Taking Stock (10 page)

“Oh, that’s really good. You definitely don’t deserve to be punched for that.”

“Thanks.”

“Who told you?”

“Cassandra. How long were you stuck in there?”

“Almost three hours. You talk to Cassandra?”

“Occasionally,” he says, shrugging. “Guess I can’t call you a rookie anymore. If almost getting hypothermia isn’t an appropriate initiation, I don’t know what is. Who do you think did it?”

I hesitate. “Well, I saw Jack before I got locked in—less than a minute before. But there’s no way to know for certain. Gilbert, the cameras are fake. They don’t work.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

“Frank admitted it. Me and Ralph asked to see the footage from last night, and he told us there is no footage, because the cameras don’t work. Ralph didn’t know. He was pretty pissed when he found out, actually.”

“Jack is Frank’s golden boy—maybe the cameras do work, and Frank is lying to cover Jack’s ass.”

“You think he’d cover up attempted murder?”

“Sure.”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know for sure it was Jack.”

“Who else would it be?”

Eric. But that’s little more than a hunch.

“I don’t know.”

“It was definitely Jack,” Gilbert says. “He hates Grocery—and he hates that we have someone now who outshines anybody in Produce. He’s afraid you’ll usurp him as Frank’s favourite.”

“So he locked me in the freezer?”

“He’s a zealot, man. A crazy person. He wanted to intimidate you into quitting.”

I pause. “He did say something weird, recently. When he asked me to work in Produce. He said Frank’s planning to replace the entire Grocery department, and that switching to Produce would have been my last chance to keep my job.”

“Jesus Christ. We need to stand up to them, Sheldon. Jack and Frank. We need to give them a taste of what they’ve been dishing out.”

Suddenly I’m concerned someone from Spend Easy is within earshot. I check behind me, but see no one. I turn back to Gilbert.

“What do you have in mind?”

He opens the glove compartment, takes out a pen and notepad, and scribbles a number. He tears off the sheet and gives it to me. “That’s my cell number. Call me tonight, after 10:30.”

“What are you planning?”

“Just call.”

He starts the car, and the Hummer’s engine roars. He drives away.

*

I’m standing by the side of the road with my hand in my mouth, wiggling a tooth. It’s a molar, and it’s loose.

It comes out. I look at it, lying in the palm of my hand. I try to fit it back into my gums, but it won’t stick there.

I look up, and see my mother standing across the road. She’s watching me with a hand over her mouth, her head tilted to the right. She walks toward me.

Out of nowhere, a yellow Hummer appears and runs her down.

I wake up to the phone ringing. I walk out to the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“You didn’t call.” It’s Gilbert.

“I fell asleep on the couch. How’d you get my number?”

“I called the store before it closed, and Cassandra gave it to me. She said it’s so nice of me to hang out with you. She thinks you really need a friend right now.”

“That sort of makes me want to vomit. Listen, what sort of revenge are you planning? I’m having second thoughts.”

“You don’t think they deserve it?”

“I’m not even sure who ‘they’ are. And I’d like to know what ‘it’ is.”

“‘They’ are Frank and Jack. And you’ll find out the other thing shortly. I’m coming to pick you up. What’s your address?”

I sigh. “Foresail Road. 37a.”

“On my way.”

Gilbert screeches into the driveway around 11. I get in, and he glances in the rearview, slams the gearshift into reverse, and darts into the road. We take off.

We park next to a Cart Corral, which is the same yellow as Gilbert’s Hummer.

“How do you expect to get into the store?” I say.

“With my key.” He holds up his key ring, jingling it.

“How do you have a key to Spend Easy?”

“I borrowed it from Ralph’s coat, one time. Got a copy made and put it back a couple hours later.”

“We could get arrested.”

“We won’t, though. Spend Easy doesn’t have security guards. And no one checks up on the store during the night. Anyway, if they did, we’d tell them Ralph called us in for an emergency overnight shift. They’d believe it—how else would we have gotten in?”

“Tell me what you’re planning.”

“It’s a surprise. Come on.” He opens his door.

“But what are we doing?”

“You’ll see. This is our one opportunity, Sheldon. Frank might have working cameras installed as early as tomorrow.”

When we left Frank’s office, Ralph said he planned to stop posting the schedule in the warehouse, where anyone can read it. He’s going to get everyone’s email address, and start sending it electronically. From now on, only Grocery employees will know when Grocery employees are working.

Gilbert and I walk to the sliding doors, which don’t slide open, of course. He inserts the key into a lock halfway up the door. We enter. Something starts to beep, and my heart rate speeds up.

“Shit. The alarm. We forgot about the alarm!”

“We didn’t forget about anything.” Gilbert walks to the panel and punches in four numbers. The beeping stops. He looks at me, eyebrows raised.

“All right, then,” I say.

