Two nights later, from the safety of Star Video’s loft—referred to by those in the know as The African Queen—Waring listened to a staff meeting that Alaura had hastily arranged. He had spent the entire day in The African Queen drinking and smoking and reading a fascinating biography of D.W. Griffith (Waring supposed someone had to invent the establishing shot, but unfortunately it was a crazy racist) and just for fun watching Thin Man movie after Thin Man movie, and he had no intention of participating in the pointless meeting. The African Queen itself was tiny, only seven feet by seven feet, nothing more than a rectangular wooden crate supported by the shelves behind the front counter where all the DVDs and VHS tapes were stored, and further secured by several rusty cables. The vessel’s name was etched upon its berth in black stenciled letters, and the walls of the loft rose high enough that, when seated on its dusty yellow couch, one was hidden from the large store below.
The loft’s television—a fifty-inch flat-panel, high-definition screen—was Waring’s lone concession to modern technology at Star Video. Because no matter how you sliced it, these new televisions were amazing, though he hadn’t yet figured out how to attach the thing to a VHS player . . .
He peered over the edge of The African Queen. Five employees. Apparently someone had just quit; he did not remember who. But Alaura, sexy as always. And the new kid (Jack? Jed? Jessie?), that tall trim smiling Richie Cunningham suck-up. The names of the remaining three, which Waring was astounded he could remember, were Dorian, Farley, and Rose. Dorian was a small effeminate kid of indeterminate age—his complexion was so polished that he might be either twenty or thirty-five—and he was the store’s expert on musicals and concert videos. Dorian spoke softly and had a habit that Waring admired of rolling his eyes when he was annoyed. Farley (documentaries and dramas) was huge, almost three hundred pounds, but unlike his nickname-sake, Chris Farley (or perhaps Farley was his real name?), he could never maintain energy levels high enough to parlay his obesity into merrymaking, let alone go a half hour without sitting down. Rose (cartoons, especially classic Looney Tunes), a tiny, oily girl who resembled a mouse, wore huge hooded sweaters even in the summer, and she snarled if anyone violated her ten-foot personal space.
“We all love movies,” Alaura was saying to them. “Working at a video store isn’t a glamorous gig. But if you’re like me, you’d rather watch movies than do anything else in the world. Anything. And yes, I know what that implies . . .”
Waring watched as his employees chuckled at her corny insinuation and, he knew, in embarrassed agreement. That was Alaura’s great talent: hiring certifiable cinephiles, those crackbrained personalities for whom the flickering screen was better than sex.
“This is a special place for all of us,” Alaura continued. “This is a college town. Ape U’s right down the road—” (more chuckles for her deployment of local slang for Appleton University). “But the point is,” she said, smiling, “this is an artsy, progressive bubble in an otherwise stupidly Republican state. And Star Video is the only local store that stocks foreign and independent titles. We carry over thirty thousand movies. It’s the best selection in North Carolina. We’re an important part of the arts community in Appleton and West Appleton and Ape U. And we’re an independent store. In-depen-dent. We do things our way. We stock the movies we want. When Waring bought this place over ten years ago, he turned it from a crappy little closet that only stocked mainstream releases, where you couldn’t even find fucking Seven Samurai, into a goddamn cathedral of movie worship. That’s why this store is special.”
The employees all nodded.
Waring belched quietly.
“I’ve worked here for nine years,” Alaura went on. “Since the nineteen freaking nineties. And if Star Video closes—I’m not saying we’re going to close, because we’re not, because Waring tells me that we’re doing fine—but if we did close, then something special about this town would be lost. A piece of its heart. I really believe that, stupid as it sounds. So, we’re making a few changes. We need to improve customer experience. Jeff and I have discussed some ideas. Would everyone like to hear them?”
Not really, Waring thought.
Then he remembered that there was something he needed to tell Alaura. Something from a few days ago? Something about a fruit pastry . . . there was another character involved . . . it was very, very important . . .
But damn it all, he couldn’t remember! The thought was gone like so many other memories. Washed away in the current of booze.
“It’s time to try customer incentives,” Alaura was saying. “Like specials, prizes, giveaways.”
Gimmicks? Waring thought.
He flopped back onto The African Queen’s couch. He cracked open another beer.
“Business is pain,” he proclaimed in a whisper. “Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
Then he realized, of course, that the real quote from The Princess Bride is, “Life is pain . . . Anyone who says differently—”
He drifted off to sleep.
Waring awoke in The African Queen the next evening, confused, having expected sunlight to needle the painful space around his head. Had he slept an entire day? Or awoken in the interim? He sat up, groaned, could not find a beer. Printers churned below. Coins clattered into the Cashier du Cinéma. Computers bleeped.
He stood and looked down at the floor. A quick scan—twenty customers. The New Releases section was nearly full. Friday was their busiest night.
Was it Friday already?
He looked at Alaura. Strangely, she was wearing a blue country dress. And what was wrong with her hair? Some sort of wig? Pigtails?
Next to her stood the new kid—straw protruded from the neck of his shirt, and a black hat flopped on his head.
Rose wore a huge lion’s mane made of yellow yarn.
