Taking Stock (4 page)

He nods. “I’m glad. He needed one, here.”

Paul’s pocket emits a brief, 8-bit melody. He takes out his phone and starts texting. “Not supposed to be doing this,” he says.

“Was that the 1up sound, from Mario?”

“It was indeed.” He puts away his phone. “So, you’re a writer?”

“Used to be.”

“Anything published?”

“No.”

“What did you write?”

“Fiction.”

“Cool. I write a blog. About video games.”

“Good for you.”

“I’ve been thinking about trying a novel. This place is actually pretty inspiring.”

For some reason, this really irritates me.

“What, you mean Spend Easy?”

“Maybe. I think it could be good.”

“What would the conflict be?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“The characters need to want something. What would they want? Food?”

“I don’t really know.”

I replace a bag of dog treats and stop fronting. “Can I take my break now?”

“Sure, man.”

Paul leads me into the warehouse, where a punch clock hangs on the wall near the entrance, flanked by two racks filled with punch cards. He searches them.

“Looks like you don’t have one of these yet. Oh well. Just come back in 15.”

“Fine.” I start to leave.

“Hey—Sheldon, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you recommend some good writing books?”

“Listen, Paul, writing fiction is nothing like blogging.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“It takes years of practice. Writing every day. You need stamina, especially when it comes to novels. Trust me—I wrote for years. I even won a short story competition. But I never got through a novel.”

“All right, then. I’ll see you in 15.”

I start to leave, but hesitate on my way out the red warehouse doors. “
On Writing
is good,” I say. “By Stephen King.”

“Thanks.”

I haven’t eaten today, but even my ravenous hunger is given pause by the sheer variety that now confronts me. I walk aimlessly along the freezers until the TV dinners catch my attention. I mouth their names. “Salisbury Steak.” Intriguing. “Chicken Parmagiana.” Captivating. “Roast Duck with Orange Sauce.” I think I’m getting aroused.

I grab the Roast Duck and take it to the cash registers. Lane One’s lineup is kind of long, so I go to Lane Two. The cashier has short, dark hair and glasses. Her nametag says “Lesley-Jo.”

“Hi,” I say. I have a thing for girls with glasses. My brain is devoid of things to say.

“Hey. You the new Grocery boy?”

“Yep. Sheldon.”

“I’m Lesley-Jo.” She scans the dinner: beep. “That’s $3.89, Sheldon.”

I pay her. “Bon appétit,” she says.

I turn around and find Eric staring down at me. His eyes are narrowed.

“What’s that?” he says.

“It’s a microwavable dinner.”

“What’s in it?”

Slowly, I turn the package till the duck’s gleaming breast is in view.

He points at the picture. “You’re supposed to be a vegetarian.”

“Um, I am.”

“This is meat.”

“It’s not mine. It’s—it’s for Gilbert.”

“Well, let’s go give it to him, then.”

We walk past the aisles. Eric’s damp hand rests on my shoulder again, and I feel like I’m being escorted to the gallows. We find Gilbert in Aisle Five, sitting on his cart, restocking boxes of popcorn. He notices us before we reach him.

Eric holds up the Roast Duck. “Is this yours?”

Without moving his head, Gilbert glances at the dinner, at Eric, and at me. He’s expressionless, and his darting eyes are almost too quick to follow. He stands up and plucks the dinner from Eric’s hands. “Yep.”

Eric blinks. “He bought this for you? Why?”

“I told him it’s tradition for the rookie to buy lunch for whoever trains him in.”

“I haven’t heard of that before.”

“That’s because I made it up.”

Eric studies Gilbert’s face a moment longer. Then he looks at me. “For a second I thought you might be a liar, vegan.”

“Damn, rookie,” Gilbert says once Eric’s out of earshot. “You make friends quick.” He puts another box of popcorn on the shelf.

“How did you know what was going on?”

“He looked pissed, and you looked worried. I figured you lied to him about something.”

“What’s his deal?”

“He got back from Afghanistan two years ago, and he’s worked here ever since. That’s his deal.”

“What will he do if he catches me eating meat?”

He scratches his scruff-shadowed cheek. “Have you fired, probably.”

“Great.”

“It could be worse.”

“How?”

He takes the Roast Duck from his cart and walks toward the warehouse. “You could be working for him.”

Chapter Three

Home, I take two steak burgers from the freezer and put them in the microwave. I only had enough break left to grab an apple after my encounter with Eric, and now I’m craving meat. Once they’re done I place them in buns, squirt some ketchup on, and eat them standing in the kitchen.

Marcus Brutus comes in and gazes up at me with wide eyes. “Meow.”

“Shut up.”

“Meow.”

“Shut up. Go away.”

Marcus Brutus licks his paw and sneezes. He looks back at me. “Meow.”

I visit Sam later, and he asks about my day. I consider telling him about Gilbert’s mid-shift haircut, or the meat manager’s strange interest in my diet. But Sam got me the job, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful.

“It was pretty good.”

“How are the other workers?”

“Nice, I guess.”

“Talk to them much?”

“A little. I don’t really know what to say to them.”

