At the next game, when he showed up to strap on pads and tape and cleats and rub his hands with Stickum, he realized he didn’t care that much if Western College won or lost. He also didn’t care if he watched from the sidelines or played. The rah-rah sessions before the games, which featured offensive linemen screaming “WESTEEEEEEERN!” with a red-faced mania as they banged their helmets against lockers, and the episodes on the team bus, when assistant coaches would try to get the players fired up with primal screams, made Kevin feel less like he had accepted a college scholarship and more like he had joined a cult. After the games, when all the players would go to the Easytown Buffet to load up on platefuls of fried chicken and celebrate a victory or reflect on a loss, Kevin would grab a book and head down to the local diner and eat by himself.
Which was where he met Linda. And then he dropped out of college and worked at a quarry so he could spend more time with her. And now here he was, twenty-eight years old, walking dogs in the rain. Why had that happened? Why couldn’t he care about winning some football games for a college that had given him a scholarship? Why did he have to be an individual all the time? Maybe it was because he had been lonely at college, and Linda had been the cure for it. Maybe that was how everyone made decisions that affected the rest of their lives, by trying to solve the problem right in front of them. And before you knew it, life was slipping away and you were obsessing with all your immediate problems and…
Stop it. Stop thinking so much. The rain had left a fresh, crisp scent in the air which gave Kevin some energy. He turned Jeffrey around to go back home, and the dog looked at him with understanding. Jeffrey seemed to understand everything, and bore it all with a grace Kevin knew he lacked. Back to sit in the doghouse, a literal doghouse, not the metaphorical one to which Kevin felt consigned. It was one of the things he liked about walking dogs, that it put everything into perspective. He got to spend time with creatures more fucked than him.
CHAPTER 2
MITCH WAS STARING at a case of auto air fresheners. Really staring at them. He was having some deep thoughts, wondering who came up with the idea of freshening the interior of a car. Mitch’s own car smelled like gas and pot smoke and mold, which was fair enough, because the roof leaked and the carpet was always damp, and he hotboxed a joint out there every day during his lunch break, and the car ran on gas. That was what an old car should smell like. He knew if he put an air freshener in it, it would smell like gas and pot smoke and mold and a chemical approximation of a pine tree, which wouldn’t really be better, just different.
He and Charles had gone out at lunch and fired up a joint and Charles had told him that he had nine brothers and sisters back in Lagos, Nigeria, and two of them had been killed by the secret police. Mitch hadn’t known what to say. In a way he envied Charles for having had a life so shitty that working at Accu-mart was a slice of heaven. He wished he had stories about having come from somewhere merciless and tragic. Instead, he had stories about living with a distant father while attending public school in Queens, and by comparison those stories shrieked of insignificance. Even he found them dull, and because of this, working at Accu-mart was even duller, a mind-numbing slow torture that was turning his brain into lifeless putty. Work, cable TV, smoke a bowl, sleep. Try to hide from suffering in all its many forms and wind up envying people whose families were getting killed by the secret police.
“Are you memorizing the bar codes?” It was Bob Sutherland, again. He must have crept up behind him while he was staring at the case of air fresheners. “Because when I started, I used to do that. Memorize the stock numbers.”
“Yeah,” Mitch said, his heart pounding from being startled. Bob-Fucking-Sutherland needed to wear a cowbell. He was going to give Mitch a heart attack.
“I noticed a pattern,” Sutherland said. “Sometimes you can tell which distributor it is just by the bar code. Back when I was a department manager, you could read me the bar digits off any piece of inventory in electronics and I could tell you what it was.” Sutherland beamed with pride at the memory.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed patterns,” Mitch said, hoping he wasn’t going to have to cite one. Who the fuck studied bar codes? Isn’t that why you had bar codes, so you could not memorize them? Could this man be any less interesting?
“Hey, Mitch, your eyes are really red. Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Mitch said. “Just a little tired.”
“You don’t have pinkeye, do you? A new hire in housewares had pinkeye. We had to let her go.”
“I don’t have pinkeye,” said Mitch.
Sutherland leaned in and stared into Mitch’s eyes, close enough to be inhaling pot fumes. Mitch could smell Sutherland’s cologne. He stifled an urge to giggle while Sutherland studied his eyes.
“You and Charles always have red eyes,” he said finally. “Do you think you guys might be allergic to something back here?”
“Maybe the air fresheners,” said Mitch, relieved to have an excuse provided for him. “I’ve been wondering about that. They’ve been making me… you know… stuffed up.”
“Do you know anything about computers?” Sutherland asked.
Cool. This was it. He was going to get transferred to the coveted computer department, where he could earn commission and work in a clean environment, and not get oil stains and dust all over him. He could talk to the pretty secretaries who asked questions about software, instead of a bunch of gruff middle-aged grease monkeys with clogged fuel filters. All because of his allergy to air fresheners.
“Sure,” Mitch said. “I know a ton about computers. I’ve got a Dell at home with a 200 gig-”
“Why don’t you help Karl with the inventory sheets then? He’s got a whole stack of them he needs to punch into the computer.” Sutherland walked off, calling over his shoulder, “Charles’ll take care of things around here.” Sutherland stopped, stared at a display of air filters, adjusted one slightly, looked happy with himself, and turned the corner, missing Mitch giving him the finger while scratching his face.
“Hey, Karl,” Mitch said. “I hear you need help with the inventory.” Karl was the electronics department manager, a techno-geek who could reel off specs about hard drives and operating systems and one of the few souls at Accu-mart who seemed genuinely happy, which was part of why Mitch avoided him. Mitch also avoided him because he was deeply religious and had his own marketing business, so any conversation with Karl eventually turned to how Mitch should either go to Karl’s church or buy Excel-Tone housecleaning products.
“Great, great, thanks for coming by,” said Karl, as if it had been Mitch’s idea. “I have a stack right here. Just punch the inventory numbers into the fields with a red asterisk.”
He handed Mitch a five-inch-thick stack of inventory forms, and Mitch heard angels singing. They were for the audio-visual electronics, not the computer electronics. The stock control numbers for the forty-two-inch plasma TVs were on the top of the pile.
Karl stood up and looked at his watch. “I have to be at a meeting in about five minutes. You don’t mind doing this for a few hours, do you?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
Karl went to meetings, usually with the store brass. It was a sure sign he was on his way up the company ladder. Mitch had never been invited to the store meetings, probably because he spent his free time smoking pot with the hourly employees in hiding places, rather than devoting himself to the more useful practice of memorizing stock numbers. He was cannon fodder to the top management, he knew, and probably had been since day one. He was trusted with brake pads, but not with anything valuable, except accidentally. Like today.