HAPPY VJJ!
Phil Wohl
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Phil Wohl
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Table of Contents
Old Man
Car Salesman
The Deal
Message Delivered
Call for Help
The Search is On!
The Interviews
Magic Dragon
Motley Crew
First Quarter
Birthday Suit
Inroads
Drugged Out
VJJ
Focus Groups
Field-Testing
Spread the Wealth
FDA Play
Universal Demand
Side Effects
Final Call
Happy Family
Old Man
"When I die, I would like the biotech company to go to my grandchildren," George Shuman said to the other three people in the room.
His secretary of 44 years, Grace Perkins, had vastly outlived his wife and had been his companion for the past 30 years, with all of the "funny stuff," as she put it. Their relationship had been the one constant in his life and he trusted her with everything important, like taking careful notes as he gave instructions to his lawyer and accountant.
George had been estranged from his son Mitchell and his kids, Mark and Cindy, for 20 years and had been thinking about the two kids he used to spend so much time with in their early years. Mark was a natural entrepreneur who was always hanging around the office and acted like he was running the place. But it was Cindy that really intrigued this 86 year-old man. She was such a wild-card - often painting pictures and decorating his office with brightly-colored bows and ribbons.
"How do you want the company to be distributed?" George's lawyer, Donald Prince asked.
"Distributed? Do you mean liquidated?" George asked and then coughed so hard that it appeared patches of his lungs might surface.
Sixty-five year-old Grace put her pen down and the stood up to transition to her role of Hospice nurse. She had known nothing else but George Shuman since the tender age of 21, when she came to New York from the Midwest with little more than $50 and a rockin' body.
"Are you all right, Mr. Shuman?" she asked handing him his large dark brown mug filled with his favorite tea."
He cleared his throat and chuckled in a scratchy tone, "You can call me George, already, Grace. We just had sex five minutes before these men showed up."
While she appeared serious about 99 percent of the time, this was not the case in private.
"All right, George Already," she said with a sly smile.
He laughed a hearty laugh and stated, "You see! If Grace can develop a sense of humor, then my granddaughter can certainly run a multi-million dollar drug company."
Preston Zorn, Shuman's accountant, obviously didn't possess his own raw abilities to unleash a sense of humor.
"If you liquidate the company the government is going to kill you with estate tax. Also, if you split the company between them, they will have to pay a huge tax."
George mulled his options and then made a quick, but informed, decision like he had always done as he climbed up the ladder to riches.
"Then it's settled. Once I have taken my last breath - and by the sound and feel of that last cough, it could be just about the time I finish this sentence - possession of the company will be given to Cindy, at which time she has one year to turn a profit. If she should fail to make money, then the company will be handed over to Mark." He looked around at his people, "Is everyone clear about my instructions?"
"What about your employees?" the lawyer asked.
"I want you to give all 99 of them generous retirement and pension packages and send them on their way. There is only to be one employee on the books," he said as he looked at Grace.
The accountant asked, "That is going to be costly. How do you want me to handle that?"
George loved a good challenge and he believed in his granddaughter's ability to overcome obstacles.
"Include it in the first quarter results." And then he looked around the room, as everyone thought he was handing Cindy an impossible task. "The worst thing we can do in life is underestimate others..." his brain was slowly shutting down and the completely lucid thought was followed by something completely different, "Actually, the worst thing you can do is sleep with a Vietnamese hooker without a condom. I got the clap so hard that they had to discharge me from the Army. Good thing I went bareback, because I probably wouldn't be sitting here right now with an incurable disease. Sure is a lot more bearable than having your winkie look like a fuckin' rainbow!"
Car Salesman
Well it did come to pass that the old man succumbed to whatever insipid disease had taken control of his innards. Highly-compensated lawyer Donald Prince's took control at that point, and focused on alerting all of George Shuman's heirs to what sizable prizes they had won. And, as an attorney, he did his part to slow the process down as much as legal billable hours could stretch.
After a full week went by without any progress, accountant Preston Zorn paid Prince a visit.
"You do realize that you're being paid a lump sum for the remainder of your work, and are no longer being paid by your hours billed?"
The old man used to scrutinize every legal bill he received from Prince and the two would often argue about his fees. Thirty years of back and forth and haggling had put Prince in a somewhat robotic state where he would always greatly exaggerate the fees in order to eventually wind up with a fair wage.
Prince was always reluctant to admit his mistakes, "I knew that," when, in fact, quite the opposite was true.
His first call that afternoon was to Mitchell Shuman, George's son, to inform him of his inheritance.
"Hello," the unsuspecting son answered the phone.
"Mitchell this is Donald Prince, your father's lawyer," the 68 year-old Prince said without realizing the backlash that awaited him.
Shuman's mood instantly soured at hearing from anyone associated with his father. "What he fuck do you want, Prince? Does my father want to question all of the choices I've made in my life?"
"Would if he could, sir, but your father passed away last week."
Mitchell had no pause in his cause, "What the fuck? Someone could have called me and saved me a few hundred dollars by letting me finally stick a red hot poker up my therapist's ass. Did he die peacefully?"
"Yes, he fell asleep in a morphine-induced haze and then stopped breathing a few minutes later."
Mitchell wasn't happy with the approach, but came to grips with the conclusion.
"Well, at least the old man died. I was beginning to think that he was alien or a robot, or something more inhuman than he was."
Then the human side of Prince peaked out from the shadows, "Your father might have been a lot of things that the devil himself would have been envious of, but he did love you, Mitchell." Silence on the other end of the line signaled that Prince could continue. "His generation had a hard time expressing any love and affection."
