Taking Stock Read online

When I was a kid, I discovered I could play catch with myself by throwing a tennis ball at the sloped roof of our shed. I’d play for hours, never able to anticipate where the ball would go once it bounced off the shingles. The empty lot across the street was always filled with kids throwing balls, but the pressure to catch one thrown by another person was too much. In the backyard there was just me, and my determination to get better. We only stayed in that apartment one summer, and in later years I missed the shed.

  That sounds like a sad story, but telling it to Sam, I can only laugh.

  Sam scratches his chin. “Within this anecdote may lie the true reason you’re not attending my dinner party tonight. Tell me. Did you throw with your right hand, or your left?”

  “My right. I’m right-handed.”

  “Oh. Never mind, then.”

  “Why? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I’m thinking of a study I was reading about the other day. They found that left-handed people are more likely to experience feelings of apprehension and self-doubt when faced with new situations. For lefties, the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant, and apparently that’s the half responsible for most negative emotions.”

  “Well, I was born left-handed, but Mom kept switching stuff to my right hand when I was a baby. She didn’t want me to be a leftie in a world built for right-handed people.”

  Sam whistles. “Goodness.”

  “I have a right-handed body and a left-handed brain.”

  “You’re screwed up.”

  “I don’t even know which side of my brain I’m supposed to be using!”

  “I guess that’s your answer, then. That’s what’s wrong with you. I understand now why you declined my dinner invitation. You have things you need to sort out.”

  “No. I defy my biology. I’ll come.”

  Sam grins.

  “But don’t tell anyone I was in a psych ward, okay?”

  His grin fades a little. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “It shouldn’t be. But it is.”

  In attendance at the dinner are Sam, a bunch of other middle-aged people, and me. A few of them glance at me askance, but nobody reacts like Gord did. As for Gord, he’s sitting near the wine, alone.

  I don’t have much experience making small talk with men and women twice my age. For that matter, I don’t have much experience making small talk. I’m not sure where to start, or whether I want to. My chest feels particularly tight. I hang out near a basket of flatbread.

  Sam walks over, sipping from a glass of wine. “Hey, Sheldon. Glad you came.” He turns to a guy standing nearby. “Ted, have you met Sheldon?”

  Ted shakes his head, and comes over. “Hey.”

  “Hi.”

  “This is the first day of Sheldon’s new social life,” Sam says.

  Ted’s eyebrows raise. “Oh? Congratulations.”

  I force a chuckle.

  Sam says, “Are you enjoying the appetizer, Sheldon? I made it especially for you.”

  “It’s good bread.”

  “Not just any bread. It’s unleavened bread. And see that bottle over there? That’s wine.”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you know what they ate at the Last Supper?”

  “Wine and bread?”

  “Bingo.”

  I glance around. “Where’s Jesus?”

  He pokes me in the chest. “Right here. And your crucifixion is tomorrow morning. The actual hour is flexible—you can show up at your convenience. But you’ll be nailed to the cross of customer service.” He sips some wine. “I got you a job.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “The grocery store down the road.”

  “Spend Easy?”

  “Yep. I know someone there who’s putting in a good word for you. Do you have much you can put on a résumé?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, write one, and include whatever you can think of. Bring it in and ask for the manager. Don’t tell them I sent you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  Something starts beeping in the kitchen. “That’s supper,” Sam says, and goes to get it.

  Ted and I look at each other.

  “So, how do you know Sam?” I say.

  “I met him through Al, the guy out on the deck. Sam sells me pot.”

  “Oh. You too, huh?”

  “He sells to everyone here.”

  “Really? You’re all his, uh, clients?”

  “Yeah. There’s a couple of us missing. He has us all for dinner every month.”

  “Is that industry standard?”

  “Um, not exactly. Not much about what Sam does is standard. He charges more, but we get security, and a superior product. He buys from his cousin, who’s an organic farmer, and he only sells to married people with families—people with a lot invested in not getting caught. Plus he hosts these dinners, so we can get to know each other, and feel less like a bunch of sketch bags.”

  “So is everyone getting high after supper, then?”

  “I’m not. Neither will most of the others. I smoke at home, personally. I have esophageal cancer, but with the limit my doctor’s set, I’m not able to get enough of the medical stuff to completely kill the pain.”

  Sam doesn’t eat meat, so I wasn’t expecting supper to be very exciting. But it’s not bad. He made vegetarian lasagna, and it disappears quickly. Compliments and approving grunts come from all around the room.

  As Last Suppers go, it’s actually pretty good.

  *

  I get up shortly after 10 and ride my bike to the grocery store.

  Standing before the Customer Service counter, I raise my 1-page résumé into the air. “To whom should I give this?” I say.

  The woman behind the counter looks at me with one eyebrow cocked. She’s wearing a bright yellow t-shirt with “Spend Easy” scrawled across the front. Her nametag says “Betty.” She’s chewing gum, and the piston-like motion of her jaw is hypnotic. “Give what?”

  “This.” I hold my résumé higher, and it bends over until the tip of the page tickles my forearm.

  “Here,” Betty says, holding out her hand.

  I pass it to her, and she drops it into the garbage bucket behind her. “Thanks.”

