Bad Leads

Hue Nielson kept a tally chart on his desk wall.

Every Monday, he arrived at his station somewhere between ten thirty and eleven, in his creased untucked suit and blonde bed hair with enough noise to overshadow his fellow salesmen in mid pitch. His priorities were off. The huddle on Monday was never his first priority, as it should have been for every sales representative at Gregory & Gordon. No, Hue Nielson’s first priority was to take a black marker, straighten the chart on the wall, and add a line to his tally. To the average eye, this was perhaps an acceptable activity for someone who had to meet demanding quotas, create reports and take note of any leads and conversions every day. But to the other salesmen in the company, this tally marking was known to represent something other than professional success. It was just outright disturbing that any man would so unashamedly inform his workplace that his tally chart was not about leads, but about body counts. Hue’s claims about his weekend activities were inarguably outrageous, they were of course claims as far his colleagues were concerned. There was never anyone to back his stories. Despite flouting around the sales floor and forcing himself into any conversation he could hijack, Hue Nielson had not found any allies in all of the six years of his employment. An appalled audience, yes, but no allies. The other workers on his floor - all men in their late thirties and forties par one part-timer - were more than wary of Nielson’s antics, and they were beginning to tire of him. To them, Nielson was still a mystery; as unknown as the women he boasted about hooking up with.

You’re just old farts; Hue would tell them, blaming their age for their lack of interest and knowledge about the London nightlife. No one asked Hue for the identities of his alleged lovers but he offered them up anyway, using his tally chart to track each apparent encounter when he reeled off their names. Even though the general consensus agreed that Hue was probably a sleeze and surely a liar, the other men kept their own personal lives away from him, as far as banning their respective wives, girlfriends and female counterparts from visiting them at work. A man like Nielson, liar or not, could not be entertained and every woman was at risk in his presence. There may not have been anything concrete about Nielson’s love life but his attitude and arrogance was proof enough that he was distasteful – an embarrassment to his male peers and a pig to women everywhere.

Hue Nielson didn’t give a monkey about what the other men thought about him. They were all past it anyway. Half of them were already bald, a few were knocking on retirement’s door and the rest were only still at the company because it would be either too expensive to hire demanding millennials or too risky to take on a bunch of interns. He didn’t care too much that they had a negative opinion about him and the way that he spent his weekends. Each to their own; he supposed. He wasn’t “one of the guys” and had never wanted to be. Building relationships were a complete waste of time. Getting paly with the other salesmen and being invited out to their gambling games or family barbecues or kids’ recitals didn’t tickle his fancy. He’d rather hit the clubs or bars and hang out with people of his own generation. He’d been working his measly sales representative job for almost seven years with not so much as a thanks or a mention from the idiots high up. Anyone smart enough would have probably up sticks and quit. Maybe he was daft to still be larking around at Gregory & Gordon considering everybody was aware of his reputation and pretty much hated his guts. But the truth was Hue wasn’t bothered; he wasn’t interested in climbing the ladder. He wasn’t interested in adding any more workload or responsibility to his already demanding weekdays for a title. No, stuff that. He kept his average salary job to fund his Fulham bedsit and live the London life. Hue turned up, met his quotas and put up with the rest of them just so that he could disappear again at 4pm on Friday and ride the tube across the city to all the famous bars in search of a good time and a drinking partner – preferably a nice girl. The truth was he was kind of lost – and he kind of liked it.

The tally chart thing had started as a joke at first. It was a well-known fact that Hue Nielson liked girls; that was no secret. On his very first day at Gregory & Gordon as a chirpy twenty-three-year-old, he announced to the entire floor that he was disappointed that there would be no healthy male competition over who could win the “legs” because there were no “legs” to spar over. His comment had received a ripple of raised eyebrows and a deathly silence. His new manager had cleared his throat, hastily shown Hue to his pew and told him to re-read the code of conduct manual at his earliest convenience.

Hue had marvelled at how easy it had been to make his mark and much to his surprise, pee off his new colleagues. On that first day at Gregory & Gordon, Hue Nielson learnt one new thing about himself. He learnt that he enjoyed winding people up and causing a stir. He realised that with very little effort, with the right words or actions, he could possess enough presence and power to fill and turn a room. And it was that power that he delighted in; that was his reason. It could be said he “got off” on that ability. Which was how the tally chart on his desk wall gained such momentum so quickly.

