of the water began to soothe his steaming crotch, and he gasped in relief.
Linda banged on the door, still laughing. “What the hell is going on with you? Why are you all white?”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” he yelled, irritated at the interruption.
There was silence. Ten minutes later, when Kevin emerged from the bathroom, Linda was back at her desk, looking at the bills. He felt better now, physically and mentally, and he watched her as she wrote a check, hoping she was still as lighthearted as she had been a few moments earlier. It had been a long time since he had seen her amused. It had been a long time since he had been free from the court system, too, and he felt like it would be a good day to go out and celebrate.
“I’m free,” he said to her back. “They let me off parole today.”
“Yeah, I heard you,” Linda said, not looking up. “Am I supposed to say congratulations?”
“Shit,” he said, annoyed. “I thought maybe we could go out and celebrate tonight, but I guess not.”
“Celebrate?” She sounded incredulous.
“Yeah, celebrate. But fuck it.”
“Celebrate.” She shook her head in awe and laughed coarsely, not happily, the way she had been laughing earlier. “What should we tell the waiter when he asks what we’re celebrating?”
“Is that what bothers you? How it looks to the waiter?”
“Where would we even get a sitter this late? And we can’t afford to go out, not this month. Have you looked at the bills lately? Do you even live on the same planet I’m on?” She turned back to the paperwork dismissively.
Kevin put on clean underwear and some loose-fitting shorts, in a hurry to leave. He had thought from her reaction to his bleaching that she might be in a lighter mood today, that he could share a moment with her. Clearly, it wasn’t the case, and now he just wanted to get away as fast as possible. He had a round of dogs to walk at four thirty, and even though it was barely three o’ clock, he grabbed his keys and headed for the stairs.
“I’m not the one who told you to grow pot in the basement, Kevin,” she called after him. Kevin wasn’t able to slam the door before she finished the sentence.
“BOB SUTHERLAND WANTS to see you in his office,” said Melissa, the office manager. She sounded mad, and Mitch knew right away he was in trouble. It was odd, the way secretaries adopted their boss’s anger as if it were their own. What the fuck had he done now? Mislabeled a display of lug nuts, perhaps? Permitted Charles to work seven minutes of overtime? Melissa was gone before he could even acknowledge her and he figured it was bad. Oh, shit, maybe they had found the missing invoices for the high-def TVs.
“Ooooh, that no sound good,” said Charles.
Mitch stood up and stretched. He and Charles had just finished an entire load of inventory. They had lifted, sorted, and stacked a tractor trailer’s worth of Accu- mart’s crap, and Mitch was in the mood for a break, not an interrogation. He sighed and handed Charles the clipboard.
“I might not see you again,” he said, suddenly aware that being fired was a possibility. He waved a hand at the dirty, oil-stained warehouse with candy and potato chip wrappers scattered across the vast floor. “Maybe tomorrow, all this will be yours.”
Charles looked concerned. “Why? What you do, man?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Mitch said, practicing his excuse. “I might have made some inventory mistakes.”
Charles said nothing and Mitch realized he would have to do better. Inventory mistakes? Didn’t sound right; too political, too guilty. It was something a congressman would have come up with. I have no idea what happened to those invoices… I never saw them. Better. That would be his lie, and he would stick to it, then throw the invoices out when he got home and bag the whole stupid TV-stealing idea, and maybe this thing would blow over.
Melissa was in Bob Sutherland’s office when Mitch got there, with a tape recorder and a microphone, which Mitch found odd. She was staring right into the microphone, not making eye contact with Mitch. Sutherland was reading a file, pretending not to notice Mitch had entered the room. This was not going to be a happy- smiley type of meeting.
Melissa, a stiff-haired and efficient woman in her fifties who in the past had bonded with Mitch over their only earthly connection, a nicotine addiction, and who was now pretending not to know him, turned to Bob and said, “OK, it’s ready.” She hit a button on the tape recorder.
“You’re being taped,” said Bob Sutherland.
“I’m being taped?”
Mitch turned to close the door, and Sutherland said, “No, leave it open.” Mitch saw rage and hurt and offense in his face and put on the mystified expression which he had decided would be his best defense. That and, of course, continually repeating that he was not good with detail-oriented tasks and he maybe might have made a mistake.
“You’re a real piece of work aren’t you, Mitch?” Sutherland said.
How did one answer that? Neither denial nor admission really moved things along. Mitch just stared.