Mitchell fought back the tears, "Like the only time he came to see me do anything, and made me stuff an entire roll of toilet paper down my pants so it would look like I had something going on down there. He said to me, "The cool musicians stick stuff down their pants." I went on stage and everyone laughed at me because they thought I was wearing diaper. I was eight years old and the kids called me Poopy Pants until the day I left for college!"
Prince was at a loss for words, and he had a few stories he could have recounted but held back.
"How come nobody called me about the funeral?" Mitchell then asked.
"Because he didn't have a funeral. He simply wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread over his mother's grave. But that option wasn't available because the cemetery she was buried in is now a Starbucks. So, we opted for Plan C, which seemed a lot more pleasant than Plan B."
"What was Plan B?" Mitchell asked.
"Giving them to you. We thought you would opt for a scatter an pee strategy."
Mitchell laughed, "Yeah, I probably would have peed on them, but after I drank too much I simply would have taken off the urn cover and tested my aim."
"While I'm not at liberty to tell you that they were scattered in Muir Lake where he used to love to fish, but I am at liberty to tell you of your inheritance."
While Mitchell had thought of this moment for years and how he would tell Prince that he didn't want anything that had to do with his father, he figured that it couldn't hurt to listen to what the old man had left him. So, he met Prince at an office building the attorney had access to, and the two men convened in a conference room.
“As you know, your father had quite a vast car collection,” Prince stated as Mitchell expected him to follow up with “and he wanted you to have the one car you coveted your whole life.”
Prince continued as the action slowed in Mitchell’s mind, “and he also wanted you to have the entire collection.”
It took the words a few seconds to swish around Mitchell Shuman’s road-blocked thoughts.
“Excuse me did you say the entire collection?”
Prince smiled, “Yes, that it what I said and, surprisingly, that is what the old man wanted.”
Mitchell sat back in the chair and ran his hands through his thinning hair and then rubbed his eyes after removing his glasses. He could not believe that the meanest, cheapest and least-loving person he had ever met in his life had agreed to give him such a sizable inheritance.
“What the fuck?” Mitchell looked around the room, “Is this like a hidden camera show or something?” He then stood up and walked over to Prince, “Let me see that shit in writing!”
Prince pointed to the appropriate paragraph and Mitchell started reading out loud: “Tom my son, Mitchell, I leave my entire collection of automobiles in the hope that he will forgive me for being a cheap and loveless son-of-a-bitch.”
He backed up and then said to Prince, “Now that’s what I call closure!”
Prince knew all along that Mitchell was not about to take all of the cars, since there were more than 50 vintage and classic cars in the collection.
“So what do you want to do with them?”
Mitchell always had trouble controlling his innards when it came to processing things that had to do with his father.
“Hold that question, I’ll be back in a minute,” he said and made a mad dash for the men’s room. He barely lowered his pants and tighty-whitey’s before shit and flames started shooting out of his ass in the most explosive of fashions. The sound of his anus release reverberated throughout the bathroom and sent the guy in next stall scurrying with toilet paper still draped from his pants, and it also was an unnatural deterrent to anyone else seeking to enter the room.
Ten minutes later, the bathroom was in dire need of completed fumigation, but Mitchell had eliminated all of his anxiety and was now ready to talk cars with Prince. He washed his hands a half-a-dozen times and then mistakenly took a deep breath to focus his thoughts, but all it did was send him scurrying into the hallway to complete the tainted gasp.
Mitchell gingerly walked back toward the conference room to continue his conversation with Donald Prince, while the director of sanitational engineering of the building – who had recently upgraded his title from head janitor – was in the process of sectioning off and condemning the first-floor bathroom.
While emptying the contents of his body, Mitchell had a brainstorm and was now in possession of a response for Prince’s loaded question.
“Okay, I think I’ve come up with a solution for my inheritance,” he said once seated back in the conference room.
He had dreamt for years about retiring from his low-paying job with the county parks department. Mitchell Shuman was a Botany Specialist who had spent fewer hours studying plant life then he did merely planting things around the county parks. The last few years had been lean ones as the county was cutting back on everything from salaries to pensions, and Mitchell was starting to think that he would be working the rest of his life.
While he writhed in pain on the bowl, Mitchell came to the realization that all of the daddy-related anxiety he had felt his entire life was put to an end through his inheritance. George Shuman lived in an era of immigrants that lived through hard times in Eastern Europe before coming to America and barely surviving the Great Depression, so that generation had the excuse for not having a great sense of humor or being all light and fluffy!
“I want you to liquidate all of the cars and give me the proceeds,” was what Mitchell first said.
But before the statement could completely deflate Prince, he quickly followed up with, “But I would like to keep the 64 ½ Mustang and make a couple of other modifications.”
Mitchell knew that his father’s lawyer and accountant were whizzes at cutting costs and making huge expenses doable. He was about to get a multimillion-dollar payday and didn’t want to spend a big chunk of that on estate taxes, so he channeled a bit of his father and decided to give a little something in order to get something in return.
“I know you have always had your eye on dad’s ’57 Chevy, so it’s yours. I also want to give Zorn the car of his choice.”
Prince beamed, “Thank you, Mitchell! That means a lot to me,” he stood up and shook Mitchell’s hand. “And Preston’s going to love the old Model T!”
Mitchell was now all business just like his father, “What means a lot to me, Mr. Prince, is not paying a lot of estate tax and keeping as much money as possible. Do you think we can arrange that?”
Prince was a lawyer, which meant that his vocation was based on bending laws until they were at the breaking point. He smirked and replied, “It definitely can be arranged, sir.”
The Deal
With Mitchell Shuman’s inheritance taken care of, Donald Prince was on to the next person he could potentially extract something from. While his job should have been focused on delivering information, he had material inside information on the recipients and could use this data to always get something out of the deal.
