walked by them quickly and with my head down, but not quickly enough to escape a whistle and then some laughter.

I took some concrete steps up to a locked door that opened onto the warehouse loft. Upon my promotion to upper-level management I had been given a skeleton key that fit all the locks in the building, necessitated by my frequent trips to the warehouse to check inventory while writing the copy (“Only 10 to Sell!”) of the ads. I used the key in this lock as I turned the knob and stepped into the loft.

The warehousemen called this area “the zoo” because of the cages along its wall that contained the heistable goods: small appliances, boom boxes, tapes, accessories, and anything else that could be stashed underneath an employee’s jacket. A large sign in read lettering hung on the wall near the first cage, and read, “Lock all cages. Don’t tempt an honest man.”

One could look down from the loft and survey the entire warehouse. It was arranged in five long parallel rows that ran the length of the building. Between each row was twelve feet of space, an allowance for the swing of forklifts that would then have a straight shot to the truck bays located directly beneath the loft.

There was a twenty-five foot drop to the warehouse floor. A three-tiered railing ran along the edge of the loft, broken only at one point to allow entrance to a caged lift that was used to move stock from one level to the next.

This time of year, as Fisher had overemphasized, the “barn” was full to capacity because of the annual fourth quarter load-in. Boxes rose from the floor and approached the legal limit, which was gauged by their proximity to the ceiling sprinklers. In several spots one could step off the loft directly onto the top of a row of stock.

I pulled open the metal gate, entered the lift, and hit the lower button on an electrical box hung over the railing. The crate lowered me in spasms.

I stepped out and walked past the bays where returning drivers were checking their manifests with the assistant warehouse managers. It was payday. Several of the drivers looked as if they had cashed their checks earlier at the liquor store. I could hear the deliberate farting of young warehousemen, and, after that, commentary and laughter as to the degree of looseness of their respective sphincters. By the time I reached Dane’s office this had degenerated into a discu nas tssion of an activity called “jamming,” which involved gerbils and then other progressively larger mammals.

The glass-enclosed office of Joe Dane, the warehouse manager, bordered the last bay. I looked in and saw the delivery manager talking on the phone. I rapped on the glass. She looked up, smiled, gave me a shrug and an exasperated look, and waved me in.

Their office smelled like cigarettes and fast food. Dane was an unashamed slob, but his female coworkers had tried to humanize the place with remnant carpeting, Redskins pennants, and stick-up Garfield cats, one of the strangest fads to come to D.C. since the Carl Lewis haircut.

Jerry Chase hung up the phone, mouthed the word asshole, slumped back in her chair, and dragged on her cigarette. The cherry from the last one was still smoking in the ashtray. I perched on the edge of her desk and butted it out.

“A good one?” I asked, looking at the phone.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, the smoke breaking around her mouth as she talked. “We miss a delivery, and the customer starts about how he makes two hundred dollars an hour, he can’t afford to sit another afternoon off and wait for a delivery. I wonder if he knows how many important people like him I talk to every day. I’m so tired of hearing that. If a guy really makes that kind of dough, then he wouldn’t get hurt missing a couple hours of work. To top it off, these problems always come up Friday afternoon payday.” She chin-nodded through the glass towards the drivers. “You think I can get any of these guys to go back out on a delivery now? They’ve been half in the bag since this morning.”

“Well, the day’s almost over,” I said, hoping to slow her down, though admittedly she had the worst job in the company.

“And people want to know why I drink,” she said, giving me a knowing look. “So what brings you down to the underworld?”

“I’m looking for Dane.”

“He got wise and split early. The ‘my baby’s sick’ routine.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe his kid really is sick.”

“Maybe,” she said, tossing her cigarette in the ashtray. I crushed it for her.

“Why don’t you ever put those things out?”

“That’s the man’s job,” she said, and shook her hair in what she thought was a sexy manner. She had a P.G. County haircut that had gone out of style at about the time that Charlie’s Angels was entering its third season.

“Take care, Jerry.” I walked out and closed the door behind me.

The warehouse had the same musty odor as the stockroom, though its rows were perfectly aligned, the floors relatively dirt-free. Except for the true summer months, it always seemed cold here, and the combination of naked steel girders, unfinished concrete, and bleak lighting heightened that chill. The young men in here worked a hard day every day, beneath insulated flannel shirts and gloves. Their occasional laughter almost alway s al ths came at the expense of each other, and the turnover was tremendous.

I walked down the center aisle, dwarfed by the cardboard walls at my sides. A kid I knew gave me a short horn-blast of recognition as he motored by on his forklift.

The barn was loaded. I took note of what we were heavy on as I walked. I would have to start dumping some of these goods, or, more likely, advertise the bait that would lead into the overstocks.

At the end of the aisle I turned left to the far corner of the warehouse, the section entirely occupied by videocassette recorders. I noticed the Kotekna VCRs that Rosen had purchased at the electronics show. Virtually none of them had moved. I made a mental note to remind Fisher that these “dogs” would have to be shipped out to the floors.

Aware of someone behind me, I turned to face two warehousemen I had never met. They were standing four feet apart and looking at me with solid stares. I nodded but got no response.

The man on the left was leaning on a pushbroom. He was of average height, with a dark, bony face and a careless goatee. His nose was narrow and flat, his eyes almost Oriental in shape. A red knit cap was cocked on his head, filled high with dreadlocks. He wore a vest over a thermal shirt, and had the loose-limbed stance of a fighter.

His partner was a black albino with mustard skin and eyes the color of a bad scrape. There was one small braid coming from the back of his shaved head. He wore striped baggies, a faded denim shirt, and leather gloves. He was so tall that his posture and bone structure suggested deformity. There was a dead, soulless look in their eyes that I had seen increasingly on the faces of men in Washington’s streets as the eighties dragged murderously on.

I walked towards them. When it was clear that they weren’t going to move, I walked around them. I felt an inexplicable humiliation, like a child who later regrets walking away from a certain ass-kicking at the hands of the schoolyard bully.

I heard them chuckle behind me, and I turned. The dark one with the pushbroom blew me a kiss. Then they both laughed.

I walked out of the warehouse. In the parking lot I noticed that my fists were balled and shoved deeply in my pockets. Climbing behind the wheel of my car, I felt weak and very small.

Joe Dane lived in old Silver Spring, on a street where the houses were built very close to the curb and had large, open porches and deep backyards. I parked my heap in front of his place and was up on his porch in six short steps.

I knocked on the door, behind which I could hear children laughing and playing and falling harmlessly to the floor. After that came a woman’s voice, raised halfheartedly to attempt sternness, then footsteps.

The door opened and Sarah Dane stood in the frame, wiping her hands dry with a dishrag. The lines around her eyes deepened as she smiled up at my face.

“Hi, Nick.”

“Sarah.” I leaned s.“H in and kissed her on the cheek.

Her baggy pants were frumpy and her sweatshirt featured a circular medallion of vomit centered between her breasts. Four kids and the raising of them had widened her hips and prematurely aged her face. But she had the relaxed beauty of contentment.

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