Texas A amp;M at LSU, Army-freakin‘-Navy. Come Thanksgiving, he wanted an orgy of bowl games and then he’d switch to the big dogs: the Patriots, the Raiders, the Eagles, all leading up to that magic moment come February when John Shelley would sit in his crap room in his crap boardinghouse and watch the freaking Super Bowl all alone for the first time in his life.
Six days a week for the last two months, he had looked out the bus window and stared longingly at the Atlanta City Rent-All. The sign in the window promised “your job is your credit,” but the asterisk, so tiny it could be a squished bug, told otherwise. Thank God he had been too nervous to walk right into the store and make a fool of himself. John had stood outside the front door, his heart shaking in his chest like a dog shitting peach pits, when he noticed the fine print on the poster. Two months, the tiny type said. You had to hold down a steady job for at least two months before they would allow you the honor of paying fifty-two weekly installments of twenty dollars for a television that would retail for around three hundred bucks in a normal store.
But John wasn’t a normal person. No matter his new haircut or his close shave or his pressed chinos, people still felt that otherness about him. Even at work, a car wash where mostly transients showed up to wipe down cars and vacuum Cheerios out of the backs of SUVs, they kept their distance.
And now, two months later, John sat on the edge of his chair, trying to keep his leg from bobbing up and down, waiting for his TV. The pimply faced kid who had greeted him at the door was taking his time. He’d gotten John’s application and rushed to the back about twenty minutes ago. Application. That was another thing they hadn’t put on the sign. Street address, date of birth, social security number, place of employment, everything but his freaking underwear size.
The Atlanta City Rent-All was noisy for a Sunday afternoon. All of the televisions were on, bright images flashing from a wall of tubes, whispered undertones from nature shows, news channels and do-it-yourself programs buzzing in his ears. The noise was getting to him. Too much light was pouring in from the floor-to- ceiling windows. The televisions were too bright.
He shifted in his chair, feeling a bead of sweat roll down his back. John didn’t wear a watch, but there was a big clock on the wall. This represented poor judgment on the store planner’s part, considering the fact that all it served to do was remind people they were stuck here waiting for some kid fresh out of high school to tell the lucky customer that they had qualified for the extreme honor of paying five hundred bucks for a Simzitzu DVD player.
“Just a TV,” John whispered to himself. “Just a small TV.” His leg was bobbing up and down again and he didn’t bother to stop it. His hands were clenching and unclenching, and that was bad. He had to stop doing that. People were staring. Parents were keeping their kids close.
“Sir?” Randall, John’s own personal sales assistant, stood in front of him. He had a smile plastered onto his face that would have given a Labrador pause. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Randall reached out his hand as if John might need help up.
“It’s okay,” John said, trying not to mumble as he stood. He started looking around, wondering what was going on. The kid was being too nice to him. Had something happened? Did someone call the police?
“We can show you these sets here,” Randall offered, leading him to the back of the store where the big screens were displayed.
John stood in front of a television that looked as huge as a movie screen. The set was almost as tall as him and twice as wide.
Randall picked up a remote control the size of a book. “The Panasonic has advanced real black technology that gives you-”
“Wait a minute.” John was walking around the television. It was only a few inches thick. He saw the price tag and laughed. “I told you what I make, man.”
Randall flashed him a smile, took a step forward that made John want to take a step back. He kept his ground, though, and the kid lowered his voice, saying, “We understand when some of our customers have outside income sources they can’t list on their credit applications.”
“That right?” John asked, recognizing something illicit was happening but not quite sure what.
“Your credit report…” Randall seemed almost embarrassed. “The credit cards came up.”
“What credit cards?” John asked. He didn’t even have a damn checking account.
“Don’t worry about it.” Randall patted John on the shoulder like they were old buddies.
“What credit cards?” John repeated, the muscles in his arm aching to slap the kid’s hand away. He hated admitting he didn’t know something. Being in the dark made you vulnerable.
Randall finally dropped his hand. “Listen, guy,” he began. “No big deal, right? Just make the payments and we don’t care. We don’t report to anybody unless you stop paying.”
John crossed his arms over his chest, even though he knew it made him look bigger, more threatening, to other people. “Lookit,” he said. “I want that crappy TV up front, the twenty-two inch with the remote control. That’s all I want.”
“Dude,” Randall said, holding up his hands. “Sure. No problem. I just figured with your credit score-”
John had to ask again. “What score?”
“Your credit score,” the kid said, the tone of his voice passing incredulous and settling on plain dumbfounded. “Your credit score’s the best I’ve ever seen here. We get some people in, they’re not even breaking three hundred.”
“What was mine?”
Randall seemed startled by the question. “We’re not allowed to tell you.
John made his voice firm, let some of the gravel come out. “What was mine?”
Randall’s pimples turned white, his skin a bright red. He whispered, “Seven-ten,” glancing over his shoulder to see if his boss was watching him. “You could go to a real store, Mr. Shelley. You could walk into a Circuit City or a Best Buy-”
“Let me see it.”
“Your report?”
John closed some of the space between them. “You said there were credit cards on there. I want to know what cards.”
Randall looked over his shoulder again, but he should have been more concerned about what was in front of him.
“Stop looking behind you, kid. Look at me. Answer my question.”
Randall’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Maybe I put in your social security number wrong. The current address was different-”
“But the name?” Same name.
“Same previous address in Garden City?” Yes, sir.
He summed it up for the kid. “You think there’s another Jonathan Winston Shelley out there with my birth date and my previous address, living in Atlanta, who has a social security number that’s close to mine?”
“No-I mean, yes.” Sweat had broken out on Randall’s upper lip and his voice began to shake. “I’m sorry, mister. I could lose my job if I showed you that. You can get a copy of it yourself for free. I can give you the num-”
“Forget it,” John said, feeling like a monster for pushing the kid. The fear in his eyes cut like a piece of glass. John walked back through the store, past the television he wanted, and left before he said something he would regret.
Instead of going home, John crossed the street and sat on the bench beside the bus stop. He took one of the free community newspapers out of the stand and thumbed through it. The street had four lanes, but was pretty busy. Using the paper as a shield, he watched the store, tracking Randall and his fellow clerks as they talked people who should know better into signing away their lives.
Credit reports, credit cards, scores. Shit, he didn’t know anything about this.
A bus came, the driver glancing out the door at John. “You gettin‘ on?
“Next one,” John said. Then, “Thanks, man.” He liked the MARTA bus drivers. They didn’t seem to make snap judgments. As long as you paid your fare and didn’t make trouble, they assumed you were a good person.
Hot air hissed from the back of the bus as it pulled away. John turned to the next page in the paper, then went back to the front, realizing he hadn’t read any of it. He sat at the bus stop for two hours, then three, leaving only once to take a piss behind an abandoned building.
