by Lee Goldberg
“It’s not work,” he said.
“It is for everybody but you.”
“But I like doing it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being paid to do something that you like so much that you’d do it for free. In fact, that’s the definition of the dream job.”
“So it’s like your situation working for me.”
It was a no-win situation. If I said no, I would offend him. If I said yes, he would use that as an argument for me to continue working for him for no salary.
So I took the cowardly way out. I smiled, said nothing, and sped off in my car without even a good-bye, leaving him standing there at the curb, looking perplexed.
I drove over to Safeway, where I found Arthur stocking some granola bars on the shelves. I apologized profusely for Monk’s bad behavior the other day. Arthur said that he understood, or maybe he was just being polite to a customer. Emboldened, I talked up how much the store meant to Monk, and said that he demonstrated that devotion by keeping the place organized and spiffy for years, on his own time, often in the wee hours of the night.
“Mr. Monk takes real pride in the store, that’s for sure,” Arthur conceded. “He can be irritating, but he does more to keep the store clean, and the shelves orderly, than any of the people who work here. He’s also a lot more loyal, punctual, and dependable than they are.”
Arthur had fallen right into my trap.
“Then you should hire him,” I said. “And me, too.”
I touted my past experience as a bartender and blackjack dealer to prove that I was adept at handling both money and difficult customers, and I promised that I’d keep Monk in line so Arthur wouldn’t have to.
Fifteen minutes later, I walked out with two bags of groceries that I’d purchased with my new employee discount. Monk and I were to report for work the next morning as cashiers and stock persons.
I called Monk with the good news as soon as I got in the car. He wanted to start immediately, but I made him promise not to go to the store until morning. He could scrub the sidewalk outside of his house if he had an irresistible urge to clean something.
The news seemed to lift his spirits and I was pretty pleased with myself, too. Our new jobs weren’t glamorous, or intellectually stimulating, but at least we’d be getting paychecks.
As happy as I was about getting us new jobs so fast, I knew that I wouldn’t be earning nearly enough to make my mortgage payment, much less pay all of my other bills. The truth was, I was still in very deep trouble.
But I decided not to dwell on the scary stuff and to bask in my achievement for a while.
The basking ended the moment that I walked in the front door of my house and saw Julie sitting at the kitchen table, her shoulders slumped, a frown on her face.
Julie was still in a funk over yesterday’s bad news and I dreaded telling her that things had gotten much worse. Somehow, I didn’t think she’d be happy to learn her mom was now a cashier at Safeway.
I was right. She was mortified.
Julie’s first reaction was to ask me to hide if anyone we knew ever came into the store.
“That’s not very likely,” I said. “The store isn’t in our neighborhood.”
“You shop there, don’t you?”
“Because it’s close to where I work,” I said and then immediately corrected myself. “Worked.”
“I’m sure other people we know work on that side of town. They could wander into the store to pick up some groceries on their way home. You might not have a chance to hide. So you should wear glasses, and a wig, and use a different name on your name tag, like Charlene, Roxi, or Ethel.”
“Why Charlene, Roxi, or Ethel?”
“Those are good cashier names,” she said. “Very working class.”
“When did you become such a snob?”
“Do you realize what would happen to me if word got out about you at school?”
“I’m a cashier at Safeway,” I said. “Not a drug dealer or a hooker.”
“They wouldn’t be as bad.”
“Are you suggesting I try those instead?”
“You know what I mean. You’re being sarcastic but this is my life we’re talking about.”
“We aren’t the only ones facing a financial crisis. There are plenty of people worse off than us. Look around at all the bank foreclosures on our block. I’m sure there are kids in your school whose parents have lost their homes.”
“And those kids are gone,” she said. “They’ve moved. They don’t have to live with the shame.”
“Of course they do. They’re just doing it somewhere else.”
“Where nobody knows them,” she said. “That’s a big difference.”
“I’m not going to hide and I’m not going to wear a disguise. I’m not ashamed of working to support my family and you shouldn’t be, either. In fact, now it’s even more important that you find a job and earn your keep. We need every cent we can get.”
She looked at me glumly. “Is it really that bad?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Maybe we should move,” she said. “And take the equity we have out of the house and live on it.”
My teenage daughter was talking to me about our equity. I was struck by how childish and mature she could be at the same time.
“I bought this house with your father,” I said. “I feel him in every room. It’s one of the few things I still have that we both shared. That’s the equity that matters most to me. It’s worth making sacrifices for. I will not move just because you can’t bear the thought of somebody seeing me in a Safeway uniform.”
There was a long silence. Evoking her father’s memory seemed to have knocked the wind out of her. She nodded somberly and her eyes began to tear up. It made me feel a little guilty for bringing Mitch into it.
“I’m sorry about what I said to you last night,” she said. “Really sorry. I know Dad is proud of you. We both are. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know you didn’t,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek and stroking her hair. “It’s okay.”
