TheBanyanTree: How to ReInvent Your Life in Twelve Weeks of Summer: a work of fiction

[TLW]

(continuing)

"Naw.  Here, I'll take you in back where you can sit down."

I followed him through the crowded aisles of the store -- the store is
always crowded, I swear -- and past a swinging door with a ship's
porthole window.  Here was the kitchen.  Or break room.  Or Employee
Lounge.  It was about eight by ten feet.  And held at that moment, I
couldn't help but notice, about twenty people.  When Jughead stuck his
head in, all chatting ceased, as if someone had pressed a STOP button.

"Oh.  Hey."  Jughead addressed the group as one.

A round of "Hey"'s and "'Sup?"'s came in reply.  Jughead didn't wait
for it.  He pivoted and headed right back out the way we came in.
"Galley's full," he muttered.  I twirled and changed directions with
him.  Oh, "The Galley."  "The Poop Deck," " The Galley."  Cute.

He took me to another heavy door, threw his weight against it and
pushed into a locker room.  Or a fire exit.  A concrete room with a
drain in the floor.  Perhaps a prison community shower at one time.
Which had no place to sit.

He pulled a hairpin turn again, rolled his eyes good-naturedly at me,
yanked open the heavy door and barrelled back into the store.

"One more try," he laughed, holding up a finger.  "Don't give up now."

I liked him.  He was not copping any attitude at all with me.  Nor was
he particularly apologetic about the lack of a Lobby or Foyer or
Applicants' Area.  Everyone always talks about how small the Cap'n
Jack's stores are, and especially how small the parking lots are, and
I always thought this was because they are so darn popular.  But geez
and crackers, that's nothing compared to how small the back rooms are.
 I've worked in theater, and this show had virtually no place to be
off stage.

Jughead pushed through some double doors at the back of the store
marked "Employees Only."  Great towering stacks of cardboard boxes
with illustrations of oranges and mangoes leaned against
plastic-wrapped cases of fizzy water and juice.  They were everywhere.
 EVERYWHERE.

"Follow me.  Stick close.  You okay?" he sang out over his shoulder.

"Me?  Sure.  A little turned around, is all."

"I hear that," he laughed.  "Here now, watch your head, we're going upstairs."

I couldn't even see the stairs.  Jug squeezed past some pallets and
more stacks and two towers of bright yellow crates.  He gave one a
hard push, and I gasped.  There was no way a human could move that
stack.  But it rolled a few inches.  Oh.  Wheels.  Great invention,
wheels.

We climbed the stairs towards an inky blackness.

"The light will turn on when we get there," he said.  And sure enough,
as soon as his foot touched the second floor, it was bathed in light.
That is, what I could see of it was.

It was all one storage area -- more crowded than downstairs, if such a
thing is possible.  Jughead hunched his shoulders and headed down a
narrow path that was formed by cardboard boxes of nuts and dried fruit
on one side and huge twenty-pound bags of pet food on the other.  They
were stacked over six feet tall.  There seemed to be endless walls of
leaning boxes, threatening to collapse on us at any second.  All I
could think was "This is earthquake country,"  and I have never, ever
been concerned about that since I moved here, no matter how many times
people from other places ask me about it with their corduroy
foreheads.  We passed an industrial heating unit, some more huge pipes
and vents, and finally we came to a door of dirty glass panes, one of
which was missing.  Jug reached through that hole and unlocked the
door from the other side.  He gestured me through with his other hand,
as if I was entering Oz.

An attic room with a slanted ceiling.  Much like the first Mrs.
Rochester lived in, I suspect.  The unpainted walls were all but
hidden behind piles and piles of Cap'n Jack's paper bags filled with
white records wrapped in rubber bands.  "Receipts, week of ---" they
were labelled.  "Applications" "Disability Claims"  Geez and CRACKERS.
 Cap'n's was such a hip cool place, they had never heard of filing
cabinets?  Or hard drives?  Had the computer even been invented in
this world?

Okay.  I admit.  I loved it.  I did.  I do so love old things and
old-fashioned things.  Scraps of papers and old notes and emphemera
and little pieces of things that seem so important at the time.  The
room looked like an estate sale of Cap'n Jack's records for the last
hundred years.  I felt right at home there.  If there had been a few
trunks loads of somebody else's underwear scattered about, I probably
could have moved right in.

Jughead pulled an unhappy folding chair up to a paint- spattered table
and patted it.  "Here ya go," he smiled.  "Take your time.  Just bring
it right back down when you're done, okay?"

