The Tramp's Story, Part X: As a Dog Returneth to His -- Well, You Know

Con’t from previous post…

Maria said she’d have to check with "people" to find out what we had to do about my peculiar employment situation, and that I should just sit tight and wait to hear. Two days went by, though – which is an eternity in schmeschminance time – so I shot her a quick email asking how things were going and if there was anything she needed me to do. Or, rather, I tried to shoot her a quick email asking how things were going and if there was anything she needed me to do. But the email address she gave me – which was just her.name@bankofamerica.com – came bouncing back.

What the tap-dancing Christ!? First I get two different contacts with six different names between them, and now the one we finally settled on does not exist? What kind of short-bus scam-operation is this, anyway? Somebody really ought to remind these folks that the “con” in “con game” is short for “confidence,” because they aren’t inspiring too much of that in me, I tell you what.

I called Maria – or whatever her name was – ready to tell her to tear up my application form once and for all. I’d already signed and faxed whatever the hell documents I’d signed and faxed, so I’d probably already consigned myself to at least two or three circles of financial hell (I imagined Satan as the naked love-child of Suze Orman and Alan Greenspan, with a pair of very small Dick Cheney horns). But maybe, if I reached down waaay deep in my dark inner pocket where I keep spare sets of testicles for times like these, I just might be able to stop it from getting any worse. I would be firm, and forceful. I would insist upon my right to be heard. I would not be fast-talked out of my newfound resolve. I would, for once in my 40 years of miserable existence, make a sensible decision and follow through with it, so help me god.

Or else I would just leave a friendly voice mail.

Well, Maria did not answer her telephone! What the hell was I supposed to do? Besides, I’d had a chance to think about things while I listened to it ring and ring, and I reminded myself how this whole mess got started in the first place. I had called them, remember. Not about schmeschminance, certainly, but it’s not as if I gave it all up to a telemarketer like some yokel Pollyanna innocently describing her undergarments to a heavy-breathing caller.

“Maria? Um, it’s Erin. Ellia? Calling about loan #XXXXXX? I’m just wondering how things are going, because I haven’t heard from you in a couple days. Sorry to bother you, but I tried to send you an email and it came back. I probably just wrote down your email address wrong or something, but… Yeah. Well, anyway. Call me back and let me know if there’s anything you need me to do at this end. Okay? Thanks.”

Sorry. Probably my fault. Thanks.

Way to follow through, there, Pullback McBunterson.

How will our hero get out of this latest scrape!? Will she finally be done in by her own stupidity? Find out next time!