Best Foot Forward (13 page)

He was asking me out in front of everyone. How awkward was this?

Murray and Mrs. Gladstone looked at me and smiled.

“Sure. Whatever.”

Murray coughed and said he had something to do in the back.

Mrs. Gladstone took Webster upstairs to read in her office.

I hugged Harry's sign.

Charlie frowned. “Well, we don't have to go if you don't want to.”

“No, it's okay.”

“I mean, really, if you'd rather not.”

“I'd rather.”

“Because believe me, Jenna, the last thing I need—”

I was going to kill Opal.

I gripped his arm.
“I completely and absolutely want to do this.”

He smiled. “Okay, that makes me feel better.”

Scheduling it was another thing. He worked when I didn't and vice versa.

It was the first time it had ever occurred to me that I might be working too hard.

Finally, we found a time—Sunday afternoon.

“I'll see you,” he said, and handed me a Doughnut Dollar
—Use Like Cash at Duran's,
it read on the front.

He pushed out the door. He had a very purposeful walk.

I threw my shoehorn in the air and caught it behind my back.

I knocked on the stockroom door. Tanner was bent over a makeshift desk he'd built out of packing crates. He had a library book on it,
How to Sell Anything to Anybody.
He was trying so hard.

I smiled. “Is that a good book?”

“I'm halfway through.”

“So sell me something,” I said.

He looked around; his face got bright. He sprung up, held out a pen with a chewed-up tip. “Young lady, do you know that this is the hottest thing going?” He held the pen out to me.

I took it, looked it over.

“We do the chewing for you, all you've got to do is just put it in your mouth. We've got blue and black ink and we'll be bringing out red for Christmas.”

“How much?” I asked, laughing.

“We've got them on special today. Two for a buck. And that's a steal.” He put his leg up on the chair and threw out a killer smile.

“Sold,” I said. “I've got another job for you.”

I told him that Mrs. Gladstone wanted all the Rollings Walkers put aside in the back room. “We're not going to be selling them right now.”

“How come?”

“There might be something wrong with them.”

“I know that.”

He wasn't supposed to know that.

“What do you mean?”

He got a box of Rollings Walkers, opened it, lifted the shoes out. “Put your hand in there. Feel the label.”

I did.

“See how it feels kind of bumpy and some of the glue dried outside it? It's like that on a lot of these new shipments of Rollings shoes, but not on the other ones.”

He showed me more Rollings in different sizes where the labels felt wrong.

“How long have you noticed this?”

“A couple weeks. Look here,” he said, “on these.” He showed me the older stock of oxfords that had smooth and proper labels.

We looked in boxes for an hour. “We'd better tell Mrs. Gladstone,” I said.

He pushed me forward. “You go first.”

 

Mrs. Gladstone gripped a Rollings Walker, put her other hand inside, and yanked the label off.

“These labels are not being sewn in at the factory. Somebody's been slapping them on,” she said.

I didn't get it. Why would somebody do that?

“Jenna, get me the monthly reports from the Bangor plant.”

Our biggest shoe factory was in Bangor, Maine.

Tanner said, “There's a lot of bad stuff passed off in my neighborhood.”

Mrs. Gladstone looked up. “I'm sure there is. You've done good work, Tanner. What gave you the idea to check these labels?”

“I see patterns,” he said.

“What other patterns do you see?” I asked Tanner this as we were walking to lunch.

“I see them all over. I showed Webster the patterns in words and numbers.”

“Really?”

The light changed, we went across. Tanner stopped in the middle and froze.

“Come on,” I said.

He stood there. I grabbed his arm; we hurried to the curb.

“What's that about?” I asked.

He waved it off.

“Tell me.”

Tanner's voice got low. “In jail, outside in the yard, there was a yellow line, okay? We couldn't cross. I did once.” He sighed. “Never again.”

“They really did it to you in there, didn't they?”

He tensed. “They kept telling me, the judge said to teach you a lesson. They taught me all right—every time I turned around.”

“I'm glad you got out.”

“Getting out's one thing.” He pointed to his head. “Getting it out of here's another.”

 

I handed Tanner the crab shell on my office desk. I got it when Mom, Faith, and I went to Chesapeake Bay. It took me forever to find it on the beach, too, because I needed one that was intact. I imagined how the crab had crawled out as it outgrew its shell and then grew a larger one.

“That's what I've done in my life. It helps me remember I'm in a much bigger and better place than I ever was before. If you want, Tanner, we can try to get something to help you remember you're not in jail anymore.”

“I hear where you're coming from,” he said.

The next day, a bone was on my desk. It still had a little meat around the edges.

Tanner peered around the corner. “It's a pork chop bone. It'll dry out.” He seemed excited about it.

My mind stretched to embrace the symbolism.

“I knew a guy, Lunar. He did a lot of time. He could sharpen a pork chop bone into a knife. For a long time I'd see a pork chop, I'd think of a weapon. Now I'm just going to think about dinner.” He picked up the bone and headed for the stairs.

I gulped. “Why was he called Lunar?”

“ 'Cause he only came out at night.”

I looked at the employee assessment sheet I had to fill out.

I wrote,
You have no idea.

 

On my desk: a pile of papers with a sticky note from Mrs. Gladstone.

 

ASAP meant as soon as possible, which is how we do everything around here.