“Say anything. Life’s not like fiction, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I think you read too many books. Stop worrying about finding things to say, and stop assuming every silence is awkward.”

“I—”

“Shut up for a minute. You need to stop being so afraid. Just don’t say anything for a while.”

*

They let me out of the psych ward because, despite diagnosing me with clinical depression, they no longer thought I was in immediate danger of killing myself. This was after three weeks on Zoloft, of course.

They also assigned me a therapist, and I have my first session with her the morning after my first shift at Spend Easy. The receptionist invites me to take a seat, and when my therapist enters the waiting room to escort me to her office, I see they’ve made a big mistake. She’s beautiful. I can’t ‘open up’ to her. I’ll be as talkative as a dead clam.

I follow her into the office and sit down.

“So,” she says, her legs crossed, a clipboard perched on her knee. She has bright blue eyes, long eyelashes, and thick brown hair. “I’m Bernice, you’re Sheldon. How is Sheldon?”

“Fine,” I say. I try not to wipe my sweaty palms on my pants.

“Nice weather.”

“Wouldn’t this be more efficient if you just asked me why I wanted to kill myself?”

She jiggles her pen, tapping it lightly against the clipboard. “Is that what you’re interested in discussing?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then let’s not.”

“But—”

“Being a decent therapist is really easy, Sheldon. If all I do is listen to you talk about the things you’re ready to talk about, then I’ve done my job pretty well. If I manage to say a few things that help you reach some insights about yourself, then I’ve been an excellent therapist. And that’s about all there is to this.”

“What if I’m not ready to talk about anything?”

“Then I would say that’s pretty typical for a first session. Why don’t we try again next time?”

I stare at her.

“Go on.” She makes a shooing gesture. “Go talk to the receptionist about scheduling your next appointment.”

*

I forgot
Crow
at Spend Easy, and I need to find out when I’m working, so after I leave Bernice’s office I bike to my new workplace.

When you first enter Spend Easy, you’re facing the section with the Bakery, Deli, and Produce departments. Across the store, just out of sight, is Meat. Hang a right. Now you’re walking between the aisles and the cash lanes. With only five aisles and six cash registers, Spend Easy isn’t a very big grocery store.

If you look at Lane Two, you’ll see Cassandra, the current record holder for breaking my heart the most, checking in a bag of frozen peas. She works here, too.

She sees me. Her eyebrows shoot up, and she raises her hand. “Hey, Sheldon,” she says.

Look away. Make a quick detour down Aisle Two.

I met Cassandra in junior high. She was attractive, and willing to talk to me, which is a rare quality among females. In fact, girls were so uninterested in me, I assumed Cassandra was a fluke. I assumed that this was the first and last time a girl would ever have time for me.

We became close. We laughed a lot. She thought it was cool I liked to write, and I thought it was cool she was hot.

She has large brown eyes, and a way of smiling with half her mouth that always made my heart race, back then. Whenever she was thinking about something she would brush her hair over her right ear. I noticed every time.

We spent a lot of time together. I told her everything about myself, except that I loved her. She told me a lot, too. About her Mom walking out on her and her Dad when she was a kid, and never coming back.

Once, she told me I wasn’t like other guys. I didn’t treat her like a ‘girl’ as distinct from a ‘boy’—I just treated her like another person. She liked that.

That same day, I told her I loved her. After that, the hanging out stopped. So did the late-night IM conversations. In the halls at school, she smiled and looked away.

That was grade nine. In grade 10, around Christmas, she messaged me to say she missed me. I was the only one who understood her. She wanted to hang out again, so we did. We went skating, and skiing, and when summer came, we did summer stuff. One day, in August, she reached out and took my hand while we were walking. I didn’t let go till we reached her house. When I did, she locked eyes with me and said, “You know, Sheldon, one day you’re going to hate me.”

She got a boyfriend the first week of grade 11. We stopped talking again.

I made friends with Sean that same year. He wanted to be a writer, too. He was well-liked—not an outcast, like me. I’m not sure how we were friends, actually.

In grade 12, it happened again with Cassandra. I told myself I didn’t feel anything for her anymore. But I was wrong.

One night, surprising even myself, I asked if I could kiss her. I asked her permission. She said no.

And, when I heard a couple weeks later that she’d kissed Sean at a party, it crushed me. They started dating, and I haven’t talked to either since. Presumably their love attained breathtaking heights, and they went on adventures together to distant lands, bringing back stories they’ll recount again and again to their grandchildren. Hell, I don’t have a Facebook account—she might have married him, for all I know.

Meanwhile, I attempted suicide.

Yesterday Frank said the Grocery manager is named Ralph, and there’s a blond-haired man wearing a Ralph nametag in the warehouse, toting a futuristic black gun. I’m guessing that’s him. He and a delivery guy are circling a pallet stacked high with dairy products held together with plastic wrap. The guy rips the plastic, exposing a yogurt container’s barcode, and Ralph points his gun, a blinking red light playing over the product. There’s a beep, and Ralph presses some buttons on the gun’s interface. They repeat this several times. I wait patiently, a spectator to their awkward, shuffling dance.

They finish. The delivery guy moves the pallet into the walk-in dairy cooler, and exits through the back door. Ralph and I are alone.

