| View Blog
|
|
|
|
| Fettered Volleys (part 7) |
I was lost in the ornamentation of his lyrical speech. His baroque plea temporarily stunned my ability to respond. Besides, I had not made advance plans of what I was going to say to whomever answered the phone. Now, I was stuck in the ornate scroll work of this distinguished gentleman's wording. Intimidated and without a formal script, I coughed out a limp reply,
"Er, yes, I'm here sir. Sorry, we must have a bad connection."
"No problem," he said reverting to the bland pronunciation of West Coast English, "How can I direct
your call, today, M'am?"
"Well," I fumbled, "Maybe you could tell me what exactly IS CL Laboratories. I mean what kind of business
does your company handle?" I hoped to seem articular.
Immediately, this Kirt Seaver character became gruff with my query and belted out crudely, "M'am, I can tell
you our company deals only with high profile clients, directly. It is apparent to me that you are not one of them...
don't waste our time!"
With that, he abruptly hung up the phone, ending our short ball game with a mere five count volley. I sat there, on the edge of the bed admonishing my absurdity. Did I really think I could tie together this stadium-sized netting
with a five minute phone call? Instead of the imagined spike to the other teams' glossy gym floor, I watched the quilted leather ball disappear into the thick coats of lacquer on my side of the meshwork. Now what? I thought to myself. It was evident that CL Labs wasn't going to answer my questions; who were they, what was so urgent, and what did Alex have to do with it all? I certainly wasn't going to humor him with my interest, nor let on that I had intercepted his mail service. The only person they would deal with was "the client, directly" and unless I could find an Alex impersonator, my female voice was unavailing.
I resigned the notion that I would get anywhere with this thing by telephone circuit; balanced the remainder of a half-smoked cigarette between my lips and lit its pleated end. After a theatrical drag, I angled the crumpled torch back into the white resin ash reservoir; letting the smoke rise in spires, and consulted my watch at the pull-back. Twelve forty-four. In less than two hours, my ability to scour for clues would be interrupted by the noise and demands of a small herd of hungry children needing help with Math equations.
Two more drags and I snuffed out my smokey treat. I transferred the bed pillows to a sun-soaked spot on the window seat, grabbed the letter and my laptop from the nightstand, and settled in my niche. The midday light was glaring on the flat panel where I typed "CL Laboratories, San Diego" into the search box. When I turned back from adjusting the blinds, the monitor showed "2617 Search Results for...". I tapped my cursor back up to the search box, dragged a blue highlight across the word "Laboratories" and double- tapped my finger to delete; run a search without the broad noun included. The screen blacked out for a brief nanosecond, then jogged back with "104 Search Results for...".
|
|
Posted by paperlily on 2008-07-19 18:32:47 | Rating: | Views: 160
|
|
| |
|
|
Email This to a Friend 