There were two copies of the June report; both contained the same information, except for page four, which Mrs. Gladstone had marked. On the first report, the heading of page four was OVERFLOW. When a shoe factory has orders to make more shoes than it can handle, they pay another plant to make them—that's overflow. But page four of the second report was different—that heading read PLANT 427. In the margin, Mrs. Gladstone had written:

 

I called the Bangor plant; a sweet secretary named Louise connected me to Norm Lewis, the plant manager.

“Mr. Lewis, I'm Jenna Boller, Mrs. Gladstone's assistant. I'm trying to get some information about Plant 427.”

Silence.

“Mr. Lewis?”

“Uh . . . yes . . . ,” he said. “What were you asking?”

“About Plant 427, sir.”

He coughed.

“We have two reports here from June . . . one mentions overflow on page four and the other page four is titled Plant 427. I'm calling to get some information about that plant for—”

“There is . . . ah . . . no Plant 427.”

I looked at the paper in front of me. “But the report I have in front of me says—”

“Oh.” He laughed nervously. “That's just a misprint. We have a new typist and she got the first-week jitters. You know how it is.”

“But, Mr. Lewis, there are two entirely different page fours from the same report. One shows all the shipping and manufacturing costs from Plant 427 and the other just mentions overflow.”

“And what did I just tell you?”

I had to be careful here to not sound mad even though this guy was treating me like I had major brain dysfunction. “Mr. Lewis, I need to know about the two million dollars billed on page four of your report.”

“Yep, I got it right here. That goes to overflow. You have that page?”

“Yes, sir. But I've got the other page that says there were five separate deliveries to you from Plant 4—”

“I told you that's a
typo.
This is as easy as life gets. Don't make it tough, now.” He sniffed. “You just shred that 427 thing. Better yet, send it back to me. Our new girl needs to see the confusion she's caused by not paying attention. Do we understand each other?”

Not really.

I went into Mrs. Gladstone's office and told her what happened. “Call him back and tell him I want to know where the overflow is being manufactured if there is no Plant 427.”

“What if he won't tell me?”

“Overflow has to come from somewhere. Ask him where.”

I wrote down what she said. I'd much rather have an official adult make this call. “Mrs. Gladstone, I don't understand enough about these reports. I'm not sure I'm helping.”

“This is a good way to learn, Jenna.”

But there are some things you just don't feel like learning. I placed my philodendron plant next to the phone—a plant that could grow in insufficient light, a plant that could handle angst and abuse and keep growing. This plant and I had a lot in common.

“Deal with the stress,” I said to the plant. “I know you can do it.” I dialed the number.

“Lewis.”

I tried to sound twenty-five instead of sixteen. “Hi, Mr. Lewis. Jenna Boller calling again.”

Air sucked in on the other end. You'd like me if you knew me, Norm, I swear.

“Mrs. Gladstone wanted me to ask you where that overflow is being manufactured.”

Hostile silence.

“Mr. Lewis?”

He cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, well . . . let me see now. It's in . . . uh . . .” He sniffed. “We've changed things around. I'll have to put you on hold.”

I waited.

Three minutes. Five.

Seven minutes had passed; I was still on hold.

Louise, the secretary, came on the line sounding like a computerized voice. “I'm afraid Mr. Lewis had to leave unexpectedly. He'll try to call you back this week . . .”

What was going on? “Maybe you could help me, Louise. I'm trying to—”

“
Mr. Lewis
will have to help you. I'm sorry.” She hung up.

I felt like I was driving into a storm of inconsistencies with the top down.

 

The official word came down from Dallas on Rollings Walkers with a personal note from Elden:

 

The official word in Chicago came down from Mrs. Gladstone. Murray, Tanner, and I sat in her office and heard it loud and clear.

“We won't sell them. I am making that recommendation to every Gladstone's store. Whether they take that advice is up to them, but we will here. Advertising will be running to promote this sale and our customers will be disappointed that we cannot accommodate them. That will make things difficult on the sales floor.”

Murray and I looked at each other.

“What they're doing,” Mrs. Gladstone explained, “is called harvesting the brand. They're betting that people will continue to buy this brand based on its good reputation. They're lowering the quality, lowering the price, but still making a nice profit. Sooner or later the word will get out and no one will want the shoes. I can't be part of that. I apologize in advance if this makes your jobs more difficult.”

War is hell.

I was on the sales floor telling customers that right now we don't have Rollings Walkers.

Not exactly.

Not in this store. Not until things change.

Change hit everywhere.

The closed-circuit TV arrived. It took two technicians to put it up.

Murray couldn't look at it; he said it hurt his eyes.

I looked at it, trying to stare it down. Mrs. Gladstone gazed up at it like David standing tough against Goliath.

There was no ON/OFF button.

“When's that thing going on?” Tanner asked.

Mrs. Gladstone walked away. “When it suits their purpose, I imagine.”

Understanding denial has given me a real leg up in the business world.

I faced my phone. Norm Lewis could run, but he couldn't hide. No excuses this time, Norm, or it won't be pretty. You're dealing with an Al-Anon participant highly trained in lie detection and all forms of deceit. I dialed his number again and again until he picked up.

“Hi, it's Jenna Boller calling. Sorry we've had such trouble reaching each other,” I said.

He sputtered and coughed and ahemmed and said, well, yes, the outsource people are somewhere in West Virginia. He'd have to get back to me on the rest.