Alyssa smiled, not knowing what to say next. She knew the mindlessness that so irritated her in other people was partially her fault. There was something limp and available about her that invited nonsense. Before people lost interest in her, they talked her ear off about awesome cardigans and disappointing nicknames. Some of them—and this Tory person was clearly one—even insisted on being her friend.
“So,” Tory said, “I’ve seen you on a couple shifts now. You in school?”
Alyssa nodded and told her where. “But I’m taking a little time off.”
“How come?”
“Uh, the classes were a joke and the people were creeps?”
She was still staring, so Alyssa elaborated. “It just wasn’t for me. Not my thing.”
Tory was wearing her college ring, like someone recruited to talk Alyssa into line. It was engraved with her class year—she was a senior—and dozens of other indecipherable abbreviations. In the center bezel, a red gem flashed like a radio tower light as she folded her arms across her chest. “You sound just like a guy,” she finally said. “Don’t you know girls don’t drop out of college? Not unless they’re bulimic or something. You’re not bulimic, are you?”
It was Tory who told her pretty much everything about the store. How two employees had been fired for having sex in the shoe room, the only stock room you could lock from the inside, and they were so stupid they hadn’t even thought to do that. How the company was unveiling a line of buttery leather handbags to compete with the high-end designer brands. How they were operating under a Loss Prevention Plan because they ranked among the top stores in the country for missing merchandise, especially men’s accessories and shirts. Alyssa knew some of the idiots who’d taken those shirts—just layered them on, clipped the censors, and walked right out of the store. They were friends of her friend’s brother, the one who’d gotten her the job.
And it was Tory, too, who told her about the big visit, ambushing her one Saturday the moment she stepped through the employee entrance.
“Are you working Tuesday?” she whispered, as Alyssa punched in. “If not, you have to switch.”
“Okay, well I am. Why?”
Tory dragged her by the wrist into the empty manager’s office. “Teddy Bailey’s coming.”
“Who’s that?”
“Jesus, Alyssa, who’s that? You really don’t give a shit, do you?” Tory tapped her finger on the desk, as though pointing to treasure on a map. “Teddy Bailey is the CEO. He’s coming to check on our progress, maybe give us an ass-whipping.”
Just when she thought things were going well. “God, why would I want to be here for that?”
“Because he’s supposed to be inspiring. He was just on the cover of Bloomberg. Do I have to spell it out for you? He’s famous and influential.” As nitwitty as Tory could be, her information was usually correct and her instincts rarely off. She wasn’t the best dresser, sticking to a reliable cycle of black slacks and Bonnies, but she’d seen even before Alyssa that the new peacock pencil skirt would sell out in a matter of days. She’d been right about the election, too: Obama and the shifting demographics.
“Well, maybe I’ll read the article,” Alyssa said. “After all, I have time.”
There were pictures to accompany the Bloomberg profile, which celebrated Teddy Bailey’s intuition and communication style. He’d turned some little apparel store into a household name, then did it again for somebody else. Until she read the profile, Alyssa had no idea how much money her company made in a year, let alone how many other little companies it had in its back pocket. On each page, Teddy Bailey’s lithe, bald form leaned against white columns and country mailboxes, smug in jeans and sweater vests. Yet Alyssa thought he looked rather kind, not the way she expected a CEO to look. He was fifty-four, born in New Hampshire to an auto mechanic and a nurse. He’d dropped out of college, too.
Driving into work the next morning, she looked at the cloud cover pinned like lambswool above the trees and thought about Teddy Bailey. She wondered what he’d think of her store. He, who now spent half his life on private jets, but probably used to save up his allowance to buy the one pair of shoes that every kid had to have. Would he notice that the bath store across the way gave off a fruit-cakey aroma that often clashed with the subtle blend of furniture polish and grass that her managers strove to maintain in their space? Would he care that their biggest competitor was located in a different wing?
On Monday night, she stood in front of her closet, mentally assembling an appropriate outfit for meeting the CEO. She assumed it ought to feature company merchandise, but not too heavily, lest she appear incapable of thinking for herself. She was wiggling into her skinniest non-company jeans when her mother knocked on her open door.
