The Introvert Read online

  A vacuum salesman by day, the introvert lives a quiet life alone with his dog until a work relationship and a dark secret from his past team up to create an uncomfortable imbalance in his otherwise ordered life, one that soon finds him squarely at the center of a murder investigation. With his thoughts continually urging him to make people “red and open” and to “achieve it” with his girlfriend Donna, what follows is a sometimes brutal, oftentimes hilarious, and absurdist account of the life of one very anti-social and unexpected anti-hero.

  KUDOS FOR THE INTROVERT

  The story is cute, poignant, and thought-provoking. I loved it. ~ Taylor Jones, Reviewer

  I rarely like stories which have an anti-hero, but I couldn’t help rooting for this one. I read it twice, just for the sheer enjoyment of it. ~ Regan Murphy, Reviewer

  THE INTROVERT

  MICHAEL PAUL MICHAUD

  A Black Opal Books Publication

  Copyright © 2016 by Michael Paul Michaud

  Cover Design by Michael Paul Michaud

  All cover art copyright © 2016

  All Rights Reserved

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626945-46-3

  EXCERPT

  Later that week I heard a knock on my door. It was the landlord. “You’re three days late with your rent.”

  “I put it in your mail slot on the first of the month.”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “You think I’d be here if you’d paid?”

  He coughed as he sometimes did since he was a smoker and the stench from his breath was revolting.

  “I paid my rent. I saw you with my check in your hand the very day I dropped it off. Maybe you misplaced it?”

  It looked like maybe he was starting to become angry because one of his eyebrows began to twitch. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said then stumbled a bit and braced himself against the doorframe. Then he added, after righting himself, “You think I like coming around here like this?” I couldn’t say whether he liked it or not, but his tone suggested he didn’t. He didn’t seem to know what to say next, but eventually said, “How ’bout you just give me a new check?”

  I decided that it wasn’t worth the bother and went to get my checkbook. Unfortunately, I’d just used my last few checks on some bills. When I told him this, he didn’t seem to believe me, and it perhaps even bolstered his belief that I was lying to him.

  He left without saying anything further, but the way he looked at me as he did, and the way he looked at Molly, gave me the greatest urge to see him red and open.

  For the weirdos

  The Company Culture Handbook

  Always Stay Positive

  Every Day is a Good Day to Buy

  Set Your Clock to Lombardi Time

  Be a Humble Student

  Assault Them with Honesty

  Always Diffuse Discomfort

  Control the Conversation

  Nobody Likes a Challenger

  Dress the Part

  The Company is Your Friend

  CHAPTER 1

  “Sir, have you got a second form of identification?”

  She was looking at me from her seated position behind the counter. She wasn’t much of a clerk. From what I could see, she was shabbily dressed, and there was a half-eaten container of Chinese noodles on the counter with a plastic fork sticking out from the cardboard box, and since it was morning, I figured that it must have been leftovers.

  “You have my driver’s license,” I said.

  The woman behind the counter smiled, and I wasn’t sure why because to me she didn’t seem very happy.

  “Yes sir, but I do need to see a second form of identification.”

  “I’m just renewing my license,” I said, and I thought that might settle things.

  “Sir, I’m afraid we require a second form of identification before we can proceed. If you’d like to come back another time, perhaps?” She was still smiling, but now the smile was waning.

  I turned to look at the line behind me that snaked back to the door where I’d first been standing when I’d come in almost forty minutes ago. Then I turned back to face the clerk, but for some reason my eyes caught again on the cardboard container of Chinese noodles and the white plastic instrument peeking up over the edge, and it made me nauseous just to see it.

  “Sir?”

  When I looked back up, I saw that her smile was all the way gone.

  “My license expires tomorrow,” I said, looking again at the noodles.

  I needed my license to drive my car legally. It wasn’t much of a car, but I still needed a valid driver’s license to drive it.

  “I understand that, sir, but I’m afraid we do require a second form of identification.”

  I brought my eyes to her face and stared blankly at the fat sphere in front of me and noticed that the lipstick on her lips was red and the mole on her neck was brown, and though both were hideous they at least made me briefly forget about the Chinese noodles. “I have credit cards,” I said.

  I could hear people grumbling behind me when I said this.

  “I’m afraid that isn’t sufficient, sir.”

  It was the third time that she’d said she was afraid, only she didn’t seem afraid. I’d seen people afraid before and their eyes usually went wide and open and white and their mouths gaped sloppy or crooked.

  “I have to be at work in ten minutes.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure why I said it since it didn’t seem entirely connected to what we were talking about. But then if she’d have just allowed me to renew my driver’s license then I probably wouldn’t have been worrying about being late for work, so then I thought that maybe it was a little bit connected after all, if not all the way connected.

  “Sir, perhaps if you came back another time?”

  I could tell that she was trying to get rid of me.

  “Why would someone who isn’t me ever want to renew my license?”

