Taking Stock (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Professor was a patient the day I arrived at the psych ward, and he was a patient the day I left. In between, I didn’t detect much of a change in him. I wasn’t the keenest observer at the time, preoccupied with my own imbalances as I was. But going over my memories now, I think I’m right.

One day he emerged from the TV room and walked over to where Sam and I sat at one of the cafeteria tables. “Infomercials,” he said to us, still standing. “What an excellent guide to what Western society is really about: playing house while the world burns.”

Sam and I looked at each other.

“Some people here are trying to maintain a positive attitude,” Sam said. “Do you think maybe you should keep those thoughts to yourself?”

The Professor nodded. “Positive thinking is an excellent way to overlook the atrocities of our age.” He turned and walked toward the rooms.

“That guy starts to grate on you after a while,” Sam said.

The Professor stopped—I think he overheard Sam. He shouted: “Did you know mental illness affects one in four people? Huh? Did you know that, asshole?”

His chin was trembling slightly. Sam had no reply, and neither did I.

The Professor turned and walked away.

*

“Do not kill insects,” Tommy says to me 10 minutes into one shift. “There may be hope for you if you spare insects.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We will be as bugs to our computer overlords. How can we beg their mercy if we are not ourselves merciful?”

“You know, Tommy, it’ll be pretty easy to prevent AIs from taking over. We just won’t give them appendages.”

“What?”

“Appendages. We won’t give them arms, or legs.”

Tommy scratches his head. “I need to talk to Gilbert.”

It’s Sunday, and I’m working on changing the displays with Casey, who’s darting around even faster than usual. Today is his 20th birthday, but he isn’t relaxing. He’s exasperated by Grocery’s return to slackness. Tommy’s actually working pretty hard since Gilbert told him about our future robot overlords, but Gilbert and Donovan are even worse than before.

Right now Casey is barreling past Aisle Three, pushing a cart laden with sacks of flour from one of last week’s displays. I’m standing just outside the warehouse doors with my cart, and Casey’s waving at me with his left hand as he pushes with his right. “Move, Sheldon! I’m coming through!”

There’s an elderly woman walking slowly out of Aisle Five, staring at a bottle of Pepsi in one hand and a bottle of Diet Pepsi in the other. Comparing their nutritional information.

“Casey, watch out!”

He stares at me, his face screwed up. “What?”

I start around my cart—to deflect Casey’s, or to push her out of the way, I don’t know which—but I’m too late. Casey hits her waist-level, knocking her into her shopping cart, which spins around and rolls toward Dairy. She falls to the floor, and I hear something inside her break. Five bags of flour tumble from Casey’s cart. Two of them land on her, and one of them splits open, spilling flour onto her blouse.

I’m standing, frozen, with my hands outstretched and my mouth open. Slowly, I close it.

Casey’s still clutching the handle of his cart, his eyes wide, his face as white as the flour coating the fallen customer.

She lies there, motionless.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Cassandra and I see a movie at the theatre in the mall, but it’s kind of disappointing. “It seemed way better when I watched the trailer,” she says as we leave.

I didn’t eat half my popcorn—I put way too much artificial butter on it. I offer it to her, but she doesn’t want it either, so I toss it.

We re-enter the mall to find Sean sitting on a bench, his arms spread across its back. When he sees us, he points. “How was the movie, kids?”

I hear Cassandra’s breath catch, but she tries to act natural. “Not so great,” she says.

“And how’ve you been, Sheldon? Haven’t seen you since the New Year.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“I’ll bet. Tell me—do you think you actually have a chance with her?”

I don’t answer.

“Sean—” Cassandra says.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sean says. “She likes you. Loves you, even. Always has. Back in high school, she never shut up about you. Even since we’ve been together, I’ve sometimes wondered if she loves you even more than she loves me.”

“That’s not true,” Cassandra says.

“So you gotta be asking yourself. If she feels that way about you, why didn’t you end up together? I mean, you met Cassandra long before I did. Why didn’t she give you a shot, instead of jerking you around for years like she did?”

