Selling drugs for a living

OPTIMUM SALES




“Apply yourself. Put everything you’ve got into it.” Tyrone Bledsoe heard his older brother Leo’s voice inside his head. “You’ve got only one go-round.”

Bledsoe, a relatively normal American of the new century, had been a salesman for Tsar-Siempre Pharmaceutical Corporation (TSPC) for many years before he was arrested for selling drugs on the street. As he sat in handcuffs, waiting to be booked, he had plenty of time to reflect. He had remembered his brother’s voice, and now he remembered the training sessions when he first began at TSPC.

What a dynamic motivator the sales manager Dan Jacobs Booty (DJ) had been! DJ had always been upbeat and energetic, but sometimes he became exasperated with the trainees. “God damn it!” DJ would roar. “You’re not just selling drugs! You’re spreading health and prosperity!” Then he modulated his tone. “A better life for our customers. A fatter wallet for you and me. You’re actually doing good when you do well. I don’t want anyone coming back from a sales trip without at least ten sales to individual doctors – or two contracts with clinics – or one solid contract with a hospital – or some combination of those. You get me those – we’re talking decent commissions. You bring back more than that – you’re in bonus territory.

“I especially don’t want anyone coming back with a load of samples that you were too timid to pass around. Give those packages away. That’s how a new product gets moving.

“We give away ten thousand pills; we get back a thousand customers willing to spend eighty bucks a month for ten or fifteen years. The pills cost maybe fifty cents to make – we’re giving away only $5,000. But do the math – 80 times 12 equals $960 times a thousand equals about a million a year in return.

“That pays our wages, costs and overhead with some left over for research, without which this company dies.”

Bledsoe hadn’t been a stellar salesman, although his intentions were to try his best. As he drove in his vehicle, he often hummed “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” or “Onward Christian Soldiers” – songs that he had learned in his childhood at Sunday school. He usually returned with several doctors’ orders and one clinic or perhaps six or eight doctors, just a little under the standard, but enough to keep him on the sales staff. His best trip had produced twelve new doctors signed and one clinic contracted; that quarter he was top salesmen by a squeak. Twice he had gotten contracts with hospitals, but they had been low-volume rural hospitals.

The one thing Tyrone never did was bring samples back. That was the easy part because every doctor was happy to have free drugs to dispense. Of course, he couldn’t give samples to just anyone; they had to be handed to a licensed physician or a physician's assistant or registered nurse – someone who could legally handle a prescription.

At first, doctors intimidated Bledsoe. He saw them as superior, so highly educated and making life or death decisions about other people’s lives. His own education had consisted of two years at a community college and a BA in business from a business college and his grades had been average. He preferred talking to secretaries or office managers, who could relay his proposals. However, at last he had to speak to a decision-maker and that was always a doctor. Then, Bledsoe ratcheted his courage and blurted his spiel, so the doctor would say, “Whoa, hold on a minute. Say that again.” Or he or she might say, “Slow down. I didn’t get that.” Perhaps Bledsoe’s large moist brown eyes created unusual patience and empathy in the doctors as if they were dealing with a puppy or a kitten that had yet to fathom the rules of the new world.

Gradually Bledsoe realized that he and the doctors were in a partnership, and he began to relax. They were truly interested in his products, would willingly take the samples to try with patients, and would order drugs they were short of. He developed relationships with some, especially rural doctors, who seemed happy to see him again.

This familiarity disturbed him because doctors began to come down off the pedestal he had imagined them on. Several doctors smoked tobacco, the riskiest behavior anyone could do to diminish his or her health, and he knew they knew the risks. Why did they smoke? Once he arrived after hours and found a doctor having unprotected sex with his receptionist on an examination table. That doctor, married to another woman, placed – with a red-faced, breathless anxiety – an extra large order for almost anything Bledsoe showed him. Bledsoe’s round brown eyes had shone with sympathy.