I nodded.  I seriously doubted that I could ever find him again.  He vanished.
I was left in a room full of records, next to a room full of coveted
Cap'n Jack's products.

I stuck my head into a small adjoining room.  Christmas decorations,
more leaning chairs and orphan tables, and an ancient boombox that
played cassettes.  More tiny rooms beyond that.  I didn't go there.  I
was afraid I'd lose my way completely, and I figured I should stay in
an area where I knew I could at least find the food.

It took me forty-five minutes to fill out the application.  My
favorite part was the math, which I aced, because I love math.  But I
bet it flummoxes a lot of people.  Here:

 12.49
  8.29
  6.99
+ 2.79
-------



   8.50
 - 3.79
--------



   17
X  25
------


168 divided by 12 =
204 divided by 17 =

And, here:

"When the shelf is full, it holds 36 jars of blueberry preserves.  You
are ordering on Monday morning for Tuesday morning delivery.  The
store sells 12 jars per day.  There are 24 jars on the shelf.  If a
case holds 12 jars, how many cases do you need to order so that you
can refill the shelf on Tuesday?"

I'd tell you the answer, but then they might hire you instead of me.
And that would be wrong.

I left out a lot about me on the application.  In fact, I didn't tell
them the most interesting parts about me.  That's the secret to these
job interviews, I've figured out.  Figure who they are looking for and
then make them think you are exactly that person.  It's kind of like
casting.  Or screenwriting -- if only the other person had memorized
the same dialogue I had.

Anyway.  I finally finished the application, did not steal a single
darn thing, not a fruit, not a nut, not even a dog biscuit, and I made
my way back downstairs.  Once I got back into the store, I knew where
I was, but I swear, if you asked me to follow the whole obstacle
course Jughead took me on, I'd never be able to do it again.

I handed the application to Jughead, and he nodded without looking at it.
"We'll be in touch," he said.

Oh.  THAT.  That means "no."

I hung around a while, just watching the people.  There's a lot of eye
candy in that store.  And some major Fashion Don't's.  I spied more
than a few handsome hunky guys in the checkout line, but then, this is
Hollywood.  Is the guy handsome, fit, well-dressed, perfect teeth?
Yeah, chances are more than excellent that he doesn't play for my
team.  There are some lovely fey girls, too.  And so many different
accents.  The  Europeans are invading this area, I read somewhere --
either L.A.  Weekly or In Style magazine.  I don't read either one,
but L.A.  Weekly is free and everywhere, and I found an old In Style
in my alley dumpster.  And yes, this is how I stay on top of popular
culture -- with free rags and dumpster mags.  And NPR and the dog
park.

And honestly, this might be the thing I love most about L.A.  Last
year I took a belly dancing class.  Just a couple of Saturdays, just
for fun.  The other people in the class included a former juvenile
delinquent getting her Master's Degree in Philosophy, a woman who  had
just sold her hair salon and got her helicopter license because she
thought her life had become "really boring," the woman who directs the
actors who dub "Desperate Housewives" in Spanish, and -- wait for it
-- a classical morimbe player.  I mean, these people don't live where
I come from in Texas.  I love living in a Destination Spot.  There's
only a handful in America, and Hollywood has the best weather.

I actually got goose bumps, standing there, looking at the crowd,
listening to all the conversations.  It was downright thrilling, to
me.  Which sounds so lame, when I put it like that, but that's how it
felt, to me.

 I can get too isolated, I know.  I think we all live in our heads,
but if you live too much in your head... well, it's a slippery slope.
Could I really handle the crowd at Cap'n Jack's?  This place is like a
circus.  They even give away free balloons to the kids.

Okay, so you can see what I do here.   I was beginning to talk myself
out of working there.  Either they wouldn't want me, or they'd give me
a chance and I wouldn't be able to cut it.  This is how I protect
myself from achievement regret or ambition regret or whatever tha hell
it it's called.

How did this happen?  From being a promising-to-moderately-
successful-screenwriter to not being good enough to check out
groceries?  How have I sunk so low and gotten so far off track?

On the way out, to make myself feel better, I bought the coconut
sorbet and chocolate sauce called Midnight Moo (for reasons that
completely elude me but still make me smile) and some slivered
almonds.  From these I could concoct my own Almond Joy sundae.  I also
got Jasper a rawhide treat shaped like a hot dog.  Thank God I have
him to think of, otherwise I'd never get out of my crowded, clouded,
claustrophobic head.

(to be continued)