“Going somewhere?” Caryn asked. Her eyes were heavily charcoaled and she was dressed in yoga spandex under a fluttering woven wrap. It was the way she always looked, tiny biceps slightly bulging under tight sleeves, hair shining in triumphant disarray, a faint promise of fun in her eye.
“Just figuring things out for the morning,” Alyssa said. “It’s stupid.”
“Thinking ahead. That’s my girl.”
Alyssa knew kids who were traumatized by their parents’ charisma, but she took hers as an article of faith. Her father could lift enormous pieces of furniture and had frequently leveled quarterbacks on TV. Her mother was like a flowering plant, filling rooms with the scent of vacation. It didn’t even matter that they weren’t a couple. If anything they were more powerful apart, ruling their separate but vast domains, each of them a pledge that everything would work out okay.
Tuesday morning came and Alyssa showed up at the store ten minutes early, dressed in the skinny jeans, a jangly necklace, and a navy blazer over a white t-shirt that highlighted the twin peaks of her clavicles. To her relief, Teddy Bailey had not yet arrived. She deposited her handbag in the locker room and ran the lint roller down each arm before making her way to the floor.
The store opened to a surprisingly busy weekday morning. Alyssa was constantly in the dressing room, holding hangers and knocking gently on doors, since women startled easily when they weren’t wearing tops. The armloads she brought out to fold contained nearly every piece in the store, giving her the sensation that anything was possible. She worked through lunch, barely pausing to chat with Tory when she arrived for the closing shift. There was pizza in the back, and she eventually ate a slice, then washed her hands in a full head of lather so that no trace of grease would threaten the clothes.
As her shift neared its end, at five o’clock, Teddy Bailey still hadn’t arrived.
“Do you need me to stay?” she asked Mark, who never failed to give her extra hours when she wanted them. Over his shoulder, Tory twirled her key and winked.
The morning tide of housewives had given way to the usual evening trickle of after-school teenagers, who touched everything but bought nothing, and after-work professionals, who bought all kinds of things full-price. Closing was now minutes away and the registers were silent, the clerks murmuring languidly to one another as they rested their elbows on the cash wrap. Alyssa was crossing the floor with a pair of Mary Janes for a customer to try with the Cluny lace cocktail dress when she saw a man holding a feather-crystal brooch over the jewelry bin, as though trying to estimate its weight in his hand. Dressed in jeans and a navy v-neck sweater, he had the unhurried manner of someone who’d shown up early for an appointment. His shorn, balding head glistened under the display lights, and he would’ve been completely unremarkable had he not been Teddy Bailey.
Alyssa delivered the Mary Janes to her customer and returned to the floor, where the CEO continued to linger unnoticed. She wondered if he’d somehow been there all along, patiently examining each garment and accessory while a woman friend tested the customer service in the midst of an unexpectedly busy day. It was possible he’d sent the morning housewives there himself; possible, too, that one of them was his wife, or even somehow Teddy himself. She didn’t
think he had whole days to waste checking up on single stores, and yet what else did a CEO do? The magazine profile made it seem as though he spent a lot of time following his intuition, which after all was just what she had done, and it had led her here.
She approached the jewelry bin and began re-sorting the goods on the side opposite him, not daring to make eye contact. She had realigned all the sunglasses and nearly disentangled a wad of hair elastics before she worked up the courage to speak.
“Are you finding everything all right?” she finally asked, with a slight inflection, so that he would understand that even though she was asking what she asked every customer, she knew exactly who he was.
His pale blue eyes met hers as he seemed to consider her question on several levels. Something in his cheek twitched, betraying a possible lunacy, and she wondered for a moment if he was not Teddy Bailey after all. Then he smiled. “I think I’m fine for now,” he said, fully articulating each word. “But thank you.”
Bewildered, she continued with her lines. “Well, let me know if you need anything. We’ll be closing in fifteen minutes.” He nodded and returned his attention to the brooch, like a counterfeiter trying to commit it to memory.