Mark Shuman was George Shuman’s grandson in every sense of the word and was the obvious heir-apparent to the family’s remaining business. George spent a lot more time with Mitchell’s two kids when they were younger than he ever spent with Mitchell, which was an obvious source of both pride and frustration for the prodigal son.
Prince and Mark Shuman were on the same page the minute Mark drove in from the city to a Long Island Starbucks. The lawyer had sent a copy of the will to Mark and he was fully briefed, and in strategic mode, by the time they sat down in the espresso-colored Pottery Barn leather club chairs. Prince lived in Cold Spring Harbor and the company’s headquarters was located in the outskirts of Huntington, New York.
“So, basically, all I have to do is wait a year and the company is mine?” Mark stated.
“Yes, it looks that way,” Prince replied.
“You know she’s going to ask me for help,” Mark said, being that he was the older brother by 10 months and always had to clean up after his wacky sister. Like the time when she threw a party when their mother was out of town and she almost burned the house down, as he luckily saved the day by locating a fire extinguisher and putting out the small kitchen fire. Or the time when she thought that saving a few neighborhood cats was a grand idea, only to realize they had rabies and were foaming at the mouth. Mark took care of that with a large cardboard box and a can of silly string. Or the time when she thought she was pregnant when she was 16, only to realize that you couldn’t have a baby unless the guy actually took it out of his pants. They were sitting in the doctor’s office and she was crying because she thought she needed an abortion, but he got the truth out of here and they got out of there before anyone was the wiser.
It was one sordid mishap after the other: younger sister would walk into potential catastrophe and older brother would save the day and bail her out of trouble, or at least that was his ego-inflated side of the story!
“Do you feel like there is any chance she could succeed?” Prince asked.
“Why? What’s in it for you?” Mark asked a worker whose contract would expire at the end of the year.
Prince smirked, “What’s in it for me? Exactly, what’s in it for me to make sure that she never gets on the righteous path toward profitability?”
“What do you want?” Mark asked.
Prince sat all the way back in the chair and crossed his legs – at first like a man in a triangle form and then like a women, acting like his shriveled balls wouldn’t be offended.
“What do we all want? Financial security. A job with your company until I’ve had enough and I want to retire.”
“Okay that can be arranged, but there is one other thing that I really want,” Mark stated.
“What is that?” Prince asked.
“Do you have any influence with my grandfather’s cars?”
Prince smiled, “Perhaps.”
"If you can get your hands on that ’64 Corvette, and it finds its way into my garage, then I think we have a deal.”
Prince and his partner in crime Zorn were experts in moving numbers and assets around and talking their way into more profitable situations, so lifting the ’64 Vette out of the collection would only have been alarming to one person – Mitchell Shuman – and he and his estranged son hadn’t spoken in more than 10 years. Once Mitchell got his money he would gone like the wind and move to some tropical island where no one would ever find him.
Message Delivered
Donald Prince then went through the painstaking process of trying to find a person that wasn’t even sure where she was, let alone what her next move in life would be. So, the task of finding Cindy Shuman in order to impart the wishes of her grandfather in his Last Will and Testament would be much more difficult than locating her high profile brother.
“The girl doesn’t have any public record of a residence, she doesn’t have a cell phone and volunteers, so there are no government records of income!” Prince yelled into the phone at the only person in the world he could talk to about the family, Preston Zorn.
Zorn was an accountant and tended to think logically, “She does like unicorns.”
“Unicorns? What the hell are you talking about?” Prince exclaimed.
“She founded the Unicorn Foundation in Waterbury, Vermont. I’m going to send you the link to their web site,” Zorn said as he shot Prince the link through his phone.
“It’s a picture of a unicorn eating an ice cream cone,” a dumfounded Prince stated in reaction to seeing the image on his phone.
“It looks like she had the makings of a good idea to help local underprivileged kids, but they appear to be a bunch of hippy potheads that get the munchies and scam free samples from the nearby Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream factory. Check out the picture on the ‘About Us’ page.”
Prince turned his phone vertically to get a better look and then talked into the speaker phone, “The guy taking the picture is so high that the image is off-center. Well, I guess I’m headed to Vermont.”
“Can you get me one of those tie-dyed t-shirts from Ben & Jerry’s?” Zorn innocently asked.
Prince was in no mood for games, but he also was in no mood to be cut off at the end of the year, either, “Are you still an Extra Large?”
Zorn was all excited, “Yes! And if you see…” he started asking for one of those ice cream bowls in the shape of a cow’s bottom.
Prince hung up the phone and was on his way on his way in his BMW convertible by the time Zorn even knew what was going on.
“Donald? Donald can you hear me?” Zorn yelled into his phone. Then he mumbled, “Must have lost the connection.”
Prince normally would have taken the company’s private jet, but it was temporarily unavailable due to the shift in control. He drove the better part of the day, making a few stops on his way up north, and arrived at the Ben & Jerry’s Factory Store just before dinner time. He walked directly into the gift shop and browsed through the t-shirts for his co-worker Zorn.
“That is really soft cotton, but if I were you I would go with this tie-dyed shirt,” a soft female voice gave advice to Prince from behind him.
Prince was about to answer but was interrupted by another women, “Excuse me miss, I am telling you again that you don’t work here,” in her most non-confrontational hippy chic vernacular.
“That’s okay. I think it’s important that people get the best value for their money,” replied Cindy Shuman, whose hair was literally in dreadlocks. It had obviously been some time since she had become acquainted with running water, soap and shampoo.
“Cindy, is that you?” a socked Prince asked.
She was so rocked that she wouldn’t have recognized most of the people she had ever met, but she did place this face from the past.
“Mr. Prince?” Cindy stated, pulling out one of the most obscure people from her past out of her odiferous ass.
“Yes it’s me, Cindy.”