The most distressing doctor was Dr. William K. Lester, who lived in the small town of Oakmount in the Midwest. He was obese, smoked tobacco and drank alcohol. He waddled and huffed around like a fattened goose ready for the chef’s merciful blade. The doctor wouldn’t smoke in front of his patients, but every hour, he stepped outside behind his office and sucked down a cigarette. If Bledsoe met him after normal office hours, he would find Dr. Lester drinking whisky from a bottle and chain-smoking and the remains of a greasy dinner stuffed into the wastebasket beside his desk. Bledsoe began to associate the combined odors of alcohol, tobacco and fatty food with Dr. Lester; Bledsoe secretly nicknamed the doctor “ATF” and then “Jabba the Doc.”

Finally, one day he asked Lester, “Doc, why do you drink and smoke?”

“And eat too much of the wrong foods?”

“Ok, that, too.”

“A failed life, Tyrone.”

“How can you say that? You’re a doctor. You help people. You’ve done a lot of good.”

“I keep people going, so they can live their lives. I’ve become skeptical that that’s always a good thing. I’ve saved some nasty people and then seen them do harm to others. Besides failure and success are relative; they’re all in the mind.”

“No one’s life turns out exactly as he or she expects.”

“True. Perhaps I’m just bored. Tired of existence on this earth and too much of a coward to put a gun to my head. So I hurry death along with bad habits.”

“Don’t you have family?”

“That didn’t work out for me. How about you?

“I did have a family, but we’re divorced and my ex-wife and child live in Chicago, so I rarely see them.”

“What went wrong?”

“I’m not sure. I was gone a lot for this job, sometimes weeks at a time. But Sharia didn’t seem unhappy.”

“Why’d she go to Chicago?”

“Promotion. A career move.”

“Life is a bitch.”

“The consolation of religion?”

“Ha! Some of the worst people are found inside the walls of churches. I’ve treated pastors and priests and deacons for STDs and addictions, and treated their wives and children for abuse. Don’t talk to me about religion!”

“We’re all just human.”

“Do you want some of this whisky?”

“No, not for me.”

Dr. Lester died during the next quarter. The town replaced him with Dr. S. K. Pahkti from Pakistan. Dr. Pahkti, who was young and nervous, didn’t chew the fat in multiple ways as Dr. Lester had, so Bledsoe just filled his order sheet, handed out samples, had the new doctor sign the order sheet and drove on.

At the jail, a court-appointed defense attorney came in to discuss his case where Tyrone sat in an interview room. The attorney – a young woman fresh out of law school, her wool skirt just revealing bony knees – said, “Tell me what happened?”

Bledsoe wanted to tell her about sales conferences and conventions. They were always held in city centers in auditoriums. He wanted to tell her that he always attended almost every session that he could. He was devoted and dedicated to his task of dispensing pharmaceuticals and helping his company to prosper.

However, in those city centers he also saw, along the streets and hanging in alleys and clustered around the entrances of half-way houses and soup kitchens, an underworld of displaced bodies and empty souls, people who seem to have been ejected from the hustling, grubbing society that he was part of. They drifted sadly and listlessly in and out of his consciousness as he moved through the centers of cities. At first he despised them and was suspicious of them, but as he became more familiar with their slouching angst, he understood that they, too, were waiting for some magic to come into their lives, just like everyone else. What did they want?

Looking steadily at her with his soulful eyes, he told his attorney, “I sold a controlled substance to a cop.”

She asked, “What was that you were humming . . . sounded familiar?”

“Oh . . . ‘Onward Christian Soldier’ . . . or . . . maybe . . .’The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’” He knew he hummed almost unconsciously.

After his pre-arraignment interview and while sitting in the jail, Tyrone thought about his own life. It wasn’t the stuff of legends, so he understood what Dr. Lester had meant. He and Sharia, the secretary he had married, had produced one darling girl before his wife was promoted and took the daughter and moved to Chicago. He no longer had a family, but he was still paying for it.