  I blink. “That was my résumé.”

  “Yep.”

  “You just threw it in the garbage.”

  “That’s the résumé bucket.”

  “There’s a Pepsi can in there.”

  “It’s also the recycling bin.”

  I frown.

  “Listen,” she says. “You don’t want to work here.”

  The phone sitting near her splayed hand begins to ring, and she snatches it up. “Customer Service, Betty speaking. Oh. Yes. He’s an applicant.” I follow her gaze across the store and up, to a tinted window that overlooks the cash registers. Behind the glass is the silhouette of a head talking on a phone. I get the feeling it’s staring right at me.

  While Betty’s on the phone, a lady walks up to the Customer Service counter with her son, five bottles of detergent piled in her arms. “I’m in a rush,” she says.

  Betty glares at her. Into the phone she says, “I’ll send him up.” She replaces the receiver and instructs me to take the stairs behind the last cash lane.

  “Can I have my résumé back?”

  She fishes it out of the trash.

  “Thanks.”

  For a moment, I consider heading for the exit instead.

  But I walk past the cash registers. Behind the last one a staircase awaits, just as Betty said. It’s narrow and black. At its top I find a short hall with three doors. The one on my right stands open, and a voice calls for me to enter. Inside, a man is sitting in a swivel chair, facing the tinted window. He swivels.

  “Hi,” I say, “I’m Sheldon Mason, I’m here to—”

  He isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at the single page dangling from my hand. “I need that.”

 
I hold it out, but he swivels again, and pushes himself backward with his feet until he’s sitting behind his desk. He looks across the room, at a filing cabinet in the corner. “Place it on my desk.”

  His eyes don’t leave the filing cabinet until the résumé is in his hands. He glares at it. I learn from a placard on his desk that his name is Frank Crawford.

  His eyes flick to the empty air two feet to my right. He has yet to make eye contact. He reminds me of a horse just escaped from a burning barn, eyes rolling madly. “The uniform consists of black pants, black shoes, a yellow Spend Easy t-shirt, and a nametag. We strive to maintain a professional appearance. Shirts tucked in. Nametags worn at all times. Facial hair neatly trimmed.”

  “Are you offering me a position?”

  He doesn’t answer. He picks up the phone on his desk, presses a button, and says, “Eric Andrews to the store office please.” His voice comes out through a speaker above my head.

  I stand awkwardly, and Frank returns to his study of the filing cabinet. We wait. Soon, I hear footsteps ascending the stairs. I feel them, too. A large mammal approaches.

  Indeed, the person who appears in the doorway is among the biggest, hairiest men I have ever encountered. His eyes are small, but I can feel them measuring me—weighing me. Contemplating how I would look, drawn and quartered and marked down for purchase. He extends his hand, and I have the fleeting impression he is going for my jugular. Then I recall the ritual, and we shake. He doesn’t try to impress me with his grip. He doesn’t need to.

  “Eric Andrews.”

  “Sheldon Mason.”

  He motions to the chair behind me. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  I sit.

  Frank folds his hands and gazes down at them. “Eric is the Meat manager. We have openings in both the Meat and Grocery departments. The Grocery manager is Ralph Thompson, who isn’t in today.”

  “I could really use him in Meat,” Eric says. “I’d work him hard.” He grins down at me with a mouth full of teeth.

  “Both positions are full-time,” Frank says.

  “There’s a chance of getting promoted, in the Meat department,” Eric says. “If you work out, I’ll make you a meat cutter. There’s a pay increase.”

  I swallow. Eric is standing very close.

  “It’s up to you,” Frank says.

  “I’m a good boss,” Eric says. He places a hand on my shoulder, so sweaty it soaks through my t-shirt.

  “I’m sure you are,” I say. “But—”

  Eric raises his eyebrows.

  With his hand still on my shoulder, I try not to breathe too deeply. I cannot work for this man. He freaks me out.

  “I’m a vegetarian,” I say.

  Eric’s smile vanishes. “What?”

  “I don’t eat meat.”

  “You don’t have to eat it.”

  “I can’t work with meat. It’s against my principles.”

  “There’s meat in the Grocery department, too.”

  For a moment, I hesitate. “It’s in cans. It’s different if you can’t see it.”

  Eric looks at Frank, who shrugs. Eric looks back at me, eyes narrowed.

  “Well. Enjoy yourself in Grocery.”

  Chapter Two

  I find a Spend Easy guy in Aisle Two. He’s a little taller than me, with shaggy black hair, and scruff shadowing his cheeks. I wouldn’t say he looks messy—at least, he’s the kind of messy I imagine girls finding attractive.

  He’s slowly taking cans of dog food from a cardboard box and arranging them on the shelf. The box sits on a metal trolley. As I draw near, he glances at me with bored eyes.

  “Working hard?” I say.

  “Depends. By the standards of Bangladesh, definitely not. But by this country’s standards? I’m overtaxing myself. Soon time to take a break.”

  A middle-aged man approaches us holding a can of carrots. “I don’t need this many carrots,” he says. “Do you have a smaller can than this?”

  “Beats me,” my new co-worker says.

