husky man charged toward him. Jim hurried with the keys, but his hands were shaking too badly. The man reached Jim and seized him with both arms in a bear hug, lifting him off the ground.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I haven’t been able to find a job in months, and now I get one just before Christmas! My children will have presents! It’s all because of you!”
With all the firing and hiring, there wasn’t much middle emotional ground in Jim’s line. All mountain peaks and mine shafts. On average, his work mood was indifferent. He was very happy.
But that was Jim. Counting his blessings. And overthinking the worst-case scenario.
As the man had asked, how did he sleep at night? Two eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Then the digital alarm clock with green numbers: 2:04, 2:44, 3:19. Perspiration. Aware of every heartbeat. Running checklists of family precautions through his mind. To look at Jim was, well, to look at anyone else on the street. Non-muscular, a little on the thin side. The kind of person people can’t identify to police. “He was just average.” “Anything else?” “Seemed the quiet type, like he could be pushed around.”
Martha Davenport took up the slack. Attractive in a mature way. Which meant unpretentious clothing that hid the fact she was even more attractive. And full-bodied, fiery red hair that didn’t lie about her temperament. She slept the sleep of small children.
In one way, Jim was like Spock from Star Trek, calmly computing any conflict through to all permutations of final outcome, deciding that most were pointless and perilous enough to be strenuously avoided. Martha started at DEFCON 5 and went from there. She had opposed Melvin playing Little League, because of how she heard the other parents behaved. Then, clinging the chain-link fence behind home plate: “Ump! Are you blind?”
In their case, however, the extremes of the marriage created a whole that was greater than the sum of the parts. All in all, a good collaboration, like Lennon-McCartney.
A company car finished the drive back from Lakeland and pulled up a driveway on Triggerfish Lane. Jim came through the front door with his briefcase. “Honey, I’m home…”
“How was your day?” asked Martha.
“Great!” said Jim, loosening his tie. “It was so-so.”
“I had a great day, too,” said Martha. “I went to the mall.”
“Find something on sale?”
“No, I went to see the assistant manager about that mall cop.”
“I thought you handled that on the phone.”
Martha shook her head. “They called back. Said they couldn’t prove anything about the fight in the bathroom, and they reviewed the security tapes. Concluded it was elves after all. So they wanted to interview me.”
Jim folded his jacket over the back of a chair. “What for?”
“Said they wanted to fire him anyway, and needed more details about my complaint.”
“Honey, I really wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Why?” said Martha. “I’m tired of the jerks getting away with stuff. It seems people like us who obey the rules are the only ones who ever get punished.”
She grabbed a pair of binoculars from a drawer.
“What are you doing?”
Martha walked to the window. “We’re getting new neighbors. That rental house across the street. I saw the landlord take down the sign and change the locks today.”
“I’m not sure you should be looking out our front window with binoculars.”
“Relax, everyone on the street does it.” She adjusted the focus. “I wonder what we’ll get this time. Hope they’re like those nice Flanagans whose kids used to babysit Nicole when she was younger. Hope it’s not like the Raifords, whose dogs kept getting loose…”
“And who received a copy of your anonymous dog complaint.”
“They were the ones breaking the rules. And then they blamed us, making crank calls at all hours.”
“I remember that,” said Jim. “Using pay phones so the calls couldn’t be traced when you reported it to the police.”
Martha scanned the windows, trying to see if any furniture had arrived. “Remember the dental hygienist who left the blinds open and had men coming and going, and that old man who kept digging holes in his yard in the middle of the night?…”
“The police never found anything after you called.”
“… The newlyweds who never left the house for weeks until all his clothes were on fire in the driveway, and those college kids who left the door open and played Pink Floyd all the time, and… Oh no.” Martha slowly lowered the binoculars.
“What is it?” asked Jim. “Jesus, those veins in your head are throbbing again.”
Across the street, a ’72 Chevelle pulled up. The driver’s door opened. “Coleman, imagine our luck being able to rent a house so close to the Davenports. I can’t wait to see the look on their faces!”
Chapter Six
Birds chirped.
More accurately squawked. Green parrots. Flying over the light poles in the parking lot of the new Tampa Bay Mall.
The stores hadn’t opened yet. Just janitors and power walkers with hand weights. Security bars began cranking up in front of the Cutlery Castle. Someone else turned on a stove at the Magic Wok.
A mall cop strolled along the second level, past one of the power walkers who got a little ambitious.
“No running!” said the security guard. A corridor approached. The guard walked past the restrooms and knocked on the last door. He stuck his head inside. “You wanted to see me?”
“Come in and have a seat,” said the assistant mall manager. Serious mouth. Holding a report in his hands.
Five minutes later. “Son of a bitch!”
“We can’t have personnel yelling at children, and especially not mothers. They’re our best customers.”
“What’s her name?” The guard lunged from his chair with an outstretched arm. “Let me see that fucking complaint!”
The assistant manager yanked the complaint out of reach high over his head. “It’s anonymous.”
The ex-mall cop stood. “I’m going to find out who reported me if it’s the last thing I do!”
He flung the office door open. Someone was waiting in the hall; that person jumped out of the way as the fired guard stormed past.
The assistant mall manager slipped the complaint in the top drawer of his desk, then smiled and waved for the person waiting in the hall to enter the office. “Come in, come in, Mr. Beach. Corporate told me you’d be here.”
“Please call me Jensen,” said Jim Davenport.
“Okay, Jensen, pull up a chair.” The assistant manager took a seat behind his desk and leaned forward on elbows. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“I’m sure you know that retail is in a slump.”
The manager leaned back in his chair with fingers interlaced behind his head. “Yeah, everyone’s a little off. Sausage World pulled out last month. But it all goes in cycles; everyone bounces back.”
“I’m happy to hear you see it that way.” Jim opened his briefcase on his lap. “That’ll make this go a lot easier.”
“What do you mean by that?…”
Five minutes later:
“Motherfucker! You’re firing me? Do you know anything at all about mall administration?”
“Not remotely.”
“So you have no real basis to fire me instead of one of the other assistant managers.”
