by Adam Selzer
“Well, you need to clear these things ahead of time!” said Harold, somewhat exasperated. “We can’t set up anything here without clearing it with corporate first, and no third-party flyers or signs are allowed. That means no tables and cookie sales, either.”
“There’s no harm done, though,” said Andy.
“We do things by the book here,” said Harold. “And the book doesn’t say anything about this.”
“Are you the boss around here?” Coach Hunter asked. He was standing off to the side, still looking confused.
“Yes, I am, sir,” said Harold, turning toward him. “How can I help you?”
“This place is out of control!” he muttered. “Whole town’s out of control! I’ve got kids sneaking depressing poems into my office, and when I try to come here for a drink, I get people talking about something to do with accounting and management crap, this guy behind the counter gives me a cup of foam, and then some skinhead punk rocker comes and tells me to be hip!”
“Skinhead?” asked my dad. “I lost my hair in a chemistry accident. I’m not a racist or anything.”
“Oh?” said Coach Hunter. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that your hair was dyed green as part of a science experiment?”
“All right, sir,” said Harold. “I’m sure we can work this out.”
“Maybe you should do some push-ups,” Brian suggested from behind the camera. “That might make you feel better.”
Coach Hunter moved his glare over to Brian—he looked like he was just longing to tell him to do some form of calisthenics, but since he was off school property, his powers were pretty useless. Truly, here stood a broken man. He was actually starting to look the way he was described in Dustin’s poems: sad, confused, and scared, now that he was in a situation where push-ups were not the answer and any blows on his whistle would have been just unwanted, ineffective background noise. A vein in his neck was twitching, and I would have wailed with joy if I hadn’t been starting to fear for my life. The guy looked like he was about three twitches from turning into the Incredible Hulk.
Then he looked over at Anna and me. Then he looked over at the guy doing regular office work, who was paying him no mind, and then over at the stapler. He stared good and hard at the stapler, and I thought for a second he was going to crack. I’m no psychologist, but in movies it’s always a little thing, like running out of milk or finding out there’s a hole in your socks, that pushes people over the brink. Maybe the sight of a familiar-looking stapler was the thing that was going to do it to Coach Hunter. Only a guy who was close to losing it would be as quick to shout at someone over climbing a rope or square-dancing as he was, after all.
Then Jenny broke the silence.
“Go to hell,” she said timidly.
Coach Hunter looked away from the stapler and over at her, slowly leaning closer, like he was trying to get her in focus.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I said go to hell,” she said in a very small voice.
He looked at her, and then at my dad, and then at the stapler, and then back at her, like a guy in a movie on the Count Dave show beholding the creature as it first rises from the swamp. Jenny looked incredibly nervous.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” said Harold. “Can I get you another drink?”
Coach Hunter looked up at Harold, then slowly shook his head.
“Out of control,” he said.
And Coach Hunter sighed and walked out of the store.
“What the heck was his problem?” my dad asked. “That guy looked miserable.”
“That was Coach Hunter. He’s the gym teacher at school,” I said.
“Oh,” Dad said, as though it suddenly made pretty good sense. “Well, that stands to reason. I’d be miserable, too, if I were a gym teacher.”
“You want to explain to me what that was all about, Andy?” asked Harold.
“No big deal, Harold,” said Andy. “Just one of those guys who doesn’t expect a cappuccino to be mostly foam. He was having a pretty bad day, I guess. Driving through the snow has everybody in a bad mood.”
“That’s what I figured,” said Harold. He turned toward Anna and me. “But you guys need to clear out.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’re all done, and we’re just packing up. Right, guys?”
Everyone nodded. We stashed the tables and the watercooler in the back room so Andy could get them home later. I stuffed the motivational posters in the trash. That just left the filing cabinet and the ferns to be taken away. We started to pile them together. The guy who was working on finance was still there, still not paying any attention. My dad watched the whole thing, looking a bit confused.
“I’ll explain later,” I muttered to him.
“Andy,” said Harold, “we’ll talk some more about this after your shift.”
“No problem,” said Andy. “Good luck, guys!” He waved at us.
We all shook hands with Troy and Andy, I waved good-bye to my dad, who looked a little puzzled but wasn’t saying anything, and we were all out the door—including Jenny, who followed along just behind.
Jenny, in fact, practically skipped her way out of the store. “Did you hear that?” she asked. “I can’t believe I said that! Wasn’t it awesome?”
“That rocked,” said Anna. “I’ve always wanted to tell that guy to go to hell.”
“He never expected it coming from me!” said Jenny gleefully. She was actually jumping up and down now.
She’d just stood up to authority for the first time. I was getting used to doing it, but for her to do it…well, that really was pushing the bounds of reality.
In the parking lot, Mr. Streich was just getting out of his car.
“Hey, guys,” he said, a bit surprised to see us. “Working on your movie?”
“Yep,” I said. “We wanted to get some shots of the new downtown for contrast.”
“Good idea.” Streich nodded thoughtfully. “I’m just here to meet up with your dad.”