Then his older brother Leo had died from a heart attack, leaving a widow and three children – Leo, whom he had always looked up to! Even so, the two had not been close. When they had talked, Leo had assumed the stance of an advisor, telling Tyrone how to get ahead, and Tyrone had listened patiently. “Whatever you do, do it with all your might, like the Good Book says. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Bear down and build up. Money is got by the sweat of your brow. Time is money.”

Leo himself had been a hard driver, and had advanced quickly in every job he ever did. When still a young man, he had become a manager of a fast-food enterprise and later a franchise owner. Eventually, he had a large home in the suburbs, and his family seemed happy.

Tyrone had had one reservation about his brother; he ate too much of his own products – burgers, hot dogs, and fried potatoes – and brought home much of it for his family, so all of them were round, meaty beings like puffy, stuffed sausages.

At Leo’s funeral, Tyrone had hugged the widow Luanne and the children, cried and asked Leo in the coffin, “So, Leo, is this what it’s all about? Work your ass off, procreate, until you’re worn out and die?” Leo had no advice to give from the coffin.

Tyrone asked Luanne what she was going to do. “Why, Tyrone, just what Leo would’ve wanted me to do. Take over the business. I’ve always helped out when needed anyway, so I know what has to be done. You might say I’ve been Leo’s assistant manager. Timothy’s old enough to help out, so I’ll need to work until they’re all through college or have their own jobs, but I can do it.”

“Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Tyrone. You’re a good brother. I want you to stay in the kids’ lives.”

“I will.”

Despite his good intentions, Tyrone found that keeping in touch with his sister-in-law and his nephews and niece wasn’t easy. He was on the road a lot, and when he did call, he usually got an answering machine or a voice mail. Luanne was working as hard as her husband had worked, and the kids were in school or working, too. She told him on one connected call, “I figure that they might as well be earning some money, too. This way more of it stays in the family.” Timothy worked nights and weekends as a supervisor. Luella worked evenings and weekends as a counter clerk, and Bobby worked the same hours as server and janitor. Tyrone worried that the children were losing out on education.

The next year Tsar-Siempre debuted the drug Poptemim, a potent pain-killer and hypnotic-sedative combination in a shiny gold and silver capsule. It calmed while at the same time vanquishing pain. It was a bonanza, mining a vast range of the market and could be prescribed for chronic pain, migraines, serious injuries, hypertension, and insomnia. Its tagline was “Rest in painless peace.” Tyrone thought that Dr. Lester would have liked the product and its package.

Other doctors took as many as they could get, and the orders skyrocketed. DJ Booty told his sales force: “The Company really wants you to push this product. Here’s what I’m told by R and D. It stops pain as effectively as any opiate, calms as well as any tranquillizer, and puts a body to sleep better than a barbiturate. It’s got multiple uses. The doctors love it. Do well! Do good!” Dr. Pahkti ordered a huge amount for Oakmount and vicinity.

Tyrone personally delivered one order since he was heading to Oakmount anyway. He arrived late and found Dr. Pahkti alone in the office and apparently passed out on his desk, his head resting on some papers. Tyrone approached and saw that the papers were a letter to Pahkti’s mother and it was sad, expressing homesickness and boredom. One sentence stood out: “Mother, I think I have made a big mistake.”

Then Tyrone gasped to see covered by Pahkti’s arm a syringe, a rubber constriction band for taking blood pressure and two gold and sliver capsules of Poptemim broken apart, and beyond the arm a small tin plate, forceps, a Bunsen burner. In the tin plate was a muddy residue of the drug, like the scum on the edge of a toxic canal. His first thought was that Pahkti had committed suicide.

He touched a finger to Pahkti’s throat and found a pulse. No he was not dead. He shook Pahkti’s right shoulder. “Doctor, Doctor, wake up. It’s Bledsoe, the salesman.”