  “Sir, I can’t comment on that. But we do have our regulations...”

  I could hear the sighs and the grumbles growing heavier behind me so I fished in my wallet for some other form of government identification though I knew it was hopeless even before I tried.

  When I looked back up I could see the clerk staring at me and the smile was back on her face now and even enhanced in a way that it hadn’t been before, as if perhaps with more fake friendliness I might go away faster and then she could take another bite from her container with the plastic fork or move onto the next customer or both.

  A man stepped up to the wicket to my right. He’d been one of the people staring at me when I’d last turned around so I was relieved that he was now being served, but then I figured there were many others still staring just as intently so I didn’t feel relieved for very long.

  The clerk continued to smile at me, and I thought again how she wasn’t much of a clerk. It wasn’t very professional to have opened food at the counter. It wasn’t very nice to smile at people when you didn’t really mean it. Finally, she apologized once more and slid my expiring license back toward me on the counter.

  That was when I noticed the letter opener.

  It was resting in front of her, long and steel and quite clearly sharp at one end, all shiny and polished and silver. It was easily within reach, and before I knew it I was again thinking of how she was making me late for work and how the boss wouldn’t like that. Then I imagined picking up the letter opener and stabbing down viciously into her plump pasty white neck and how I wanted more than anything in that moment to see her red and open.

  Red and open.

  And I thought that I’d have to thrust the opener with real force to pierce the thick layer of fat around her neck and I imagined how the blood would be gushing out red and wet and slide down ov
er her hideous brown mole and how then she really would be afraid with her eyes opened wide in fear and her mouth twisted apart and how people would be running in fear behind me and there would be screams and gasps and commotion all around and how the clerk would be wishing she’d have just let me renew my driver’s license before she succumbed to the attack only by then it would be too late.

  “Sir?”

  It felt good to think it, but instead I just picked up my driver’s license from the counter and turned away because I knew that she didn’t deserve it.

  She wasn’t much of a clerk, but she certainly didn’t deserve it.

  CHAPTER 2

  I was late for my job.

  It wasn’t much of a job. I sold vacuum cleaners to people who mostly already had vacuum cleaners. Our brand was decent enough and had a good reputation in the community. I even had one myself and was able to purchase it at cost because I worked for the company. I’m not sure if I would have purchased it otherwise, but I figured I still probably would have.

  Part of our sales pitch to customers was that vacuum technology was always changing and resulting in better health for your family by trapping a higher percentage of dust-motes and dangerous bacteria, which basically said to them that they should buy new vacuums every few years or else it demonstrated that they didn’t really care if their family got sick or died from too many dust-motes or dangerous bacteria. I found this to be somewhat disingenuous since in the eight years I’d worked there I hadn’t noticed any technological advancements between our older models and our newer models, but I didn’t complain about it because the bosses seemed to believe it was true, and maybe there was something more to it than I understood since I didn’t actually make them.

  My boss for the last three years was a man named Mr. Peters. Before him there were others and most of them treated us like children and Mr. Peters wasn’t much different, though he was usually decent enough to me because I usually sold enough vacuums to keep him out of trouble with his own bosses. I think maybe I was successful in sales because I didn’t talk very much. Most of my co-workers talked a lot, and if I could barely stand listening to them for free, I could only imagine how the customers would feel about paying for it.

  I was fifteen minutes late for my shift when I finally settled into my third-floor cubicle. I worked in the sales office and most of our business was done by phone, although sometimes I went out to people’s houses, too. We also had retail outlets where people would actually come in and look at the vacuums, but I’d never wanted to work in those places because I found it easier to talk to people through a telephone receiver than I did talking to people through their actual faces.

  I heard Donna say, “Peters came around already,” from the cubicle to my right.

  I didn’t respond. Instead, I logged onto my computer and pulled up my contacts. Half of this job was following up with people who’d previously purchased a vacuum or had expressed at least some mild interest during cold calls. I’d only been working for five minutes before Mr. Peters came up beside me and waited there until I finished my call.

  “Good afternoon,” he said after I’d hung up the receiver.

  This was his way of telling me that I was late since it was fifteen minutes past nine and I was supposed to be ready for work at nine o’clock if not sooner. This comment seemed disrespectful to me, but then maybe he felt the same way about me arriving late, so I figured it was nothing to get too fussed about.

  “I’m sorry. I had to go to the DMV.”

  He just looked at me until I was forced to say more.

  “There was a long line, and then the lady at the counter gave me some trouble.”

  “Trouble at the DMV, eh? You losing your license or something?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You know what the third rule says, don’t you?”

  He was referring to the third rule of The Company Culture Handbook.

  “‘Set your clock to Lombardi time,’” I said.

