Excerpt Number 1 (This is an excerpt from my upcoming book)

Prolonged exposure to Dorothy Gail painted as a mermaid can cause nightmares. She sat in a giant oyster shell. In her lap rested a scaled and finned depiction of Toto. The bubbles in the ocean water around them held the faces of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Kermit the Frog and a very stoned Paul McCartney. I began to wonder exactly what chemicals Mr. Stephens was indulging in when he created this LSD lover’s masterpiece. The gaudy monstrosity glared at me from across the office.

I need to turn my desk, I thought.

Directly below Dorothy, Joshua’s desk was a mountain of madness. Overflowing files created a wall the height of my waist. Current client information was buried beneath closed files from years past. Homeless documents were strewn in every direction, each detailing an enormous amount of personal data. Social security numbers, bank account and driver’s license numbers, and a myriad of other private financial documents from various clients were scattered in a three-foot radius, creating disaster valley beneath the mountain.

I looked at the clock. 11:30 AM. Joshua would be rolling in shortly. His workday usually began right as I was getting ready for my lunch break. I had submitted a new loan, completed several convoluted steps for three other files, and had a forty-five minute conversation with an underwriter.

Right on cue, Joshua came in the double doors. I gave him a nod without losing the shoulder grip I had on the phone. His thin and curly red hair was wet. He carried a stack of crumpled papers under one arm and an overloaded leather briefcase in the other. As usual, he was wearing a corduroy overcoat complete with elbow patches. He waddled behind his desk and dropped his pile. Some of the paper hit the desk; the rest fell beneath his chair and massaging footrest. I made another superfluous phone call so I could avoid one of Joshua’s random conversations about art or composting or the state of the beaver population in Washington.

I hung up and said a quick hello before I dove in to the explanations of the day’s business. He squinted and listened while he took off his coat. His pants were ironically too big for his frame. They fell too low, revealing a hairy and pasty gut that protruded from the unbuttoned bottom of his dress shirt. He pulled his pants up and tucked in his shirt; something I would witness ten more times before I left that afternoon. Today he wore a Tweety tie that ended just above his Santa-like belly.

“How is everything with the Prosser loan?” He asked.

“Everything is fine,” I answered. “We had a little hiccup in underwriting. Apparently Mr. Prosser had a forty-five day gap in his employment last year. He had taken a short sabbatical. I am waiting for an underwriter to clear it. She said she would call me this afternoon.”

“Okay,” he nodded, his brow creased, “So do you think we can close it tomorrow morning?”

“I think that would be seriously pushing it,” I said, confused. The closing date we agreed to wasn’t for another five days. I was right on schedule. “It still needs to clear underwriting.”

“Oh. Well, okay.”

I rolled my eyes when he turned his back.

“I am headed to lunch,” I said, “I left all of your messages on the desk.”

“Okay, alright, yeah, I will see you in a bit.”

I grabbed my little cooler and headed downstairs. The bottom floor of the three-level building had a small pizza shop and liquor store. I walked down and bought myself a cup of coffee. The shop was the only pizza and alcohol delivery service in Boulder. The walls were painted with psychedelic mushrooms and stars. Lava lamps graced every table. The same handful of pierced and dreadlocked employees worked in shifts during the week. I loved it. I had befriended all of them. I sat on their patio, mystified by the Flatiron Mountains that towered above me. The job had perks.

I ate my lunch, read a book, and used every minute of an hour before I climbed the stairs to the third floor office. When I arrived, Joshua was missing and my desk was littered with pieces of the Prosser file. I panicked. All of the documents had been removed from their clasps and several were missing completely. Joshua came back in from the bathroom wiping his wet hands on his pants.

“What happened here?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

“Well, you said you had a hiccup in underwriting so I submitted some things to another bank.”

I sat down abruptly and was startled when the phone rang. I answered. It was the underwriter whose call I was waiting for.

“Hey there! We have made that exception for you.” She said, cheerily, “All we need now is the tax certificate and we will be ready to go.

I looked through the file, but nowhere did I find the document she was requesting. I had just received it that morning and would need twenty-four hours if I wanted another one.

