The Store

by Bentley Little

  "Well, have fun." Smiling sweetly, she turned away from him and faced the young woman behind the counter. "I'd like an application for a part-time job."

  "Sales?" the woman asked.

  "Yes."

  The woman withdrew a form from a shelf beneath the counter. "You can take it home, fill it out, and bring it back when you're ready." She inserted the form into a square featureless machine that clicked loudly. "Deadline's a week."

  "Is there an interview . . . ?"

  "After your application is reviewed, then you may be invited back for an interview."

  "Thank you." She smiled at the woman, took the application, and turned to leave. Jake was walking slowly down the center aisle of the electronics department, pretending to look at boom boxes, obviously waiting for her, but she quickly made a detour around the televisions, through the household appliances, and emerged near the checkout stands.

  She glanced down at the application in her hand, quickly scanning some of the questions. She'd look good on paper, she knew. Once she filled in some of the biographical info, the clubs she belonged to, her GPA and extracurricular activities, she'd be in. There was no way they'd find someone better.

  She felt good, she felt confident, and she decided to come back later, after she'd completed and turned in the application, to do a little shopping. It couldn't hurt to let her future employers know that she shopped here herself.

  Besides, she needed some new jeans.

  She looked behind her, toward the electronics department, to make sure that Jake was nowhere in sight, then hurried past the checkout stands and through the exit doors to the parking lot outside.

  4

  "Every department, every aisle, every corner of The Store is equipped with hidden video cameras that are on twenty-four hours a day and record all activity within our boundaries."

  Mr. Lamb walked through the stockroom. No, not walked. _Strode_. His bearing was that of a military man, his gait almost a march, and he moved purposefully past the warehouse shelves filled with crated merchandise toward a white door at the far end. Jake hurried behind him, trying to keep up. He'd heard bad things about The Store from July Bettencourt and some of the other kids who'd tried to get a job here and failed, but so far he'd had no problems.

  He'd turned in his application yesterday afternoon, and Mr. Lamb had called him this morning and told him to come in for an interview. The interview had been mercifully short, and now the personnel manager was taking him on a tour of the place and acting as though he'd gotten the job. He didn't know whether he had or hadn't.

  And he was afraid to ask.

  Mr. Lamb was an intimidating guy.

  They reached the white door, Mr. Lamb pulled it open, and the two of them continued down a narrow white hallway that Jake estimated ran parallel to the hardware department, behind the tire wall.

  "Here is our monitoring room," Mr. Lamb said, opening a door and stepping inside.

  "Wow," Jake said.

  Mr. Lamb smiled thinly. "Yes."

  The walls of the room were covered with television screens, each showing a different area of the store. Ten or twelve men, none of whom Jake recognized, were seated in front of individual stations at a control console that wrapped around the room. Each man seemed to be responsible for keeping tabs on what was happening on a bank of six televisions that was three screens tall and two screens wide.

  "This is our security team," Mr. Lamb said. "Right now, we're utilizing an interim crew from corporate headquarters. They're here to set up shop and assist with training. We hope to have a locally recruited team in place by the end of the month." He turned toward Jake. "You're our first recruit."

  He _had_ gotten the job.

  Jake licked his lips, nervously cleared his throat. "I'm still going to school," he said. "I can only work part-time."

  "We are well aware of your schedule, Mr. Lindley." The personnel manager's voice was cold. "We have three shifts. Yours would be swing -- three in the afternoon until nine at night -- if that is acceptable to you."

  Jake nodded timidly.

  "Very well." Mr. Lamb turned back toward the nearest wall. "As a security monitor, you will be responsible for observing customers on these video screens here and logging any inappropriate activity so that management can later determine whether it's feasible to prosecute or take other necessary action." He moved closer and pointed to a series of numbers on a digital readout below one of the screens. "As you can see, everything is taped. If an incident occurs, you will record the number corresponding to the tape location so that the incident can be easily referenced."

  Jake nodded, not sure if he was supposed to be paying close attention, if this was part of his training, or simply an overview of information that would be repeated when his actual training began.

  "Uh, when will I be starting?" he asked.

  "When would you like to start?"

  "Tomorrow?" he offered.

  Mr. Lamb smiled. "That will be fine. There will be a two-day training session, before you begin monitoring the card department. If you are effective in this assignment, you may eventually move up to" -- he paused dramatically "the women's fitting rooms." His smile growing broader, he led the way across the room and pointed to a screen above the head of a young man with a blond crew cut. On the screen, in a closed dressing room, Samantha Davis unbuckled her belt, unbuttoned, unzipped, and pulled down her jeans. The crew cut man turned a knob on the console, and the camera zoomed in on her crotch. Her panties had a hole in them, and through the small tear in the patterned cotton he could see blond pubic hair.

  Jake was immediately aroused, and he casually moved his right hand in front of his crotch, surreptitiously trying to push down on his growing erection. He had often imagined what Shannon's sister looked like naked, and here she was in the flesh.

  A natural blond.

  She adjusted the panties, pulling them tight, clearly outlining the cleft between her legs, before trying on the jeans that she'd brought into the dressing room with her.