  “Set Your Clock To Lombardi Time” was corporate jargon for arriving to work fifteen minutes early. That way even if you ran a bit late like I had this morning then you wouldn’t really be late at all. It had something to do with Vince Lombardi, who used to coach the Green Bay Packers, but none of that meant anything to me because I didn’t watch sports and because I normally did arrive on time or early except maybe when I had to go to the DMV and argue with the woman with the red lipstick and the brown mole or the one time I got a flat tire because of a nail in the road.

  Mr. Peters tapped the top of my cubicle three or four times just to show me who was boss but then finally walked away. He hadn’t gone very far before I heard Donna’s voice.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

  I looked up to see her peeking over from her cubicle. Her arms were up on the divider and her elbows were turned out at each side. She was younger than me. Her hair was blonde but not as blonde as it actually appeared to be. At least it wasn’t blonde like that two years ago when she first joined the company.

  “Not so bad,” I said. I already had the phone back in my hand and was preparing to make my next call.

  “So what’s wrong with your license?”

  Donna always wanted to chat. She’d asked me out on dates several times before but I hadn’t gone yet and I’m not sure why except for the fact that I normally liked to be alone.

  “It expires tomorrow,” I said.

  “Better get it renewed then,” she said, which was rather obvious. Now she was tapping the top of the divider between us much in the way that Mr. Peters had done before he left, and even though she wasn’t doing it to make me uncomfortable like when Mr. Peters did, I still found it distracting.

  “I tried this morning,” I said. “The woman told me I needed a second form of identification.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s always something with those places,” she said. “Thankfully it only comes around every five years or so. Why’d you leave it so long, anyway?”

  I didn’t have a very good answer for this so I just shrugged, then I started typing a phone number into the keypad, but Donna kept talking.

  “So why didn’t you come out on Friday?”

  Friday was payday for our company and most of the employees got together after work at a nearby pub called Wellington’s. I’d come out once in a while but mostly tried to avoid it. Every time I went out, Donna would come close to my side and touch me on my arm or my leg, and even though she was pretty, it still made me uncomfortable. I knew Jeff wanted to have sex with her, not just because of how he’d stare at her every time she walked past him, but because he’d also told me so on several occasions, usually when he’d been drinking. There were others who looked at her the same way but she didn’t seem very interested in them. The way it seemed with girls was that the more attention you paid to them the less they wanted you, and the less attention you paid to them the more they seemed to. Women didn’t make much sense that way. Or in a lot of other ways.

  “I was tired,” was all I said. I started to re-dial the number but she went on anyway.

  “It was a good time. Gary bought us each a couple rounds. His deal went through.”

  Gary had some sort of relationship with a local cleaning plant. For some reason they needed to buy two dozen vacuums every year and Gary had been lucky enough to take the call when they’d phoned in about five years ago. It was a good commission. It also struck me that the deals always went through in a month when there was a contest, like this month, where the top salesman received a bonus of five hundred dollars. I didn’t think it was very fair of him to do that, but then I figured I might do the same thing in his place, so I wasn’t too fussed about it.

  “That’s good for him,” I said. Then, sensing that Donna wasn’t prepared to stop talking anytime soon, I set the receiver back down onto the cradle.

  “Anyway, sorry about the contest.”

  I looked over at the dry-erase white board that hung to the side. Gary was now ahead by
eleven vacuums with just eight days remaining.

  “The month isn’t over,” I said.

  “No, that’s true. So why didn’t you come out on Friday?”

  I’d thought we’d moved past it, but apparently we hadn’t. The truth was I didn’t like spending any more time with my co-workers than I absolutely had to. Most of them were decent enough, but I just preferred to be alone. I’d also been wary of alcohol ever since the incident two years ago, and they always pressured me to drink.

  “I was tired,” I said.

  “Aww, but you had all weekend to rest.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Will you come out this week?”

  “Maybe,” I said. By then I had the receiver back in my hand, but it didn’t seem to dissuade her.

  “Promise me you’ll come out this week.”

  “Okay, I promise,” I said, immediately regretting it, though at least she then retreated back to her own cubicle and left me free to dial.

  It rang three times before a husky-voiced woman picked up on the other side.

  “Good morning, ma’am. I wonder if you’d have a moment to discuss the latest in vacuum technology?”

  CHAPTER 3

  I arrived home to my apartment just in time to let the dog out before she had an accident.

  The dog’s name was Molly and I’d found her the same night of the incident. I’m not sure if her name was actually Molly back then, but that’s what I started to call her once I figured out that she was a girl, and she didn’t seem to mind it. The veterinarian had said that she was some sort of Cocker Spaniel mix, only she didn’t tell me what the other part of the mix was, so to me she was just Molly the Cocker Spaniel.

  After Molly did her business, we went right back inside because it was cold and wet out. There was one time when Molly didn’t last before I got home, and I found the results on the kitchen floor, and it made me so angry that I thought about making Molly red and open, but then I figured it wasn’t her fault and swore to myself to never think of her that way again.