He leads me past the cash registers. With only one strip of fluorescent lights on, and no customers, the store seems larger. It’s quiet, too. I didn’t realize how noisy Spend Easy gets until now that there’s no music, no talking, no cash drawers opening and closing.

We walk up the stairs and enter the room next to Frank’s office. Near a computer monitor sits a row of four black scanning guns, all nestled in a battery charger. I remember them from my second day at Spend Easy, when Ralph used one to scan Dairy products. Gilbert grabs the one labelled “PRODUCE,” and we go back down the stairs.

“Jack is responsible for placing the Produce orders,” he says. “He placed one just this morning, using this order gun. We’re going to make a little adjustment.”

We walk a couple meters into Aisle One. Gilbert taps a few buttons on the gun’s interface, and then takes a box of condoms off the shelf. “Lubricated,” he says. “Jack will appreciate that.” He points the gun at the box and pulls the trigger. A blinking red line of light falls on the barcode. There’s a beep. Gilbert presses a few more buttons.

“How many are you ordering?”

“A fuckton. Come on.”

We walk back to the warehouse, and Gilbert accesses the computer. I watch the entrance while he works, as well as the doors that lead to the Meat department’s back room. I’m petrified we’ll get caught. Why did I agree to this?

“There,” he says after a few minutes. “Now the Produce order for Monday consists of all condoms, and no veggies.”

Gilbert turns the alarm back on and locks the doors, and we get back in the Hummer. He drives out of the parking lot as fast as he pulled in. I don’t speak, and neither does he.

In my driveway, with my fingers on the door handle, I say, “Why did you need me to come with you tonight? I didn’t actually do anything.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. Then he says, “I wanted you to enjoy your vengeance. I could have done it myself, but then watching Jack haul all those condoms off the truck wouldn’t be as satisfying for you—just funny.”

“Oh. Well, thanks, I guess.”

“Do you mind if I smoke in your driveway?”

“Go ahead.”

We get out, and he opens the Hummer’s back hatch. We sit.

Gilbert takes an apple out of his pocket. “Behold,” he says. “I made a pipe out of an apple.”

He’s carved a little bowl where the stem used to be, and lined it with tin foil. After a couple puffs he holds it out to me. The thick smoke wafts on the crisp November air.

“No, thanks.”

*

My next shift is Monday afternoon. I wake up around 10, and for once Marcus Brutus isn’t crying for food, or water, or his kitty litter to be changed, or release from an existential crisis. He’s just lying on the coffee table, on his back, with four paws up in the air. He tracks me with his eyes as I walk by. I stop. “What? Are you completely at peace with the world today, or something?”

I have an appointment with Bernice before work. I don’t tell her about getting locked in the freezer. I do tell her what’s resulted, though—that I think I’ve moved past any thoughts of suicide. She asks how, and I give a true answer. I say I no longer feel so alone.

But that’s only part of the truth.

The possibility that someone wants to kill me has made me realize there’s nothing I want more than to live.

Chapter Nine

One day, the Professor approached me in the common area. “I hear you’re writing a novel,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I don’t write anymore.”

“Tell whoever reads your novel that they aren’t going to learn anything from a novel. Fiction doesn’t properly represent cause and effect—it’s just what the author thinks would happen. Tell them they should be reading non-fiction.”

“Sure. I’ll make that my epigraph.”

“I used to want to be a professor, you know. Before my…issues.”

I considered this for a moment, and said, “I think you’d make a good one. I’ve learned a lot from you already.”

The Professor smiled—for the first time, that I’d seen. “Thank you.” He walked away.

I glanced across the room and saw Rodney sitting on the other side, glaring at me. He was drinking a can of something. He held it up so I could see it, then chugged it in one go.

He smashed the empty can against his head, and roared. I had to try pretty hard to keep a grin from forming. He got up and stomped away.

*

Brent calls my name as I wheel my bike toward a 2-10 Monday shift. He’s standing near the corner of the building, motioning for me to come over. I hold up a finger—I need to lock up my bike, first.

I snap the padlock shut and walk to meet him. He’s smoking a joint. “Hello,” I say.

“Hey, dude. I heard what happened on Friday, with the freezer. Sorry I wasn’t there.”

“It’s fine.”

He holds out the joint. “Want some?”

“No, thanks. I don’t smoke. And I’m about to start my shift.”

He pulls back one side of his unzipped jacket, revealing the Spend Easy logo on his breast pocket. “So am I. We’re working together.”

I shrug. “To each his own.”

“Don’t act so superior. The way you’re looking at me right now, it makes me want to punch you in the face. Seriously.” He tosses the roach onto the ground. “You think I shouldn’t be working here, right? You think they should fire all the stoners.”

“Think what you want, Brent.”

