The Warehouse Ch. 08
“Strive for Improvement by Remaining Relentlessly Dissatisfied With the Present”
Chapter 0108
Word Count: 6929
Time Allotted: 33 Minutes 43 Seconds
Setting: The Warehouse
Jakko has been assigned to building five for the day.
Being assigned to building five is the only time that one is assigned to any single building, so it is the only building referred to by name. On a typical day, assignments range between the four outer buildings. Building five is special though. It contains what are known as breakouts. Breakouts are smaller items in easily crushable packaging. Instead of selecting a box from the designated pick slot, one must cut open a larger box and remove a single (or however many indicated by the W-MC) item(s) and place it(/them) in a plastic tote. These totes have closable lids that, when filled, can be shut in order to protect the merchandise, and the next tote can be started.
The ripping into of so many cardboard boxes at the typical breakneck speed of The Warehouse naturally creates a lot of cardboard waste that drifts into the aisles. Product is strewn everywhere. There is a sanitation team on constant rotation through the aisles, but even they are unable to keep up with the accumulation. It builds, and Barretts cut through it like snow plows.
For Jakko, the scene really feeds his image of the wasteful decadence The Warehouse is fueling. When working building five, he cannot help but suffer the notion that he is rutting around at the bottom of the world, dredging through the surplus, and sending out whatever is salvageable. What is terrifying is how much deeper down the bottom really is hidden. The factories in which this plastic shit is put together. The mines from which the raw material comes. The converted forests where the trees for the cardboard are harvested. When he thinks about it in that way, he is forced to admit he is in fact closer to the consumer than the origin, removed only by the loader, truck driver, stocker, and cashier.
“Javier Gonzalez, please report to the floor managers’ office,” announces the overseer’s voice from the ceiling speakers. Announcement finished, the music fades back in. Jakko still hates himself for the adrenaline rush he gets any time that Eye of the Tiger comes on, which is at least once a day. The music is curated for the lowest common denominator, and even most of the warehousers make fun of it.
There is a team of selectors in building five who are there every day and then there are a couple selectors drawn from the main pool at random to help. Jakko doesn’t know any of the mainstays, and does his best to stay out of their way as he struggles with his boxcutter at every pick slot. Many of the boxes are printed with an image of a blade with a circle around it and a diagonal line through it, signaling that it should not be cut, but then it is taped shut and there seems no other way to open it with any speed. He watches others simply punch a hole through the cardboard and claw out what they need from inside, but when he tries he hurts his wrist while simply denting the box, and is too embarrassed to try it again, so fuck it, he decides, and uses his blade on boxes no matter what is printed on them.
He doesn’t often think of the customers who will buy the product, but as he slices open a box of diapers and takes an inner pack out, he sees that he has sliced through not only the box, but the plastic packaging and even the outermost diaper, and has an image of an overstressed mother trying to jam six kiddos into a van while Baby is leaking straight through his diaper, feels a rare flash of empathy, and grabs the other package in the box, hardly registering that this just means some other parent at some other store will end up with the sliced diaper.
A loader once confided to him that over thirty percent of what gets put on the trucks cannot be sold at the stores because it is either damaged already or damaged en route, which seemed at the time to be an impossibly high number, but could well be true.
After he turns in a few assignments, all of which he scores well under his numbers, his mood plummets as he makes the long drive back to building five. It’s all mental, he reminds himself, trying to keep from falling into one of his dark moods, but that’s not exactly true, is it? He returns to the first aisle, picks up a stack of plastic totes, and prepares to bring his numbers up, but almost immediately is slowed down by TINA instructing him to load twelve packs of firewood. The firewood comes in sheer plastic wrap, does not fit in the totes, and is the least even base imaginable. It is only at the start of orders because it is too heavy to be at the end. He places the logs along the bottom of his pallet and moves on, trying to keep the frustration from bubbling up, but the first totes slump in or slide off completely, and he has nearly two hundred picks to go, and the aisles ahead are blocked by other selectors, lift operators, and man-ups‒selectors who are harnessed to their machines and instead of sending their forks up to bring down entire pallets, lift themselves to the rafters to select only a couple of boxes. There are less of them than lift operators, and their zone of operation is constricted to buildings five and four, so Jakko does not run into them often, but he knows he is not meant to pass underneath them when they are up in the air. Still, many of the selectors do. Jakko elects to wait. Rather risk his job than his skull, but he can feel the time ticking away.