The doctor rolled his head so it was sideways on the surface of the desk. One eye opened slightly and the doctor murmured, “Hello.”

Tyrone said, “Sit up.” He got behind the doctor and pulled his shoulders back, so the doctor sat upright in the chair, but his head still hung down. Tyrone pulled his head up and slid around so he could see the doctor’s eyes. The doctor was smiling and his eyes were slits inside which the pinhead pupils looked at him.

“You’re a mess, Doc.” Tyrone put the doctor’s head back onto the desk, found the coffee machine and got it dripping a new pot of coffee. Then he wet some paper towels and patted the doctor’s face with the cool, moist surface. He poured the black coffee between the doctor’s lips and got him to swallow. Gradually, gradually, the doctor regained his awareness.

When Tyrone saw that the doctor’s consciousness was returning, he said, “Doc, if this job is killing you, leave. You don’t have to stay here.”

“Yes, yes, you are right,” the doctor mumbled.

“When did you start shooting Popper?”

“Popper?”

“That’s what we sales people call Poptemim.”

“Just a few months.”

“I brought your new order. A gross of monthly doses.”

“Take it back.”

“My boss won’t like that.”

“I’ll sign for them, but take them.”

Dr. Pahkti signed the delivery form and drank more coffee.

“Do you need a ride home?”

“No, no, I’ll be ok. My house is behind here. . . . And thank you.”

“Move on, Doc. Life is too short.”

Dr. Pahkti left the next week. The citizens of Oakmount would thereafter have to travel to the regional hospital sixty-five miles away if they wanted medical care.

However, Tyrone had had another dilemma that night. He possessed a case of Poptemim that was signed for: over four thousand capsules.

In the first small city he came to, he drove to skid row and beckoned some derelicts to his car. They shuffled like suspicious zombies toward an elixir that could restore life. He opened one bottle of Poptemim and announced, “I’ve got Popper. You want any?”

“How much?”

“Going rate.”

A five dollar bill was shoved through the window. And another. And another. Tyrone dispensed the pills. When the last happy bum had stumbled away, he had a handful of capsules left in the bottle and, for fifteen minutes work, $120 dollars on the seat next to him.

In the first large city he passed through, he found the going rate in its demimonde was $10 a cap. He got rid of four bottles and made $1200 from an obviously pleased clientele of the disenfranchised. He said aloud as he drove away, “I’m doing good . . . and . . . I’m doing well.”

Back at his home office, he gathered a thousand Poptemim sample packages, each containing a regimen of fourteen pills, and loaded those into his car, all the while humming “Onward Christian Soldiers” and then “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

At his residence, Tyrone wrote a check for a thousand dollars and sent it to Luanne. His enclosed note read, “For the children. Let them concentrate on school. Life is too short.”

Luanne called him the next Sunday. “Thanks, Tyrone. You’re a good man. The two young ones are back in school and no longer working, but Timothy wants to stay on. He wants to run his own store one day.”

“He’s old enough. If that’s what he wants, he should do it.” He added, “And Luanne, I’ll be sending more. I want Leo’s kids to have every advantage.”

For more than a year, he sent Luanne a thousand or two every month, so the family prospered. He also flew to Chicago and visited his daughter before Christmas and took her on a shopping spree, although she was shy and didn’t understand who he was. He gave his wife a $30,000 savings bond in his daughter’s name and told the wife, “By the time she’s ready for college, it’ll help.”

When an undercover cop arrested him after Tyrone sold him a bottle of Popper for $600, Tyrone went meekly to jail.

At his arraignment, when the judge asked for his plea, Tyrone said, “Your Honor, I’m guilty of doing well by doing good.” The judge, perhaps influenced by Tyrone’s theretofore clean record and those large empathetic eyes, sentenced him to five years with the possibility of parole in eighteen months for good behavior.

Tsar-Siempre fired him, of course.

The end of "Optimum Sales"

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