Lifetime Guarantee
Pablo Grenoble snapped his cellphone shut. “My long, unnatural nightmare is over,” he said to himself, then halted the thought. It was almost over – the problem that had dragged along at his heels, like toilet paper stuck to gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe, slowing him down, making him look ridiculous.
It began, like most curses, in what Pablo would now call his callow youth, when, optimistic and sure of his footing, he had ventured out into the world with only hope as a guide, and with his inborn good nature – a cheerfulness he expected would serve him well – but which he now saw left him vulnerable to attack.
Pablo did not know then what he knows now (but couldn’t we spend our lives repeating that phrase?) – that a healthy social immune system works by rejecting, rather than embracing, the infectious company of fellow humans.
What was his crime? What mistake had he made to deserve this burden, to inherit this curse?
Simply this: he had said ‘yes’ to a salesman. The exact article the salesman was offering is irrelevant. The only material fact is that it came with a lifetime guarantee.
“And that’s supposed to be a good thing?” He fumed. Of course he had considered it good all those years ago. A lifetime guarantee seemed not only to imply a trustworthy appliance, but also to suggest that many years of life lay ahead of him. And why not? His shoes were shined, as were the salesman’s. Pablo noticed the impeccable white of the other man’s cuffs. These things seemed further proof of a long, fruitful life where every dysfunction was soon corrected, every derailment rectified, every breakdown repairable.
Oh! Oh! Had he ever been wrong! He had never expected longevity to be a regrettable condition, but there you have it. Any luster he had once borne had been the superficial patina of youth – all rubbed off, cheap pigment.
For years, he had been awakened in the wincing dawn by a phone call – “is the appliance still operational?” Not every day, but often enough. It may have been better if it had been every day, if he could have come to expect it and respect it as a daily ritual, like shaving or defecation.
But just as soon as he began to be lulled into false confidence, when he began to sleep through the night once again and resume the normal course and rhythms of his life – another call would come to shatter his calm. “Can’t you fools call during regular hours? Nine to five?”
“We find that our clients are generally more available in the hours before dawn, and finding out if our clients are satisfied is our number one priority.”
He disconnected his phone, lived like a hermit. Then the company’s agents – bland, officious functionaries whose meekness belied the disruptive power they wielded – would bang on his door. He moved, and moved again. Somehow they always found him.
Sometimes he would be approached in public. Seemingly with the utmost discretion, which in fact made the rapprochement all the more conspicuous, painfully conspicuous, an agent would approach him and demand: “the appliance – is it still operational?”
None of his pleas and entreaties to the agents ever made any difference. And although the company was always able to find him, he was never able to locate it – an untraceable address, leading to a squat olive dropbox on a deserted street in Pueblo, Colorado. Following a hunch, he dropped a pebble through the slot. He counted four full seconds before he heard the splash. The company’s phone numbers reached bored and powerless operators, or, later, automated menus.
Some of his letters to the company were returned to him, covered with angry red stamps from the post office. Others – worse yet! – were never returned, and he was left to wonder if they had reached their destination.
The only way to know that he had been heard would be if nothing happened. If the calls ceased. If he was no longer accosted. He lived for weeks, months, even, with his soul crouched, shuddering in tense expectation of that blow that may not ever fall.
He had always been disappointed. Until now.
He had received a terse, unsigned letter from the company, on its official letterhead. “We have received and processed your request,” it said. It gave him a number to call – a number he had never seen before, in his decades of fruitlessly telephoning the company – to arrange for an agent to make a final visit so that the contract could officially be terminated.
On the second ring, a sweet voiced girl – a girl whose voice hinted at her blossom cheeks and rosy plumpness – answered the phone. She was agreeably formal, but unlike the other operators, she used his name instead of coldly calling him “sir.” “All right, Mr. Grenoble,” she said, “what can I do for you?” He easily, pleasantly made the arrangements, and an “exit agent” would visit his home that evening. He would terminate his contract, and then he would be totally expunged from the company’s system, she promised. “As though you never existed,” were her giggled words of reassurance.
As he sat at home that evening, relief settling over him like a cloud of cotton candy, he reflected that this would be the last time he would see an agent of the company. It would be the last time he would have to even think about the company. He would submerge himself in marshy, dense anonymity – the pleasure, largely unappreciated, of being unwatched, unworried over.
The agent was punctual, as he expected.
And for the last time, Pablo Grenoble opened the door.