The idea came to him one weekend and the following Monday, he entered the floor late as usual and made enough commotion noisily unwrapping a pinboard, he’d found in a stationary superstore to draw curiosity from the other men. Once he had their attention, he took a marker from his cabinet and started to pen a table. When he was done perfecting his axis and labels, he held it up in front of his face, cocked his head from side to side in an animated way, interrupted someone else’s call to demand adhesive and finally tacked his project on the wall. It took almost half a day before people started lurking around his station to try and figure out what strange formula had been inked on the Hue’s board. Of course, he’d made it cryptic – a series of number and symbols – to amp up the bewilderment. A few of the seniors eventually made the mistake of engaging with Hue about his chart after several days of no further activity. One of them laughed that Hue was far too young to be going senile about his leads. Another suggested that he use technology or a locked drawer to keep a record of his contacts instead of relying on a flimsy pinboard. Hue spun around in his office chair to face them and leaning back with his ankle over his thigh he told them his best “leads” were the ones he gained at the weekend. The seniors looked at each other first with confusion and then at the sight of Hue’s surly smile, they clocked onto what he meant. Check back on Monday, he called after them, as they wandered away muttering about his childishness. As promised, the board gained some activity after the weekend – two strikes. And then two more the week after that, and three more the week after that. By that time, the idea of the board had spread across the salesfloor and although the other men made sure to openly disapprove and call him a liar, nobody could help talking about it in their tight circles. Hue revelled in it; he stood by the water cooler to listen in on their coffee break conversations and took extra cigarette breaks to catch a glimpse of their musings. He heard the managers debate the probability of him hooking up with as many girls as he had recorded in such a brief time space; they judged it probable. But still outrageous. If it were true; how was he meeting them? Who were these women or more importantly who would be that naïve or foolish to go anywhere near him?

The truth was, of course, Hue was playing them - a little. Yes, he was a ladies man and everyone at Gregory & Gordon already knew that. Nevertheless he didn’t really have girls on the go the way he claimed. But what was a bit of harmless fun? He had power; the power to be in everybody’s heads and on everybody’s tongues. His infamy was like a drug. It not only kept his ego going but, as the joke played on, became his reason for returning to his substandard job week after week. Another truth was that Hue had never been in love and yes, relationships were a waste of time. And so, like most “lost” 20 something year olds, he’d swiped on Tinder and in the real world in order to try his luck. The men at his company would be thrilled to know that despite his charm and good looks, Hue Nielson’s game normally ended at the flirting. The very same mouth that had earnt him the reputation as a sleeze and a liar on the salesfloor was the same mouth that eventually insulted the girls he tried to coax into sleeping with him.

He'd been unlucky to cross paths with more feminists and tycoons and headstrong mothers than he’d cared to count and his school boy tactics didn’t work out the same way they did on the salesfloor. Still, he was relentless at getting what he wanted – it was too big a thrill to give up so easily. There was no try, there was only do and win. Hue Nielson wanted to win, he wanted to be remembered.

It was almost midnight one Friday night when Hue finally got what he thought would be his first real lead. It was the end of September and the nightlife in the city had been injected with a fresh wave of students. The regulars knew that most were looking for their first taste of independency, an excuse to spend their grants and soak up the temporary freedom before fresher’s week ended. With his sloppy hair, untucked work shirt and tired eyes, Hue Nielson was completely camouflaged amongst the teenagers. A guard at a bar he drank at regularly even made a fuss about seeing his ID, very aware of the influx of fresh and desperate faces. The night had per usual presented plenty of opportunities for Hue to lay his cards, but the university girls were playing the girl code and no one seemed to want to let go of their girlfriends’ hand long enough to join Hue in his quiet booth. But just as Hue was making a strategic decision to switch locations having exhausted the room, he was pushed into a group photo by someone. After the dazzling flash, he was subsequently asked to take a photo by a girl who he imagined assumed he was with the party because she asked him what halls he was staying at. She wasn’t from London, she sounded northern. Manchester, Newcastle, Ireland? He squinted back at her, his eyes still trying to recover from the light exposure. Her face was round and small. She wore heavy makeup and an almost entirely black outfit. She wasn’t modelesque, but she had a pretty enough face. When he told her that actually he had a place in Fulham, she was enamoured and realising he was a local she enlisted him immediately to show her around the city. She had such a loud laugh and was like an excited puppy tugging on its leash; Hue wasn’t sure if she was tipsy or just highly energised. Hue kept in step with his new friend despite her speed in heels and accent that grew intensively stronger as the night drew on and the drinks flowed.

