Eleven months before the World Series, in November, the
start of the tourist season, the beaches off St.
Petersburg were jammed with pasty people.
As always, Sharon Rhodes knew every eye was on her as she
walked coyly along the edge of the surf, twirling a bit of
hair with a finger. A volleyball game stopped. Footballs
and Frisbees fell in the water. Guys lost track of
conversations with their wives and got socked.
She was the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition in person.
Six feet tall, gently curling blonde hair cascading over
her shoulders and onto the top of her black bikini. She
had a Carnation Milk face with high cheekbones and a light
dusting of freckles. Her lips were full, pouty and cruel
in the way that makes men drive into buildings.
She stopped as if to think, stuck an index finger in her
lips and sucked. Men became woozy. She turned and splashed
out into three feet of water and dunked herself. When she
came up, she shook her head side to side, flinging wet
blonde hair, and thrust out her nipples.
There was nothing in Sharon a man wanted to love, caress
or defend. This was tie-me-up-and-hurt-me stuff,
everything about her shouting at a man, "I will destroy
all that is dear to YOU," and the man says, "Yes, please."
Wilbur Putzenfus was losing hair on top and working the
comb-over. No tan. No tone. A warrior of the business
cubicle, with women he was socially retarded. Spiro Agnew
without the power. A hundred and fifty pounds of
unrepentant geek-on-wheels.
Sharon threw her David Lee Roth beach towel down next to
his, lay on her stomach and untied her top.
Wilbur studied Sharon with a series of stolen glimpses
that wouldn't have been so obvious if they hadn't been
made through the viewfinder of a camcorder.
When Wilbur ran out of videotape Sharon raised up on her
elbows, tits hanging, and said to him in a low, husky
voice, "I like to do it in public.
Wilbur was apoplectic.
Sharon replaced her top and stood up. She reached down,
took Wilbur by the hand and tried to get him to his feet,
but his legs didn't work right, Bambi's first steps.
She walked him over to the snack bar and showers. Against
a thicket of hibiscus was one of those plywood cutouts,
the kind with a hole that tourists stick their faces
through for snapshots.
This one had a large cartoon shark swallowing a tourist
feet first. The tourist wore a straw hat, had a camera
hanging from a strap around his neck, and was banging on
the shark's snout.
The bushes shielded the backside of the plywood from
public view, but the front faced heavy foot traffic on the
boardwalk.
Sharon told Wilbur to put his face in the hole, and he
complied. She told him not to take his head out of the
hole or she would permanently stop what she was doing. She
pulled his plaid bathing trunks to his ankles, kneeled
down and applied her expertise.
Some of the guys from the volleyball game had been
following Sharon like puppy dogs, and they peeked behind
the plywood. Then they walked around the front of the
cutout and stood on the sidewalk, pointing and laughing at
Wilbur. Word spread.
The crowd was over a hundred by the time Wilbur's saliva
started to meringue around his mouth. His eyes came
unplugged and rolled around in their sockets, and he made
sounds like Charlie Callas.
Finally, nearing crescendo, Wilbur stared bug-eyed at the
crowd and yelled between shallow breaths, "WILL ... YOU...
MAR-RY... ME?"
"Yeth," came the answer from behind the plywood, a female
voice with a mouth full, and the crowd cheered.
Wilbur Putzenfus, a claims executive with a major Tampa
Bay HMO, was not an ideal catch. But he could provide a
comfortable life. Wilbur's job was to deny insurance
claims filed with the Family First Health Maintenance
Organization ("We're here because we care"). As Family
First's top claims denial supervisor, Wilbur handled the
really difficult patients, the ones who demanded the
company fulfill its policies.
Wilbur was promoted to this position after a selfless
display of ethical turpitude that had revolutionized the
company. On his own he'd launched a secret study that
showed wrongful-death suits were cheaper than paying for
organ transplants covered by their policies.
"So we should stop covering transplants?" asked a director
during the watershed board meeting.
"No," said Wilbur, "we'd lose business and profit. We
should just stop paying the claims."
"We can do that?" asked the director.
"Gentlemen," said Wilbur, grabbing the edge of the
conference table with both hands. "These people are
terribly ill and in serious need of immediate medical
treatment. They're in no shape to argue with us."
"Brilliant," went the murmur around the table.
As the senior claims denier, Wilbur handled only the most
tenacious and meritorious claims that bubbled up through
lower levels of impediment.
While a simple coward in person, Wilbur became a vicious
coward behind the relative safety of a longdistance phone
call- Wilbur answered each appeal with the predisposition
that no claim would get by, regardless of legitimacy,
company rules, reason and especially fairness. When
cornered by an airtight argument, Wilbur responded with a
tireless flurry of Byzantine logic. If all else failed and
it looked like a claim had to be approved, there was the
secret weapon. It became legend around the industry as the
Putzenfus Gambit.
"It's an obvious typographical mistake on the bill. Why
can't you fix it?" the policyholder would ask.
"I don't have that authority."
"Who does?"
"I can't tell you."
"Why not?!"
"I'm not allowed to give out that information."
"What's the phone number of your main office?"
"I'm not authorized to disclose that number."
"Fine! I'll get it myself. What city is your main office
in?"
Silence.
"Are you still there?"
"I'm not allowed to talk to you anymore."
Click.
Sharon's engagement ring was from denied dialysis. The
wedding floral arrangement from rejected prescriptions and
the open bar from obstructed physical therapy. The buffet
was subsidized by untaken CAT scans that would have found
a tiny bone fragment that later paralyzed a fourth
grader...
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