by Lee Nichols
Consider the purchase of a barbecue, for use during garden party. Fictional husband will grill. No shoplifters. (Realize it would be difficult to shoplift a GrillMaster 2000, but a cunning sticky fingers might walk off with a hibachi).
Examine quilt sets. Choose my favorite. Choose my least favorite. Change my mind. Change it back. No shoplifters.
Decide to lurk where the money is. Choose a diamond ring at the “better jewelry” department. Wonder why it is called “better.” Better than what? Where is the “worse” jewelry department? My fictional husband reverts to a fictional fiancé, due to the lack of ring on my finger. Possibly should not have flung engagement ring at Louis while he was howling and covered in warm-ish crème brûlée. Jewelry department seems good place for crime spree, but no shoplifters in sight.
Consider going back to underwear, to look at the gay men with perfect bodies again. But I’m exhausted. I check my watch.
10:54.
I’ve been here forty minutes. Seven hours left.
Wonderful.
Days two through three. Feet hurt. Head hurts. Am avoiding Maya.
Don’t want to talk about it. Day four. I’m in frozen foods, shopping for dinner, when I finally spot one. A shoplifter. I’m so excited I nearly drop my pot pie.
She’s in woman’s clothing. After four hell-days in Super 9, I am intimately acquainted with every item in that department, and even from here I can tell she’s stuffing the worst of the lot into her gym bag.
I observe her criminal acts with a dispassionate and professional eye. She’s a mousy little thing, about five-two, with sandy blond hair halfheartedly pulled into a scraggly tail. There are deep circles under her bleak eyes. She’s in her late forties, and looks like she needs an electric blue rayon blouse far more than Super 9 does.
But I have a job to do. I stealthily approach. “Excuse me,” I say. “I couldn’t help but notice—”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers hopelessly, crumbling in the face of the accusation I didn’t have time to make. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“I have to look in your bag, ma’am.”
She meekly hands it over. Inside are three polyester blouses festooned with laces and bows; one puce T-shirt from the Li’l Missy Department; two poly-blend beige skirts from the Li’l Dowdy Department; one box Rembrandt extra-whitening toothpaste; one Sonicare electric toothbrush; and a jumble of dental flosses, mostly mint.
She smiles in apologetic terror, and her teeth are horrible. She needs those dental products in the worst way.
“Shoplifting is a crime,” I tell her sternly. “It is the policy of Super 9 to prosecute to the full extent of the law.”
She cowers, and I almost snap and tell her that I stopped her inside, and she has nothing to worry about. Because this woman is clearly not part of an international ring of billion-dollar shoplifters. She is a woman with terrible teeth and a little daughter whom she dresses in puce.
But I do not snap. I speak harshly to her, very nearly reducing her to tears. She shivers before the majesty of the law, and promises she’ll never, never, never, shoplift again. She is like a wet kitten—tiny, shivering, pathetic.
I finally relent, and tell her she is free to go. “But before you do,” I say. “Maybe I can give you a little advice.”
“I know. Don’t be a shoplifter.”
“Yes. Exactly. But that’s not all.” I take a deep breath, and give her a piece of my mind. I hold nothing back. Because I have standards. There are some things I simply cannot stand aside and watch.
These are my days: wake, work, sleep, wake, work, sleep, wake, work, sleep.
I hardly even have time to eat—and still haven’t lost any weight. In fact, I worry that I’m transforming into a picture-perfect Super 9 customer. A bovine chunk of downscale consumerist urges stuffed like a sausage into a leisure suit. I don’t mind being programmed to buy, buy, buy, if at least I’m left the dignity of buying gorgeous little items. But there is nothing gorgeous about Super 9. Plus, I am beginning to hum along to the in-store music.
I return home on Wednesday, or possibly Tuesday (all blending together), to find the dial tone merrily buzzing on my phone. Voice mail! I collapse in my soiled chair, kick off my shoes and rub my feet as I check my messages.
The first is Carlos, my sexy-voiced Latin admirer. He says he’ll try again. I consider staying home to wait for his call, but decide a sick day would not be wise during my second week.
