(Untitled, "Hideout (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)", Greg Stimac, 2009)

The new salesman tucked a bunch of carrots into his desk drawer. They were not the bagged baby carrots that dieters favored, but instead were long and spindly, their leaves still attached. “How’s it going?” he asked. He was tan and trim. He wore crisp khakis and a polo shirt of blazing magenta. His luxuriant hair was longer than Charlie thought professional.
“Not bad, thank you.” Charlie turned back to his work. He was from England, where strangers didn’t ask each other how it was going.
I am the best ever,” said the salesman.
“Pardon?”
“I am the best ever.” The salesman grinned. His teeth were very white.
“Won the lottery, have we?” said Charlie. The salesman chuckled. Then he bit the end off a carrot.
Charlie was freelancing at the junk-mail company, helping out with graphic design. No one ever called it “junk mail” of course. They called it “direct marketing,” avoiding the phrase “junk mail” the way actors shrink from saying “Macbeth.”
Today, Charlie was illustrating “Home Handi-Tips,” a promotional circular for a home-improvement store. He began to draw a couple, clad in overalls, scrubbing their bathroom faucets with lemon halves dipped in salt.
“How’s it going?” asked the salesman again. Charlie looked over at him. The salesman was on the phone. There was a pause. Then the salesman said, “Thanks for asking. I am the best ever.”
Charlie flinched and looked at the clock.
For the next four hours, the salesman phoned clients, and as each one asked him how he was, he sang out, “I am the best ever.” Each time, he said the words with untarnished enthusiasm, as if he had never said them before. Each time, he used exactly the same intonation, pausing for emphasis after “best” and then practically shouting the word “ever.” The entire office could hear him.
As long as the salesman’s voice boomed out, Charlie couldn’t make progress with his work. His wrist ached from hours of sketching, and the pain in his shoulder was even worse. He could practically feel his tendons fraying. The pain was easier to tolerate when he was drawing something he enjoyed. He clipped a new piece of Bristol paper to his drawing board and sketched an alien. It had a hood-shaped head and a body that looked like a candle encrusted with drips. Then he drew another identical alien, facing the first. Their skulls were translucent, revealing glowing, white-hot brains. They had no mouths. They communicated entirely through their enormous eyes.