I walk into Spend Easy, expecting Frank to summon me to his office at any moment. I glance up at his tinted window as I walk past the cash registers, but there’s no looming silhouette there.

The first three hours of my shift are devoted to bringing overstock out to the sales floor and checking to see if it will fit on the shelves. At 5:37, a frozen order comes in. There are three pallets. I take them off the truck and put them in the middle of the warehouse.

The truck leaves, and I go to the coat rack at the front of the store, where two heavy, padded coats are hanging. I take one. I brought a pair of gloves from home, and I put on those, too. And a hat.

Standing in the warehouse, bundled up enough to weather a blizzard, I stare at the pallets and avoid looking toward the freezer.

I could ask Brent to do the frozen order alone. But that would almost guarantee it wouldn’t get done.

This is part of the job. I need to be able to work in the freezer.

I look around to make sure no one else is in the warehouse. Then I take a deep breath, as though about to dive deep underwater, and haul the first pallet into the freezer. Then I bring in the second.

I’m about to move the third inside when Jack appears. I close the freezer door and wait. I won’t go in there with him here.

But the door buzzer goes off, and he lets in a delivery guy. He won’t trap me in again with a witness present. Right? My heart beating rapidly, I shove the third pallet into the freezer and get out as quickly as I can, slamming the door shut.

Jack is watching the delivery guy pull a pallet of condoms off the truck. His eyes are as wide as Tommy’s. The guy hands Jack a piece of paper, and he stares at it like he hopes what’s written on it will change. I grab a broom and start sweeping.

“There aren’t any vegetables listed here,” Jack says. “There are just 500 boxes of condoms.”

“Yep,” the guy says. “That’s the whole order.”

“I didn’t order condoms. I ordered vegetables. For the Produce department.”

“That’s not what the invoice says.”

“Didn’t you know you were delivering a Produce order? You made a mistake.”

“I didn’t make any mistake. This is what they gave me.”

“Then the warehouse made a mistake. You have to take them back there.”

“Call them, if it’ll make you feel better. But these condoms travelled hundreds of miles. For a special trip, just to return them—that would cost more than the amount on the invoice. The supplier will refund the condoms, but Spend Easy would have to pay for their transport.”

Jack crumples the invoice in his hands. “This is $1800 worth of condoms.”

“Yep.”

“What am I supposed to do with $1800 worth of condoms?”

The guy shrugs. “Help solve overpopulation. Listen, I have more deliveries to make. I gotta go.”

“What about the vegetables?”

“Sorry, man. You won’t find anyone to bring you produce at this hour.”

He leaves. Jack looks at the crumpled invoice in his hand, and straightens it out again. He walks to the desk and picks up the phone.

He doesn’t dial anything, right away. He puts the phone down, leans his forehead against the wall, and takes deep breaths. “Oh my God,” he says in a high-pitched whimper. “Oh my God.”

He picks up the phone and punches some numbers. “Sir,” he says, “we have a bit of a problem here, sir. It seems there was a mistake with the order. I don’t know how it happened, but it would seem the order has been replaced with 500 boxes of condoms. Condoms, sir. Yes. He said the amount we’d spend returning them is greater than the refund. Yes, sir. I’m so sorry. I’ll wait for you here.”

He hangs up, and finally sees me. His eyes narrow. “Do you know anything about this?”

“About what?”

“Do you not see the pallet of condoms?”

“I just assumed you Produce guys were planning a staff meeting.”

I don’t go back into the freezer until Frank turns up. While I’m in there I keep my eyes on the door as I fumble products onto my cart.

I hear Frank ranting to Jack about “the Robertsons’ order”, and it soon becomes evident that a customer has placed an order for a large number of fruit baskets, which they are coming to pick up tomorrow.

I take a break around seven. Frank’s son, Randy, is already sitting in the break room, chatting with Lesley-Jo. Randy looks a bit annoyed when I enter. He isn’t wearing a uniform.

“Hey, Sheldon,” Lesley-Jo says.

“Hey.” I take my vegetarian spaghetti from the fridge and put it in the microwave. I look at Randy. “Why are you here? You’re not working tonight.”

“He brought me supper,” Lesley-Jo says. A burger and fries sit on the table in front of her. She’s cleaning her glasses with a tissue.

“How nice,” I say.

Randy excuses himself soon after that, claiming he has an essay due tomorrow. After he’s gone, Lesley-Jo offers me a fry, and I accept. “I think he likes you,” I say.

“Oh, I’m not the first cashier he’s given food to. He’s looking for a date. Any date.”

“Will you go on one with him?”

She shrugs. “He’s not bad looking. I might, if he wasn’t going for three other girls at the same time.”

I nod. “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. Or four rabbits, in this case. That’s a Russian proverb.” The microwave beeps, and I get up to collect my dinner.

“I’m not a rabbit.”