  He dared not move, for fear that even that slight friction would set him off. He stared up at the screen in wonder. He could sit here and spy on the girls in town as they tried on clothes, see them in their underwear, and get paid for it? This was heaven.

  Mr. Lamb grinned, put an uncomfortable arm around Jake's shoulder.

  "Sometimes," he said, "they don't even wear panties."

  5

  Bill stared at his computer screen.

  Street had won the chess game.

  It took a moment for him to realize what had happened. He hadn't expected this, hadn't been prepared for it, and he was mentally thrown off balance. When his brain finally did assimilate what had occurred, he leaned back in his chair, a shiver passing through him.

  It was not an earth-shattering moment. Nothing important had occurred.

  Hell, by rights this was something that should have happened a long time ago.

  The surprising thing was that it hadn't occurred before now.

  But after so many consecutive wins, this loss seemed somehow ominous, and he found himself reading into it an import that perhaps wasn't there.

  _Perhaps?_

  There was no "perhaps" about it. There was no larger meaning to the loss of a chess game; there was no significance to it at all.

  So why did he feel . . . uneasy?

  The phone rang. Street, no doubt. "I'll get it!" he called out. He picked up the cordless from his desk and pressed the "Talk" button. "Hello?"

  It was Street, but he hadn't called to gloat, as Bill had expected.

  Instead, he seemed subdued. "I won," he said, and there was a superstitious hush to his voice, as though he had just broken a mirror and was waiting for the imminent arrival of seven years' bad luck. "I didn't think I'd win."

  "I didn't either," Bill admitted.

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Want to call Ben and come over for a board game?"

  "Sure." Bill searched around his de
sktop, trying to find where he'd laid his watch. "What time is it?"

  "Still early. Why don't you come on by?"

  "Okay," Bill said. "See you in ten." He started to turn off the phone, then held it once again to his mouth and ear. "Oh, I almost forgot. Congratulations."

  "Thanks," Street replied, but there was no joy in his voice.

  Bill switched off the phone, switched off his PC, and emerged from his office, walking into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

  "He does still live here," Shannon said loudly from the living room.

  "Very funny." He made a face at her.

  Ginny looked over at him from the couch. "You could spend a little more time with your family and a little less time hiding in your room with your computer."

  "Yeah, Dad."

  "You're with that computer all day. Do you have to do it at night, too?"

  "Sorry." Bill grabbed a glass from the sideboard, rinsed it out, poured himself some water from the sink, and drank.

  "So what's your plan now?" Ginny asked. "Are you going to stay here with us for once, or are you going to hang out with your cronies?"

  "My cronies?"

  "Your cronies." Ginny looked at him levelly.

  "Well . . . I was going to go over to Street's house for a quick game."

  "Jesus. Don't you think for once you could do something with me instead of your friends?"

  All lightness, all trace of bantering, had left her voice. If it had ever been there. Shannon was on the floor, moving closer to the television, trying to pretend she couldn't hear what was going on.

  Bill put his glass in the sink. "Fine," he said. "I'll stay home. We'll have our match tomorrow."

  "But you're going to be angry about it, aren't you? You're going to be silent and pout all night."

  "What's with you today?" He moved around the counter, into the living room, sitting down on the couch next to her. "That time of the month?"

  "You're gross," Shannon said.

  "Are your little hormones telling you to be angry with me?" He pinched Ginny's side, tickling her, and against her will she laughed. "You _are_ gross," she said.

  "But that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, you like it."

  "Dad!"

  "Okay, okay. Sorry." He gave Ginny a quick kiss. "Just let me call Street and cancel."

  "You sure you're not going to pout?"

  "No," he said. And as he walked back down the hallway to his office, he realized that he hadn't been lying to Ginny. He wasn't angry. In fact, he wasn't at all upset that they wouldn't be playing chess tonight.

  He was relieved.

  "Thank you, Fred," Street said as he handed the customer his change.

  The old man nodded, took his bag of adapters. "Thanks."

  Ben waited until the customer had left the store, then turned toward Street. "Whatever happened to the words 'You're welcome'?"

  "What?"

  "It seems like every time I say 'Thank you' to someone, they say "Thank you' back to me. Everyone's thanking everybody these days. No one says, 'You're welcome' anymore."

  "What is this crap? You trying to be Andy Rooney or something?"

  "Like what just happened here. What are you supposed to say when someone buys something from you? Do you thank him for buying from you and patronizing your store? You do, right? Then he's supposed to say, 'You're welcome.' That's the correct response to Thank you.' But, instead, Fred said, 'Thanks.' Why?

  What's he thanking you for? Giving him his change?"

  Street shook his head. "Give it a rest, will you? It's been a crappy day."

  The editor looked over at Bill, changing the subject. "Well, maybe this'll start a new pattern. Now maybe he'll win all the computer games and you'll win all the board games."

  "Street's right," Bill said. "Give it a rest."

  He didn't feel like talking about the chess game. In fact, he didn't feel like playing chess ever again. He _had_ won the board game in their little test, and that pattern reversal had shaken him far more than he cared to admit. It had not been a surprise -- hell, he'd been expecting it -- but confirmation only made it that much worse.