Alyssa wandered back to the dressing room only to find that her customer had left without purchasing anything. The cocktail dress was suspended lightly on its hanger, the Mary Janes tucked together on the floor. She returned the items to their places and set about reordering a rack of cropped corduroys. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this: this placid ordinariness, this feeling of not even having been tested. At the very least, when a powerful man paid a visit, it shouldn’t feel like just another day.
The store music had stopped, and the last customer was escorted out, heels clicking, the double wooden doors double-locked in her wake, and just when Alyssa thought that this was all the day was going to be, Mark’s voice came over the staticky loudspeaker. “Attention, everyone,” he said, echoing across the ghost town of halted commerce. “I’d like to ask all staff to join me at the women’s cash wrap for a special meeting.”
Teddy Bailey stood before the counter like a professor, having solved whatever he’d been puzzling over in the brooch, which was no longer in his hand. Mark and the woman who’d asked for the Mary Janes stood beside him, and a few other managers had materialized as well. Alyssa gathered round with the rest of the staff, joining Tory by a display table covered with the casually draped mohair sleeves and rhinestone buttons of the must-have cardigan for fall. Who must have it? Alyssa wondered, fingering a hem. She preferred the summer’s more basic iteration.
Mark introduced Teddy, and if anyone hadn’t known who he was or how long he’d been observing them, they didn’t let on, smiling as though meetings like this were some kind of regular reward.
“What do you think went well today?” Teddy asked neutrally. “Don’t be shy.”
“We had a lot of foot traffic,” one of the college boys finally said. “More than usual for a weekday.”
“Is that right?” Teddy mused.
Hearing this, the college boy seemed to lose an inch of confidence—not much, but a perceptible amount. “I mean,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets, “I think so.”
Teddy nodded. “All right. What else?”
People volunteered anecdotes. Someone had sold a customer the jacket she came in for, and the matching skirt as well. Someone else had tracked down a size from another store and was having it shipped directly to the customer’s home. They’d sold a few gift cards. A favorite regular had come in for a belt.
“And what do you think didn’t go so well?”
Everyone looked at their feet. Alyssa tried to think of a weakness that was actually a strength, and failing that, tried to look like she was thinking at all.
“I have to tell you,” Teddy said, “this is one our most underperforming stores, so I imagine a lot of things didn’t go so well today. You know about the missing merchandise, of course. That’s getting better. But you’re still not keeping pace with other stores of this size. Why do you think that is?”
The ass-kicking was coming after all. Alyssa tried to catch Tory’s eye, but she was staring intently at a display niche bearing a purple leather handbag.
“Could be a question of store placement,” the college boy said. Evan—that was his name. He was clearly used to speaking first.
“Could be,” Teddy replied. “We’re looking into it. But I have to tell you, my gut says that’s not it.”
Alyssa was becoming aware of an ache cresting from her knees to her lower back. She had never worked twelve hours straight before, arriving at ten in the morning, still on the floor now at ten at night, and all that standing was finally beginning to test her stamina. She shifted her weight to one side, then the other, finally coming to rest against the table of mohair cardigans, cushioning her elbows on the many-layered pile.
“What do you think?” Teddy said. Mark whispered in his ear, and Teddy added, “Alyssa,” and still it took her a moment to recognize that he was speaking to her.
“Well,” she said, standing up straight again. “I think there are several issues.”
“That’s right,” Teddy said. “And I think you know what they are. When we spoke earlier, you were a perfect model of customer service. Great tone. And your personal style is completely of the moment. Everyone look at Alyssa.” A dozen groomed heads turned her way, their gazes even and appraising. “This is exactly how we want our sales associates to dress. So, then, from your perspective, what needs to change around here?”
No one had ever asked Alyssa such an important question before. Even the questions her college professors had posed from their faraway lecterns were clearly directed at someone else—someone who’d already obsessed over them or was looking online that very moment and would therefore have some kind of answer. Her professors knew better than to expect anything of her. But Teddy Bailey did not. Here he was, an incredibly rich man, a famous CEO who’d built his success on intuition, asking her what ought to be changed in his store. His face waited expectantly across the room, cool and bright as a refrigerator.
