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

[Russ Doden]

On 7/10/10, TLW <tlwagener at gmail.com> wrote:
> (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)
>


-- 
Take things one day at a time
IF that is too much go 1 hour at a time
If that is too much, go 1 minute at a time
Miracles come one minute at a time.