Who is this ghost selector who sets the precedent against which they are timed? He has an image of the translucent character in Mario Kart time trials that represents the top time, and another of the hitchhiker from The Twilight Zone, the relentless pursuer, one who is not slowed down by any of the normal obstacles. Apollo after Daphne.
Who has the right to give any task an allotted amount of time when we can hardly even pretend to know what time is? What is the relentless pursuer at time’s own back, driving her ever forward? And this hauntological selector, this perfect specimen, zipping by lift operators and man-ups, phasing through trainees and spills, selecting without tiring, without despair, without feeling the miasma of The Warehouse, without need for bathroom breaks, or to stop and joke with a friend. Neither dead nor alive. Simply an idea, an abstraction, an algorithm. How can the very human Jakko be held against its precedent?
And if he ever accidentally misses an item or grabs too many or too few or the one from the pick slot next to the one that is intended, if he’s ever late or causes an accident or drops a stack, then he can be fired. For missing a single item from a single assignment. They call that phantom selecting. He always wondered who’d come up with such a fantastical name. Phantom selecting. It’s meant to protect The Company against selectors cheating the system, scanning without actually picking a box to save on time, but it doesn’t differentiate between this and a mistake, or this and having a box slide off the back of a stack without the selector’s noticing.
The man-up finally moves on, but then a sanitation worker drives up the aisle in the wrong direction and starts sweeping up the cardboard mess, moving glacially, too old to still be required to work, yet here she is, and Jakko is no longer in the mood to feel empathetic. He lets out a blow from his horn, just to let her know he is there and needs to get by, but the look she gives him is of deep hurt. Another selector comes up behind him and immediately starts talking to the woman like they are family, but Jakko can’t understand what they are saying and can’t shake the feeling they are talking about him.
At the end of the next aisle, the selector, says: “She was upset because she’s tired of selectors pretending like their time is more valuable than hers.”
“Well,” Jakko says, “it kind of is.”
The other selector seems stunned by that.
“I mean, no offense, but we are on a timer, and they’re not.”
He shakes his head and moves onto the next aisle, leaving Jakko to seethe in his faux pas.
Milhouse leaves his stack on the side of an aisle and drives his empty Barrett to the floor managers’ office, pulls to the side near the base of the stairs, and begins to ascend. The sad affair of their office is all the proof anyone should need of how completely middle these middle managers really are. Standing at the open door, taking in the shared office, its paper thin carpet over concrete, wall of windows looking not outside, but simply into The Warehouse, barely covered by blinds that look like they’ve seen a few rounds with an angry cat, The Company’s dystopian motivational poster hanging proudly behind them (“Strive for Improvement by Remaining Relentlessly Dissatisfied With the Present”), and the single computer that three floor managers are gathered around. Milhouse finds himself preferring being out on the floor, screw a promotion. It isn’t until you escape The Warehouse at large and make it to the corporate Olympia that you have any sort of power, and even then the owner resides over it all like an absentee demiurge, bored of his creation and seeking fulfillment instead in his fleet of jet skis off the side of his yacht.
Milhouse doesn’t have much interest in management, no matter how high level. He wants to put in his time as selector and then try to switch to truck driver when there is an opening, out on the open road, no one watching over his shoulder, and talk about a pay raise.
