Please Don't Come Back from the Moon (16 page)

"For what?"

"The Hump Day Honey contest," I said, and then immediately wished I hadn't. "God, you were there?" she said.

I nodded.

"Do you go to those every week?"

"Um, no. Not really."

"Not really?" she said. She shuffled around a stack of books. "It's easy money."

"I was just there for dinner. With my cousin Nick. Do you know him? He works at Liberty Bell Subs. Shaved head, goatee?"

"That's your cousin?" she said. "He's pretty brilliant."

I had never heard anybody call Nick brilliant before.

"He's cute too," she added.

"Brilliant? Cute?" I said.

"In Brooklyn, he's all the rage," she said. "Tough, hard-working, wears boots and Carhartt jackets. In Williamsburg, he'd be the hottest thing going."

"Are you kidding me?" I said.

"No. There was just an article in the
Times
about men like him," she said. "My sister Margaret e-mailed it to me. It was hysterical. Carhartt guys, they're called. I read all about it in the
Sunday Styles
section."

"How ironic," I said.

"Exactly," she said.

"What?" I said.

"What?" she said.

"Am I a Carhartt guy?" I asked, then couldn't believe I'd asked it.

"The tough guy thing," she said, "needs work."

"Thanks."

"If Nick's ideas come together, he might just be famous," she said.

"What ideas?" I said.

Our manager, Eddie Jones, came over and said it didn't take a whole crew to price remainders, did it? He sent me over to put out the new magazines. I tore the covers off the old unsold issues and sent them back to the distributor for credit. I could keep the rest of the magazine for myself. I had a pretty good collection of coverless
Playboys
going. Suddenly I was embarrassed by the thought of them. I decided to throw them away when I got home.

Later, I found Ella having a cigarette out on the loading dock.

"Do you know that in 1937, GM workers held a massive sit-down strike in Flint?" I said.

"What?"

"I don't know. It seems workers had more rights then, you know. They were better at fighting against shitty pay and all of that."

"Yeah," she said. "I've heard all of this. I've already met Nick, remember?"

She was looking out into the distance, past a silvery stream of cigarette smoke, past an approaching UPS truck, past the vast parking lots and the smokestacks of an empty factory. I'd fucked up her cigarette break, I could tell. She didn't seem like she enjoyed talking to me. I was about to go back inside and get to work before Eddie came out and snapped at me again. Then she said, "You like me, don't you?"

She was smiling at me.

"Come again?"

"You're hot for me, is that it? You see me in a bikini on a bar one night, and now you can't think of anything but me? I don't know whether I should be flattered or insulted."

The list of appropriate comebacks was long and simple—
Don't flatter yourself
or
Hello, ego problem
—but instead I said, "I don't know."

"Say, Michael," she said. "Can you cover my shift for me this Saturday? Eddie didn't give me the day off because I need more hours to get my forty for the week. Trouble is, my sister is going out of town and I don't have anybody to stay with Rusty."

It was my only Saturday off that month. I had planned to go to Ann Arbor with Nick for a football game. There was supposed to be a party afterward, at the house of somebody he'd met at a socialist potluck. It didn't sound like much fun. Plus, an extra shift would earn me a day's worth of overtime.

"Sure," I said. "No sweat."

"Eddie's threatening to pull my benefits if I don't work a full forty every week until Christmas," she said.

"Can he do that?" I said.

"I think so," she said.

She flicked her cigarette off the loading dock and immediately lit another one.

"You know," I said, "I could watch Rusty for you. I used to watch my little brother all the time."

"I don't know," she said. "Do you really think you can entertain a little boy on a Saturday night?"

"I've got nothing else to do," I said.

"Okay," Ella said.

I pumped my fist in the air, like I'd just won a contest.

"Look," she said, "I'd feel better about it if you just stayed at the mall, you know, in case he needs me or something."

"Okay," I said.

"Maybe you can take him to the movies," she said. "And then I'll give you money for dinner and ice cream. You could take him to the toy store to kill time. He'd spend all day in there if you'd let him."

"I can buy him dinner," I said.

Ella put her cigarette out in the coffee can filled with sand that Eddie had labeled,
BURY YOUR BUTTS HERE.