“That was the underwriter. She said everything is fine.” I said this almost testily and then I asked, “Where is the tax certificate?

“I think I faxed it.”

“It’s not in this pile.”

He fished through the mess on his desk several times before I joined the search. My blood was racing. Every delay in the mortgage origination business could cause a domino effect of ruin.

I started to open all of the files in the mountain. He didn’t seem surprised when, fifteen minutes into the search, I found the document I was looking for shoved in a file that had been closed for three years; a file with a last name that in no way resembled “Prosser.”

“Gosh, I don’t know how it ended up in there.”

I took the document to the fax machine and sent it to the underwriter.

“The other lender said they could close in two days,” Joshua said to my back.

“So what.” I snapped, “We are already through underwriting with this bank. It will be done on time, if not a day early.”

“Well, see, I told Mr. Prosser that we could close tomorrow morning because he plans on taking a last minute vacation.”

I found myself gripping my pyramid shaped paperweight, a gift from one of my Account Executives. I imagined the paperweight sailing across the office and lodging itself in the empty skull of the mass that sat before me.

“When-did-you-tell-him-this?” I chewed on my words.

“Last week.”

Adrenaline was pumping through my body.

“Excuse me.” I said.

I left the office and made my way to the bathroom in the hallway. I made sure I was alone before I started kicking the stall door repeatedly. The heels on my boots placed several new dents next to those I had already created in past visits to the bathroom. I splashed my face with water at the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. Behind my reflection hung one of Joshua’s insane paintings, this one depicting a flamingo in cramped hotel room. I wanted to take it back to the office and force Joshua to watch and cry as I destroyed it. I settled instead for giving it the finger and turning it sideways.

He was on the phone when I came back. I busied myself in repairing the damage he had caused to my desk while I waited for him to hang up.

“Joshua, there is no possible way for this loan to close tomorrow.” I said. “It is probably a good idea to let Mr. Prosser know.”

He proceeded to ask me “Why” several times and I had to remind him of the basic procedures of his job, typical timelines, and the detrimental habit of over-promising. We were set up to under-deliver, yet again, due to Joshua’s infinite stupidity, yet again.

“Well, man, that stinks.” He said.

He got up and put on his coat. I recognized this cue. In T-minus-ten-seconds he would make up some lame excuse for having to leave and then ask me to call the client and deliver the bad news.

“I have a meeting,” he said.

Meeting my ass, I thought. His job was to bring in loans, something he had not done in a month. The only loans closing were those that I was prospecting from the thousands of files in the office. The Prosser loan had been one that he had taken an application for and then forgotten completely. He ran across it two weeks later and exclaimed, “Oh yeah!”

I, the lowly processor, had pushed the limits to get the loan through underwriting in record time and was watching Joshua single-handedly demolish it.

“I will call Mr. Prosser,” I said, exasperated.

Joshua wasted no time in walking out the door. He took nothing but his car keys. I dug in my bag for my secret stash of cigarettes, walked out on to the small balcony and lit one. I took a long and satisfying drag and blew it out toward the mountains.

I would call Mr. Prosser. I would calmly explain the circumstances to him as he yelled from the other end of the phone. I would apologize repeatedly and take a few verbal blows before I would console him enough to continue working with us.

When Joshua came back, I told him that everything was okay. I bit my tongue when he produced some large prints of more acid tripping, black light responsive artwork, which could only have come from his “meeting.”

I worked the rest of the day, grunting in response to Joshua’s comments on maple trees and how delicious tuna can be when prepared just right. I was not shocked when the 3:30 appointment revealed a woman who refinanced for sixty-five thousand in cash only three months before, but had not paid her mortgage in six. I remained unaffected as she paced back and forth during our meeting. She repeatedly scratched her neck and sniffed loudly while trying to account for the sixty-five thousand that had magically disappeared.

I left work early and daydreamed of all the different ways to suffocate an old fat man, but I still came back the next day. A glutton for punishment, a punching bag; I was described as both by my husband and it only took me ten months of my life before I agreed and told Joshua to shove Dorothy right up his ass.