“Javier?” George asks as Milhouse loiters in the doorway, unsure of how to announce himself. The team leader with a face like a cartoon drill sergeant looks expectant and the other two join his gaze, tilting their faces up and away from the computer screen. Other than George with his perfectly bald head, scrunched face, and turkey neck, there is a short woman, dark haired and nervous, Bobbi Gair, and a large gutted man in Hawaiian shirt called Barney, who is bright red, and almost throbbing, like a pimple that bleeds when pricked.
“Yes,” Milhouse says.
“Come in, take a seat,” Bobbi says as the three managers roll into a line in their respective office chairs. “You can close the door.”
Milhouse does as he is told while Bobbi makes a few maneuvers with the mouse and pulls up some file on the computer. She then tilts the screen so that it can be seen by everyone. There is a line graph on it that continues steady, peaks suddenly, and then drops back down to the prior consistency.
“What happened here?” she asks, indicating the high point.
“Um, sorry. What are we looking at?” Milhouse asks.
“These are your numbers for the last couple weeks. You see, you usually pull right around a 65%, which is fine, as you’re still in your first weeks of training, but what happened here, on Thursday? You had the highest numbers in The Warehouse, by far, but the next day and ever since you have dropped back to your usual 65-70% range.”
The three faces wait.
Milhouse looks at his hands in his lap, moist and fidgety.
“You’re not in trouble, Gonzalez. We just want to get a handle on what happened. Did you mix up your Unit with someone else?” Bobbi asks.
“No.”
“Listen man, we took a look at your assignments for the day, and they certainly weren’t small ones, so we are just a bit confused,” Barney cuts in.
“I, uh, I went to see the Battery Man,” Milhouse admits.
“Okay…” Barney says, opening the way for him to continue.
“Well,” Milhouse begins, spilling the beans on the whole operation.
By the end of shift, Jakko is pissed in the way only a day in building five leaves him pissed, so following dinner he makes his way to Outside the Box for a rare appearance.
As he projects his imaginary self forward in time, the phantom easily glides through every obstacle presented it. Thus, the phantom’s trajectory diverts from Jakko’s true path within the first few seconds of arrival. The phantom, child of Pan, enjoys the night of his life in that parallel universe of its own creation, driving it further and further from Jakko’s own reality through the blessed energy of its own charm. A hypnagogic aura burns darkly around it, enveloping everyone in the bar, elevating the night into one of legend. Inhibitions melt away as the phantasmagorical fulcrum drags everyone into its orbit; spinning faster and faster, the purple wine flows from bottles and clings to the wall, churning like the ocean behind a massive cruise ship. The shards of shattered cocktail glasses get sucked into the red sea and spun into twinkling constellations. Sitting at a booth in the eye of the storm, the phantom entertains all, a frothing glass of beer sloshing in one hand, the bubbles pouring up as if from a crack in an eternal wellspring keep it constantly topped off even as Jakko’s phantom takes great slugs from it, letting the sour liquid join the sweat on his exposed chest, the top five buttons of the shirt he and Jakko once shared having come undone, the fur beneath bristling like a stag’s. The night rides the explosion at the center of A Day in the Life past its breaking point, the ocean liner is sucked into the center of a whirlpool where it finds the animal evil that mutated the Bermuda Triangle and at the center of it all, whooping drunk and shouting into the wine sky, Jakko’s projection.
The bar Jakko enters is cramped and dim, tinted blue thanks to the Bud Light neon shining against the long mirror that he stares into as he waits several minutes for the bartender to notice him. In the mirror, he spots Big Bucks. He wants to, but his stomach clenches at the thought of walking over and sitting down with him.
The first phantom Jakko let loose into the universe had been dreamed up en route, while he was still far away from reality. It had the confidence that Jakko always has before things become real, but this new one drops out of his ass like a watery shit and trips over its own slime before finding its footing and limping towards the booth where Big Bucks is sitting with a book in hand.
“Jakko?” he says as it stands heaving at the foot of the table as if it has forgotten how to breathe. “Hey man! What are you doing here?”