“So I hear,” I said. “He’s already in there.”
“Great,” said Streich. “I wondered if he’d make it through the snow. Barely did myself! I’ll see you guys on Friday!” And he walked off. If Harold had stopped ranting and raving, Mr. Streich would probably end up none the wiser that ten minutes earlier, the Wackfords had been an accounting and midlevel management strategies office. Dad would surely tell him something weird was going on, but he’d take that in stride.
The snow was still coming down, though not nearly as hard as it had been earlier that morning, and there were plows rolling down Cedar Avenue.
“Well,” I said to Anna, Brian, and Edie, “I guess that’s a wrap.”
“Well done,” said Anna. “We managed to get plenty of footage, and we didn’t even get arrested.”
“Hang on,” said Brian. “One more shot.”
And he picked up his camera and aimed it at the front door of the Wackfords.
The pirate flag was still there, flapping in the snow.
Brian filmed it getting smaller and smaller as we walked away.
Well, that was it. Our career as pirates lasted about four hours, and at the end of it, I’d annoyed a gym teacher, seen my father accused of being a skinhead punk, struck a blow against what Edie always called “the corporate takeover of America,” added experience in accounting and midlevel management strategies to my resume, filmed the better part of a movie, and acquired an official girlfriend—not bad, considering I’d done it all before the time I normally woke up on a Saturday.
We were all pretty excited on the walk away from the store, but no one was more excited than Jenny. She could hardly stop skipping and saying, “I can’t believe I said that!”
We walked to my house first, since I lived the closest and we all needed to warm up. We dropped off the plants and filing cabinet, then headed straight down to Douglas and Venture to take some establishing shots of the old downtown—something to compare and contrast with all the s
hots we had of Cedar Avenue. It had stopped snowing by then, which would make the contrast even better. The air would be clear in the shots of the old downtown, where the fresh snow lent an additional bit of charm, while the retail wasteland shots would almost look like they’d been filmed in Siberia or something.
“Man,” said Brian as we walked into Sip, “this is going to be a pain in the ass to edit. We’ve got, like, six hours worth of footage between the two cameras to wade through and put into a movie short enough to show in class.”
“Who says it has to be that short?” I said. “We can make it a regular-length movie and just show a trailer for it as the presentation. Then they’ll all have to see the whole thing separately. They’re all going to want to.”
We roamed through the shop to our usual table, and Trinity danced her way over to us.
“What happened?” she said. “You pirates didn’t stab Troy and bury him at sea, did you?”
“Oh no,” I said. “We’re friendly pirates.”
“I’m not!” said Edie.
“Okay, well, we aren’t the violent kind.”
“Unless provoked,” said Edie.
“And there’s no sea to bury him in anywhere near here,” I said. “Unless you count the pond. And that’s frozen.”
“Whatever,” said Trinity. “And he didn’t get fired or arrested or anything, right?”
“Nope,” said Brian proudly. “We told his boss we were selling Girl Scout cookies, and he fell for it.”
Trinity chuckled. “You met Harold, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And I told a teacher to go to hell!” said Jenny proudly.
“Wow,” said Trinity. “Just don’t start climbing on the tables again, okay?”
“Anyway,” I asked, “do you mind if we record some things here in the store?”
“Be my guest.”
We wandered around, filming the inside of Sip. We asked the few customers who had braved the snow why they came to Sip instead of the Wackfords, and they all had pretty much the same answer: they liked going someplace that was their place, not just another link in a large chain. One woman said she felt like she was just in a glorified Burger Box when she went to Wackfords. That was movie gold, right there.
“Well,” said Edie to Trinity as we finished up, “I hope we can help you stay in business.”
“What do you mean?” asked Trinity.
“Aren’t you having trouble staying open with a Wackfords to compete with?”
“Are you nuts?” asked Trinity. “You talked to all those people at Wackfords, right?”
Edie nodded.
“Do you think any of them would have been caught dead here in the first place? And do you think any of our customers are going to go to the Wackfords?”
“Well…no,” said Edie.
“See?” said Trinity. “We’re doing fine.”
“Oh,” said Edie. Honestly, she looked kind of disappointed that Sip wasn’t going out of business. I was a little surprised to hear this myself, but I guess it made pretty good sense.
“Wait a minute!” I said. “I heard George telling Troy you guys were closing in six months! That’s part of why we did the takeover!”
“George is always saying that,” said Trinity. “It’s just to bother Troy. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“You said you had to sleep with him in the back room to get company secrets out of him!”
Trinity snickered. “I think that’s excuse number two hundred and thirty-six.”
I was relieved, of course, but more embarrassed than relieved. I’d just taken over a Wackfords, possibly risking jail time, to save a coffee shop that didn’t even need saving. After a while, though, the embarrassment was gone, and I was just relieved that Sip wasn’t closing.
“We aren’t out of the woods yet,” Anna said as we sat down. “Someone could still call and complain. We could still be in trouble.”
“There weren’t that many people,” said Brian. “And only a couple of them didn’t get a drink in the end.”
