She glanced over at Ferris.
"Hi, Eddie!"
"Hi, Diana!"
Diana was obviously a salesgirl. Ferris walked over to her. They stood talking. I couldn't hear the conversation but I could hear them laughing. Then they broke off. Diana walked over and waited for the elevator to take her to her work. Ferris walked back toward me holding my timecard.
"I'll punch in now, Mr. Ferris," I told him.
"I'll do it for you. I want to start you out right."
Ferris inserted my timecard into the clock and stood there. He waited. I heard the clock tick, then he hit it. He put my card in the rack.
"How late was I, Mr. Ferris?"
"Ten minutes. Now follow me."
I followed along behind him. I saw the group waiting.
Four men and three women. They were all old. They seemed to have salivary problems. Little clumps of spittle had formed at the corners of their mouths; the spittle had dried and turned white and then been coated by new wet spittle. Some of them were too thin, others too fat. Some were nearsighted; others trembled. One old fellow in a brightly colored shirt had a hump on his back. They all smiled and coughed, puffing at cigarettes. Then I got it. The message.
Mears-Starbuck was looking for stayers. The company didn't care for employee turnover (although these new recruits obviously weren't going anywhere but to the grave - until then they'd remain grateful and loyal employees). And I had been chosen to work alongside of them. The lady in the employment office had evaluated me as belonging with this pathetic group of losers.
What would the guys in high school think if they saw me? Me, one of the toughest guys in the graduating class.
I walked over and stood with my group. Ferris sat on a table facing us. A shaft of light fell upon him from an overhead transom. He inhaled his cigarette and smiled at us.
"Welcome to Mears-Starbuck…"
Then he seemed to fall into a reverie. Perhaps he was thinking about when he had first joined the department store thirty-five years ago. He blew a few smoke rings and watched them rise into the air. His half-sliced ear looked impressive in the light from above.
The guy next to me, a little pretzel of a man, knifed his sharp little elbow into my side. He was one of those individuals whose glasses always seem ready to fall off. He was uglier than I was.
"Hi!" he whispered. "I'm Mewks. Odell Mewks."
"Hello, Mewks."
"Listen, kid, after work let's you and me make the bars. Maybe we can pick up some girls."
"I can't, Mewks."
"Afraid of girls?"
"It's my brother, he's sick. I've got to watch over him."
"Sick?"
"Worse. Cancer. He has to piss through a tube into a bottle strapped to his leg."
Then Ferris began again. "Your starting salary is forty-four- and-ahalf cents an hour. We are non-union here. Management believes that what is fair for the company is fair for you. We are like a family, dedicated to serve and to profit. You will each receive a ten-percent discount on all merchandise you purchase from Mears-Starbuck…"
"OH, BOY!" Mewks said in a loud voice.
"Yes, Mr. Mewks, it's a good deal. You take care of us, we'll take care of you."
I could stay with Mears-Starbuck for forty-seven years, I thought. I could live with a crazy girlfriend, get my left ear sliced off and maybe inherit Ferris' job when he retired.
Ferris talked about which holidays we could look forward to and then the speech was over. We were issued our smocks and our lockers and then we were directed to the underground storage facilities.
Ferris worked down there too. He manned the phones. Whenever he answered the phone he would hold it to his sliced left ear with his left hand and clamp his right hand under his left armpit.
"Yes? Yes? Yes. Coming right up!"
"Chinaski!"
"Yes, sir."
"Lingerie department…"
Then he would pick up the order pad, list the items needed and how many of each. He never did this while on the phone, always afterwards.
"Locate these items, deliver them to the lingerie department, obtain a signature and return."
His speech never varied.
My first delivery was to lingerie. I located the items, placed them in my little green cart with its four rubber wheels and pushed it toward the elevator. The elevator was at an upper floor and I pressed the button and waited. After some time I could see the bottom of the elevator as it came down. It was very slow. Then it was at basement level. The doors opened and an albino with one eye stood at the controls. Jesus. He looked at me.
"New guy, huh?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"What do you think of Ferris?"
"I think he's a great guy."
They probably lived together in the same room and took turns manning the hotplate.
"I can't take you up."
"Why not?"
"I gotta take a shit."
He left the elevator and walked off.
There I stood in my smock. This was the way things usually worked. You were a governor or a garbageman, you were a tight-rope walker or a bank robber, you were a dentist or a fruit picker, you were this or you were that. You wanted to do a good job. You manned your station and then you stood and waited for some asshole. I stood there in my smock next to my green cart while the elevator man took a shit.
It came to me then, clearly, why the rich, golden boys and girls were always laughing. They knew. The albino returned.
"It was great. I feel thirty pounds lighter."
"Good. Can we go now?"
He closed the doors and we rose to the sales floor. He opened the doors.
"Good luck," said the albino.
I pushed my green cart down through the aisles looking for the lingerie department, a Miss Meadows.
Miss Meadows was waiting. She was slender and classy- looking. She looked like a model. Her arms were folded. As I approached her I noticed her eyes. They were an emerald green, there was depth, a knowledge there. I should know somebody like that. Such eyes, such class. I stopped my cart in front of her counter.
"Hello, Miss Meadows," I smiled.
"Where the hell have you been?" she asked.
"It just took this long."
"Do you realize I have customers waiting? Do you realize that I'm attempting to run an efficient department here?"
The salesclerks got ten cents an hour more than we did, plus commissions. I was to discover that they never spoke to us in a friendly way. Male or female, the clerks were the same. They took any familiarity as an affront.
"I've got a good mind to phone Mr. Ferris."
"I'll do better next time. Miss Meadows."
I placed the goods on her counter and then handed her the form to sign. She scratched her signature furiously on the paper, then instead of handing it back to me she threw it into my green cart.
"Christ, I don't know where they find people like you!"
I pushed my cart over to the elevator, hit the button and waited. The doors opened and I rolled on in.
"How'd it go?" the albino asked me.
"I feel thirty pounds heavier," I told him. He grinned, the doors closed and we descended.
Over dinner that night my mother said, "Henry, I'm so proud of you that you have a job!"
I didn't answer.
My father said, "Well, aren't you glad to have a job?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah? Is that all you can say? Do you realize how many men are unemployed in this nation now?"
"Plenty, I guess."
"Then you should be grateful."
"Look, can't we just eat our food?"
"You should be grateful for your food, too. Do you know how much this meal cost?"
I shoved my plate away. "Shit! I can't eat this stuff!"