Chapter 18: The Voice on the Line

The customer service department of the biggest department store in Seattle sat on the ninth floor, behind a glass door that said NO VISITORS.

A woman in a gray suit opened it herself and said, "Hi, honey. It's the coat."

I knew her voice before I saw her.

She was about fifty-five, with silver earrings and reading glasses pushed up into her hair.

She held out both hands.

"You never told me your name," I said.

"Nobody's asked in nineteen years."

She told me her name, and then she asked me to keep calling her the rep, because it was the only title she had ever liked.

Behind her, through a wall of glass, three hundred people in headsets sat in rows and talked quietly into their desks.

It looked like a cathedral for people who say "I understand your frustration."

"You run the whole call center," I said.

"I run all of it," the rep said. "Nine floors, eleven cities."

She smiled.

"When you rang me on a Sunday night about a coat, I was in my pajamas. I'd taken the line to cover a sick agent."

"Why were you on it?"

"I miss the callers," she said.

She looked at Gus, who had come in behind me with his security jacket buttoned wrong.

Then she looked at Reed, who was holding my bag.

"Now," the rep said. "Who needs what?"

I explained.

I explained Gus, and the community with the pool and the bingo league, and the three tabs I'd had open for a week.

"Waiting lists are three years," Gus muttered. "I called. The nice ones say, 'We'll let you know.'"

The rep took her glasses out of her hair and put them on.

"Let me make one call," she said.

She picked up the phone on a nearby desk, dialed from memory, and spoke for four minutes in a sweet, steady voice.

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