Now, looking at his reddening face and hearing his feet slide nervously off the desk drawer that he had only moments before so coolly placed them on, I only wished he’d hurry up and get this done. I must have been grinning, because his plastic smile faded, leaving his fat upper lip stuck momentarily on one of his big front teeth.
“So it was my call, Ric. How did I blow it?”
“Don’t think for a moment that I don’t wish I was sitting here praising your performance. But when you went to work in our Connecticut Avenue store, you went as a representative of management. And you let us down.”
“How so?”
“A very serious complaint was filed last week. A customer called and claimed that two salesmen, fitting the description of John McGinnes and yourself, were intoxicated during business hours. The customer also reported the smell of marijuana in the store. Can you explain this?”
I looked out of Brandon’s tiny window, across the office and through the larger window on the south wall, at the brilliant blue sky. It was one of the last beautifully sunny days of the year.
“Are you letting me go?”
“I’m afraid so, Nick.” His body relaxed in his chair.
“What about McGinnes?”
“I do only what’s right for this company. McGinnes is an extremely valuable employee. I’m hoping that a very serious conversation with him will straighten things around. He’s the engine that powers that store. Bates and Malone are decent employees, but they’re in that store basically because I need some black faces on my D.C. floor. No, I definitely think McGinnes is salvageable.”
“You didn’t actually take that complaint yourself, did you Ric?”
“Mr. Rosen,” he said unsteadily, “took the call when I was out. He suggested that there was no alternative but to let you go. Frankly, on this point I agreed. The nature of the complaint constituted a firing offense.”
Through the window of the south wall I watched a flock of blackbirds pass across the blue sky. I rose from my chair. “Is that all?” I asked. I stared at him until he looked down at his desk, a little gray in the face but basically unmoved.
“I’ve written up your termination papers, effective immediately,” he said coldly. “You’re eligible for vacation pay, which will come in your final check. I’ll pass this on to personnel.”
I walked out of his office and softly closed the door behind me.
It didn’t take long to clean out my desk. I was quite certain that I was through with retail. I left behind industry related materials, drawing implements, certificates from management seminars, sales awards, and all other evidence of my tenure in the business. Oddly, the things I put into the plastic bag that a tight-jawed Fisher had wordlessly handed me were the most memorable objects of my career at Nutty Nathan’s: a book of matches, on the cover of which was printed “It Pays to Advertise,” which opened up to a pair of paper legs that spread to expose a thick patch of female “wool”; a caricature of me that the office girls had commissioned, with what I thought to be a rather lecherous look in my eyes and with a cigarette hanging trashily out the side of my mouth, circa my smoking days; a set of pencils with erasers shaped as dickheads; and a file of vulgarities that is charitably referred to as Xerox “art.”
All of these things I knew would end up in my apartment’s wastebasket. But on that day, like some sentimental pornographer, I couldn’t bear to leave them in my desk.
I dropped the duplicate key off with the woman in charge at the personnel office, who was busy cutting out clip art for the company newsletter, a waste of paper so heinous that as “editor” she should have been convicted of arboricide. Seaton, the controller who peed with his trousers around his ankles, stopped me in the hall to shake my hand and wish me luck. Though he was wrongfully despised by many employees for the cutbacks he was constantly forced to make, he wato er ss the only one that day with the guts to say good-bye.
A young woman wearing a Redskins jersey was sitting at the switchboard in Marsha’s place. I gave her a questioning look.
“She’s in the bathroom,” she said accusingly, “crying.” She popped her gum and looked me over.
“Tell her I’ll talk to her later,” I said.
“Sure, Nick. Take it easy.”
I turned and walked down the stairs, out the door, and across the parking lot, the plastic bag of novelties (the summation of my career) in my hand, a weird grin on my face. It was only eleven-thirty, and therefore a bit early for a cocktail. A cold beer, however, would do just fine.
I was hammering my second can of Bud at the counter of the Good Times Lunch when I noticed a primered Torino parked on the east side of Georgia Avenue. Two men were in the front seat, and one of them was smoking and staring in my direction. Kim was pulling my lunch out of the deep fryer with a pair of tongs.
“I lost my job today, Kim,” I said. He turned his head, looked at the can in my hand, then into my eyes. “I’m a free man.”
A man seated at the end of the counter wearing an army jacket raised his beer to me in a toast. The radio was playing a half-spoken ballad by a teenage soul singer, barely audible above the jetlike sound of the upright fan.
My lunch was a breaded veal patty with a side of green beans and fries. I ate it quickly, especially rushing through the tastelessness of the veal.
After the lunch crowd had gone, I stayed and had another beer. Once, when Kim walked by, he almost spoke, but passed with only a nod. The primered Torino was still across the street, its occupants still staring into the Good Times Lunch. The last customer walked out as I finished my fourth.
The two men got out of the Torino. I watched them hustle across the street. They were very dark and wiry. They entered the store and moved quickly in my direction.
“What’s going on?” I asked in a friendly tone, rising instinctively to face them.
The lead man threw a quick, hard right into my belly that dropped me to one knee. I coughed, fought for breath, and spit up a short blast of beer. I saw his foot coming but was unable to block it. The instep of his boot caught me solidly across the bridge of my nose. I felt the cartilage collapse and a needlelike pain as the force of his kick knocked me back into the base of a booth against the wall.
Kim must have made some sort of move. My attacker looked back and said, “Fuck you, Chang. This here is our business,” then turned back to face me. I tasted warm blood pouring down over my lip and into my mouth.
“You can stop all that shit with the boy,” the lead man said. “Understand?” My nose felt as if it were pointing upward, and the man in front of me got blurry and then it was black for a few dead seconds. fon said. height='0em'›‹ div›
When my vision came back, Kim was vaulting over the lunch counter, a black snub-nosed revolver in his hand. Just as his feet hit the floor, he swung the pistol, striking the second man in the temple with the short barrel and dropping him to the floor. Then he quickly pointed the piece towards the stunned face of the man who had smashed my nose.
The guy seemed to contemplate a break but wisely froze. Kim backed him up to the wall, brought the gun to his face, and tapped the steel of the barrel on the man’s front teeth, hard enough so it made a sound.
“You no fuck me,” Kim said evenly. “I fuck you.”
The man, hands up, moved slowly away from the wall with as much pride as he could fake. He helped his partner up and they silently backed out of the store. Kim kept the gun on them until they were gone, then locked the door from the inside.
I thought too late to read their plates. By the time I staggered to the door, their car was a fishtailing blur of smoke and burning rubber. I did notice that the plates were out of state, though all I could make out was a design something like a mushroom cloud.
“No cops,” I said as Kim replaced the gun beneath the register. He nodded and pointed to the back room.
I lay on a cot next to a chest freezer, looking up at a shelf stocked with pickle spears and clam juice, holding a compress to my nose. The bleeding had stopped but the pain intensified.
“Help me up, Kim,” I said as he entered the room. He put a hand behind my back and another around my arm, bringing me to a sitting position. The room caved in from both sides, but soon converged into one picture.
“Okay?” he asked.
“I think so. Thanks, Kim.”