“What are you doing in Vermont? Is grandfather here?” she replied.
Prince was trying to be as diplomatic as a lawyer could be, although his hypocritical oath forbade him from displaying any real emotion unless it had the potential to earn him money. He gently moved Cindy over the side away from the crowd and whispered, “Your grandfather passed away.”
She must have had an intense wax buildup from the months of deplorable hygiene, “What did you say?”
“I said, your grandfather passed away,” Prince said with a little more determination.
The words managed to penetrate a small opening in Cindy’s left earlobe and then rumbled around her brain a few times until the words collectively made sense.
“Did you just say that ‘Pappy’ died?” she asked with very little deviation in her face.
“Yes.”
The news hit her like an atomic bomb, as her eyes turned flame red and she about to experience a complete emotional meltdown.
“MY PAPPY IS DEAD! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO KILL MY PAPPY?” she yelled as a concerned rent-a-cop came over and lightly took Prince into ice cream custody with only his trusty flashlight at his disposal.
It took a few minutes for the Ben & Jerry’s management to listen to Prince's explanation why he was in Vermont, and then he and Cindy were asked to leave the building.
Prince looked over at Cindy and her red, bloodshot eyes and flashed back to watching George Shuman handle his granddaughter when she got upset.
“Can I buy you an ice cream cone?” Prince said, as he had somehow surrendered his useless body to the spirit of George Shuman.
She dabbed the tears away from her eyes and replied, “Double scoop?”
He smiled, “Double scoop.”
They sat down and Cindy started to devour the Chubby Hubby ice cream as Prince ate some Chocolate Fudge Brownie yogurt and started to unravel the mystery why he was really in Vermont.
“We need to go back to New York because your grandfather left you his company in his will.”
“I hope he left Mark something good,” Cindy asked in typical selfless fashion.
Prince smirked, “Yes, he will be taken care of.”
“Goody, goody gumdrops!” she exclaimed.
The ride back to New York was preempted by a brief check-in to a hotel so Cindy could take a shower or three. Prince surmised that there was no way he was going to sacrifice the inside of his car for someone so smelly and eventually disposable.
Call for Help!
The drive from Vermont to Long Island was slow and it was painfully quiet. Cindy barely spoke to Prince between naps because she was still trying to process the death of her grandfather, and the collective impact of all the weed she smoked was ever-present. They rolled into the rural parking lot of Shuman Enterprises at about three o’clock in the morning and both travelers were a bit groggy. Prince opened the front door with his key and Cindy followed just behind him and then led her into a back area that had a bed and a full bathroom; she was sleeping snuggly by the time he closed up and went home.
Cindy had some really detailed and completely fucked up dreams that night, where her grandpa’ was talking to her from the inside of his grave. She was standing over the big rectangular hole in the ground and her grandfather was sitting near some of the toys she loved to play with at his house when she was young. Her red tricycle, a multi-colored ball, and a set of knives she used to throw against the wall to trace the outline of her brother.
“You were such a good girl,” a younger George Shuman said.
“Why did you have to die, Pappa?”
“Because I got old,” he said as he tossed the ball up to her.
“You are my shining star, Cindy. Don’t let me down.”
“What do you mean, don't let me down? I don’t know anything about running a company,” she replied.
As his image faded out and she was waking up, George said, “Don’t think like everyone else. Just focus on what makes you happy.”
“What makes me happy? I like to smoke pot…” she stated.
He yelled, “Get off the pipe you crack-head! Time is a wasting!”
She woke up and took a shower and then changed into some clothes that were left for her back in the room she had slept in. And just as she was about to emerge from the shadows, her grandfather’s secretary entered the room.
“Little Cindy Lou, oh how you have grown up!” Grace beamed. “Your grandfather would be so proud of you.”
It took the few brain cells that Cindy had left to piece together the origin of the old lad in front of her. The woman was a saint and always was there for Cindy when she needed help in her youth.
“Gracie! Is it you?” Cindy exclaimed as she skipped over to Grace and they embraced.
“Great to have you home, dear,” Grace said.
And, as usual, Cindy said the first thing that came into her mind, “Great to be home, Gracie.”
The broke the hug and Grace asked Cindy a similar question that she did years earlier, “What do you want to do today, Cindy?”
Cindy had nothing on her mind other than to do the thing she always did when things got tough, “I need to see my brother.”
Grace was always ready for action, “I’ll set it up. Follow me, I got you some Lucky Charms cereal just like you used to like it.”
Cindy skipped behind Grace in glee and followed the Pied Piper to a sugar breakfast cereal that was ‘magically delicious.’ Twenty minutes and three phone calls later, a Lincoln Town Car was waiting outside of the warehouse to take Cindy into Manhattan to meet with her brother.
“Now you take care of yourself in the big city,” Grace said. “Here is a card so that you can get yourself some clothes.”
Cindy hugged Grace as she replied, “Thank you, Grace! You always take such great care of me.”
“It’s my pleasure, dear,” Grace stated as she opened the back door of the black car and then closed it when her charge was safely inside. Cindy waved to Grace and she waved back as the car rolled out of the long, dirt roadway and onto the paved main road.
Cindy fell back asleep as she headed into the city, the warmth of the mid-day sun sending her into a comfortable nap-coma. Her grandfather once again came to her in a dream, only this time they were walking together on the floor of his factory. He was older and obviously wise along with his years.
“Be careful who you trust, Cindy.”
“What do you mean, grandpa’?” she countered.
“Do you ever notice that every time I ask you a question in these dreams, you come back with another question?”
“I do?” Cindy replied.
George nodded in acknowledgement of the trend and then said, “You must listen to your heart.” And then he quickly spoke again as a preemptive strike against a potential question, “And you also must listen to me without asking so many questions.”