“Can you explain this?” Sutherland asked. He handed Mitch a sheet of paper with thousands of tiny numbers written on it. About halfway down, one ten-digit number was highlighted, and Mitch immediately recognized it as the telephone number of Dave Rice, the guy he had called about pretending to be the Webmaster general. He tried to piece together how Sutherland had started with this and somehow wound up with knowledge of the stolen TV invoices. How did
“What is it? It looks like a sheet with phone numbers on it.”
“Quit playing around, Mitch,” Sutherland snapped. “You know what it is.” Sutherland leaned back in his chair, and Mitch noticed Melissa was staring at him with what appeared to be hate. He smiled at her and her expression did not change. He might still be able to save his job if he gave the right answers.
“There’s a number highlighted,” Mitch said, trying to sound helpful. His brain was firing in every direction, trying to figure how Sutherland, the world’s stupidest man, had been able to find the missing invoices from Mitch’s conversation with Dave Rice. What was going on?
“Why don’t you tell me about that?”
“About this number?” Mitch stalled.
“Yes. About that number.” Sutherland leaned farther back and glared at Mitch malevolently. It was intimidating, all the hate in the room. “About how that number got called from Karl’s office, on his day off.”
Sutherland was enraged but he was also enjoying himself. Was a demotion coming? Could Mitch possibly be demoted any lower? Was there a cleaning closet he could be made to work out of or a hidden department of the Accu-mart more dirty and mind-numbing than auto accessories to manage?
“I… think it’s the number of a friend of mine,” Mitch said and for a second he imagined that they might just be mad because it was a long distance phone call, and he could offer to pay for it, and the matter would be behind them. Then he imagined something else: that Dave Rice had called and pretended to be the Webmaster general, as they had agreed he would and Sutherland had not been amused. Other more severe scenarios presented themselves: Dave Rice using the word
“So this number is the number of a friend of yours?”
“Uh… yeah.”
Mitch was aware of a person in the hall outside the opened door; his main thought was embarrassment that they would overhear this conversation. He had an impulse to get up and close the door but when he turned his head to look, he saw it was one of the store security guys. It struck him that Sutherland had arranged to have a store security guard outside the door to escort him off the property after their “discussion,” which gave Mitch the sudden confidence of a man with nothing to lose.
“Mitch,” Sutherland began, toying with him, Mitch now knew. “We’ve put a lot of time and energy into developing you-”
“You’re the stupidest fucking douche bag I’ve ever worked for,” said Mitch quickly, aware that his time was running out. He said it pleasantly but Sutherland was on his feet in a flash as if he had been expecting it, his face flushed. “Jesus Christ, Webmaster general? Seriously, are you retarded?” This last sentence was lost under the high-volume screeching of Sutherland screaming at Mitch to get out, which drew an instant response from the security guard, who rushed into the office as if Mitch were wielding a gun. The security guy was about a hundred pounds overweight and in his midfifties, and the excitement of the moment had him red in the face.
Mitch looked up at him. “What are you going to do, have a heart attack and fall on me?”
“Let’s go, NOW,” the security guy said in his roughest voice. Mitch had never had a problem with the guy, who was, Mitch suspected, borderline retarded and spent most of his time in the electronics department watching TV. He didn’t want his last act as an Accu-mart employee to be an assault on a man who was most likely handicapped, so he rose gracefully and slowly, careful not to show any signs of hostility. Maybe the security guy had overheard his retard comment to Sutherland and had taken it personally, or maybe he was trying to impress Sutherland and Melissa with his brute efficiency, because he grabbed Mitch’s shoulder unnecessarily and pushed him toward the door.
“Easy, you fucker,” Mitch snapped.
“GET HIM OUT OF HERE!” bellowed Sutherland.
Customers and store employees were now being drawn to the scene and when Mitch walked out of the office, everyone was looking at him. Denise, his pretty high school hire, who had come in to pick up her paycheck, stared at him, shocked. Despite the situation, a huge grin broke out on his face. He turned back to show it to Sutherland.
“See ya,” he said pleasantly.
The security guard pushed him in the back, and Mitch turned to him. “If you touch me again…” he said, the grin disappearing as he felt a surge of raw fury and the man backed off. Now that they were outside the room, without anyone to impress, the guard was meek again.
“You have to leave,” he pleaded, red-faced and sweating.
“I’m leaving.”
And he did. When the doors opened in front of him and a wave of cold air enveloped him, it was the refreshing air of freedom.
“Thank you for shopping at Accu-mart,” said the automatic recording.
“Go fuck yourself,” said Mitch, and he stared with loathing at the small speaker over the door. A middle-aged woman, who had clearly heard him cursing at the
