“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 this incriminate him? Best to just act ignorant.
“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 asshole, as he had been prone to do when he’d worked at Accu-mart; Dave Rice telling Sutherland he was stupid. Also prone to that. Now that Mitch thought about it, having Dave Rice play a joke on Sutherland might not have been the most excellent idea.
“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 speaker, stared at him with disapproval as she walked into the store.
“Thank you for shopping at Accu-mart,” the speaker said pleasantly.
“Eat shit and die,” Mitch said to the speaker
Another woman entered.
“Thank you for shopping at Accu-mart.”
Mitch turned and walked to his car.
CHAPTER 4
“HOW COME YOU don’t have a girlfriend?” Linda asked. “You’re such a nice guy.”
Doug wasn’t sure he was comfortable with the question. They were driving home after a shopping trip to the mall, during which Linda had insisted he buy a shirt that he knew he would never wear despite her enthusiasm about it being “so in-style.” It was a dark green, striped monstrosity that Doug thought made him look like either an attention-seeking hipster or a Hispanic drug dealer, neither of which was a look he was going for. In fact, in his clothing choices, he wasn’t going for anything except affordable, which this wasn’t. He had laid out forty-two dollars for the shirt, mostly because he hadn’t wanted to hurt Linda’s feelings, but also because she had hinted, obtusely, that it would increase his chances of becoming sexually active again. But at $9.50 an hour, which is what he made at the restaurant, he calculated that, with taxes, he would have to pick up five extra hours this week to compensate for the damned thing, which would have to be on Sunday morning, the brunch shift, the only shift any of the other line cooks would willingly surrender. So on their ride back home, he had been secretly fuming that because of their little shopping trip he was now going to have to work Sunday morning, and then Linda, whom he had only recently decided was a decent human being, was suddenly asking him a personal question that he didn’t want to answer, or think about.
“Uh… dunno,” he said.
Linda was regarding him with amusement. “Is there anyone you like?”
Doug was staring out the window, watching the town go by. On days like this, wintry and wet, Wilton looked dirty and the snow that everyone said looked so beautiful when it was falling had been shoveled into exhaust-blackened piles at the edge of every parking lot. All the supposedly beautiful snow ever did was showcase all the environmental damage caused by everyday events like driving, and the cold and moisture made the diesel fumes from buses and trucks hang heavy in the air, giving Doug the feeling that the town wasn’t dying as much as it was being killed.