Us northerners can take our drink; she ensured him and necked his beer. At the third bar, she grabbed his arm with both hands, and with an unexpected strength, hauled him to his feet and insisted he dance on the table for her. Her hands were clammy and cold, cold enough for him to feel through his shirt. Hue Nielson didn’t dance, let alone dance on tables. That wasn’t his thing - in fact he thought that dancing on tables was tacky. They weren’t in Marbella or Ibiza; this bar had standards, and so did he.

Not happening, he told her straight to her giggling face and twisted his arm to shake her off. But she held tight.

Do it; she pushed; feet rooted to the floor like an oak. She was still laughing but Hue suddenly found it unsettling. He told her to drop it and gave her another jolt to get free. Her reflex was unmatched. She absorbed every nudge and rode through every shake. For the first-time all-night Hue noticed that her dissimilarities to a model, his usual type, was not only in facial features but her body. There was more of her than he had thought, more of her to manage than he had envisioned. She was certainly curvier than the other girls he liked to look at. The girls in Hue Nielson’s head didn’t look like this; he hadn’t made any room for anything else outside of his head. The situation threw him off and when he realised, she still attached to him now descending into a whining drunk, he decided he wanted nothing more than to ditch her and find a brand-new lead. This one had turned cold.

In a moment of confusion, the pair jostled one another, both in a desperate attempt to control. Hue’s arm started to spasm in her grip and the pain made him mad. He started yelling at her and she yelled back in a slurry of intoxicated slang. With the only power he had left in his arsenal at that moment, Hue did only what he knew how. Though his throat was dry and croaky with dehydration, he gave an exaggerated yell, drew the attention of the spirited bar and announced that this girl, this crazy fat underaged girl was a stalker and she was trying to steal from him. The response from the crowd was both delayed and unanticipated. Hue was meet by a round of merry cheers. He glared around at the jeering faces looking for an accomplice but no one seemed bothered, cognitively or physically willing to stand up and give him a hand. The girl he had just publicly disgraced was the only one who seemed to have heard him and the look of horror, hurt and confusion on her face and the release of her grip said it all. Hue wasted no time stumbling away from her to make his exit. He flew out of the bar, barging past security with a throbbing arm to bear. She came after him screaming blue murder. Hue ran from her. For what seemed like forever, she chased him down the empty early morning pavements, in and out of parked taxis, until he didn’t hear the clattering of her heels behind him anymore. But he felt relieved. He didn’t care to stop or look back to find out what had happened and why she had stopped pursuing him. And he wished for the first time in his adult life, that he had relented. He should have given up on the lead. And on reflection, he should have retired his game a long time ago. The façade was exhausting and it wasn’t working.

Hue Nielson didn’t show up at Gregory & Gordon that Monday morning. His colleagues were almost disappointed to not be greeted by the arrogant sales representative; the day was uneventful without the details of Hue’s weekend to concur over. Tuesday came and went and Wednesday arrived with still no activity. On Thursday after the 10am huddle, the salesfloor team was rounded up again by a senior manager whose face was grave. He solemnly informed them that a police investigation had opened up and that all of the salesmen would be interviewed in due course. He also asked them to keep everything on the low; any unconfirmed news about the alleged accusation that got out would be detrimental to the company’s image. One of the seniors dared to ask what the investigation was about.

The senior manager sighed, lowered his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt.

He told them an allegation of sexual assault had been made against one of Gregory & Gordon’s employees.

And I think it’s fair to say gentleman; the manager concluded; that although the accusation itself is shockingly outrageous, I don’t think it’s outrageous to say the probability of the accusation being true is. The evidence; he continued spreading his hands in the direction of a certain employee’s empty desk; has been recorded in plain sight.

The men shook their heads. The news was a shock and an expectation all at the same time.

Here, here; they all agreed, just as the police showed up to clear Hue Nielson’s desk. The salesfloor watched as the drawers were emptied and Nielson’s belongings were bagged, including his notorious tally chart.

If only the man himself had been there in person to revel in the glory of his infamy.

Wasn’t this what he wanted all along?