It opens its mouth and a bit of drool drips out. As it goes to wipe it off, it forgets the full beer it holds in one hand and a voluminous slosh hits it in the chest and stains its pale shirt, but the heavy glass continues upwards, its own trajectory set, and knocks against the phantom’s front tooth with a loud clink. A crack must have already existed in the glass, for this is enough to send long fissures through its structure and it shatters in the phantom’s hand, slicing the skin and dropping the remainder of the liquid down the front of its pants. The sudden rush of liquid triggers some deeply buried impulse in the phantom’s anxiety-riddled brain and it begins to piss itself, standing there before its friend who is aghast at the display. Blood trickles out of the phantom’s mouth and its tooth hangs by a thick root, dangling outside of its lips.
“Oh shit, are you alright?”
Tears fill the phantom’s eyes because of the pain and because it is overwhelmed by the situation. It turns and looks through spacetime at its creator, cursing him with all the spite it can muster for birthing it, and then wills itself out of existence, deleting the wretched pocket universe with it.
Jakko reels as he watches the interaction end, but Big Bucks has not noticed him. He is still at the bar having just been handed his glass of beer and a chance to do things over, but now his stomach feels swollen and empty at the same time and there is cold, unhealthy sweat pooling in his pits. He is frozen to the spot, but the only thing worse than approaching would be to not approach and consequently be discovered here at the bar afraid to approach. A third phantom attempts to phase out of him and allow that scenario to play out, but Jakko flexes shut every exit from his mind, redirecting the manic energy of anxiety, and focusing it to a sharp point.
The phantom dissipates.
It is a dangerous thing to be constantly frustrated with oneself, Jakko thinks angrily. These people are lucky I have a hold on it, otherwise...his mind blinks through all the newsfeed he’s seen in the past few years. Men — boys, like him — their emotional growth stunted by a miserable society, or some inborn wrath, taking revenge on the world at large because they can’t turn inward to face what lies inside themselves, but no, Jakko thinks, that’s not me. That’s not me, he insists, but a phantom tries to squeeze out and go running out The Warehouse and to the nearest gun shop until Jakko closes all exits with the finality of Revelations. It is too horrible a thought to entertain, so he shakes it out of his head.
He stands looking towards the door, contemplating his chances of making it through the mess of tables scattered before him and outside without being noticed, the feeling of The Warehouse air on his face as he speed walks back to his hammock, climbing up, getting inside, quelling all this insurmountable stress by going to sleep, but it’s unlikely he’d make it to the door without being seen, without having his name called out like a fishing hook sinking into his shoulder, the sudden tug as he is turned to face his accuser:
“Jakko is Out of the Box? While I live and breathe!” Arizona says, slapping him on his back and making Jakko jump. “Sorry bud, I scare you?” he laughs, obviously quite drunk. “Let me get you a drink,” he says, and Jakko almost protests, saying he just got a beer, but decides to keep his mouth shut. Arizona continues past to the bar, so Jakko goes and sits down with Big Bucks. They bump fists as is the local greeting, and Big Bucks sets his book down.
“What are you reading?” Jakko asks.
“Stephen King.”
“Ah,” Jakko says, a little disappointed. “Dark Tower?”
“No,” Big Bucks says, pushing the book nearer so that Jakko can inspect it, but if it’s not Dark Tower then he doesn’t much care. He picks the book up, peers at the cover, flips it over and then pushes it back across the table.
Jakko realizes he is doing what he hates in other people, interrupting someone as they’re trying to read, but he can’t seem to stop himself.
“Been working on this one for a minute. You ever try to read after a shift? Puts you right to sleep.”
That much is certainly true. Jakko, for all the airs he puts on, has been making his way through the same collection of Kafka shorts since he started here. It’s up in his hammock, used more as a pillow than anything else. He laughs and nods. His drink is gone already and his leg is shaking with the urge for a refill.
“Enough of that talj, nerds. This is a special occasion. Let’s not waste it talking about books! Jakko in the Box,” Arizona riffs, sitting down and supplying Jakko with a fresh beer. “Goddamn, I could go for some of their tacos right now.”
