Life Changing, a Story of Inspiration

By G. R. Daniels

Palmer Pallister is in his mid-30s and he seems set in his ways. So set, in fact, that he puts up with bullies at work. He tolerates a dead-end job as a public relations consultant in a small non-profit. He is going nowhere fast and it doesn't look like he's going to change until Palmer experiences life-changing events. Who would think that inspiration can be found while getting a haircut, meeting a kid looking for help, associating with a couple of ambitious women or having an officemate who is into extracurricular sports. Palmer is nudged, pushed and drawn by his encounters to, at least, consider the alternatives to his life. At the same time, his bullying boss has several encounters that present him with life-changing decisions. Will Palmer be inspired enough to change his life at the age of 35? Does Palmer stay in his tedious life or try for something far better? Will the bullying Lester Brewster Kaide get his comeuppance? What can inspire life changing once you're a 30-something.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G. R. Daniels
• Release date: Mar 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990304026

G. R. Daniels

G. R. Daniels is the pen name of this author. He is a veteran journalist who has worked as a front-page reporter, editor, tv writer, tv on-air reporter, tv producer, radio producer, internet blogger and website writer. He also is one of the world's busiest media relations trainers and crisis consultants, working on major and one-off projects for corporations, government bodies, institutions and individuals. His popular novels offer heavy doses of action, thrills, intrigue and complex plots. They are fascinating and fun reads from someone who has been there and done that for world-wide audiences. Daniels writes often about his native Canada but also provides his readers with international stories such as Escape from Zaatari. Many readers are joining the growing audience for Daniels' exciting and absorbing novels. Become one and write a review for this outstanding author's works.

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LIFE CHANGING

Copyright 2020 by Awareness Communications Inc.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior, written consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law of Canada.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, particularly of the principal organization, and of all other characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. 

Published in Canada and abroad by Awareness Communications Inc.

ISBN Canada 9781990304026

LIFE CHANGING

CHAPTER ONE

The summons came, as usual, in a curt email. See me!

Mr. Lester Brewster Kaide loved exclamation points almost as much as he loved yellow mustard, the kind that added colour and texture to the broad ties he insisted on wearing most of the time. Palmer Pallister dreaded such messages, most of all since he would have to look at Mr. Kaide and his tie.

Palmer could count on the sight being the same day after day, hour after excruciating hour.

Lester Kaide was overweight in the careless, dishevelled manner of men who cared nothing for others’ tolerance of unhygienic ugliness. The man would have stood several inches under six feet if he ever stood. For most of his time in his office, he sprawled. His broad butt would be planted in the huge, brown leather chair behind his large wood desk. His legs, the size of limbs from a hundred-year-old oak tree, extended out from the chair across about a yard of green carpet worn by the constant back and forth of the heels of his scuffed Oxfords. At the moment, he was pushed back against the sloping back of the chair, torso bulging in front like a quarter of a ton of cooked porridge wrapped in a sweat-stained cream shirt decorated by a mustard-dotted wide tie.

Kaide’s head rose from the mount of bulging suet. It was thinly topped with brown and gray hair that he often and annoyingly patted into place. Spittle sprayed from his mouth when he spoke, grunted or yawned, which was the reason why most of his visitors bumped their chairs back from the desk as much as possible or simply stood just inside the doorway of the room when summoned. No one with any sense entered this room without being commanded.

The boss’s face was lumpy and had a greenish sheen. Palmer used to be forgiving enough to assume the green tinge was merely a reflection of the bilious carpeting over the floor of Mr. Kaide’s office. Now, Palmer believed the green hue was the given colour of this man’s flesh. Kaide’s nose sported several lumps with a large, red-tinted end.

Thrown together as it was, Kaide’s face was even more disturbingly unpalatable than his body. Kaide was, simply, a disgusting-looking man who, just as simply, didn’t give a damn.

Wait there. Kaide’s voice reminded Palmer of the flushing of his neighbour’s toilet through the paper walls of his small apartment. Kaide was pointing with his stubby, fat finger at the place where Palmer had come to a halt about three feet inside the office. Palmer stood, like a soldier at ease, looking over Kaide’s head at the top shelf of the book rack. The shelf held nothing but dust and a small porcelain horse that Kaide had stolen from a stand at a country fair he attended years before.

Palmer hated, not just the boss at the Association of Independent Immigration Advisors, but this office and the air within that smelled like unwashed socks. He hated, even more, the way he waited like the porcelain, dusty horse on that shelf for this disaster of a man to determine the next hours of Palmer’s existence. There was another person Palmer hated, almost as much as his boss, and that person entered the office behind him.

Move, will you, the harridan whispered into his ear. He felt the bony elbow jab into his side, forcing him to take a step to the left so she could pass by him and take the lone chair on this side of that big desk.

Mavis Thorpe settled onto the padded seat of the wooden visitor’s chair. She was a tall woman constructed from skin-covered metal of some sort, all taut wires and sharp edges. Palmer imagined a mad sculptor working frenetically to craft this robotic woman. Physically, she was the opposite of the bulbous man who sat on the other side of the desk, all angles and corners in a form that weighed about the same as a handful of shaving lather.

Mavis had whiskers; they fascinated Palmer every time she stood illuminated by a backlight that showed the lengths of hair jutting from her cheeks and chin. The rest of her head hair was thin and gray even though she couldn’t have been more than 40 years old. Her eyes were those of a bird of prey, dark and beady under grey eyebrows that hadn’t been trimmed in years. Her skin was sallow except on her neck and upper chest where it was red, like a rash, and dotted with pimples something like the mustard bits on Kaide’s ties.