He then faded out as the driver rolled up to the Serendipity 3 restaurant on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan. The sway of the car served as a natural alarm clock and brought Cindy from sleep to her awakened state.
“What?” she said to her grandfather in the transition, who rolled his eyes at the additional question.
“We are here, Miss Shuman,” the driver said in a peaceful voice.
“Okay,” Cindy said as she rubbed her eyes as the driver scooted around the car to open her door.
She exited the car and the man said, “I will be waiting for you when you come out.”
Cindy thanked the man and then walked into the restaurant, still a bit dazed from her hour-long slumber. There was no sight of her brother, who was always notoriously late for appointments, so she asked for a table for two and was seated on the upper level of the restaurant.
“Welcome to Serendipity, can I get you something to drink while you wait?” the waitress asked Cindy.
She smiled like a kid in a candy shop, “Frozen hot chocolate, please!”
A few minutes later the waitress delivered a tub of chocolaty-goodness and Cindy wasted no time in placing the straw in her mouth and slurping down as much as she could in one breath – and then she did it again and again, until she was paralyzed in a brain-freeze condition. Of course, that was the point where her brother entered the restaurant and he was escorted to the table.
“There’s my beautiful and talented sister!” resident bullshit artist Mark Shuman said to Cindy, who put a single finger up to signify that she would be with him in a minute once the stinging pain of the upper lobe freeze subsided.
He kissed her on the forehead and then sat down, while Cindy came back to her senses.
“Can I get you anything to drink, sir?” the waitress asked.
Cindy was coming back to life, “He’ll have one of these!” she blurted, pointing to her drink.
He ignored his sister’s request and turned to the waitress, “I’d like a chai latte with soy milk, not regular milk.”
The waitress walked away mumbling, “What does he think this is, fuckin’ Starbucks?”
“I don’t drink that stuff anymore,” a somewhat polite Mark said because he obviously wanted his sister to believe that he wasn’t after something, when he was obviously after everything.
“So, what brings you to the big city?” Mark asked, fully knowing why his sister had come back.
She took another sip of the drink and somehow hoped that the powers of the concoction would give her the strength to effectively relay her concern.
“I need your help!” Cindy exclaimed in her best baby-inspired voice.
He somehow kept a straight face and replied, “With what?”
She broke down and said, “Did you hear that pappy died?”
He nodded, “Yes. I just heard.”
She moved closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder, which was usually a no-no in the no intimate contact world of Mark Shuman. But he played along and put his arm around her so that she would feel comforted and even more vulnerable.
“I missed him so much!” she said as she started crying.
“Me too,” he replied.
Just then the waitress came over with the chai tea and also another huge vat of frozen hot chocolate, which she placed in front of Cindy.
“We have a special rule here that anyone shedding a tear must be infused immediately with as much chocolate as we can squeeze into a really large glass. There’s no crying her at Serendipity.”
Cindy took a big sip of the new drink and then the waitress asked, “Better?”
Cindy uncurled her lip and replied, “Better.”
Mark happily was released from the contact and moved his chair back away from his sister, who barely noticed the move through the haze of chocolate.
He was desperate to get back on track, “So, what did you say that you needed my help with?”
She took another drink and then sat back in her chair, “Well, it appears that pappy left me his company and I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do?"
At first, Mark wasn’t sure if Prince had supplied Cindy with the full details of the will, but then he quickly remembered a conversation they had when Cindy was sleeping on the ride back from Vermont.
“Yeah, I just informed the granddaughter of George Shuman that if she did not make a profit during her year in control of the company that all ownership rights would revert to her brother, Mark Shuman.”
“How did she take the news?” Mark asked.
“She was either stunned or she slept right through it,” Prince replied, “It’s hard to tell with your sister whether she’s awake or really buzzed.”
The two men laughed and then Mark was transported back into the restaurant after his flashback.
“What do you need me to do?” Mark asked his sister.
“I think I need to hire people, because there was no one left inside the building except for that wonderful old lady Grace!”
“Why don’t I find a human resources person and then I’ll send him… I mean then I’ll send him or her out to you on Long Island.”
Cindy missed the obvious reference to a already-targeted person, because she was so focused on offloading any serious responsibility to her fully-competent brother.
“Okay! Now we’re talking! And then you’ll visit me and we’ll play cowboys and Indians in the warehouse like we used to when we were kids?”
He couldn’t believe how truly different he and his sister were, and how she was probably one of the most retarded and irresponsible people he had ever met.
“Yes, I will come visit you,” Mark replied.
“Great! I’ll have Grace get us some cap guns and rubber arrows.”
He smiled the look of ingenuity and replied, “I can’t wait.’
Shuman Resources
Mark Shuman knew from the moment he heard about the details of his grandfather’s will that he would have some involvement in Cindy’s one year trial run. The question he really had before their frozen hot chocolate meeting was, “How much pull and influence would he really have?” The answer came through loud and clear in between whimpers and whines, as Cindy Shuman basically handed the keys to the business to her older brother.
The first task on the ‘sabotage my sister and then take over the company’ list was finding a human resources professional to assemble the 99 employees needed to run the company, or at least give the appearance of running the company. One of Mark’s best friends was his roommate and fraternity brother from his days at George Washington University, and he just happened to be a recruiter that had just been laid off and was looking for work.
Mark ripped off a text to his friend, “Starbucks in 20 minutes.”
Jeff Birnbaum was sitting on his couch in his boxer shorts and a white t-shirt that read, “FUCK THIS SHIT!” He was tired of being laid off from one job after the other as a result of mergers and a bunch of managers in a room deciding that their bonuses were more important than keeping the quirky, but effective HR guy. Jeff was depressed and he was a few days away from putting his tail back between his legs and giving in to his mother’s request to come back and live at home. Besides, the rent was due in a few weeks and it was doubtful that the money would magically appear or grow on a fabled cash tree.
