'I know. I understand that. But what they're going to argue is that this is a small price to pay for so many extra jobs. And that, in the long run, The Store will bring in more revenue to the town than it's taking in these incentives.'
Street snorted. 'And you buy that load of horse pucky?'
'That's not what I said.'
'Sounds like it.'
'Look, I don't want to fight. Of course I'm against raising the sales tax to benefit The Store. But I just got through interviewing Rod Snopes and his militia buddies for a piece I'm writing, and I have to say that I'm pretty sick of this knee-jerk antigovernment, antitax shit.'
Bill laughed. 'And you call yourself an old hippie?'
'Reformed.'
'You talk like a respected member of the status quo.'
'Not really. It's just that a lot of these loonies like Rod are so worried about the federal government, and I never saw a government agency that worked worth a damn. These guys're so afraid of Big Brother and creeping totalitarianism, but our government's always seemed to me to be full of inept bunglers, not brilliantly organized master planners. Hell, they couldn't even pull off a third-rate burglary. It's the corporations we have to worry about, I think. They're the ones with the money. They're the ones who can afford to hire the best and the brightest, to competently carry out their plans. They're more efficient, better run, better organized. Shit, they can buy _off_ politicians if they need a political favor.'
'Like The Store,' Street said.
'Exactly.'
'Okay,' Bill said. 'I apologize. You're still a hippie.'
'This isn't funny,' Street said. 'We're talking about my future here.' He stared gloomily out the front window. 'Or lack of it.'
'You could always get a job at The Store,' Ben suggested.
'Not funny.' Street sighed heavily. 'Not funny at all.'
NINE
1
There were no windows in the room, nothing on the walls. It looked like a prison cell or a place where the police might conduct interrogations. There was only the one door, and a table and two opposing chairs underneath a bar of fluorescent light in the center of the ceiling.
Samantha shifted in the seat, adjusting her buttocks on the hard chair.
She tried to remain calm and still, to maintain a pleasant expression on her face. They were probably watching her, she knew, studying her from behind a wall or through some hidden video monitor, and if she hoped to get the job she needed to make sure that she made a good impression.
Mr. Lamb walked in a moment later, looking down at a clipboard and what she assumed was her application. He sat down in the chair opposite her. 'Sorry for the delay,' he said.
'That's okay.'
She watched as he read over her application and made small checks next to certain items with a red pen. There was something about the personnel manager that made her nervous, something in the implacability of his face: the coldness of his eyes, perhaps, or the hint of a smirk on his straight-lined mouth. She didn't like being alone with him, and she wished someone else was here, another manager or an assistant. Someone.
'First things first,' he said. 'We need you to take a short aptitude and placement test to determine your abilities and qualifications.'
She nodded as he handed her two stapled pages and a second clipboard he'd been hiding under the first. _Why didn't you give me this with my application?_ she wanted to ask. _Why do I have to fill it out now?_
But she said nothing, merely took the pen he offered her and began answering the questions on the top sheet. He watched her silently as she completed the test. She could not see his face clearly, could only see him with her peripheral vision, but she had the impression that he stared at her without blinking, his eyes as still as the rest of his body, and that unnerved her.
She finished the test as quickly as possible, handing the clipboard back to him.
'Thank you.' He gave the top page a cursory glance, then looked up at her.
'As you may or may not know, The Store is a drug-free workplace and we have a policy of zero tolerance.'
She smiled politely. 'No problem.'
'If you are going to work here, you will be required to take both a lie detector test and a drug test.'
'Okay.'
He stood. 'I will bring in the polygraph.'
Samantha was confused as she watched him leave the room once again. The woman on the phone had told her that she was being asked back for an interview, but Mr. Lamb hadn't asked her any questions. She'd expected to respond to queries regarding the answers on her application, to clarify any questions about her they might have, to basically sell herself as a potential employee. Instead, she'd taken an aptitude test and was about to take a lie detector test. Had she already gotten the job? It almost seemed like it -- as though these were merely preliminary requirements, the red-tape steps she had to go through before being officially hired.
Mr. Lamb returned a moment later, wheeling in a peculiar-looking device on a two-tiered cart. The body of the machine was about the size of a small television set, but there were thin red and black wires spread across the cart top, and several cables that connected to what looked like a battery on the lower shelf.
He pushed the cart next to her, began untangling wires. 'This is the polygraph,' he said. 'I will be administering the test, but the results will be recorded and then evaluated at the corporate office since I am not qualified to interpret them.' He turned toward her. 'Please remove your blouse and your bra.'
She blinked. 'What?'
'The polygraph measures galvanic skin response. The breast is the most sensitive and therefore the most telling area. It prevents us from having to reperform the test.'
Samantha licked her lips nervously. 'I think I'd rather do it twice if I
have to.'
'I'm sorry. It's policy. Multiple tests are too cost-prohibitive. We only do it once. Please take off your blouse and bra.'
There was nothing keeping her here, no one forcing her to submit to this.
She could stand up and walk out and not look back. She wouldn't get the job, but she wouldn't have to expose herself to this creepy, slimy man. And she could always get a job somewhere else. Georges, maybe. Or Buy-and-Save. Or KFC.
She started unbuttoning her blouse.
Even as she did it, she didn't know why. But she methodically went down the row of buttons, unhooking them, pretending this was not unusual, not a problem, that she was calm, adult, professional, and willing to do what it took to secure this position.
She leaned forward, took off the blouse, laid it in her lap. She reached around and unhooked her bra.
'Thank you.' Mr. Lamb instantly began applying sensors to her skin: thin pieces of metal sheathed in plastic and coated with some sort of clear gel that felt ice-cold on her skin. He placed one in the middle of her chest, just below her neck, one above her left breast, one above her right.
'Raise your arms please.'
She raised her arms, looked down as he applied a sensor below each armpit.
She had never felt so naked and exposed in her life, not even when Todd Atkins had burst into the girl's locker room on a dare in junior high and had seen her and Jenny Newman naked and toweling off. That had been embarrassing but essentially innocent, probably just as scary for Todd as it had been for them, probably just as exciting for them as for Todd.
But this was different. Sitting here in this bare and empty room, stripped to the waist and being viewed so coldly, so clinically, so matter-of-factly, seemed at once more intimate and more degrading. All her flaws were accentuated, her inadequacies exaggerated. Her breasts looked too white compared to the rest of her body, the nipples too small. She looked down as he applied the thin sensors and could see the white powder of her deodorant