“Fried, with the cheese slices?” Jakko asks, surprising him.
“You know them?”
“Yeah, I used to get those all the time in high school,” Jakko says, beer lubricant allowing him to slide more easily into the swing of things.
“My man. Maybe I underestimated you, Jakko. Tell me, you ever sleep with two women in the same day?”
“Have I ever what?”
“Threesomes don’t count, either.”
There it is, that old feeling that he is being messed with, but not quite understanding the joke. Jakko’s mind grinds to a crawl and he is unsure of what to say. He can feel his face blushing a bit, not quite so much out of embarrassment as confusion. He’s never gotten the hang of this male bonding, probably never will at this point. How and why did they pivot so quickly from Jack in the Box to sex?
“I have,” Arizona goes on, hardly noticing Jakko’s internal panic. “My ex in the morning, my fiance in the evening.”
“Dude,” Big Bucks scolds. “That’s messed up.”
Arizona laughs a bit sheepishly. “Yeah, yeah, I know it was. It just happened.”
“I didn’t know you were engaged,” Jakko says finally.
“Well, I’m not after that.”
“Wait, she found out?”
“Yeah, she found out. Worked out alright though. I was too young to be getting married.”
“Man,” Jakko says, still not understanding where the question had come from in the first place or if he should continue pulling the thread. Big Bucks seems content to let it die, so he decides to follow his lead.
“I used to do a lot of fucked up shit like that back then,” Arizona goes on. “This job kind of saved me. Gave me a purpose.”
“This job?” Vroom snorts as he drops into an empty seat at the table. “What’s up, Bucks!” They exchange a smooth handshake above the table that moves through several stages too quickly for Jakko to process completely. “Hey man, you a trainee?”
“Huh, no,” Jakko answers in a fluster.
“Oh shit, my bad, man. I’m Vroom. That’s what they call me, anyway, you know.”
“Jakko. Actually, I think we were in the same orientation class.”
“That’s right, yeah now I remember you! How you been, man?”
“Oh, you know.”
“Shit man, I thought you quit a long time ago. Thought I was the only one from the class left.”
“We can quit?” Jakko quips, but the joke fails to land as just then there is a sudden noise near the entrance. A fight has broken out between a pair of selectors: Mother Russia (who takes his nickname due to his strong resemblance to Putin) and Gap (who sports a wide, not unfashionable gap between his two front teeth). Gap has Mother Russia backed into a corner and is wailing on him, but only manages to land a couple good ones before one of Mother Russia’s friends cuts in and takes him to the floor. Then there is a general rushing of selectors joining the growing pile from which blood begins to pool and a few teeth, but from where Jakko remains he swears he can hear laughter.
Arizona, Vroom, and even Big Bucks have leapt in.
Shortly, Axe-Grinder has it broken up and all the boys are friendlier with each other than ever, helping one another to their feet, admiring the already blossoming bruises, and fitting teeth back into mouths from the pile like searching for the right puzzle piece. Tensions threaten to rise again when Gap, feeling at his mouth, realizes one half of his namesake has been knocked out, but the whole thing is put to rest when Mother Russia steps forward, slowly opens a clenched fist to reveal the tooth hidden within, and then shoves it back into Gap’s waiting gums until it sticks. The two young men embrace and go off to split a pitcher.
Arizona, Big Bucks, and Vroom return to the table and Jakko feels more lost amongst his lot than ever. The three of them are drunk on the adrenaline and revving for more. Arizona tries to channel the energy into a night of heavy drinking, but the others have enough wits about them to know they have work in the morning, unlike Arizona who is facing down a day off.
A day off is a brittle thing. It is something to be pined for from deep in the pits of an endless shift, but to achieve it, to actually hold one in your hands is to feel its lattice of crystalline fragility, and for that reason most selectors take only the single day off a week as required by The Company.