He moved through the rinse cycle of his shower and then threw on a pair of shorts, a t-shirt from his college fraternity, and some sandals and was out the door. New York was moving into the dog days of summer and there really wasn’t any need to wear extra fabric. He settled into a chair at Starbucks and sipped a foamy espresso, which gave him the adrenaline adjustment that he sorely needed.
Mark walked through the door an impressive 15 minutes late, which his friend had anticipated by arriving 12 minutes after the time he was supposed to be there. Operating on “Shuman Time” was nothing new for Jeff Birnbaum, so he simply adjusted the schedule accordingly by either telling his friend a false time or arriving later than the time that Mark set.
Mark ordered his usual chai latte and then walked over to his buddy as they shook hands and did their best white man version of a bro’ hug. Mark waited to sit down until he had his drink in hand.
“So, why the urgent call? I haven’t heard from you in a few months,” a slightly annoyed and scorned Jeff said.
Mark took a dainty sip of the steaming liquid and then defiantly replied, “Don’t get your stockings all in a bunch their Alice! I’ve been working on a special project lately and I wanted to ask you if you would help me?”
Jeff sat up slightly in his chair, as the mention of working on anything, let alone a ‘special project,’ definitely got his attention.
“What kind of special project?” Jeff asked.
“Oh, no! You’re not going to ask me questions until my ears bleed, are you?”
Jeff countered, “What do you mean?”
“Holy shit, dude! This shit is scary, because you’re starting to sound like my sister!” Mark stated.
“I do not! Why would you say that?” Jeff questioned.
“Can you go two minutes without asking a question?” Mark bluntly replied.
“Yes,” Jeff said, although he had another question about the project he was dying to ask.
Mark looked out of the window to the people and cars zipping by on the busy Manhattan street. Streams of thoughts were going through Jeff’s head and he did just about everything he could to stifle the reams of potential queries and questions.
Mark casually looked back at his friend and said, “You’re face is turning red. Dude, you look like your holding your breath or something.”
“I’m okay,” Jeff said and then was going to ask Mark a general question about what he had been doing, but decided to continue to hold back.
“You’re just dying to ask me a question,” Mark said, continuing the torture. And then he loaded up the one statement he knew would elicit a question, “My grandpa’ died last week.”
Jeff instinctively unlocked the question door and then opened his mouth without even realizing what he was doing. It was the kind of out-of-body experience that he felt was an unfair representation of his inquisitive nature.
“Sorry to hear that. How old was he?”
Mark’s eyes widened as he knew the bet had been won. Jeff realized that he had asked a question, “Oh man, that wasn’t fair! Come to think of it, I didn’t even realize that I was asking you a question.”
Mark needed to press on with his agenda, “Okay, now that we’ve established that you’re a serial questioner, let’s get down to the real business at hand. The answer to your very astute and obviously unavoidable question is that he was old, very old, and it’s time for the younger generation to step up and claim what is rightfully ours.”
No question surfaced from Birnbaum, so Shuman continued, “My grandfather was a very successful businessman and he made millions with a variety of companies, but all I have been interested in my whole life is his drug company…”
Mark continued to ramble about when he was younger and how he loved to shadow his grandfather at work, but Jeff had already checked out and started to talk to himself internally, “What the fuck is this guy talking about? Why do I have to listen to him ramble every time we get together? And how am I supposed to sit here with a straight face? Holy shit, I do ask a lot of questions.”
The flow of talk finally ceded and Jeff immediately jumped in with a self-centered question, “So what does all of this have to do with me?”
“I’m glad you asked yet another question, my unemployed friend, because it just so happens that my grandfather sort of left the company to me.”
“Wow, that is cool!" Jeff stated as the two guys celebrated by bumping fists.
“Ah, but there is a slight hitch to me gaining full official control of the company, and before you ask me what that is I’m just going to tell you. My sister gets it first.”
Jeff was flabbergasted, “For how long?”
“One year,” Mark replied. “She has to make a profit within one year.”
Jeff’s business senses kicked back on, “A single quarterly profit or an annual total profit?”
“An annual total profit,” Mark replied.
Jeff didn’t have to think very long about his response, “No way! She’ll never be able to make a dime!”
“Exactly! But in the meantime, she has asked me to help her with the day-to-day operations of the company, including all of the staffing needs.”
“Does she know that if she fails, you get the company?” Jeff inquired.
“She was informed on the trip back from Vermont, but I’m not sure if she was completely alert when this information was revealed. Not that it really matters anyway, right?”
“Right,” Jeff replied and then really got down to business, “How much are you going to pay me?”
Mark was in a giving mood for a change, especially since any monies paid to his friend would detract from the company’s bottom line and move his sister further away from keeping his company.
“How much do you want to make?”
“Is that a trick question?” Jeff asked.
“Since you are incapable of directly answering a question without first asking a question of your own, I’m going to make this easy for you. What was your top salary?”
Jeff immediately knew the answer to the question, but needed to ask one more question in the interim, “Including bonus?”
Mark gave in to his friend, “Including bonus.”
I made $125,000 when I was working at Citigroup a few years ago.”
“Is it safe to assume that your compensation was 100K and the bonus was 25K?”
“Well played, Mr. Shuman. Well played,” Jeff stated.
“All right, since the Shuman family needs immediate help with human resources, and you are available to close the gap and tackle Shuman Resources, I hereby am in position to double your highest salary and bonus and offer you the tidy sum of $250,000 for the year.”
“I accept!” an elated Jeff Birnbaum exclaimed, “Can I get that in writing?”
“Of course!” Mark replied as the two men stood and shook hands on the deal. “But there’s one major thing I need you to do for me.”
