Since the Layoffs (5 page)
M
onday morning, 5 a.m. The newspaper guy brings the papers, dumps them out front of the store in a bundle and drives off. I eagerly go out and cut the string, put the newspapers in the rack, then take one out to see if my crime has shocked the city.
Nothing. Not on the front page, anyway. There’s a lot of stuff about a local hospital closing its doors because no one can pay their bills anymore, and some Washington pol got caught doing something bad with funds earmarked for some great cause. Never heard of him. I flip back to page two. Nothing. Trouble in the Congo and the Middle East. Isn’t there always? I toss the whole section and grab the thinner “Town and Area” section, which holds the comics. Nothing on the front page of the section, just more about the hospital. After flipping past eight pages of friggin’ hospital articles, which I guess are supposed to make me feel something (What the fuck were they expecting? That the hospital managers would just keep helping sick people out of the goodness of their hearts? We know by now that nobody gives a fuck about us, so we don’t care about this shit, just give us a paper full of comics and sports and shut the fuck up with this manipulative liberal ass-kissing that’s supposed to make me feel sorry for myself), I see a small article on the bottom corner of page nine which is headlined WOMAN, DOG, SHOT BY INTRUDER. In the article, which is three short paragraphs, one paragraph less than was devoted to the trouble in the Congo, I learn that a neighbor found Corinne Gardocki, 39, Sunday morning when he noticed her body lying on the back steps.
She was thirty-nine? Bet she wouldn’t have wanted the whole town to know that. I thought she was a good bit younger. Police Sergeant Somebody-or-Other was ruling it a homicide, tipped off, I suppose, by the gunshot wound in the head. He surmised that a Peeping Tom (I beg your pardon!) had been watching Mrs. Gardocki when the family dog attacked, and violence had begun.
I get my first criminal impulse, an insane desire to call this cop and set him straight, tell him I’m not a Peeping Tom, I’m a respectable assassin, thank you very much. Of course, I overcome the impulse, but I feel slightly offended. I also have a strong desire to go back there, look around, see how the place looks in daylight without a dead woman and dog on the back steps, see the yellow police tape around the place, tape for which I am solely responsible. There is most likely a cop sitting out front, waiting for the criminal to return to the scene of the crime, as they almost always do, supposedly. Now I see why. I’m surprised at how strong the urge is.
I fold up the newspaper and put it back in the rack.
Tommy comes in at seven. We chat for a bit. He tells me that his wife, Mel, got a job for an insurance company, administrative assistant. I congratulate him.
“We might even be able to pay all our bills this month,” he tells me.
As I’m walking out the door, he asks, “Jake, man, have you been fucking with the security system? All the tapes say Friday.”
“Haven’t touched it. I don’t do well with technology.”
He shrugs. “Maybe it was Jughead.”
I shrug. “See you tonight.”
“Later.”
So the only suspicious thing I’ve done is screw with the security system. Someone has noticed. What to do now? Screw with it more, or leave it alone? I figure just take the tape and throw it out might be the best thing. Or tape over it. We’re supposed to keep the tapes in order, each one lasts twenty-four hours, and there are fourteen, so we can go back two weeks. If I mix up the order, and throw the incriminating tape in tonight, I won’t need to worry about it anymore.
And I can’t control the urge to walk up past the Gardocki place again. Instead of driving home, I drive about a mile away from the Gardocki residence, park on a quiet street, and walk around. I want to walk past the house, to see if there really is a cop car outside. Maybe they’ve set up a surveillance camera to see who walks by. I get to the bridge over Kruc Creek and see not one, but four cop cars, and a police van, parked next to the bridge.
“Morning,” I say to one of the cops. He is standing by his car, drinking coffee from a paper cup. He nods. Down in the creek I see two other cops, dressed in hip boots, splashing around.
“Somebody drown?” I ask.
“Nah,” says the cop. “Just looking for some stuff.”
I don’t say anything, am about to continue walking, when the cop, out of boredom, volunteers some information. “There was a homicide up the road over the weekend. We got a tip that a guy driving by saw someone throwing something into the creek, about the time of the murder.”
I look awed, impressed by the importance of police work. “Wow,” I say.
