“She was there,” said Doug, handing him the smokes and his change.
“You talk to her?”
“She was busy. Tonight, like, wasn’t the night.”
Mitch nodded. Better to say nothing. Wasn’t it always? They drove home, the windows down despite the snow flurries, with “Pour Some Sugar on Me” shaking the glass and bolts of the car.
“MITCH, DO YOU know anything about computers?” Apparently, when Mitch had answered that question the previous day, he had been in stealth mode, invisible and inaudible. Sutherland’s employees frequently found themselves in stealth mode when they were talking to him, the real conversation going on behind Sutherland’s eyes, the employee’s existence unnoticed.
“Yes. I punched in all the inventory sheets yesterday.”
“You don’t seem… to have any allergies today.” Sutherland stared into his eyes.
“They usually don’t kick in till after lunch.” Mitch lifted a heavy case of tire bolts, placed them on a stack, and turned to face Sutherland. Why did this guy keep dropping by? Car accessories could run itself. It was almost as if Sutherland was lonely.
“I need you to contact the Webmaster,” Sutherland said. “I want you to have him call me. Set up a time when we can talk.”
“You mean the guy who runs our Web site?”
“No, no, no. The Webmaster. In Washington. If it was the guy who ran our Web site, I could do it.”
Mitch made a face. “The Webmaster of which…” He trailed off, aware that he had gone into stealth mode again.
“I usually have Karl do it, but it’s his day off.” Sutherland walked away, clearly irritated by Mitch’s inability to follow. “Use his office. I’ll open it for you.”
The Webmaster in Washington? What the hell did that mean? And since when did Karl have his own office? Karl was a department manager just like Mitch. Was Sutherland calling the computer office Karl’s “office”? Mitch’s office was an alcove in the stockroom, more of a design flaw than an actual room, and it was furnished only with two filthy crates that he and whomever he was talking to could sit on while eating snacks.
He sat down in the computer office and tried to figure out what Sutherland was talking about. Then he played FreeCell for forty-five minutes, just to get warmed up for computer work. Then he called Karl at home.
“Dude, sorry to bug you on your day off.”
“No problem, Mitch. What can I do for you?” On his days off, Mitch would sleep in, wake up, smoke a bowl, maybe do laundry by dinnertime. His appearance and demeanor for the whole day was that of a bear just awakened from hibernation. Mitch imagined that Karl was sitting at a breakfast table, wearing a pressed shirt, his pretty wife serving him eggs Benedict with homemade hollandaise. The table would be laid out with fresh fruit and breads, the sun shining through a picture window.
“Sutherland just asked me to call, like, some Webmaster guy in Washington.”
Karl laughed. “Yeah. He thinks the Web is like the post office. You know the way there is a postmaster general? He thinks there is a Webmaster general. A politician or something who runs the Internet. I’ve explained it to him like three times, but he just doesn’t get it. What he really means is the Web site administrator.”
Mitch laughed. “So I’ll just call him?”
“Yeah. His number’s in my Rolodex.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Have a good day. Say, we’re having a sales meeting for Excel-Tone products at my house on Monday evening-”
“I’ve got to work, man. Thanks anyway.”
“Take care.”
Mitch hung up, leaned back in the chair, and folded his arms behind his head with an evil smile. Sutherland thought there was a Webmaster general in Washington. Hee-hee-hee. How amazingly stupid was this guy? He could supposedly run a multimillion dollar enterprise, but he didn’t understand even the basics of the Internet. Mitch thought for a few seconds. What was the name of that guy that had worked in the one-hour photo department? Dave Rice. Dave Rice had left to finish a four-year degree and was now in law school at Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. Dave Rice had been a cool guy. Maybe he wanted to have some fun. Mitch searched for Rice’s name on the Internet, found it easily, then picked up the phone.
THE PHONE WAS ringing, and Doug wondered who the hell was calling at ten to eight in the morning. The debt collectors had to wait until eight. It was a state law. Doug didn’t know state capitals and hadn’t read a book since high school, but he knew about regulations for debt collectors, and about pharmaceuticals, and he could answer any trivia question about rock bands from the eighties. Things that mattered.
If it was after eight, he would have let it ring, but he figured this might actually be important. Maybe the nursing home calling about his grandmother. He got out of bed, grumbling, tripping over a box of recycling Mitch had left outside his room. It was Doug’s week to take out the trash. OK, Mitch, I get the fucking point. Now there were plastic soda bottles and empty milk cartons all over the floor.
“Yuh,” he mumbled grumpily into the phone.
“Good morning. Did I wake you up?” He recognized Linda’s voice; she sounded upbeat and alert. Was she serious? How many people who worked in restaurants would be awake at this hour?
“Yuh,” he said.
“I’m sorry. You want me to let you go back to bed?”
“No,” he muttered and flopped onto the couch, curling up in a fetal position. “It’s OK. I’m up now. Wassup?”
“Are you working today?”
“Not till four.”
“I want to take you shopping.”
Doug let this sink in for a moment. He had never really been “shopping.” Occasionally he went to the mall when he had specific things he wanted to buy, but it was a chore, like laundry or brushing your teeth. It wasn’t an activity one looked forward to. “OK,” he said.
“Really?”
Apparently, Linda had expected an argument. Hell, it was something to do. And since he had hung out with her in her kitchen, he had realized that Linda was a lot cooler than Kevin made her out to be. He certainly didn’t want to get involved in their marital difficulties, but he figured he could be friends with both of them. Plus she got high, which was a big surprise to Doug, as she had never joined them in their basement smoke sessions. “Yeah,” he said. “Why not?”
“I dunno. I thought guys hated shopping.”
Doug shrugged, aware that the gesture wasn’t visible over the phone. “I don’t really even know what you mean by shopping. But I’ll try it.”
Linda laughed. “You don’t know what I mean by shopping? We’re going to buy you some clothes.”
“I have clothes.”
Linda laughed again. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”
“How about one… thirty,” he added quickly, to give himself another half hour of sleep.
“I have to pick Ellie up from school at two. How about eleven?”
“Eleven?” Shit, that was like the middle of the night.
Linda heard the dismay in his voice. “OK, eleven thirty.” “Awright.” Linda sounded cheerful and it occurred to Doug how different that was. He spent too much of his time around cheerless people: Mitch, Kevin, the cooks at the restaurant. There was a definite need for some kind of cheer in his life, even if it involved getting up before noon.
Unable to go back to sleep, Doug grabbed a cigarette and sat on the back porch and wondered what to do with his life. The Navaho believed that your life calling just came to you. He had seen that on the Discovery Channel. Why wouldn’t his calling come to him? It sure wasn’t cooking at a corporate restaurant. He had been there four years now and his wage had only gone up two dollars and at least three other guys had been promoted to kitchen manager without a thought even being given to him. “You’re our best grill man,” his boss always told him. “We can’t afford to lose you.” He could work every station on the line blindfolded, could do all the food ordering when the kitchen managers were on vacation, but the management would fight him if he ever asked for a quarter more an hour. Doug was convinced they would move him up if he cut his hair, but that wasn’t going to happen.