  “Aren’t you even going to look?” the man says.

  “I’ll look,” I say.

  “You stay out of this,” my new co-worker says. He’s wearing a gold ring on the middle finger of his left hand. He’s twisting it with his right.

  The customer furrows his brow. “Could one of you please do your job?”

  “My job, old man,” my new co-worker says, “is to put these cans on this shelf, and to remain sane despite incessant customer bitching.”

  The man’s face is turning red, and so, I think, is mine. “What’s your name, you little brat?”

  “Can you read?” He points to his nametag, which reads “Ernest.”

  “Okay, Ernest. You’ll regret your treatment of me. I’ll be having a chat with your manager, and you’ll be out a job if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Go right ahead.” Ernest takes something from his pocket. “Here’s his business card.” Ernest flicks it. The card spins through the air and hits the man in the chest. He flinches. “Say hi to him for me,” Ernest says.

  The man picks the card off the floor, glowers at Ernest, and storms out of Aisle Two.

  “Um,” I say.

  “What an asshole,” Ernest says. He nods at the yellow shirt I’m holding. “So, you’re the new Grocery boy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow. They’re getting quick.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said they’re getting quick. They just sacked John two hours ago, and now they’ve hired his replacement already.”

  I wonder what John had to do to get fired.

  “Frank said to find a stock boy to show me around,” I say. “He said there’s a video I should watch?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sheldon.”

  “I’m Gilbert.”

  “I thought your name was Ernest.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “Your nametag says Ernest.”

  “That’s because this is Ernest’s nametag.”

  He turns and starts walking toward the rear of the store. He pauses, and glances back at me. “Were you recently a patient in a psychiatric ward?”

  I struggle to keep my shock from registering on my face. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “You’re wearing Velcro sneakers.”

  *

  When Sam brought me the Velcro shoes, I asked him how he got to the hospital. He doesn’t have a car—at least, I’ve never seen one in the driveway.

  It turns out he walked.

  “Why did you walk an hour to visit someone you don’t know? Why’d you buy me this stuff? I was going to kill myself in your shed.”

  “Our shed.”

  “Why are you doing this? I can’t repay you.”

  “You will repay me. For the book, the sneakers, and the ambulance ride. But don’t worry—I can wait till you find a job, and my interest rates aren’t that high.”

  My debt mounted quickly. Sam was feeding my cat, and he said in a couple days, rent day, he intended to pay it for me. He’d tell the landlord I was out of town, which was technically true. The hospital’s in the city—we live in the next town.

  It’s occurred to me a couple times that maybe I should find it weird that Sam is helping me so much.

  *

  The girl in the video wears a t-shirt with Spend Easy written across it, but it’s bright blue instead of yellow. She’s walking past shelves filled with canned goods, and she speaks with the kind of enthusiastic condescension you can only get away with in safety videos.

  “Hey there! My name is Sandy. I’m a Grocery worker, just like you! My experience with the Spend Easy chain of supermarkets has been both enjoyable and rewarding, and I just know you’ll feel the same. But don’t get carried away! Every job has its potential safety hazards, and Grocery is no different. The last thing we want is for you to end up with a fractured skull!”

  The scene switches to a warehouse, where a tall, gangly guy is re
aching up to place a cardboard box on a shelf.

  Enter Sandy. “This is my co-worker, Stan. Say hi, Stan!”

  “Hi, there.”

  “Stan is about to help me demonstrate an important safety rule.”

  Stan scratches his head. “I am? What rule is that, Sandy?”

  The camera zooms in on the box Stan just put on the shelf, which tips forward, dumps three packages of macaroni noodles on his head, and settles back onto the shelf.

  “You’re never supposed to place product above eye level, Stan!” Sandy says, and skips away, leaving Stan rubbing his head.

  Next, Sandy’s in a parking lot, pushing shopping carts past rows of parked cars. A truck screeches to a halt a meter away from her. The driver leans out his window and shouts, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, lady!”

  Sandy wags a finger at him. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, mister! I’m wearing a bright orange safety vest with yellow reflectors, as per safety regulations!”

  Gilbert steps forward and turns off the TV. “Anyway. You get the idea, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Sandy is a lie, by the way. There are no girls in Grocery.”

  “Why not?”

  “There just aren’t.”

  The warehouse is accessed through a set of red swinging doors. We’re in a tiny office to the right of them. The warehouse has walls and floor of cracked concrete. Towers of cardboard boxes sit on wooden pallets all around, and still more boxes sit on carts like the one Gilbert left in Aisle Two. A metal rail runs along the walls, low to the floor, and the space between is overflowing with litter.

  “Is Ernest working today?” I ask.

  “Nope.”

  “So, what if that customer calls Frank and says ‘Ernest’ mistreated him today? Won’t Frank figure out what really happened?”

  “Oh, are you concerned for my welfare? Trying to save me from myself?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Frank never knows who’s working. If he gets a complaint about Ernest, he’ll do what he always does—call the fat fucker to the office and tell him off.”

  Gilbert directs me up a staircase farther into the warehouse, to the washroom for male employees, where I change into the Spend Easy shirt. Then we head back toward the sales floor.