“That’s not—”

“You know, Sheldon, if you wanted a date with a cashier, I bet you could have one, easy. They all seem to adore you.”

I glance back at her, eyebrows raised. “Is that an invitation?”

“I was thinking of Marilyn, actually. Are you into older women?” She stands up, laughing. “That’s the end of my break. Have a good shift, Sheldon!”

*

Jack manages to buy enough produce from other stores to satisfy the Robertsons. Gilbert says it’s a lucky thing he did. According to him, Spend Easy is already a few million dollars in the hole. If the store lost another big customer, and Frank blamed Jack, who knows where Jack would be working right now.

The next day, Frank has working cameras installed. Men with ladders make their way around Spend Easy, taking down the fake ones and replacing them with black globes.

“It doesn’t matter,” Gilbert says. “No one’s going to watch the footage. Even on fast forward, real life is incredibly boring.”

Frank orders Ernie to move the pallet of condoms next to the Dairy cooler, where I assume they’ll sit until he figures out what to do with them. Jack doesn’t seem to have taken much heat from Frank after all. It makes sense, really. How could he have accidentally cancelled the entire order, walked to Aisle One, and ordered 500 boxes of condoms instead? It must be obvious to Frank that the order was tampered with.

So the question is, whom does he suspect?

*

Gilbert was wrong. Frank really enjoys footage of real life. Ralph claims Frank is able to access the feed from his computer, at home, and it soon becomes clear this isn’t mere propaganda.

One night, Frank calls the warehouse and asks for Brent. He tells him that if he and Gilbert don’t stop putting cardboard in the dumpster, they will be written up. Company policy dictates cardboard go in the cardboard compactor, to be recycled.

“Looks like surveillance footage isn’t so boring after all,” I say to Gilbert after Frank’s call. “Looks like Frank could watch real life all day.”

Gilbert shakes his head. “This doesn’t prove anything. Ernie’s working tonight too—Frank’s tree-hugging informant. He probably called Frank to rat us out, and then Frank pretended to spot it on the cameras. To hide the fact he has a big fat mole in Grocery.”

Nevertheless, Gilbert starts putting cardboard in the cardboard compactor.

On another shift the intercom beeps, and Frank’s voice comes out: “Gilbert Ryan, tuck in your shirt, please. Gilbert Ryan, tuck in your shirt.” We’re both in Aisle Two. Gilbert stuffs his shirt into his pants, frowning.

I haven’t heard about anyone from other departments getting reprimanded. Eric and the Produce guys have started wrestling each other in the warehouse. Doesn’t that show up on camera? Isn’t roughhousing a violation of company policy?

Eric always wins these wrestling matches. He’s huge, and military trained. It’s not serious wrestling—just a playful way for Eric to express his physical dominance. For the Produce guys’ part, they appear to love it. They emerge from Eric’s arms red-faced and beaming. I think they enjoy submitting to authority.

Two weeks after I was locked in the freezer, Frank calls a staff meeting.

Ralph tells us the purpose of the meeting is to discuss new store policies, and to refresh employees on some existing ones.

Attendance, he says, is mandatory.

*

I didn’t realize how many people work at Spend Easy. That is, there are fewer than I expected. We’re holding the meeting in the front end, and I estimate about 60 people gathered around the cash registers.

Frank called this meeting, but he doesn’t speak. That’s left to Ralph, who picks up the Service counter phone and taps a button. His voice emanates from the ceiling speakers.

“All staff to the front end, please.”

Matt and Paul emerge from Aisle Five. Unlike almost everyone else, they’re wearing uniforms. The Produce employees are standing near the mouth of Aisle Two, and they’re also in uniform. Grocery is scattered throughout the crowd.

The sun set over an hour ago, and it’s dark outside the big windows.

Ralph sits on two upside-down milk crates, one stacked on top of the other. He surveys the crowd.

Silence, now. Ralph is still holding the phone receiver, cradled in his lap. The milk crates don’t look very comfortable. His feet aren’t quite touching the floor, which gives him something of a boyish look. He glances to his right, toward the parking lot. Ernie is leaning against the Service counter beside him.

Ralph clears his throat.

He raises the receiver.

“This is a grocery store, and we serve the public. Everything we do here—in the Grocery department, in the Bakery, in the Produce department, at the cash registers—is for the customer’s benefit.”

Jack interrupts.

“That’s right! And when you break store policy, you do the customer a disservice!”

“True, Jack. We work in the food industry, the most important sector of the economy. We have a lot of responsibility.”

I glance at Jack. He’s exchanging grins with another Produce worker.

“You’ve all been given the Employee Handbook,” Ralph says, “and you’re expected to know the policies.” He lowers the receiver for a second and looks around at everyone. He raises it again. “None of us are children. We’re all getting paid to do a job, and we owe it to ourselves to do it well.”