The second is Maya. Going through Elle-withdrawal, I suspect.
The third message is Sheila, from Superior Employment. I forgot to tell her I found a job. She says not to worry, dear, she’s still looking. She sounds thoroughly pessimistic.
Fourth message is Spenser telling me to stop by the office on my way to work tomorrow. Don’t know if I should be worried or pleased. Dare I hope I’m needed for another assignment? Would prefer posing as a cage-cleaner at a hell-hole kennel, in search of prizewinning bitch, to another day at Super 9.
I defrost dinner and ring Maya. She thinks I’m angry about the bartending job, but I don’t have the energy to work myself into a snit. Eight hours wrestling shopping carts in discount hell is too exhausting. Why can’t Saks need help with shoplifters?
We have a nice chat, then I wash the discount grease out of my hair and collapse into bed.
It’s still dark when I wake to alarming scrambling sounds outside the trolley. After full-panic mode is engaged, I decide the noise is merely the pugs doing their business. Check the clock, it’s only nine-thirty—I must have fallen asleep around eight.
I hear a human cough. The noise is footsteps. Eddie Munster.
Fully awake, I tiptoe to my stack of water-condoms which are squatting by the front door like round rubber ducks in a row.
I grab an armful, and like an avenging fury, heave open the door. The little bastard is hunched at the end of the trolley, turned away from me, clearly doing something nefarious.
I shriek like a banshee and slam him with rubbers.
My aim is true. The first one catches him in the back of the neck. He flails and bellows and the next two condoms burst on his shoulders and ass. He trips and falls, the feeble runt, and the barrage continues. I am high on vengeance, I am retribution personified, I am unloading a week-and-a-half of Super 9 angst on Eddie’s sodden and supine form.
I stand over him, the coup de grace in my hand—an aqua Trojan with a reservoir tip—and let him have it at short range.
The instant the rubber leaves my hand, my brain registers, with a flicker of surprise, that this is not, in fact, Eddie Munster.
I’ve just bombed the living hell out of a seventy-year-old man.
“You aren’t—you aren’t—” I say. “Who are you?”
He wipes water from his eyes and pulls bits of burst condom from his hair. “Your landlord,” he says. “Mr. Petrie.”
Chapter 16
“So,” Spenser says, tapping a pack of cigarettes on the Formica table.
“So!” I say brightly. Judging from his expression, I’m not here for good news.
“You watched the videos, right?”
“They were far out,” I say. “Man.” Trying to keep things light.
He doesn’t crack a smile. “And what do you do when you spot a perp?”
“Be certain they have committed a crime, discreetly follow them out of the store and apprehend them.”
“Do you warn them off, if you decide that’s all that is required?”
I shake my head. “That’s Phil’s decision.”
He can’t possibly know about the dentally-challenged wet-kitten woman, can he?
“Phil’s decision? Not yours?”
“I just round ’em up and shoot ’em down,” I say.
“Very good.” He swivels in his chair and fiddles with the VCR. “Now watch what you don’t do.”
“Not another shoplifting video,” I complain.
“No,” he says.
No.
It’s me. In living color on Super 9 closed-circuit TV.
There’s me playing electronic darts in the toy department. There’s me, ensconced in a beanbag chair reading US Weekly magazine. (Note to self: never sit in beanbag chairs—very unflattering.) Me learning to play piano in the electronics department, and me twirling troll-head pencils for longer than is right. Me putting coats of silver polish on my fingernails and toes, and me watching One Life to Live.
I’m considering telling Spenser that the camera really does add ten pounds, when we get to the finale: me, catching-and-releasing the wet-kitten. And then me, giving her fashion advice—an obscenely long eleven minutes on fast-forward, as a blurry, jerky Elle pirouettes the woman from rack to rack, offering sage advice and fashion tips.
It finally ends. Spenser resumes tapping his cigarettes.
“Yes, but, honestly,” I say, desperate to end the silence. “Honestly, she picked the ugliest things in the department. I mean, she would have looked horrible. The skirts? The shirts? For someone with her coloring? And the laces and bows were—” I shudder, unable to think of an accurate description “—not good.”
“When do we approach the shoplifter?”