"You're sure?" she said. She looked upset.

"Are you sure?" I said.

"No," she said. "No sweat." She went back inside.

NICK AND I WERE
smoking pot behind Victoria's Secret. Even as we embraced the intellectual world, we had some old habits that we didn't abandon. Going through the workday with a buzz was one of them. The loading dock for that store was on the far side of the mall, away from the roads and parking lot, and in the evenings, after all the deliveries were done, nobody was back there but a handful of mall workers getting stoned. We had five minutes left in our break, and we were trying to get high enough to survive until nine thirty. I was looking out at the wetlands and field that the mall developer had to leave to comply with state regulations, and all of a sudden this weird-looking dog walked out from some brush and stared at us, its tongue hanging out.

"Look at that dog," I said.

"That's a coyote," Nick said.

"There's no fucking coyotes around here," I said.

"Bullshit, coyotes are everywhere."

"No, they're desert animals. They're in places like Arizona and New Mexico."

"No, they can live anywhere. You just never see them around here. They're afraid of people."

The creature was thin and matted and looked a little squirrelly to be somebody's stray mutt. It froze when it saw us and then took off, with not even a little wag of its tail.

"Shit, that was a sign," Nick said. "An affirmation."

I started laughing and took one last hit off the joint. I was getting pretty bored with pot. It generally made me feel like shit the next morning and aggravated my allergies, but I was way more bored with working at the mall than I was with weed. Still, I had a story to write for my creative writing class, which I desperately wanted to do well in. I wanted the instructor to dub me an heir to the Hemingway magic. The previous week, he'd handed back my first attempt at a workshop story. On top of the first page, in bold red letters, he'd written,
There are no more interesting or intelligent stories left to write about drunks. Find a new subject and try again.

"That was a sign," Nick said. "Talking coyotes, man, talking coyotes."

"Oh, yeah? Did he talk?" I said.

"Mikey, you don't listen to spirit animals with your ears. You listen with your heart."

I was getting a little sick of Nick the guru. I was ready for the old fuckface Nick who communicated by punching the hell out of my arm or throwing bottles caps at my head.

I walked Nick back to the food court. I hoped Tom was still on the clock. I was feeling depressed after the joint, and was thinking that maybe some Miami Mambo would do the trick. I would write my story the next night.

As we walked through the mall, a salesgirl from Banana Republic waved at us; a few guys at the Sharper Image and the counter woman at the Thomas Kinkaid Gallery waved too. At the Arby's, a few guys shouted out, "Comrade!" When we walked by the Successories store, a red-haired guy in a suit came to the entrance and glared at Nick. He was standing next to a Serenity Desktop Rock Garden display, but he looked anything but serene. When we were out of his sight, Nick said, "He's one of the only goddamn Republicans who works at a mall. You make eight bucks an hour and you're a Republican? Stupid shit."

"How do you know everybody who works here?" I said.

"Because I'm not an antisocial bookworm," he said. "I get out. I talk to the people. I sell submarines and frozen Cokes. And I find out what makes people tick. People know me."

"You're fall of it," I said.

"For instance," Nick said, shrugging off my accusation, "for instance, the girl at the Banana Republic? She's trying to pay her way through college. And the guys at the Sharper Image? One has three kids, the other one has a wife on disability and a kid with diabetes. The art gallery woman? Newly divorced, mother of twins. Her ex-husband lost all of their savings in one weekend in Atlantic City."

"Man, you could write a book," I said.

"No way," he said. "I got bigger plans."

NICK DID HAVE A
bigger idea than a book. For a change, I hadn't heard about it first. By the time he told me he already had about a hundred people who supported it. And, for another change, he seemed like he was actually hell-bent on pursuing this idea, not just letting it die out in a series of barroom conversations.

"On the Friday after Thanksgiving," he said, "the biggest motherfucking shopping day of the American year, Maple Rock Mall will be the sight of the biggest sit-down strike since 1937. We'll be on CNN. We'll be on the cover of
Time.
They'll want to make movies about us."

"Why?"

"Man, if my fucking dad sees this, he'll shit himself. Yours, too. Can you imagine it?"