I glance at Cassandra. “Give it up, Sean,” she says.

“The reason Cassandra wasn’t willing to even consider a relationship with you, Sheldon, was your complete lack of social status. She didn’t use those words, of course. But I can tell you some words she did use. When I brought up how often she talked about you, and how she seemed to have feelings for you, know what she said? She said she’d never go out with you, because all her friends thought you were a loser.” Sean smiles. “Now you know how much the ‘love’ between you means to her.”

I look again at Cassandra, who won’t meet my gaze.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Sean says. “My car’s outside. Let’s get out of here before you make an even bigger fool of yourself. Sheldon can bus it back, the same way he got here.”

They leave.

*

“How was your date?” Gilbert says.

“Gross—I keep getting bong water in my mouth.”

“Don’t inhale so hard.”

I try again, and pass it to him. “It wasn’t a date. She has a boyfriend.” I don’t feel like relating the particulars. How Sean showed up, and how, without Gilbert there to throw beer in his face, he made me look and feel like a piece of shit. I don’t want to talk about that at all. I just want to get really stoned.

“Boyfriends are inconvenient,” Gilbert says. “So, who paid for the movie?”

“Me.”

“It wasn’t a date, but you paid?”

“She offered to pay for herself, but I insisted.”

“You’re an idiot.” He passes back the bong.

“I was being nice. I know it’s old fashioned for the guy to get the tickets.”

“It’s not just that. You want to sleep with her, right? You want to have sex with Cassandra.”

“Um—”

“Because if you buy her stuff all the time, it’s kind of like paying installments on an expensive prostitute you might not even get to sleep with.”

I lower the bong and look at him. “You live off screwing Frank. What does that make you?”

*

Frank’s son, Randy, has been causing trouble for Gilbert.

He tells everyone at Spend Easy who’ll listen that his Dad used to talk about firing Gilbert, but never mentions it anymore. It’s odd to see Randy being so brazen about it—directly questioning Gilbert on why he’s back to slacking off all the time, and openly asking the other employees what they know. No one stands up to Gilbert like this.

Obviously, Randy doesn’t know what a stranglehold Gilbert has on this place. And I can understand why he’s upset. According to Sam, Frank’s been severely depressed. Randy must see that at home.

He asks Ernie what happened to the video showing Gilbert exiting the customer restroom with a girl, but Ernie lies to him, saying his phone crashed, and he lost it. The pants incident cowed Ernie pretty thoroughly. It doesn’t take much.

“I know something’s going on,” Randy says to Gilbert in the warehouse, one day. “I plan to find out what.”

Gilbert just nods.

Theresa seems to have meant what she said in the psych ward. She avoids all contact with me. I answered a couple of her pages, but when I did she treated me like a total stranger—not a glimmer of recognition. I’ve decided not to answer any more of them.

In Grocery, the same ritual unfolds that does whenever an attractive cashier is hired. “Damn,” Gilbert says to me and Donovan in Aisle Two. “That body!” He makes a squeezing motion with his hands, and nudges Donovan. “You wanna do some premarital stuff to that, right?”

Casey tells me the woman he struck is in critical condition with a broken hip. The doctors are saying she’s lucky to have survived, at her age. She must be a really sweet lady, because apparently during a moment of lucidity from the morphine she said she doesn’t want to press charges.

“She was leaving the next day,” Casey says. “To visit her sister. She was here buying groceries for the girl who was going to housesit for her.” Casey sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “Her sister’s sick with leukemia, Sheldon. And now she can’t visit her, because she’s in the hospital herself.”

After he hit her, everyone in Grocery was required to watch a new safety video. There have been some catty comments made in the break room too, with Casey present.

“Why was I going so fast, Sheldon? Why do you and I kill ourselves out there, for minimum fucking wage? The customers eat either way, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” I say, “but that’s not the point. It’s about earning your salary. It’s about doing a job because someone’s paying you. That’s all you were doing, Casey.” It feels weak, but it’s all I have.