“Once they’ve left the store.”
“And who decides if they should be charged?”
“Phillip.”
“So what the hell did you think you were doing?”
I feebly try to defend myself. “It was my, my professional opinion that this was purely an isolated incident. I know that’s wrong. I should have called Phil. But I talked to her. I’m sure she’ll never do it again.”
“Well, if you’re absolutely certain,” he says.
“Definitely,” I say firmly. “No question.”
He hits fast-forward. As I head for Housewares, the wet-kitten immediately shoplifts every single item I’ve recommended.
There’s a long dense silence.
“I’m fired, aren’t I?” I say. He can’t fire me. I just lost my home. You can’t fire someone who just lost their home, can you?
“If there were any justice in the world, you would be.” He flicks open his silver lighter, then flicks it closed again. “But I like you, Medina. So I’m putting you on…what’s it called? When you’ve been warned? Starts with a P.”
“Probation?”
“Parole.”
For two days, contrite over my monumental, mouth-breathing, videotaped fuck-up, I spend eight hours a day at Super 9 actually pretending to shop. And watching for shoplifters, of course.
Day three, I decide to be mother of five. There’s a sale on diapers, so I dump four packs of Huggies into my cart. What else does a mother of five need? Valium? Liquor? Birth control, obviously—but I’m not in the mood for condoms, for some reason.
By three o’clock, I’m beat. I finished shopping hours ago, but continue to rattle around with my cart full of products for children ages sixteen months to eighteen years.
I’m soul-numbingly bored. I trudge into the tool department and stare at a pegged wall of wrenches. That’s a lot of wrenches.
I’m not the only one who’s impressed. There’s a man fiddling with a ratchet-thingie, and I turn my hawklike Sherlock Holmes gaze upon him. He smiles and knocks the wind out of me. He’s gorgeous. Heart-achingly gorgeous. Underwear model, TV star, young-Mel-Gibson beautiful.
He’s a trim six-foot-something, with dark wavy hair I want to run my fingers though and tanned skin I want to rub up against. Emerald eyes I want to fall into, and wide beautiful lips and flashing white teeth—and I realize I’m describing the guy on the cover of a romance novel, but I can’t help myself.
I twist a curl and say: “Ga.”
He smiles wider.
I try again: “Hi.”
He says hello. He sounds smooth and creamy.
“Shopping for a wench? A wrench. A wrench.” Kill me now.
He laughs. “Not really. You know men and tools—I can resist anything except a display of hardware I’ll never use.”
I consider saying “Ga” again, when a voice calls my name. I turn, expecting Phillip, who’s been harassing me since the wet-kitten incident. It is not Phillip. It’s ZZ from the Goleta garage, with his stick legs and enormous belly.
“Yo there,” ZZ says. “Ever find a place?”
I shoot a desperate look at Gorgeous. He winks, slips the ratchet-thingie into his pocket, and walks off, leaving me drooling.
“Excuse me?” I say to ZZ, who is still talking.
“Never said you have kids,” he says, with a gesture at my cart. “No carpet-crawlers allowed. Might wreck the place.”
Wreck the garage? What is he…wait, wait. Back up. The ratchet-thingie? His pocket? He shoplifted! It’s true he is Gorgeous—beyond gorgeous, he is Ga-Ga Gorgeous—but he just blatantly shoplifted in front of Elle Medina, professional Retail Loss Reduction Associate. That was a mistake. I will wait until he has left the building and then…except, of course, he’s already gone.
Fortunately, when I was a kid, my friend Janey and I spent untold hours targeting cute guys and tailing them through stores, giggling. Years of preparation finally pay off. I direct ZZ to the beard-trimmers, grab a bink and diaper-rash ointment from the cart—figuring if Ga-Ga spots me, he’ll think I’m just getting a few things—and locate the suspect in Aisle 16. Home and Garden.
He’s subtle, I’ll give him that. Only the trained eye can discern the clues. But by the time I follow him outside, I figure he’s lifted eight or ten items. Mostly from Electronics, but he also stopped at the jewelry counter to look at watches. Every time the salesgirl showed another watch, the neckline on her top got lower. I couldn’t blame her.