Jeff knew there had to be a hitch in the seemingly inconceivable plan.
“Anything. What do you need, my brotha’?” Jeff replied in his best pseudo-hood vernacular.
Mark moved in closer so that only Jeff could hear, “Make sure that you hire only the least qualified and ill-suited candidates for the positions,” and then stepped back.
“Seriously?” Jeff asked.
“Seriously,” Mark sternly replied like a boss absolutely needing something to get done without any slip-ups.
The Search is on!
Jeff Birnbaum instantly rented a U-Haul truck and moved his stuff from his city apartment, where he could give two shits about his measly security deposit, to a vacant foreclosed house that her rented for what amounted to peanuts. The two guys decided to split Jeff’s bonus between a $25,000 signing bonus and then a $25,000 year-end bonus so he would have a little more lee-way in his financial situation.
Nobody was happier to see Jeff on Long Island more than Cindy, who always got along with her brother’s friend. Jeff's parents were also happy that Their son was back in his Long Island roots, but his father was a little skeptical after the euphoria of the news that their nest would continue to be empty.
“I don’t trust that Shuman kid, and I never did,” Mel Birnbaum stated.
“Why is that?” Rita Birnbaum asked, proving that her gene pool was obviously influential in his son’s questioning development.
“He rarely ever makes eye contact, and when he does it creeps me out.”
“But our son has a job. Isn’t that great?”
Mel couldn’t argue with simple logic such as that, so he ceded, “Yes it is.”
Meanwhile, their son rented a car for a week until he purchased his own car, and drove 20 minutes down the road to company headquarters in Huntington where he was greeted in the parking lot by an elated Cindy Shuman. She was looking out of one of the front windows and saw him pull up; he barely got out of the car when she christened the occasion by completing the first of many politically incorrect acts: a jump-on followed by a limber, mid-air leg straddle.
“I’m so glad you are here!” Cindy said as she hugged him tight. “Mark told me that you were coming to help us!”
The hug must have not only lasted too long, because it left Jeff with a bit of a bulging situation. They stood outside talking as he sported an erection in his basketball shorts that would have been noticeable to just about any human being with a pulse. But, Cindy did not look down and embarrass her new Director of Human Resources, she simply said, “Come on in and I’ll show you around.”
He obviously needed a minute to compose himself, “I’ll be there in just a second I have to get something out of my car.”
“Did you get me a present?” Cindy happily squealed like a little kid.
“You don’t want to spoil the surprise? Go inside and I’ll be there in a minute,” he said, trying to regain his composure.
Cindy turned and walked back inside as Jeff tried to refocus his thoughts, “Old wrinkled ladies, piles of horse shit…” then, just as he was getting the bulge under control, an image of Cindy naked on a bear-skin rug flashed through his mind. “Oh, that isn’t good for business.”
Jeff eventually got the situation under control because he had to browse in his car for anything to bring inside and pass off as a gift. There wasn’t much to chose from, being that he had just picked up the car and stopped off at 7-Eleven on the way. So, he walked inside with a smile and a half-eaten bag of Cheese Doodles, which he placed behind his back to enhance the big surprise. The one thing he did know about Cindy was that she loved being surprised probably as much or more than the actual gift itself.
After entering the premises, Jeff played along and said “Close your eyes and put out your hands!”
Cindy complied with the request and Jeff placed the crumpled bag in her hand and then out an old, sticky jellybean out of the lining of his shorts and also placed it in her hands.
“Can I open?” she excitedly asked.
“Yes, open your eyes and you will get a big surprise,” Jeff stated as if he was at a party of four year-olds.
Cindy excitedly opened her big blue eyes and was amazed to see her surprise.
“Oh, I love Cheese Doodles, she said as she rifled through the bag and stuffed the remaining four doodles in her mouth. She had barely processed the highly-processed snack before she focused on the brown candy with some pocket lint fixed to her palm.
“And desert, too!” she exclaimed as she tossed the Jelly Belly candy in her mouth and analyzed its contents, “Root beer! I love root beer!” she said as she hugged him again, causing a repeated scene that had just played out in the parking lot.
Since there were now only three employees in a company of 100 employees, Jeff decided to take Cindy out to lunch and explain how they were going to fill all of those positions in such a short period of time. However, he was going to have to explain it over her fascination with about just ever food in the Huntington Diner.
She stood in front of the classy fixture that was the rotating desert case for a good five minutes until a waitress came up to her and said in her best raspy Long Island accent, “Ya’ know, we can bring one of those ova’ to ya’ table?”
Cindy was all-in, “Okay, great! I’ll go sit down now.”
“Can we eat desert first and then have the meal?" she asked. "I’m not sure I can wait that long.”
He replied, “Is that what you want?” preserving the question for question quota that was apparently present.
She nodded in approval as the waitress came over.
“What can I get you, kids?”
“Can I have a piece of that big chocolate pie?” she asked as if the waitress had a hand in approving her desert selection.
“Sure, hun. And you?” she asked as she turned to Jeff.
“Did you see anything else you wanted to try?” he asked Cindy.
“What about the cheesecake with that gooey strawberry topping?”
The waitress was now in tune with the pair that asked questions in the form of actual answers.
“Okay, one piece of chocolate cake and another piece of cheesecake coming right up!”
The waitress walked away and Jeff got right down to business to initiate the company’s first unofficial meeting.
“Did you know that we only have a few weeks before the first quarter of our fiscal year starts on September 1st?”
“Do I have to talk about business when I am about to eat pie?” she replied, wanting to avoid such serious discussion for as long as she lived.
Jeff knew it would be a struggle to talk to Cindy about anything to do with the company, which in his mind was perfectly in sync with her brother’s master plan.