“After last night, I thought things couldn’t get any worse.”
“If you and I support each other, and keep a positive attitude, we’ll get through this. We might even come out of it better off than we were before.”
“I don’t see how we’re going to end up rich with you working at Safeway.”
“I don’t mean better off financially. I mean as people. You’re going to learn some things about yourself, and what you’re capable of, that will surprise you.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled. “There’s a ‘help wanted’ sign down at the car wash. The pay is probably lousy, but it has the benefit of being walking distance from here.”
“And you’ll impress Mr. Monk,” I said. “You’ll be doing God’s work.”
“I guess it’s better than joining a convent.”
“The pay is certainly better,” I said.
“On the other hand, if I went to a convent, there’s not much chance that my friends would see me.”
“I’m all for the convent,” I said. “I can think of a lot of good reasons for you to go there, including the money it would save us on clothes, food, and broadband.”
“I think I’d rather help God out by scrubbing bird poop off of Hondas,” she said.
“It’s your decision,” I said. “But it’s going to take you a lot longer to reach sainthood that way.”
“I’ve already blown my shot at that,” she said, smiling slyly at me, and headed to her room before I dared to ask her how she’d done that.
Russell Haxby’s murder, seen as a severe blow to the prosecution’s case against Bob Sebes, was front-page news in the San Francisco Chronicle that morning.
The article was illustrated with a grainy photograph of Bob Sebes, standing at his picture window, staring sadly out at the bay. The picture must have been taken just before we arrived, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Sebes was posing
for the cameras that he knew were watching him.
The article noted that Haxby was Sebes’ chief compliance officer and was killed after agreeing to testify against his former employer.
But the implication that Sebes might have been behind the murder was squashed by Captain Stottlemeyer, who was quoted as saying that Sebes was not a suspect in the murder and had been under “constant surveillance” by law enforcement, both by virtue of the monitoring device on his ankle and the round-the-clock police presence outside of his home. The captain told reporters that Sebes was questioned as part of a routine effort to learn more about Haxby’s professional and personal relationships.
Bob Sebes’ lawyer released a statement saying that Haxby’s murder was a “devastating blow” to his client’s efforts to prove his innocence but that he was confident “the truth will prevail and Bob Sebes will be cleared of all the charges against him.”
There was no mention of Monk’s presence at the questioning of Bob Sebes or at the scene of Haxby’s murder. I went to pick Monk up and found him already waiting for me outside of his apartment. He was wearing a long-sleeved, white button-down shirt (buttoned at the collar), black pants, and black dress shoes that were shinier than Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
“You don’t have to interview for the job, Mr. Monk. You already have it.”
“This is the standard Safeway apparel for a clerk,” Monk said as he got into the car.
“It is? Arthur didn’t tell me,” I said. “How did you know what it was?”
“Because I’m not blind and I pay attention to the world around me,” Monk said. “It’s also what I wear when I go in at night to straighten things up.”
“You masqueraded as an employee?”
“No, I was simply showing respect by conforming to the store’s employee dress code.”
I was wearing jeans and a V-neck sweater. I guess I was already off to a bad start. But when I got to the store, Arthur was cool about it. He gave me a white Safeway polo shirt and said there were some spare women’s black slacks in the employee locker room that I could borrow for the day and bring back cleaned tomorrow.
When Arthur gave us our black Safeway aprons emblazoned with the store logo, a white S against a red background, Monk reacted as if the president of the United States was awarding us the Medal of Honor.
“I can honestly say that I’ve lived my life trying to embody the values inherent in the name of this store,” Monk said, standing at attention. “I promise to be a credit to the apron and to Safeway.”
“That’s great,” Arthur said. “You can start by unpacking the new shipment of breakfast cereals onto the shelves on aisle twelve.”
I thought Monk might salute, but he simply nodded and hurried off to do the task that he’d been assigned.
Arthur turned to me, watching me warily as I put on the apron and tied it around my waist.
“You’re not going to give me an acceptance speech or swear an oath?” he asked.
I touched the Safeway logo on my apron. “I feel like the Supergirl of groceries with this on my chest. Do you have a cape to go with this?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “You’re on register three this morning, Supergirl. Charlene is out sick.”
“Charlene?” I said.
“Do you know her?” Arthur asked.
“No,” I said, trying to remember if Julie had ever visited this store with me. “It’s just a pretty name.”
“Common, too,” Arthur said. “We’ve got two Charlenes in the store.”
“How about Roxi?”
“She retired last year,” Arthur said and went back to the office.
The morning went by surprisingly fast. The job kept me busy, but it didn’t take much concentration. I scanned the grocery items over a bar-code reader, so there wasn’t much ringing up to do, unless the customer bought fruit or vegetables. I didn’t even have to think about how much change to give, since the register did that for me, too. Most of my work involved bagging items, putting on a cheerful face, and engaging in polite small talk with the customers.