After one last round in which they joyously rehash the highlights of the fight, the selectors begin to limp off to bed, first Jakko, then Big Bucks, and finally Vroom leaves Arizona alone at the table. He drifts over to another where a group of lift operators are drinking and they scoot over to make room, but they don’t last much longer than another pint. Eventually, it is just Arizona and Axe-Grinder, so Arizona moves up to the bar and sits down at a stool.
“Another pint,” he says.
“You seen the time, Phoenix? Best be careful or else even you are going to feel this one.”
“Off tomorrow.”
“Aw, I see,” Axe-Grinder nods. He fills a pint from the tap and sets the frothing golden ale down in front of the lonely selector who lifts it, spills a bit of white foam down his hand which he licks clean after setting the glass down.
“I remember what days off were like. They feel a little pointless, aye? When you know you just have to come back here anyway.”
“B-I-N-G-O,” Arizona spells out. “It’s like, I look forward to it all week, and then it comes around and I freeze up, I’m terrified of wasting it. All these desires pulling me in different ways just leave me taut even as they threaten to quarter me. You know, there are all these movies I want to see, but watching one eats up a good chunk of a day. And then, finally, if I do choose something, I have put so much pressure on it to entertain me, to fullfil me, to make up for a week of work, that of course it’s not going to satisfy, so I end up doing nothing. Just sitting frozen, watching tv, excited to come back here. Goddamn, now I’ve depressed myself.”
“Believe me, son. I felt just like you up until I started this place. I wish I could give you better advice, but maybe you should think about looking for a new job.”
“That’s just it, Axe. I mean, this job is fine. I can’t imagine finding a job I’m better suited for, but it’s just like...Is this it? Y’know?”
“Of course this isn’t it! This is just work. Work is just a part of life. A necessary part so that you can enjoy the rest. I mean, think about it. You had a good time tonight, did you not? Drinking with friends, getting a little rowdy, busting up my fine establishment,” Axe-Grinder grins, extending his arms to take in the sad little speakeasy. “By the way, you want some ice for that? Your eye is starting to swell up real bad.”
“Oh shit, for real? Yeah, get me some ice, will you? Thanks.”
“Listen,” Axe-Grinder says when he returns with a cloth full of ice, “I’ve got some stuff I need to attend to back in the office before the night shift boys start coming in here. You’re welcome to hang out, fill your glass from the tap, but I’d recommend you go get some sleep and give tomorrow a real chance. Forgive me if I’m overstepping here, but maybe you can make things right with your girl.”
“No,” the hunched over selector with the ice pressed to his eyeball laughs sourly, “no way. That ship has long sailed. I fucked that one up fully and truly, my friend.”
“One must be careful with names. So often, it is the name of an offense that a life shatters upon, and not the nameless and personal action itself,” Axe-Grinder tells him, “or something like that,” he adds, rustling Arizona’s fine hair before turning his back and entering the back room.
Having been handed a bottomless pint, Arizona is still haunting the bar when the night selectors begin drifting in. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t a little Eloi, all by himself,” the apparent leader of the gang, menacingly. “What are you doing out? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“My, my! I think he’s drunk himself mute!”
“‘avenot, you fuckin’ acrobats.”
“Acrobats?” they discuss among themselves. “Does he think we’re man-ups, or what? Hey, buddy. We’re no man-ups. We’re selectors of the night.”
“Oh, you selectors? I am selector!” Arizona says excitedly. “I select daytime, yeah?”
“Christ, this guy is fucked up. Should we take him to his hammock?”
“No way. Look at him. He’d probably roll right out of it.”
“Speaking of rolling, check out his eyes...er, eye. It’s doing cartwheels!”
“Hey, buddy, you alright? Let’s get him over to that booth. Axe-Grinder!” They call into the back. “Can we get some water?”
“Oh, Phoenix, what’ve you done to yourself?” he mutters as he brings over a glass of water. “He’ll be alright,” he assures the night selectors, who take him at his word and move to the bar to discuss the man they have all seen crouching amongst the boxes.