“Is it all right if I just say one thing?”
The waitress walked over with the mile-high pieces of pie, which made Cindy all squishy with excitement in her pants. She put the chocolate pie in front of Cindy and the cheesecake slathered in strawberries and sauce in front of Jeff and the said, “Enjoy, kids!”
Cindy was all set to dive into her piece, but Jeff put a stop to that.
“We can put the two pieces of pie in the middle and share, but you have to let me say this one thing, okay?”
She nodded affirmatively after thinking for a moment with a heavy sad curl in her lip.
“We have to hire 97 people in the next two weeks, are you ready for it?”
He slid his pie to the center of the table and she did the same, “Yes, can we eat now?”
Jeff said nothing else other than diving into the cheesecake with his fork and then he snatched a piece of her seven-layer cake, before she dove into the chocolate cake and then flicked a strawberry at him causing a mini food fight.
So, the mad dash to add 97 people to the staff without even a hint of fiscal responsibility was on. Of course, Mark Shuman had explicit instructions for his inside man.
“Make sure you add the most irresponsible and least qualified people for those positions, and then we’ll fire all of them and start from scratch next year.”
“You wouldn’t fire your best friend, too?” Jeff asked.
Mark replied with an emphatic “No!” although he did add the following when he hung up the phone, “but I will slice the shit out of that bloated salary!”
There were a variety of positions to fill within the drug company, including jobs in the Production, Marketing, Sales, Distribution and Technology departments. Jeff put ads in the local newspapers and also on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. He also fielded random suggestions from Cindy most of day.
“Do you think we should take care of our employees by providing day care and building an on-site fitness facility?”
“Could we have a recent mother come in and feed the babies with her own milk?” Jeff said in his most sarcastic voice, but he was nonetheless intrigued with the idea. He quickly realized that the wackier his suggestions and thoughts, the more she would brainstorm the concept into eventual disaster.
“And could we hire a completely out of shape instructor to teach all of our fitness classes?” she asked.
“Only if you think it’s a good idea to hire professionals to teach pole dancing classes and administer massages?”
So together, they carved out a sixth department they called “Wellness,” which ate into the total allotment of employees and summarily weakened the other departments.
The Interviews
Cindy and Jeff conducted all of the interviews together, which assured that there would never be a shortage of questions.
“So what do you feel like would be your greatest asset as an employee?” Jeff asked candidate number one for the Wellness Department.
“Besides these, my flexibility,” the well-endowed blonde women replied as she gestured toward her boobs.
Cindy was undaunted and unfazed as usual, “Can you show us?”
The woman wearing five-inch spiked heels stood up, pulled down her top, stood up as her saline-enhanced breasts perked up to the air conditioning, and then dropped to the carpeted floor in a split. She then rolled over on her back and wrapped her legs around her head, revealing her shaved vagina, which was not being obscured by any undergarments.
“Why doesn’t my vee-jay-jay look like that?” Cindy asked. Isn’t she flexible?” Cindy asked a speechless Jeff and then dropped to the floor next to the women they were interviewing.
“Can you show me how to put my legs over my head like that?” Cindy asked the women who went by the handle of ‘Destiny.’
Destiny lifted Cindy’s legs, but the momentum of the action sent Cindy rolling across the floor before crashing into a row of file cabinets.
“Sorry!” Destiny yelled.
“Do you think we should hire her?” Cindy yelled from a distance.
Jeff bent over and was still face-to-lady parts as he extended his hand to a woman with her legs still wrapped around her head.
“I think you’re hired?”
“When do I start?” she asked.
“September 1st. Will 9-5 work?” Jeff asked.
She signaled ‘okay’ with her right hand and then said, “It will give me plenty of time to limber up for my nighttime gig.”
Jeff was solely responsible for collecting all of the thousands of resumes that he received in his new company e-mail address, and then skimming off the cream of the crop and then the mid-level talent to leave whatever crap was left in the bottom of the barrel. Somehow, Cindy saw the good in every person no matter how heinous their work background was. That skill of positivity would come in handy with the next batch of recruits.
Cindy’s first official capacity was to name herself as CEO, Chief Executive Officer, after repeated prodding from Birnbaum. With one spot in the Wellness Department filled, it was on to the position of Chief Financial Officer, or CFO. After the first candidate cancelled because he was collecting long-term disability and found out that a job that paid money would infringe on that, it was on to a red and sweaty ball of flesh named Vernon Pile.
“Do you like numbers?” Cindy asked because Jeff told her that it would be an important part of the job.
Pile was obviously a wordsmith, “Yes.”
Jeff moved in to the subsequent silence and sought a soft clarification, “What types of numbers?”
“Even and odd,” Pile replied.
“So, you like both types of numbers?” Cindy inquired.
“Yes.”
Cindy turned to Jeff, “See, that’s important.”
“Did you take accounting classes in college?” Jeff asked.
“As you see on my resume, I graduated with honors from The Beltway Institute.”
Jeff was obviously having a hard time being passive, “Is that a four-year school?”
Pile laughed, “Four years? Hell, it took me less than a month to get that degree on line. Saved myself a bundle in money!” he said proudly.
“See, he is good with money,” Cindy stated.
The next CFO candidate was a notorious thief who stole money from every company he had ever been associated with. He was a corporate kleptomaniac and had just been released from white collar prison after consecutive one-year stints.
“You have a great background with some really cool companies,” Cindy said to William Moore.
“Thank you,” Moore replied.
Jeff was dying to ask the obvious question, because the resume had more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese.
“I can see that you’ve had - how can I put this – various breaks in your employment history.”
Cindy was confused, “Is that a question?”
“Oh sorry,” Jeff said, “Can you explain it?”
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(Pages 1-56 show above.)