“You’re the new guy, right?” he says. “Sheldon?”

“That’s me.”

He offers his hand, and we shake—firm but brief. “I’m Ralph. You worked your first shift yesterday, with...” He checks a schedule lying next to a computer. “Gilbert and Paul. What was your impression of them?”

“They appear to know what they’re doing.”

“How much work did Gilbert do?”

“Not sure—I wasn’t with him, much.”

“I know for a fact Gilbert did very little last night. And I think you know it, too.”

“Really?”

“So, I know you’re not a tattler. Which is fine—I don’t need a spy to know what’s going on in my department. Besides, I already have a tattler. Do you consider yourself a hard worker?”

“I’ve never had a job before.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something. Almost every new employee that comes through those doors is a hard worker. Pretty much everyone hauls ass when they’re first hired on. Yet Grocery is full of slackers. You, the new guy, you’ll put out a 100 cases of stock on order night, and they’ll put out 45. You’ll answer pages for carryouts and price checks, and they’ll relax in the warehouse. They’ll even make fun of you for working so hard. Eventually, you’ll start asking yourself why you should work any harder, when you’re only getting paid minimum wage, just like everyone else. Are you asking yourself that?”

“I think so.”

“Well, I’ll tell you why. A decent person isn’t comfortable sitting on his ass and collecting a paycheck for it. A decent person knows that if someone’s paying you to do a job, you do it. Otherwise, it’s stealing.” Ralph turns and takes a clipboard from the desk. “We hired you to replace John. He was supposed to work today, 5-10. Can you work that shift?”

“Sure.”

“Great. I’m in till five, so I’ll see you as I’m leaving.”

The store got busier while I was in the warehouse, and leaving involves navigating around pushy customers wielding carts. I leave through Aisle Two, grabbing a few cans of cat food on my way—Turkey Giblets in Gravy, the only thing Marcus Brutus will eat. I take them to the Customer Service counter (Eight Items or Less), where Betty awaits. She scans the cans without speaking.

“That’s ungrammatical, you know,” I say.

“What?”

“It should say Eight Items or Fewer. Not Less.”

“You owe me $5.37.”

Frank rushes past to my right, then backs up and scrutinizes the metal flaps that conceal the cigarettes behind Betty. Does he ever make eye contact?

“Mason,” he says. “Got a minute?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Do you want to change the outside garbage for me? Thanks.” He turns on his heel and marches down Aisle One.

“I haven’t started my shift yet,” I call after him.

“You’ll need rubber gloves,” he shouts back. He’s already past the dryer sheets. “You can get them from the Meat department.”

I’m not sure Ralph’s pep talk prepared me for this.

But this is the only job I have, and I’m not likely to get another. So I head for the Meat department.

There are two entrances into Meat—one from the sales floor, and one from the warehouse. It has three rooms. The first room features a window through which customers can speak to employees working inside. I peer through. Eric’s not there. I go in and start searching for the gloves.

The double doors that lead to the next room swing open, and Eric emerges, holding a long, blood-spattered butcher knife. Tiny rivulets of red trickle down his plastic apron. I begin inching backward.

“Hi,” I say.

“Morning, vegan. What brings you to my den of sin?”

“Rubber gloves. Frank said they were in here.”

Eric takes a step closer, without lowering the knife. I take a step back. “This is my department,” he says. “Frank has no idea what I keep in here. For instance—” He turns abruptly, and I jump. He grabs a box from a shelf. “We have latex gloves. Not rubber.”

He takes two from the box and throws them at me. I catch one, the other bouncing off my chest and onto the concrete floor.

I pick it up, keeping my eyes on him. “Thanks.” I back through the door.

“They’re disposable!” he says. “You throw them out when you’re done.”

Betty supplies me with a big black bag, and I bring it outside. When I find the garbage disposal, I realize I’ll need more bags. The disposal consists of a concrete cylinder cemented to the sidewalk, and at this point, throwing trash here is a purely symbolic act. There isn’t room for any more.

I put on the gloves and pick up a coffee cup. It’s half full, and some coffee spills out, narrowly missing my sneakers. I drop it into the bag and grab a burger wrapper. I can feel the grease through the latex—it’s like I’m not even wearing gloves.

A guy walks by wearing the trademark yellow shirt. He notices me, and stops. “Whoa, dude. Are you new?”

I drop a half-eaten slice of pizza into the bag. “I was hired yesterday.”

“Where’s your uniform?”

“Home. My shift doesn’t start till five.”

“Looks like it started early to me, bro. I’m Brent, by the way. I work in Grocery.”

“Me too. I’m Sheldon.”

“Why are you digging around in that trash if you’re not in till five?”

“I came in to find out when I’m working, and Frank asked me to do this.”

“He told you to scour that disease pit, when you’re not even on?”

“Yep.”

“You know why he asked you, right? You, and not someone else?”

“Not really.”

“Because no one but the new guy would go near that. Look at it. It’s disgusting.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“It needs to be done, though, so who better than the rookie? And during his off-time, no less.” Brent shakes his head. “I wouldn’t do it, bro.”