approached Matt as if he were an old friend-- an arm around the shoulder, his voice dropping down a decibel or two.

"Ya no, paypull think yew have to be a gud loyer in order to sell. Note true, ma boy. Note true. A gud sellsman tails deh truth. No mottah wot he's selling or who hey's sellin' it tew, a gud sellsman oll-ways tails deh truth."

Matt didn't know how to respond to Chas, who seemed like he was a bit demented in his own right. But Matt knew what Chas wanted to hear. He put on his best Tony Montana impersonation.

"Like that line in Scarface... 'Ah always tell th' troof... even when I lie!'"

Chas exploded into laughter, the smile now taken to a dimension further than anyone could have ever expected from the human mouth.

Chas extended his hand to his newest hire. "Matty, Oy think yew'll work out jess fine here! Walcolm ta XYZ!"

Matt returned the vigorous handshake, all the while wondering what lay in store for him in the next few weeks.


*/*


Matt didn't have a car. His parents never bought him one, because they were too busy getting a divorce to settle upon a model. Not that Matt minded it-- not having a car allowed him to stave off things like responsibility for car payments. That meant that he never had to work a job to keep up with his friends. All of his buddies had cars, so he got rides when he needed them. And then, there was the craziness of the bus lines that ran through the San Fernando Valley: so many colorful characters on the bus. They all liked to single Matt out and talk his ear off. Something about Matt's face spoke to them, offered them a refuge from their respective inner storms... maybe it was youthful sincerity, or maybe it was a feature of his eyes that tipped off chronic talkers that they were in the presence of a world-class listener.

Matt was able to listen to anyone prattle on about anything at any given time. Because he aspired to write, he dedicated a lot of his time and focus on listening to what people were saying. But the downside was, he often spent a disproportionate amount of time listeing to the way they said it as opposed to what they were actually saying.

Of course, this never bothered the people on the bus, who didn't care if anyone really heard them. As long as they acted like they understood, that's all that mattered. And Matt Desmond was a master at acting as if he understood every word: he knew when to nod his head, when to register surprise, when to blink, when to do a double take, when to inteject with a "so then what happened" or a "you don't say" or any number of qualifiers that helped the story move along.

Matt heard the entire life story of a homeless man as they both rode the bus out to Northridge. The man moved to California from Florida with his wife and kids. The wife cheated on him and ran off with another man, taking the kids. This caused the homeless man to slide into an abyss of alcohol and drug abuse. He spent a lot of time on Skid Row but made enough off of panhandling to get by.

Of course, the homeless man never once asked Matt where he was going or what he was doing. And if he had stopped to ask him, Matt would've replied quite simply: "I'm going to meet the one I love."

The one he loved was Mary Jane Paris, his high school sweetheart. She was two grades below Matt, and therefore she still had two more years of high school to complete. Matt was absolutely smitten with her, and even after he graduated from high school their relationship continued. The way Matt figured it, he wasn't interested in going to college or traveling out of state, so it didn't make sense for the two of them to part ways.

Mary Jane, for her part, was just as crazy about Matt as he was for her, and she would stay up late on weeknights, waiting for him to walk up to her window and rap on the pane. Then, she would sneak out of her window for an hour and they would walk over to the steps of the elementary school across the street from her home and sit and talk and smoke cigarettes and make out for a while before she had to be back in her room.

Matt had called earlier in the evening and notified Mary Jane that he was going to be stopping by around midnight. Mary Jane waited patiently by her window until she heard the signature raps on the window glass.

As they walked to the steps of the school, Matt revealed the good news to Mary Jane.

"So, what's the special occasion? Why are you all dressed up in a suit?"

"I got that job I was telling you about!"

"Really?"

"Really." Matt was smiling from ear to ear.

"That's so cool, Matt! Congratulations!" Mary Jane kissed him sweetly on the lips.

"Thanks!" Matt was beaming with pride.

"How's it feel?"

"Weird."

Mary Jane giggled. "Now you have responsibility!"

"Yes, I do."

"Still gettin' used to it?"

"Yeah, still getting used to it... You should see this guy, Chas. He's a real character. He talks with a Scottish accent. He's the funniest guy."

Matt re-enacted his interview with Chas Scott for Mary Jane's amusement. She laughed as he impersonated Chas' speech, his mannerisms, the way he quoted lines from Scarface...

"Sounds like fun. When do you start?"

"Tomorrow. I have to wear this suit every day. That's one down side, I suppose."

"Welcome to the real world, Matt."

"I'm not so sure I'm there yet," Matt replied, unsure of himself.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... it's not what I want to do with the rest of my life, obviously. But what if I get good at it and decide to stop pursuing my dreams? What if this becomes my job for the next thirty years?"

"If I know you, Matt, then you won't let this take you over. I think you'll be fine."

"I know... I just keep thinking of what you told me your dad said when I met him for the first time. Remember that?"

"How can I forget?"

For the record: Mary Jane Paris' father, after meeting Matthew Desmond for the first time, said to Mary Jane, "He's a good kid. He reminds me of me, before I received my first paycheck."

"No offense to your father, Janie, but I don't want him to be right."

"I understand, Matt. Really, I do. My father lost his enthusiasm a long time ago. He married young, he had me and my brother before he was 25 years old... He never had a chance to live it up."

"Same with my parents," Matt said. "MY mother was barely 20 when she had me, and I was the second oldest."

"WE don't have to repeat the mistakes of our parents, Matt. We can be whomever we want to be, if we're just careful."

Mary Jane kissed Matt and they embraced for a long time. They made out for a short while, and then Mary Jane had to get back inside her room.

"Good luck tomorrow," she whispered to Matt as he pushed her back inside her window.

"Thanks, sweetie," Matt said. She reached out through the window one last time to give him a peck on the cheek. Then, Matthew Desmond turned around and walked toward the bus stop. It was late, and the buses at this hour came sporadically, but he would be home within the hour and with just enough time to get some sleep before he started his first day at XYZ Inc.