“Oh, Christ,” Waring said. “Costumes?”
The Wizard of Oz played on the store’s central TV.
The new kid—boring name?—he bounced around, scratching at his chest where the straw seemed to irritate him, always that damn frantic smile hanging on his face. Twitchy like a little bird. Muscular and youthfully handsome, except for those pimples. And he was clearly enamored with Alaura—always looking at her, always cowering whenever she addressed him, always attempting to impress her with his stupendous effort. But who could blame him? Look at her. She’s amazing. Sexy pigtails. Tattoos. Lips and eyes painted severely dark. Steampunk Dorothy. Alaura was at her best here. She addressed all the regulars by name. Outside Star Video, on the street or in the bars, she always frowned, tough as nails. But here, in the store, she pranced around happily, fully equipped with fire and music, and enjoying every second of it, enjoying that people enjoyed being around her. That every customer hoped she would be the one to help him or her. Alaura was a West Appleton icon.
Waring overheard her recommend a Match Anderson movie to an Ape U student. Match Anderson, the young Hollywood director who had lived near Appleton as a teenager and had gone on to make one amazing indie thriller, Losers, and two Hollywood-financed flops, A House on the Edge of Reason and Changeless, the latter of which had taken eighteen months to film and that not even Hugh Jackman’s loss of sixty pounds could save. Just because Match Anderson was a hometown boy made good didn’t mean Alaura had to recommend his crappy movies to every damn customer . . . But look at Alaura, just fucking look at her, long tattooed neck, swaying hips, wonderfully filled-out ass, giving a little wink or a knowing grin, having fun, laughing, making a little joke, tapping her fingers in rhythm to “Yellow Brick Road” while a customer signed a receipt, doing a silly dance as she retrieved a DVD, saying something slightly risqué under her breath to a customer she thought could take it, always including the customer on something, always giving him or her some individual glimmer of her inner light.
She loved working here. This was her home. It wasn’t only about money. He had to remember that.
He should go down and help; Alaura was now directing calcul
ated glances at him, her lips pursed into a dark strawberry. He only replied with annoyed shrugs. He didn’t have the energy. He was hungover. He lit a cigarette. The damned customers, he thought, the damned fools. He knew that the night’s biggest renter would be The Devil Wears Prada, out that week. Already he had witnessed the gaggles of Ape U girls prancing in and giggling and gaggling and excitedly clutching their stupid Anne Hathaway vehicle. And who the hell is Anne Hathaway anyway? Out there are wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and daily terror plots and Dick Cheney running the damn country, not to mention the ever-present potential of food poisoning or nuclear annihilation, and you want milky meh-inspiring Anne Hathaway? Maybe they would rent a second movie, but would it be something decent, something made with respect for the craft of filmmaking, something classic, or, God forbid, something foreign, or independent, something about a character’s inner journey? There’s a lifetime’s worth of entertaining and well-made movies out there, but would any of these customers make the right choice? Of course not. And the male customers, men of all ages, renting their action movies, occasionally venturing to Oscar winners but not usually, usually they would debate for three seconds between a Vin Diesel vehicle and a Steve McQueen vehicle, and they would choose Vin Diesel, every fucking time. And yes, Little Miss Sunshine was an “indie” film that rented well, and The Departed rented well, too, and that was another solid movie and it’d been that year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, as if that meant anything. But what about all the other classics? Why did most people rent the absolute dreck? Waring could not believe that at this point in his life, the customers he respected most were the little old biddies who rented British movie after British movie after British movie (the Colin Firth–Merchant Ivory whores), because at least they’d chosen a niche they longed to exhaust, and the pimply teenage boys who could not get enough of anime and sci-fi and horror, because at least they watched movies outside of the mainstream . . .
Waring watched his customers—the good and the bad, the worthy and the lame. Their faces blurred together, time-lapsed.
They were in his store. Renting his movies.
For better or for worse, this was his home, too.
Oh, Jesus. Was he crying again?
“I want to speak to your manager,” one of the customers said.
Waring focused—Alaura smiled at the customer, a short man whose face was a little too tanned for his white hair and his white teeth and his white Nike track jacket. “I want to speak to your manager,” he repeated, louder, as if Alaura had been too stupid to catch it the first time.
“I am the manager, sir,” Alaura said calmly.
“Then I want to speak to the owner.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to pay this late fee.”
“But I’ve told you, it’s a mistake.”
“Sir, someone else on your account might have—”
“So your computer never makes a mistake?”
Alaura glanced up at Waring—her expression indicated that she was confident in the computer’s assessment.
The customer shook his head, bubbled with anger. “I want to speak to your man-a-ger.”
“Again, sir, I am the manager.”
Thatta girl, Waring thought.
Alaura smiled pleasantly. The customers around them had quieted.
“So your computer never makes a mistake?”
“I don’t think this is a mistake, sir.”
“Your computer never makes a mistake?”
The new kid—Jeff was his name?—materialized next to Alaura. Waring watched her look up at the new kid, at his floppy hat, at his tawny neck gone red with hay scratches, at the frightened expression on his young, blemished face.
“Please calm down, sir,” Jeff said in a deep, quivering, Southern-twanged voice.