“What’s he look like?”
“I don’t know. He’s never more than a shade. If I look too closely, he’s gone.”
“Same.”
“Every time I see him, something is off. Either his arms have an extra joint, or his legs are so long that his knees are over his head when he’s squatting.”
“It’s like how in dreams when you look at your hands and you never have the right amount of fingers.”
“You’re saying none of you have seen his face?”
“His face?”
“Yeah.”
“Dunno. Now that you mention it, I can’t recall any details.”
“Me neither. Except the patience. He exudes patience.”
“Like a spider, or a gargoyle.”
“Except that gargoyles are good guys, and I don’t get that feeling from him.”
“Hold up, gargoyles are good? Then why are they so scary looking?”
“They are there on behalf of the church, to protect it.”
“From what, pigeons, demons?”
“Rain water.”
“Oh. Well, even if that is true, to say they are good is to assume that the Catholic Church is a source of good, which is at best a matter of opinion, and at worst demonstrably wrong.”
“Careful now. Those could be construed as fighting words where I’m from.”
“Take it easy, Father, I’m just messing with you. You know I’m right with the big guy,” the night selector says, bringing a fist to his heart and then raising his pointer finger towards the sky.
“Your conception of ‘the big guy’ is worrisome to me.”
“I’ve been thinking some more lately about all that. Never used to bother me none, but I think it’s this work we do, as steady as the shaman’s drum, it can open worlds. The Garden of Eden, we were never meant to dwell there always. It is a holy place, a place for gods, and we are but perennial flowers, each gracing the garden only in our own seasons, only when our soul is pure and our conscious clean, then do we bloom there in the garden of God, never for long, for soon we will sully ourselves and be banished yet again, but we can return! That is what is beautiful. If we can get our souls right, we can grow more beautiful in our second, third, hundredth season. And only we can know for ourselves when our soul is right. No earthly judge, no angry mob can decide that. I feel it now, brother. My soul is right. I’m sitting here with you in the bar, but my soul is a flower somewhere in space, and some barefoot god is smiling at it! You told me I must know myself, that I must know what it is that I want, and I have figured it out. I want my flower to adorn that holy place as often as possible!”
“Keep talking like that, and there is only one place your soul is going to adorn, and there ain’t no flower that can grow in a lake of fire.”
“Oh fuck off with all that. I’m free of it. Nothing can touch me right now. Let’s not bicker. Another round, on me. Axe-Grinder, line ‘em up, friend.”
About mid-afternoon, when the night selectors have gone off to bed, Arizona stirs. His head aches horribly and his stomach is sloshing full of partially digested beer, but he manages to lift himself to his feet and stagger out of the bar and into The Warehouse, tripping several times while crossing the pallet graveyard, hissing at the sunbeam coming in through a skylight, and on out to the cafeteria where he has to put on an act to avoid the suspicion of higher-ups.
“Arizona!” a voice freezes him in the hallway between cafeteria and Warehouse. “What are you doing out here?”
“I have the day off,” he says.
“Yeah, I mean what are you doing here?”
“Oh,” he says, struggling to think quickly, “I left something here, just had to pick it up.”
“Gotchya. Hey, you hungry? Got some hamburgers in the managers’ lounge.”
“Hell yeah,” he tells Barney, not quite thinking through the decision. He follows him into the lounge and takes a seat with Barney and Bobbi, and a couple managers he recognizes but can’t name who must oversee other departments.
“Say, you okay? Your eye is looking pretty banged up,” Bobbi says.
“Oh yeah, I’m okay. I’ve been taking some boxing lessons, and took a real ringer straight to the eye.”
“Boxing lessons, you don’t say,” Barney says, digging a paper-wrapped burger out from the big orange and white bag before him and slapping it down in front of Arizona who jumps at it. The grease and meat settles his stomach and clears his head a bit, and a fit new bird emerges from the wreckage and flames of another ill-spent night.