I tried to occupy my mind by imagining what my customers’ lives were like based on the things they were buying. I had no idea if I was right or wrong, of course, but I was able to amuse myself. It distracted me from my troubles.
Monk was doing much the same thing, only in his own way. He unpacked the breakfast cereals, but then he took it upon himself to arrange all the products on the aisle by brand, by alphabetical order, and by expiration date, with the oldest boxes in back.
When Monk finished, he proudly showed off his work to Arthur, who appreciated the orderliness but wasn’t very pleased that the newest boxes of cereal were out in front.
“We want to sell the products that expire sooner first,” Arthur said. “But people won’t buy them if they are hidden in the back.”
“Don’t you want to sell customers the freshest possible products?”
“These products are still fresh and tasty,” Arthur said. “But they will go bad if we sell the newer products first. To meet demand, we get new shipments in all the time, even while there are still some unexpired packages of those same products on our shelves.”
“Wouldn’t you want to buy the freshest possible product?”
“It’s not about what I want to buy,” Arthur said. “It’s about what we need to sell.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You have to start thinking like a grocer instead of a customer. If we did it your way, we’d never sell anything and we’d waste a lot of perfectly fresh, healthy, and delicious products.” That’s when Arthur noticed two grocery carts full of cereal boxes at the end of the aisle. He cocked his head, curious. “Are all of those expired products?”
“No, those are damaged and defective goods.”
“They don’t look torn, dented, or opened to me.”
“They’re odd,” Monk said.
Arthur walked over to the cart and picked up one of the boxes. “This package of Cap’n Crunch doesn’t expire until November seventeenth. That’s four months from now. What’s odd about that?”
“The expiration date is the seventeenth day of the eleventh month,” Monk said. “The box might as well be contaminated with rat poison.”
Arthur shushed him, looking around to make sure that no one but me had overheard. Luckily, there was hardly anybody in the store.
“Do you want to create a panic?” Arthur said. “Never mention the word contaminated in a grocery store.”
“Not only is the expiration date wrong,” Monk continued, lowering his voice, “but ‘Captain’ is misspelled, there are three pieces of cereal in Crunch’s spoon and five tassels on his epaulets. What kind of quality control is that? The Quakers should be ashamed of themselves.”
“What Quakers?”
“The Quakers at Quaker Oats,” Monk said, pointing to the manufacturer’s logo, which depicted a man in old-fashioned Quaker garb. “William Penn would be outraged if he saw this box. You should write them a very stern letter.”
“Forget about cereal,” Arthur said, rubbing his temples in a way that immediately reminded me of Captain Stottlemeyer. “Why don’t you take your break?”
“This has been a break for me. I’m completely relaxed. You’ve really taken my mind off my troubles.”
“Maybe you don’t need a break, but I do,” Arthur said. “From you. I’m going to my office for a cup of coffee.”
“Take your time,” Monk said. “We’ll mind the store until you get back.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mr. Monk Rounds Up
Before Arthur left the floor on his break, he assigned Monk to the cash register next to mine. It seemed, at the time, like the safest place to put him.
The first thing Monk did was put on a pair of surgical gloves, the kind he often put on at crime scenes.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“Because I don’t want to become a drug addict.”
“You can’t become a drug addict from handling money,” I said.
“I beg to differ. According to a 2009 study presented at the two hundred thirty-eighth National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, there are traces of cocaine on more than ninety percent of the paper money in circulation.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“I wish that I was, Natalie. All it takes is one sniff of your unprotected hands after handling the wrong ten-dollar bill, and bang, you’re a crack whore.”
“Okay, I can see the leap to junkie, but why would I become a prostitute?”
“How are you going to afford crack on what you make here?”
“Good point,” I said.
“And the banknotes that aren’t coated in coke are infected with countless diseases, including, but not limited to, swine flu, E. coli, and flesh-eating Ebola.”
“Was that in the study, too?”
“It’s just common sense. The dirtiest thing in the world is money. You have no idea where it has been or how many hands have touched it.”
Monk went to his register and, after thoroughly cleaning the counters and cash register with Lysol, began ringing up customers.
He removed his gloves after each customer, cleaned his hands with a disinfectant wipe, then put on a fresh pair before handling the next transaction.
Monk insisted on putting each item in an individual plastic bag before putting them all together in the larger grocery bags, which he packed by food groups and household products.
He carefully wrapped apples and other easily bruised fruit and vegetables in paper towels, taped them securely, and bagged them as if they were Ming vases he was preparing to ship overseas.
The customers didn’t seem to appreciate all the extra attention he was giving to their purchases, or the slow, methodical pace at which he moved.
But I was too busy with my customers to try to speed him along. That’s because things were moving so glacially at his register that everyone was coming to mine.
Eventually, my line finally ebbed and I was able to take a little break and watch as Monk rang up his last customer, a tight-faced old lady with collagen fish lips, hip-hop hair extensions, and tattooed, arched eyebrows over the ones that had been tweezed into extinction.