“I guess so.” He takes a deep breath. “I quit drinking coffee.”

I’ve run into Matt in the break room twice since he started in Meat. The first time, I asked how he likes working for Eric. He just shrugged. There are dark spots under his eyes. I don’t think he’s been sleeping very well.

“I wouldn’t want to work for him,” I said. “I don’t trust him, if you want to know the truth.”

No reply.

The second time, I found Matt with a TV dinner in front of him. He was poking at it with his fork.

I tried to get him talking. He used to get pretty riled up whenever he thought anyone was gossiping about him, so I made something up. “I overheard one of the cashiers saying you have pretty bad body odour. She said you stink.”

Matt nodded. “My break is over. I have to get back to work.”

He stood, leaving most of the TV dinner.

*

Donovan calls, and invites me for a joint and a drive.

“Impaired driving, Donovan,” I say. “Not a thing I endorse.”

“Right. Well, let’s get high and ride the bus around, then. We can get off periodically for buzz maintenance.”

I have nothing better to do. We sit in the back of the bus with an earbud apiece, listening to music and not saying much. After an hour or so, at a seemingly random stop, Donovan takes back the earbud and puts away his phone. “Come on.” He stands up.

“You wanna smoke some more?” I ask as we step off onto the sidewalk.

“Well, yeah,” he says. “But also—that.” He points across a nearby parking lot.

“A grocery store?”

“A superstore, man. Way bigger than Spend Easy. More than five aisles—like, 10, probably.”

“And?”

“Must be different. You’d probably be just a number, working there. Just another cog. We could go in, ask them what it’s like.”

“If you want.”

We smoke a bowl, and enter the store. This seems weird. I’m definitely letting him do the talking. When Donovan starts asking employees what it’s like to have 10 aisles to stock, we’re bound to look like huge stoners. I wonder if they’ll throw us out.

“Hey,” Donovan says when he finds an employee, in housewares.

“Hey, Donovan. You got more for us? We haven’t even sold the last pound, yet.”

“If I had more for you, do you think I’d come talk to you about it in the middle of the store? You dumbass.”

The guy frowns. “Geez. Sorry.”

“Did you know Randy Crawford when he worked here?”

The guy starts cutting open a box sitting on a nearby cart. “You’re talking about Crohner, right?”

“Crohner? What does that mean?”

“Oh, he used to stay in the washroom for like a half hour at a time. We asked him why, and he told us he has Crohn’s disease. After that, we called him Crohner. He was a weird guy, anyway.”

“How did he react?” Donovan says.

“Some of the guys think he quit because of it.”

“Wow. That’s a stroke of luck, then.”

He gives Donovan a strange look. “I guess so, man.”

“Come on, Sheldon.” We walk back through the store.

I’m trying to piece together what just happened. “How did you know Randy used to work here?”

“Gilbert found his résumé on file in Frank’s office.”

I stop walking.

Donovan returns my gaze, expressionless. “Gilbert wanted me to come here and dig up some compromising info on Randy. He told me to bring you.”

“Why?”

“He wants you to see how we’re doing things, now.”

“We?”

“You know.”

“So, you work for Gilbert now, or something?”

“I work for Frank. Frank works for Gilbert.”

“What was that guy talking about, asking if you had more for him?”

He waits until we’re outside to answer, and when he does, his voice is low.

“Gilbert has started distributing dope to stores all over the city.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Do you wanna help, or something? Wanna do what I’m doing—legwork?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. Anyway, you’ve helped him in your own way.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Without you, Gilbert never would have gotten proof Frank is gay. And when you started smoking his weed, he saw a healthy bump in sales. Did you know that? People think you’re a good guy, Sheldon. When people hear you’re smoking his product, they want to smoke it, too.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I’m really not.” Donovan smiles. “Your endorsement meant money to him. You should embrace it. He got me a raise, and now he’s giving me a cut of his profits. I bet he could make your life a little easier, too.”