"What are you going to do?" I said. I was getting nervous. My thoughts moved to worst-case scenarios: A bomb? A riot? A full-scale invasion?

"Sit my ass down. Me and more than five hundred of my fellow retail workers will sit our asses down."

"Really?" I said. "Why?"

"Have you not been listening to anything I've been telling you about 1937?"

"No," I said.

"You know," Nick said, "you tell me you go to college now, Mikey, but you're still one of the stupidest goddamn guys at the mall."

SATURDAY—FIFTEEN MINUTES
before four o'clock, on a cold, drizzly October afternoon—I met Ella and her son, Rusty, at the fountain in front of JC Penney's. Ella was beautiful. She wore a gray skirt, black boots, and black V-neck sweater. Unlike the rest of the employees at the Book Nook, she was always well-dressed and professional. I knew she was hoping to become the manager if Eddie Jones ever left, and, since regional managers often dropped in unannounced, Ella made it a point to work hard and look good every day. Only out on the loading dock, during the occasional cynical rant on her cigarette breaks, could you ever guess how much she hated her job.

She looked so good that I didn't even see her kid until she said, "Michael, this is my wonderful son, Rusty."

I put my hand out and Rusty slapped it. I couldn't tell if he was offering a high five or rejecting my handshake. He was a cagey little kid, all knees and elbows, and he was dressed in blue sweatpants and a red Spider-Man sweatshirt and Spider-Man tennis shoes. He had white-blond hair, pale skin, and giant blue eyes. He didn't look a thing like Ella.

"Rusty, this is my friend Michael. He's going to take you to the movies and take you out for pizza, and then maybe a trip to the toy store. After that, the two of you will pick up Mommy at work, and we'll go home, okay?"

"Why?" Rusty said.

"Remember, we talked all about it this morning."

In that moment, seeing Ella squat down so she could look her son in the eye, I considered taking back my offer. Ella could stay with Rusty, and I would go to work for her, then give her all the money I made on the shift. But it didn't seem like she would accept charity, or would ever be interested in me if I blew off an outing with her son.

I squatted down next to them, so both of us were there at Rusty's eye level. I looked over at Ella and she smiled. The dimples in her cheeks made me want to jump on her right there in the mall. Instead, still looking at her, I said, "Rusty, if you want to see Mommy at any time, we'll just go over to the bookstore and watch her work."

This seemed to make Rusty relax a little.

"Should we go see that movie?" I said. Rusty nodded and grabbed onto my hand. His mother gave him a squeeze and a loud smack on the forehead, and then she patted my arm, thanked me, and trotted past the Foot Locker toward the Book Nook.

Rusty held my hand but did very little talking. I bought him a small soda and popcorn and we found seats near the back, which he said was where he liked to sit.
The Land Be
fore Time
was pretty good, but midway through the movie, Rusty had to pee so I took him to the bathroom. He dropped his pants right in front of the lowest urinal and wizzed, getting some urine on the wall in the process. Then he pulled his pants back up, and I lifted him so he could wash his hands. We missed a good chunk of the movie, but he didn't seem to care.

After the movie, we checked in with Ella at the Book Nook. Rusty launched into a vivid description of the film's ending and Ella seemed relieved, but Eddie Jones was working the register by himself, so we didn't stay long. We went over to Pizza Pizzazz.

"What kind of slice do you want?" I asked. "Pepperoni?"

"No," he said. "Veggie Delight."

"Yuck," I said. "That's not what kids like."

"It has broccoli on it," he said. "I like broccoli."

"Rusty, your mom isn't here today," I said. "Get whatever you want. Wouldn't you like pepperoni, or ham? Sausage? Five-Cheese Fiesta?"

"No, the Veggie Delight is great," he said. "I have it all the time."

I ordered a Veggie Delight for him, and two pepperoni slices for myself. I'd spent less than three hours with the kid, and had already dropped almost thirty bucks on dinner and a movie. Not that I really minded. I thought he was polite and cute. I was starting to feel crazy in love with his mother.

Tom Slowinski came over to our table. I introduced him to Rusty. Tom nodded politely and then made a whipping sound effect behind my back.