Together, Kaide and Thorpe had become, to Palmer, an act in a circus of revulsion. Perhaps to others, they would not be described so harshly, but Palmer had developed such an aversion to the pair, he accentuated and magnified every flaw in Kaide and Thorpe. He fought against a desire to gag as he forced his eyes down from the top shelf to the two people who controlled his time five days of every endless week.

I am going to reduce your salary, Pallister. It was Kaide’s voice, coming out of a mouth ringed with fat, liver-coloured lips. Pallister shifted his weight slightly toward the man and woman. He was surprised but not shocked. Over the past few weeks, McKay had been even more insufferable than his normal with most of his ire directed at Palmer Pallister.

Why? Palmer hated the sound of his own voice. This one word was uttered without power. It was barely above Mavis’s earlier whisper. It was the voice of compliance, not the just objection of one being wronged.

Because I don’t like you, Pallister. Palmer stood silent and still. He knew this was the beginning sentence of a typical outburst from this man. He was right as the toilet continued to flush.

You think you are so smart, Pallister. Kaide was into it now. Mavis, ever his audience and acolyte, beamed with one black molar grandstanding in a mouth full of yellow teeth. I know you. When I was in school, there were people like you. They were bullies. All of them thought they were smarter than me. Okay. Maybe they were but I got where I am. So, I guess I wasn’t that dumb, was I?

Kaide didn’t expect an answer. He paused only long enough to run his worm of a tongue over his own row of yellow teeth with his liver lips parted. Then he was off again.

I hate you, Pallister. You think you can do whatever you want. This is my office, Pallister. Mine. I tell you what you can do and what you can’t. Isn’t that right, Mavis?

The bony woman looked at Kaide with admiration and, then, at Palmer with disdain. She should have snakes coming out of that head of thin, washed-out hair, Palmer thought to himself.

So, I think I’ll take 20 per cent off the top of your salary, Pallister. Because, I don’t like you and I don’t like what you do. Kaide thumped one of his chubby fists on his desk, disrupting the pile of papers there. He had not imperilled, however, the wrapped sandwich that rested in a film of grease on the scarred desktop until his mid-morning snack time.

Palmer found enough courage for one rejoinder. What don’t you like, sir? Again, his voice was too quiet, too defensive.

Everything. I don’t like what you write. I can’t understand half the words you use. Like I said, you think you’re so smart.

Yes, said Mavis in her acidic tone. I don’t understand them either.

Palmer kept his thoughts to himself but knew the words he used in his writing of news releases and reports for the association were dumbed down and appropriate for even the most stupid of association members and the editors of the few trade journals that appealed to members. There was no audience for his writings beyond members and a handful of others so there was no one who wouldn’t understand the language he used, except for this couple who he had learned were truly ignorant.

In fact, Pallister. I think I’ll cut you by 30 per cent.

Kaide put his hands on the chairs of his oversized chair and levered his bulk out of the seat. Kaide moved all the way around his desk, quite a chore in itself. He came even farther until he stood less than five feet from Palmer.

Palmer moved back but his body contacted the door frame bringing him to a stop.

You look like that all the time, Pallister. You don’t say anything. You just look at me. I know what you’re doing, Pallister.

Pallister didn’t understand what Kaide was saying. How could Kaide know what Pallister was doing when Palmer didn’t know himself? What could Palmer say to this man? He knew only that he couldn’t withstand any pay cut, much less one of 20 or 30 per cent. He was paid so little now.

He does that with me, too, said Mavis from her seat by the desk. He just looks at me. He’s weird.

Palmer turned to the door. It was closed and he put his hand around the door handle.

You can’t leave, Pallister. I have a lot to say to you. Kaide lifted his hand. Palmer dropped his hand from the door handle. Kaide smiled triumphantly.

You know I can cut your pay, Pallister. Kaide was boasting that he could exert power over a man who was more intelligent than he was. Kaide snapped his fingers. Just like that.

Palmer shook his head but Kaide took it as a sign of defeat, at least resignation. Palmer was acknowledging the power Kaide had over his life.

Great idea, came the chorus from Kaide’s booster. Miss Thorpe’s head bobbed up and down and her eyes glinted.

I won’t do it now, Pallister. I can do it tomorrow. Or next week. Maybe I’ll cut your pay by 50 per cent. I can do that. Why are you standing there just looking at me, Pallister? You have work to do, don’t you?

Kaide stepped away, to Palmer’s relief. The boss turned toward his desk where Mavis sat watching him with her twisted version of a smile. Palmer noted Mavis was waiting for some recognition but Kaide, true to his narcissism, ignored the woman and looked instead only at his desk, the waiting sandwich and the chair into which he would soon lower his bulk.

Palmer opened the door and slipped out into the hallway, hating himself more than the pathetic creatures in that room and wondering, again, if Palmer Pallister might ever have reason to respect himself.

CHAPTER TWO

Palmer Pallister walked down the hallway of the Council of Independent Immigration Advisors in a mental fog. He passed, oblivious to the large plaque on the wall with its unimaginative round border on which was engraved the long name of the not-for-profit outfit for which Palmer toiled. In the centre of the garish medallion there was a crest that was nothing but symbol graffiti. Most called the association the ‘CIIA’, which sounded like a spy agency with a stutter. This was rather daring for the association’s several hundred members and its few sponsors.

Palmer arrived at the open area in which the desks of CIIA drones were placed. He looked over the work-pit. His two co-workers kept their eyes down, either engrossed in their tasks or not wanting to embarrass Palmer. They knew he had gone to Kaide’s office for a dressing-down. He felt an urgent need to visit the washroom in the hallway leading away from the pit. He passed by the four desks, including his own by a window overlooking the rear parking lot of the building and trudged into and through the far hallway toward the Men’s.

The human brain is a marvelous organ but it has its shortcomings. Memory is one of the brain’s problems. We can demand of the hippocampus a declarative memory and, under this heading, an episodic recall. But we