“For one thing,” she said. “Most of us are part-time, and none of us work on commission. So I don’t know how invested we are in actually making sales. And there are also issues with inventory and store layout.” She grazed her hand over the pile of mohair sweaters. “These have been here over a month. No one buys them. Definitely not anyone cool.”
Teddy’s expression brightened further. “Why not?” he asked.
“Because they’re too similar to a lot of other styles, but not nearly as versatile. Like, the Bonnie?” she pointed at Tory, who had on a pink one. “It’s sexy and you could wear it every day. Michelle Obama pretty much does.” She bit her lip, hoping she hadn’t gone too far in calling the garment sexy.
“You know what?” he said. “You’re absolutely right. I hate that sweater.” Someone gasped. “I hate a few pieces every season. It’s the nature of the business—some styles work, some don’t. But this store should’ve recognized the mistake when they didn’t sell and moved them out of their prime position. See how many are left?” His previously calm voice rose, almost precipitously. “You think the customer can’t smell failure? Believe me, she can. She can smell it the moment she walks in the store. It’s like that one stinking stall in the food court. The frying oil, or whatever it is. It sticks to everything! It makes it all taste wrong!”
Teddy could’ve been a televangelist the way he ranted and flapped his arms. It was an ass-kicking all right, but she was somehow exempt. As he thundered about the cash wrap, he repeatedly singled her out for her perception and wit. Alyssa felt as though she’d been wrapped in a cashmere cloak of immunity. Other staffers were called upon to rethink their methods. The Mary Jane woman was called upon to make suggestions. And through it all Teddy kept looking her way. Alyssa could barely listen, feeling as good as the fall catalog cover girl looked, st
anding atop a seaside boulder in a brilliant red toggle coat while blue ocean and green sea grass vied for her attention below.
Less than two months on the job and already she was headed for better things. He shook her hand before he left and asked her to send him her resume. A few of his trusted stylists would be back to speak with her directly. She walked out to her car in the deserted garage feeling like an astronaut touching down on a brand new planet.
“Hey!” Tory’s voice called out from behind her. Alyssa stopped and waited, one foot on either side of a white parking space line.
“Way to go,” Tory said, as she drew nearer. “Way to throw the rest of us under the bus.” Her forehead shone and she was panting a little, as though she’d been running to catch up.
Alyssa laughed and tossed her hand like it was no big deal, but Tory didn’t seem in the mood to laugh. She zipped her coat as though striking a match.
“He was going to say all that anyway,” Alyssa said. “Hey, I used you as an example!”
“Everyone loves the Bonnie!” Tory said, not quite mad, not quite sarcastic. She looked tired. “Whatever. It’s just a part-time job. I’m on again Friday. You?”
“I’m always on,” Alyssa said, before she realized how it sounded.
Tory grinned. “Honestly, you’re nuts. You should just go back to college already. How hard can it be for an NFL kid?”
Alyssa and Tory had taken plenty of breaks together, but they’d never talked about Alyssa’s dad. When it came up, she just said he lived in Florida, and that she’d always lived with her mom. She looked at Tory. “Who told you that?”
“No secrets around here. Not for long. Anyway, if you’re special enough for Teddy Bailey, you’re probably special enough for college.”
Alyssa thought about the girl with the panties in the dorm laundry room and the fraternity boys, some of whom, it was true, had forced things a little, pressing harder on her dry, unreceptive body while she let her mind turn off. But that wasn’t the reason she left, not really. She always had a more general reason for doing whatever she did. She saw herself as a freshman, standing alone on the green that had been washed of color by weeks of winter and the lightless late afternoon, while everyone else—teammates, other students, professors, whoever—hurried about in pairs and trios, caressing their books, caressing their cell phones, absorbed in a game that had somehow started, and now continued, and probably would for years, without her. She saw that she’d been special once, and then she’d blacked out, and when she came to, she wasn’t.
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