The cop looks pleased with my reaction. This guy isn’t wondering about me, he’s thinking about himself, about impressing an average joe with the details of his job. I could impress him mightily by telling him I’m the guy they’re looking for, but I’m prudent enough to just smile and nod.
“Have a good day,” I tell him, walking off.
“You too,” he says, Clint Eastwood-like.
So it seems my decision not to throw the gun in the creek was a good one after all. Someone up there, maybe the patron saint of hired killers, is looking out for me. About time.
“There’s going to be some kind of review,” Tommy tells me the next morning as I am preparing to hand him the reins of the business. “Some guy will be coming down from the head office, going over stuff, checking out the store. I think he rates the employees. You’re going to have to talk to him.”
“When?”
“Today. They just called.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Tommy nods. He has stress circles around his eyes that he used to get during the beginning of farm season back at the factory. He’s a good guy, always trying, always working to make his life and the lives of his family better, always getting fucked by circumstance and making the best of it. He nearly lost his house when the layoffs came, but he called the bank and worked things out. Every now and then I hear rumors about his wife and some other guy from the factory, but she and Tommy are still together. He works it out. Now he’s trying to work out the inventory list. He has a look of fear about him, anticipating some kind of criticism from the corporate types who are on their way, doing everything in his power to prevent it.
The store makes money, but since the layoffs I’ve learned that’s hardly the point. Making money is neither here nor there. What matters is, are you making as much money as is humanly possible, and if not, why not. And the people who determine the limits of human possibility with regards to money-making, using totally theoretical ideas they’ve dreamed up over glasses of wine or latenight poker games, will determine whether Tommy is doing a good job solely on the criteria of their imaginary profit margins. So the fact that Tommy works over seventy hours a week, cleaning, counting, ordering, worrying, means nothing. If there isn’t a large enough display from the most profitable soda company visible from the street, and the profits are not being maximized, then Tommy has to be criticized, even punished, in the form of a bad review.
“Anything I can do to help?”
Tommy looks at me, his eyes wide with worry. “Just make sure everything is clean. In the back.”
“It is, man. I cleaned everything last night.”
“I need you to hang out for a while,” he says. “You have to talk to this guy. He wants to meet all the employees.”
“No problem.”
He walks around muttering to himself, shifting boxes, moving milk around so all the labels face out. There are all kinds of rules.
“Is the door to the security room locked?”
“No, it never is.”
“Don’t tell the guy that,” Tommy says, alarmed. “Tell him it’s always locked.”
“Okay.” The security room, where we keep the surveillance tapes, doubles as a break room, so if we locked it, we’d never be able to take breaks. When it’s slow at night, I go back there, eat a microwaveable sandwich, read the paper, sit down for a bit, away from the security cameras and the fluorescent lights. This is against the rules? I realize suddenly that tearing their pamphlet into dust without reading to page three might have created trouble for Tommy. I have to learn answers to anticipated questions.
“Is there anything else I should say?” I ask.
Tommy shrugs, even smiles. “Just be honest.”
“Always.”
* * *
The guy comes in at ten o’clock, an hour late, which means an hour of extra standing around for me. The first thing he says when he walks in the door is, “The
USA Today
box is in the wrong position. It should be to the right of the
Courier.
” He ignores me as I stand behind the counter, and shakes Tommy’s hand without smiling, looking around the store as he does this. He is a young man, maybe thirty, in a nice gray suit, hair immaculate, clean shaven. He has a critical eye, designed to inspire insecurity in anyone he meets, and my first thought upon seeing him is, do I look presentable? Did I shave last night? Am I as presentable as the models on the pamphlet cover? I stroke my chin. Stubble.
He looks at me as he and Tommy head toward the back. He has a frozen, unfriendly smile as he asks me, “Don’t we wear smocks here?”
As long as I’ve worked here, I’ve never even seen one of the brown Gas’n’Go smocks the employees wear on the pamphlet cover.
“I’ll get him one,” Tommy says quickly. He disappears into the back and comes out a few seconds later with a brown smock, which he hands to me. “Here, Jake,” he says, giving me the smock as if we’ve both been looking for it everywhere.
