True Stories

Random memories mesh together to create a character. This one happens to be real; a 26-year-old Israeli boy studying film in NYC. (As with anything, it's best to start at the beginning. Go to the archives...) Copyright 2006

Friday, June 09, 2006

A story about True Lies

As I drove my friend Tal home one smoky night during my lost year, after I’d been discharged from the army, graduated from my screenwriting studies at the judiciously titled “Screenwriting School of Tel Aviv” and then found myself afloat in nothingness, he offered me a job with which I could fill my pointless days: I was to work in a CD store but secretly get paid by a private eye agency, which would be my true employer. I’d be there to keep an open eye on shoplifting customers and, more importantly, spy on shoplifting employees. I’d be an implanted traitor. The salary I’d receive from the private eye agency was set to be double or triple the minimum wage salary one could expect at such a chain. Tal had offered the job to our friend Gil first, seeing as how he was the more critical case between the two of us, having gone for two and a half years without work, but the spy from the agency was unwilling to hire someone who hadn’t completed his military service, and so I, the decorated soldier, was offered the job.

I’d never wanted to work in any kind of store under any capacity, but the shame of unemployment was too oppressive, and I feared it would only worsen if I knew in the back of my mind that I had disregarded such a sensible opportunity.

The man called himself “Aaron the spy.” I called the number Tal had given me and asked the secretary, as instructed, for Aaron the spy. When he answered I said “Aaron the spy? This is in regards to your conversation with Tal?” Aaron the spy spoke in a gruff, slow whisper that had me biting my lower lip to keep from laughing. He said “Let’s just say we’re talking about… a certain… store… somewhere in… Tel Aviv…” he spread out the sentence to add mystery to it. He asked me to email my details over to his agency so that he could run a comprehensive background check on me. That email was my only chore for that week, and I diligently completed it within fifteen minutes.

Later that night my friend Oren was ripped; his eyes bulged red and his dry tongue smacked against the roof of his dehydrated mouth. I said "Get this man a drink of water!" and then slowly explained that it was quite possible I would become a spy the next week. I told him all about Aaron and the CD store, and Oren said “What? I don’t believe you.” I was high myself, and the fact that after years of friendship he would so blatantly state his disbelief in my story blew my mind. “What do you mean, you don’t believe me?!” I cried. “You’ve known me for years, I’ve told you a million stories, and now all of a sudden out of nowhere you just… don’t believe me?!”
“That’s right.” Oren said, and then laughed. “I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Nope.”
“What does that even mean, that you don’t believe me?” I asked. “You think I’m lying?”
“No. I just don’t believe you.”
“But I’m not lying.”
“Probably not.”

This momentary lapse of reason was quickly forgotten, but the astringent amazement I’d experienced at that moment stayed with me. Over the next few days my new career in espionage became the running gag amongst my circle of friends. I was brought in to mediate arguments as the authoritative spy, and shared my fictional ramblings of classified knowledge having to do with anything and everything with my drugged-up thirsty audience. I said “Guys, guys, guys, listen to me, ok? I’m a spy, ok, I know what I’m saying here.”

My new job required multiple interviews. The first one was appropriately shady and took place at a hole-in-the-wall bagel place. I’d been told to find a man named David, who’d be waiting for me at “Tzvika’s”, which was neither a restaurant nor an office, it was a small booth where the parking attendant of a nameless lot sat drinking black coffee and cracking sunflower seeds. The kindly Tzvika told me I’d just missed David, and gave me his cellphone number. David said “I can see you. Turn to your left. Now walk a hundred meters in that direction.” He could have just told me to hop into “American Bagels”.

David was a tanned bald fat man who chewed gum like a lazy cow. He ordered himself some lemonade. I wished I was anywhere but there, sitting across from him. He questioned me relentlessly about my criminal past, as if trying to scare some confession out of me. “I thought you were running a background check on me.” I frowned. “Well, yeah, that too.” He answered. “Why don’t you save us the time and tell me what we’re going to find out anyway when we read it?” We ran in those circles for a while until he was satisfied, and then revealed to me that the mystery store was the nearby Tower Records, where I would find the store manage waiting for me. David raised a fat finger and said “Let me warn you, though – the man stutters. Just so you know.”

He didn’t stutter. The store’s miserable employees proved unhelpful, and I had to pace around the maze of CDs and wait out two sappy, saxophone-wailing love songs before I found the manager and another couple of songs before he was free to talk to me. He led me outside, lit a cigarette and confided in me about the recent rash of thefts they suffered from. I nodded in feigned interest. He glanced over my resume and chuckled. “You went to that screenwriting school crap too, huh? I see you just came out of there. I graduated three years ago. There’s no work in that field.”

He led me back to the office and presented me with a bright orange vest that read “Security”. I was taken aback. I had come under the assumption that I was going to be a salesperson just like the others, with the added responsibility (and pay) of keeping tabs on customers and employees. He had begun to fill out my employee information card and was tapping his pen anxiously on the paper, waiting for me to dictate my name and ID. A pale faced girl came in without knocking to complain about the number of cigarette breaks that another girl had been allowed. That interaction struck inexplicable terror in me. When she left I struggled to find my voice and asked; why would you need a private eye agency to find you a security guard whose sole duty was to stand at the door of the store and check bags?

“Everyone working in the store is checked out by those guys,” he said. “It’s just a screening process we have all our employees go through.”
A screening process?, I though to myself. They had obviously done nothing but badger me in a bagel store. It was clear that they ran no background checks. “But aren’t they paying my salary?” I asked.
“Why would they pay your salary?” He looked up at me. He must have seen the fear in my eyes. He said “This paperwork can wait. Do you want to get it done when you start? When do you want to start?”
“Today?” I mumbled. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.” He agreed. “See you then.”

I walked out and never returned to that store.
“Fuck that.” Tal said. “I can’t believe that was the fucking job. I wish I hadn’t told you about it. Another thing that blew up in your face.” A few months of unemployement later I did find work in my field after all; I became the security guard at the front desk of a television studio. Instead of an orange vest I wore a buttoned white shirt with a blue logo on its arms. And all the while I thought, wow, Oren had been right.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home