“One is all it takes,” I said. “We just risked some serious trouble to save Sip, and it didn’t even need saving.”
“That wasn’t why we did it,” said Anna. “It was never going to do that, anyway. We did it to make a point about the new downtown.”
“And to bring down big business!” said Edie.
This brought Anna into a little argument with Edie over exactly what we’d hoped to accomplish with the whole thing, but the truth was that there were a lot of reasons. We’d done it out of frustration over poor city planning that had caused our part of town—Anna’s and mine, anyway—to go from being the main part of town to an afterthought. Out of despair from thinking our favorite place was closing. To make a good movie and a monument to the old downtown. And in my case, to prove to myself that I had the guts to do it.
Brian and Edie stuck around after that so Edie could beg Trinity for some tango lessons, and Jenny called to get another cab to take her home. She was still buzzed from having told Coach Hunter to go to hell.
Anna and I started walking home. We held hands the whole way, and when we got to her house, she grabbed me and kissed me long, and hard, and good.
“So,” she said when we paused for a breath. “You never told me…Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Seen a naked girl.”
I pulled back a step and blushed about three different shades of red. “Well, define the conditions of seeing a naked girl,” I said. “Do you mean, like…live and in person? Or just pictures?”
She laughed out loud. “I know you’ve seen pictures, dummy. Ever seen a real one, not counting, like, when you were a baby or anything? Your age or older.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess not.”
I don’t know exactly why this embarrassed me; I mean, it’s not like there are a lot of nudie bars in the suburbs that let minors in, and I’m pretty sure air vents that offer a view of the girls’ locker room only exist in a few of the best movies ever made.
“Didn’t think so.” She smiled.
“Same question to you,” I said. “Have you seen a naked guy?”
“Sure,” she said. “Sometimes when my dad is working at his office, I sit in on the life drawing group at the college. You know that. So I’ve seen naked guys and girls. Mostly college aged, some older.”
“I can’t believe they really let you into those.”
“It’s just an art class,” she said. “No big deal. I’ve seen more erotic bug documentaries on public broadcasting.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but that means, you’re like…one up on me.”
“So?” She smiled.
“So…,” I said.
“So you’re just going to have to live with it.” She smirked. And she kissed me again, and walked into her house.
Anna was not one up on me, she was about a million up on me. Not only had she seen a lot more naked people than I had, or probably would in the near future, she also knew all about art and movies I’d barely even heard of. She played classical music with her parents while I was at home listening to my dad butcher “Smoke on the Water,” which, honestly, should not be an easy thing to butcher. She was sophisticated and cool, and I was just a suburban slob being raised by a pair of dorks.
But she liked me. And she was kissing me.
If I didn’t know better, I’d even say she liked to think of me as a bit of a dork. And not even in a condescending way.
That evening, Mr. Streich came over to my house with a bass guitar. This was the first time I could recall ever having a teacher in my house, and even though I liked the guy a lot more than I had at the beginning of the year, it was still awkward, especially when I had to hear him and my dad trying to harmonize on “Day Tripper.” The Wildewood Singers probably did it better. But Mr. Streich didn’t ask me about the takeover, so I assumed that he hadn’t found out, which was a relief.
To my even greater relief, he left before Da
d put on his True American gear, though if he’d stayed, maybe he could have told Dad ahead of time that trying to grill indoors can cause a fire. He was a science teacher, after all. Not that you should need an advanced degree to know that starting fires indoors isn’t the safest thing you could try. Luckily, Mom talked him out of the idea just before he lit the match.
It started snowing again that night, and it kept coming down on Sunday, enough that we actually got a snow day from school on Monday. The roads being too snowy for the buses didn’t stop us from moving around ourselves; I went over to Brian’s house, where we got a jump start on editing.
By midweek, we were deep into editing the footage of the takeover into a pretty good movie. Edie found out from Trinity, who found out from Troy, that a couple of people had called the store to complain that there’d been kids bugging them, but the complaints weren’t really about us—they were about Andy, and most of the customers, like the lady in the tacky suit, weren’t taken very seriously, even by Harold. After all, if they fired everyone people complained about, there’d be no employees left in town.
In fact, the only customer who really got Andy in trouble was a woman, presumably Mrs. Smollet, who called the corporate office to say that he’d called her an idiot. Andy had happily offered his resignation before Harold could fire him.
On Friday, Coach Hunter apparently found some more poems in his office, because, true to his word, right after lunch, he enacted a locker search of everyone in the gifted pool. It was all done very quietly; he didn’t gather the whole school together to watch or anything, like they do on TV. I only knew about it because as I was walking between classes, I saw the janitor opening James Cole’s locker. Coach Hunter dug around for a bit, but the only thing he found was a large piece of paper taped to the inside of the door on which James had written “Hi, Coach!” He dug around, found nothing else besides a coat and gloves, and slammed the door shut. Locker slamming, of course, was strictly against the rules for students.
At the pool meeting that afternoon, Mr. Streich asked if we were all aware that our lockers had been raided that afternoon.