Finally, we’re outside. I haven’t fucked up. I can make my first collar. I dismiss an errant lady-cop-with-handcuffs fantasy, and authoritatively say: “Um, excuse me?”
He turns, a half smile on his face. Not nervous at all. “You caught me,” he says.
“Yes. Yes. I saw—inside, at the, in Electronics—”
“I should know better than to lie to a woman.” He looks me over. “It’s not only displays of hardware I can’t resist.”
I blush. “I work for the store. I was, I saw you—putting the wrench—in your pocket and…I’m afraid I have to call security?”
“By all means,” he says politely, and waits.
Fuck. Now what do I do? What if I tell him to come inside, and he walks away? I’d enjoy watching him walk away, but I cannot lose my job when I need to find a new apartment in a couple weeks.
“Follow me, please,” I say, and to my great surprise, he does.
“I’m Joshua Franklin,” he says. Why is he introducing himself? Shouldn’t he want to keep quiet?
“Elle. Elle Medina.”
“Elle Medina. That’s a musical name. Listen, Elle. I didn’t steal anything.”
I apologize, but am impressively firm, and insist we speak with Phil.
He apologizes too, for some reason, and says, “I hope you don’t get in any trouble.”
It all goes by the book. I’m professional, competent, and efficient. There is only one snag: when Phillip asks Ga-Ga to empty his pockets, he cannot.
Because they are already empty. No illicit wrenches, no contraband watch.
“Miss Medina?” Phillip says.
“But I saw him!” I say.
“I’m sorry,” Ga-Ga says.
“You’re fired,” Phillip says.
Back at the green Formica table, I hang my head and stare at my lap.
“Franklin’s lawyer already contacted Super 9,” Spenser says. “He’s gonna sue.”
“Yeah. I heard him mention that.”
“Super 9, in turn, is talking about suing me.”
I continue to look at my lap.
“For negligence. Hiring unqualified and incapable employees.”
“I’m really sorry,” I say again. Spenser is a chain-smoking freak, but he shouldn’t be sued for my fuck-up.
“So I’m gon
na sue you, Medina.”
I finally look up.
“I’m kidding,” he says. “But I’ve gotta let you go.”
I nod. Of course he does.
“Hey. Don’t take it so hard. Coulda happened to the best of us.”
“I saw him shoplifting. Honestly. I really did.”
“I looked at the tapes,” he says. “And the guy might not be a pro, but he’s a talented amateur. Old scam. He marks the store detective. That’s you. Then pretends to shoplift, without actually pocketing anything. You catch him, he sues the company for defamation. Doesn’t actually sue, of course. They’ll settle out of court. But he’ll pick up five or six grand, minus his attorney’s fees, for an afternoon’s work.”
“Five or six thousand dollars? For pretend shoplifting?” Hmmm.
“Don’t get any ideas, Medina,” Spenser says. “I like you. I really do. But you try a scam like this, you’ll end up doing seven to nine at a women’s prison. I like you—” he blows smoke through his nose “—but you’re an idiot.”
Chapter 17
A new list.
Income: Paycheck from Señor Spenser: $479.84
Outcome: BCBG’s broken while in Nordstrom: $188-ish.
Private Investigator-type lipstick—Chanel: $25
Private Investigator-type sunglasses—Armani: $150, more or less.
Thus, from my week-and-a-half of employment, discounting valuable experience gained at very first job, I am ahead by roughly…$100?
That’s not so bad, considering I was not only fired, but was instrumental in initiating a lawsuit. Impressive first effort, I’d say.
But I still need a job. Perhaps Sheila called. Perhaps anyone called. I pick up my phone to check the dial tone, because it’s possible the phone rang silently. The tone is straight and even. No voice mail. Not even from Carlos.
I know I should count my money to see precisely how much I don’t have, but am deeply afraid. I had $500, and then made $100, and haven’t been spending much due to constant bargain shopping at Super 9. Of course, there’s gas and orchids and the bottle of twelve-year-old port and the cartons of Godiva Chocolate Raspberry Truffle ice cream. But theoretically, I still have $500-ish.