“I don’t know how you do it. I’m too tired to do anything but watch tv and pass out when I get home, and my job is far easier than yours,” Bobbi says while wiping a bit of ketchup from the corner of her mouth with a napkin and then slurping down some Cola.
“Arizona is a special one,” Barney says. “Man, if only all our selectors were like you, our job would be a breeze. Lightning fast, never complains, always in high spirits. Why, there are so many just absolute ghouls out there. I see their faces as they drive by and it’s like they couldn’t be more miserable, like they’re in some factory in Juarez or something...I mean, not like in a racial way. You know me. I love how diverse we are here. I grew up in Africa, went to an international school.”
“We know, Barney.”
“Okay, anyway, the way some of these new guys complain to me it’s like yeah, buddy, it’s a job. Didn’t you read the description before signing up? Just the other day, I had one kid, brand new, probably about eighteen years old, walk up to me in the middle of a shift while I was walking off the floor, and he immediately starts listing his grievances, acting like he is being abused out there, and so I listen to him, I let him walk and talk, and he’s saying Oh boo hoo, it’s too hard, you expect too much out of us, this is inhumane, et cetera et cetera, and the whole time we’re walking he just keeps complaining and eventually we walk plum to the front door and I open it like I’m going through and he steps outside and I stand there in the doorway and say, ‘If you don’t want to work, here you go,’ and then I shut the door and I see him through the glass just standing there stunned, with his mouth open and everything.”
Arizona joins the managers in a fit of laughter, chewed up wad of burger showing at the back of each of their mouths. Eventually it dies down and Barney reaches his hand back into the bag and asks if anyone wants another. Arizona says he’ll take one, as do a couple of the other managers.
“Hang on there, buddy. Managers first, you know,” Barney says to Arizona.
“It’s fine. He can have mine. You know I never eat two,” Bobbi says.
“Your lucky day,” Barney plops the burger down in front of him and Arizona tears into it as ravenously as he did the first. “So we were talking to your friend yesterday; a new kid named Javier.”
“Javier,” Arizona repeats to himself. “Javier,” he says again, shaking his head. “Drawing a blank here.”
“The kid who beat you last week.”
“Oh, Milhouse! Yeah, I like that kid. Don’t know him super well.”
“He had some interesting things to say.”
“Did he now?”
“Any idea what it could have been?”
“Uh,” Arizona shakes his head again. “No, like I said, he’s more a friend of a friend.”
“Look, we’re not idiots, okay? We’ve known about that little bar for a long time now, we know most of you are living in the rafters like a bunch of goddamn grackles, and we don’t give a shit, but what we didn’t know was this thing about The Battery Man.”
“Oh...that.”
“Yes, that,” Bobbi says. “How’d you know?”
“It’s just an old story you hear out on the floor, I didn’t believe it.”
“Yet you took Javier to be shocked by him?”
“Look, I was just messing with him. I had no idea he was actually going to do it. I’m sorry, okay? Truly, I am, but it’s not like I forced him to do anything he didn’t want to. If you’re going to fire me, just do it. Don’t butter me up with hamburgers beforehand.”
“Fire you?” a new voice asks from the doorway. George walks in and joins them at the table, perfectly bald head shining like it’s just been waxed, face like a bloodhound that’s gotten hooked on botox. “Why in the world would we fire you? Don’t you see, this is the future. If a hapless trainee can be shocked into numbers like that, imagine what you and the other veterans could do. Imagine the speeds you could reach. Imagine the bonuses that’d tack onto your paychecks.”
“You want me to start visiting The Battery Man?”
“No, no, no, no,” Bobbi coos. “This would be completely up to you. We’d have no idea if you went or not, or even if you were to invite some of your friends to join you.”
“Just like we’d continue to have no idea about, what’s it called, Outside the Box, and the shanty town in the sky,” Barney adds on.
“All we would do is sign the checks.”
“The suddenly enormous checks.”
“It’s just something to think about. Now, go and enjoy the rest of your day off!”
[Exit Music]