“Just try to make sure they’re wearing those smocks,” the corporate guy says cheerfully, as if it doesn’t matter, but letting us know that he really thinks it’s the most important thing in the world. Tommy nods vigorously and starts making an excuse but the guy hushes him, the issue is closed, nothing more needs to be said about the smock. They go into the back. I go outside and switch the
USA Today
and
Courier
boxes.
Then, for an hour and a half I stand there, waiting on customers, wondering if these two are ever coming out, wondering when this silliness will be over and I can go home and get some sleep. It is well past noon when they come out of the meeting, and Tommy looks much the same as he did when he went in, stressed, tormented.
“Jake,” Tommy says, “Mr. Brecht wants to meet with you now.” He looks worried that I’m going to spill some kinds of beans, unwittingly get Tommy in trouble. Tommy tries to make eye contact with me as I go back, as if to clarify that we share a bond, that I’m on his side. Of course I am. Why does he feel like this? Why does the corporate guy want him to feel like this? Do nervousness and fear make one a more loyal employee? I go into the cramped little back room, where the corporate guy is sitting behind Tommy’s desk, which he has actually moved away from the wall so the desk separates us, clarifying the relationship.
“Mr. Skowran,” he says, reviewing my employee file, which can’t be very thick. It contains two pieces of paper, a W-2 and an application form, on which I wrote my name and my phone number at Tommy’s request. I’ve worked here just over a week and have yet to receive a paycheck. What’s to review?
“What we’re doing here is a periodic review of store management,” he tells me. I had forgotten until now that I am listed on the employee payroll as an assistant manager. “But we’ve been particularly concerned about Eight One Eight.”
“About what?”
“Eight One Eight.” He looks at me, folds his hands on the desk.
Okay, I give up. “What’s Eight One Eight?”
“It’s this store,” he says, incredulous at my ignorance. “Gas’n’Go unit Eight One Eight.”
“Oh,” I say. “The store.”
“Yes. The store.”
“Why are you concerned about it?” I’m a full-time employee, and I’m not concerned one bit. What’s so concerning about a little gas station that sells beer and soda and makes a profit?
“We came down here,” he says, “because of the trouble you had last week.” Did I have trouble last week? I try to recall. Then I realize he must be talking about the kid getting shot by cops while selling drugs out of the store. “Gas’n’Go’s name appeared in a number of news reports about the incident. We can’t have that.”
I nod.
He looks at me piercingly, trying to make me uneasy, while I imagine how he would die if I shot him. I wonder if this man has ever loved anyone. I doubt it. Has he ever been really angry about anything? I doubt that, too. The range of emotions available to him are limited due to his obsession with greed and his belief in its rewards. I imagine he did fairly well in college, and at some point in his personal development he learned that ruthlessness was rewarded with money. Maybe he had a summer job once with a man who cared about nothing but money and made lots of it, and he listened to everything this man said, even quoted it to himself while he drove back and forth to work. He probably uses those quotes still. They were quotes like “Hard work is the only thing that pays the bills,” and he confuses hard work with aggressively acquiring money, and believes himself a worker in the most basic sense. Humor, passion, love and art are distractions. This is the type of man who ran the company that laid us all off. He finally asks me, “Mr. Skowran, do you use drugs?”
“Can’t afford ’em,” I tell him jovially, in an effort to bring some level of humanity into the conversation. He doesn’t smile back.
“What we need from you, is a urine sample,” he says. He looks at me as if this news is supposed to shock me to my boots. He thinks this conversation, to me, is a fight for my job, and my life. In fact, it is he who is interviewing for his life. I’ve got a gun at home and I’ve just discovered that I like to use it, and if he insults me unnecessarily, he is going to be the first of what I am planning will be a number of people who will pay with their lives for what has been done to my town. I don’t like him, or his attitude, and somebody is going to pay and it is going to be somebody with an attitude just like his. Telling Tommy to move the newspaper boxes around before you have even introduced yourself, is that a reason to die? Hell, yes. It really is. Whatever happened to civility? But it’s not just that. It’s this attempt to inspire fear, to be the alpha male. What has he ever done that he should be in charge of two grown men like Tommy and myself, except demonstrate an ability to behave with murderous money-hunger for a company with a similar mindset?