  Street, too, had avoided discussing the subject. Only Ben seemed to be unfazed by what had occurred, viewing it dispassionately, talking about it as though he were a geologist who had just found some sort of interesting crystal formation.

  The editor sighed. "Boy, you two are a barrel of laughs today. If you guys are just going to sit around and mope, I'm going back to the office."

  Bill smiled. "And actually do some work?"

  "He _is_ still alive!"

  "They're talking about raising the sales tax a quarter of a cent," Street said. "The city council. Either of you know anything about it?"

  Bill shook his head.

  Ben nodded. "I think it's done deal. That's the rumor."

  Bill frowned. "Why? I never even heard about this."

  Street snorted derisively. "Apparently, The Store wasn't required to pay for the traffic impact report, the easement fee, hookup fees, or anything else that the rest of us had to pay. They were given preferential treatment."

  "Incentives," Ben concurred.

  "Now the rest of us have to make up for those lost revenues."

  "I imagine our local citizens are going to be pretty unhappy with that,"

  Bill said.

  "I hope so."

  "It's only a quarter of a cent," Ben said. "A penny for every four bucks."

  "People still won't like it."

  "You know, that's something that always seemed ironic to me," Ben said.

  "It's the one who are so antitaxation that are usually so gung ho about the military. They're willing to kill for their country but not pay for it."

  Bill smiled. "You old hippie you."

  "I admit it."

  Street shook his head. "It's not that simple. These are the taxes that really hurt small businesses like mine. Someplace like The Store can afford to absorb the loss and not pass the tax on to the consumer. But the rest of us here are just making ends meet. My prices are going to jump. Not much, but maybe just enough to give The Store that extra edge."

  "Besides," Bill said, "this is not providing better roads or better hospitals or things that will actually benefit people. This is subsidizing a successful business with taxpayer money. At the expense of our local merchants -"

  "Damn straight," Street said.

  "I know. I understand that. But what they're going to argue is that this is a small price to pay for so many extra jobs. And that, in the long run, The Store will bring in more revenue to the town than it's taking in these incentives."

  Street snorted. "And you buy that load of horse pucky?"

  "That's not what I said."

  "Sounds like it."

  "Look, I don't want to fight. Of course I'm against raising the sales tax to benefit The Store. But I just got through interviewing Rod Snopes and his militia buddies for a piece I'm writing, and I have to say that I'm pretty sick of this knee-jerk antigovernment, antitax shit."

  Bill laughed. "And you call yourself an old hippie?"

  "Reformed."

  "You talk like a respected member of the status quo."

  "Not really. It's just that a lot of these loonies like Rod are so worried about the federal government, and I never saw a government agency that worked worth a damn. These guys're so afraid of Big Brother and creeping totalitarianism, but our government's always seemed to me to be full of inept bunglers, not brilliantly organized master planners. Hell, they couldn't even pull off a third-rate burglary. It's the corporations we have to worry about, I think. They're the ones with the money. They're the ones who can afford to hire the best and the brightest, to competently carry out their plans. They're more efficient, better run, better organized. Shit, they can buy _off_ politicians if they need a political favor."

  "Like The Store," Street said.

  "Exactly."

  "Okay," Bill said. "I apologize. You're still a hippie."

>   "This isn't funny," Street said. "We're talking about my future here." He stared gloomily out the front window. "Or lack of it."

  "You could always get a job at The Store," Ben suggested.

  "Not funny." Street sighed heavily. "Not funny at all."

  NINE

  1

  There were no windows in the room, nothing on the walls. It looked like a prison cell or a place where the police might conduct interrogations. There was only the one door, and a table and two opposing chairs underneath a bar of fluorescent light in the center of the ceiling.

  Samantha shifted in the seat, adjusting her buttocks on the hard chair.

  She tried to remain calm and still, to maintain a pleasant expression on her face. They were probably watching her, she knew, studying her from behind a wall or through some hidden video monitor, and if she hoped to get the job she needed to make sure that she made a good impression.

  Mr. Lamb walked in a moment later, looking down at a clipboard and what she assumed was her application. He sat down in the chair opposite her. "Sorry for the delay," he said.

  "That's okay."

  She watched as he read over her application and made small checks next to certain items with a red pen. There was something about the personnel manager that made her nervous, something in the implacability of his face: the coldness of his eyes, perhaps, or the hint of a smirk on his straight-lined mouth. She didn't like being alone with him, and she wished someone else was here, another manager or an assistant. Someone.

  "First things first," he said. "We need you to take a short aptitude and placement test to determine your abilities and qualifications."

  She nodded as he handed her two stapled pages and a second clipboard he'd been hiding under the first. _Why didn't you give me this with my application?_ she wanted to ask. _Why do I have to fill it out now?_

  But she said nothing, merely took the pen he offered her and began answering the questions on the top sheet. He watched her silently as she completed the test. She could not see his face clearly, could only see him with her peripheral vision, but she had the impression that he stared at her without blinking, his eyes as still as the rest of his body, and that unnerved her.

  She finished the test as quickly as possible, handing the clipboard back to him.