The customer rolled his eyes. “I want to speak to whoever is in charge.”
“No you don’t, sir,” Alaura said.
“I mean, you really don’t,” Jeff agreed sincerely.
“Yes,” the customer said, “I do.”
“Well, sir, that can be arranged,” Alaura said. “Waring!”
Waring swiped away the last of his tears. Then he cleared his throat, climbed out of The African Queen, and descended the rusty spiral staircase—his footsteps a little heavy for dramatic effect.
This should be fun.
“Dorothy, Scarecrow, I’ll take it from here,” he said when he’d arrived at the counter.
“Are you the person in charge?” the customer asked.
Waring stepped in front of Alaura, stared the customer dead in the face.
“Owner,” Waring corrected. “I’m the owner.”
The customer extended a hand over the counter. Waring frowned, held out a limp set of fingers that the man immediately grabbed and shook, jostling Waring’s entire body.
“I’m Adam,” the man said, now speaking pleasantly. “Adam Pritt. I own Quick Dick’s, the running shoe store in Browne Mill Mall. Surprised we’ve never met.”
“Mm?”
“I only say that because, like you, I’m a local business owner. Started my place with nothing. I know the value of customer service.”
“Customer what?”
“This employee,” Pritt continued as if he hadn’t heard Waring’s quip, “who I understand is a manager, refuses to waive some late fees that I did not accrue.”
Waring looked at the computer display of Adam Pritt’s account information. The total of his outrageous late fee was six dollars. And a note in the comments section:
MAJOR asshole, always problem with late fees. No breaks.
“Well,” Waring said. “The thing is, you have a late fee.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your hair is perfect,” Waring observed, squinting at the white quaff atop Pritt’s head. “Like the spoiler of a Lamborghini.”
The man ran his fingers over his spoiler.
“You have a late fee,” Waring repeated. “A whopping six dollars.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
The man laughed contemptuously. “I’ve never been treated like this.”
“The treatment is free of charge.”
“You know, it’s almost cheaper to buy these movies on Amazon.”
“Then go to Amazon, Tarzan.”
“And I hear Blockbuster doesn’t even charge late fees.”
Waring leaned forward. “Then. Go. To. Blockbuster.”
Adam Pritt (Adam Prick, Waring thought) was speechless.
“I hear Blockbuster also has a discount for dramatic hair. They give free Twizzlers for being repeatedly rude.” Waring took a breath. “People like you amaze me. I recognize you. I’ve seen you skishing around on your bicycle, with all your bicycle buddies. Bragging at the Open Eye about your workouts, your four-by-four hundreds, your ten-by-ten millions, or whatever, in your tight sweaty shorts that seem designed to mechanically lift your balls in my direction.” Waring cradled a large pair of invisible orbs from his waist toward Adam Prick’s face. “And all the while you’re sweating on the couches, so there’s absolutely nowhere for me to sit in that place to enjoy my red eye that hasn’t been tainted by your balls.”
“I’m leaving—”
“That’s an idea!” Waring cried. “Go in peace. And thank you for this opportunity, because it’s been a while, but I think it’s time for our ‘firing a customer’ dance.”
Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Waring raised his hands in the air and waved them like a deranged Grateful Dead fan.
—Sometimes you have to fire a customer—
Alaura snorted in laughter, and she leaned forward, hands on knees, wiggled her glorious round bottom near the microwaveable popcorn display, nodded her head to a silent beat, and said, “Uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh, yeah,” over and over. Her fake pigtails flopped in front of her face.
Waring glanced at the new kid. He was dancing, too—sort of hopping in place and pounding his fists . . . the mas
hed potato?
Maybe not such a bad kid after all, Waring thought.
Customers around them covered their mouths in astonishment.
“Oh, go to hell!” Adam Prick said to them all.
Finally he stormed out of the shop.
The other customers clapped as the door closed behind him.
Waring took a bow.
And Alaura collapsed on his shoulder in laughter—he could tell that she wasn’t thinking about Blockbuster or money or how she was so much better than this place—and he held her up, hoping to memorize the sensation of her weight.
That night, Star Video grossed $1,100. One of their worst Fridays ever.
The following evening Waring entered Ehle County Social Club, one of the many dive bars he frequented and the location, he now remembered, of his recent debacle with Alaura and Peckerdick, the embarrassing particulars of which now came back to him in a sandy rush. Shit. Idiot. Sticking my tongue in her ear. Deserved to get punched. Didn’t deserve Alaura defending me. Whatever. Just forget about it. Waring approached the bar, and when the bartender (to whom Waring was always polite because he resembled a young Joe Don Baker and didn’t take shit from anyone) asked compulsorily how his night was going, Waring responded, “I’m scared I might be bankrupt, and I don’t know how to save my shop.”
But Young Joe Don Baker wasn’t interested. Nor, Waring imagined, was anyone else.
Four hours later, after five pints and two whiskeys and an entire pack of cigarettes, and after abandoning a crossword puzzle upon seeing evidence, in that same crossword, of the progressive degradation of his own handwriting, Waring started walking home. Very drunk.
The Last Days of Video Page 2