Supermarket(15)

“Well, I’m just fine, Vernon,” said Ted. He smiled, his teeth protruding more than ever.

Vernon grabbed the three deposit bags and put them in a locked duffel bag. “See you next month,” said Vernon. Ted and Hector waved good-bye and returned to their daily paperwork.

“That guy looked like Father Time, huh?” I said to Frank.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Ted.

“Frank,” I said, turning my head to look. Frank was nowhere to be found.

“Well, he must have slipped away while you were standing there daydreaming. No more of that, okay?”

“Got it, Ted, sorry about that.”

“Can I see you in my office?” Ted said with a smile.

Sitting in Ted’s office was never fun. He was always so awkward. He was the boss who wanted to be everyone’s buddy, insisting that you come to him if you ever needed anything. But as he pulled his chair up next to mine, the only thing I needed was space, quite honestly.

“Flynn,” he said, looking concerned. “How are we feeling today? You’ve been acting a little aloof lately. Everything all right? Things going smoothly? Anything you need, just know that I’m here.”

“No, everything is going pretty okay, thanks,” I said. He was right. I was aloof. But that was only because I was preoccupied trying to take mental notes for my book. If I wasn’t floating or being distracted by Frank, I was plotting the story in my head, thinking of how these characters would puzzle together. Trying to figure out the rising action and climax.

“All right, well, listen . . . I just want you to know that you’re a part of this family now, and if there’s anything I can help you with, you let me know,” he said with a smile. “Oh,” he continued, “the code to the break room is 34652, okay? That’s the code to everything else around this place. I made it something super easy that I would never forget. I mean, everything is pretty much unlocked or open anyway, but, you know, just in case!” he explained, pointing at me with one brow raised, as if to say in case you were wondering.

I wasn’t.

Like that, I was out of his office as quickly as I had entered, with one thought in mind.

I hope this doesn’t become a reoccurring thing.

From the corner of my eye I caught the clock on the wall. It was 6:00 p.m. My shift was over. The day had flown by. I was feeling more comfortable with how things operated, but I was still a little disoriented. I clocked out, and said bye to Ronda. Just as I was leaving, Frank stopped me.

“Flynn, where you going?” he said.

“I’m going home, man, it’s six,” I said.

“You’re not doing it right, dog,” he said, pulling out a stack of twenties and tens from his pocket.

“Frank, where’d you get that cash?” I said.

“Umm . . . ha, where you think, Einstein? From the fucking cash register,” he jeered.

“Frank, what the fuck, man, you can’t be stealing like that, that’s embezzlement!” I said.

“Bro, I’ve been tipping myself out nightly for months and no one has said shit—it’s easy as pie,” he said as he took out a banana from his apron.

“That ain’t right, man. Your luck is going to run out one of these days,” I said.

I turned and went home.

I got home and poured the day into my Moleskine. It may not have seemed like an eventful shift from the looks of it, but it was the kind of pedestrian, humdrum nonaction I needed to set the stage for the first few chapters. I wrote and wrote and wrote until my hands hurt. I turned a page, pausing momentarily, mentally dazed from the stream.

I turned my notebook sideways and scrawled in all caps:

MULDOON’S

That was it. That would be the title. It was a rare moment of certainty. I closed the book and went to bed.

? ? ?

The next morning, when I came to work, I saw the old black man outside playing chess again. This was already feeling like déjà vu. As I entered through the automatic doors and walked toward the break room to clock in, I saw the crazy-looking dude holding his coffee to his nose. He sniffed intensely.

“Coffee coffee coffee coffee!!!!” he said.

“Hey, what’s your name, man?” I asked.

“Coffee? Coffee coffee coffee!” he said.

“Oookkaaayyyyy theennn . . . ,” I said, and just kept walking until I was intercepted by Ann from the pharmacy. Like clockwork, yet again, she handed me a couple of multivitamins, which I pretended to ingest, secretly storing them in my jacket pocket.

I reached the break room and hit the keypad above the doorknob: 34652. I went to clock in. Rachel and Becca were sitting inside again, talking about last night’s episode of The Bachelor.

“Hey, Flynn,” Rachel said.

“Hey, Rachel, what’s up?” I responded as I opened my locker and put on my Muldoon’s apron and name tag.

“Nothing much, just another monotonous day in the grocery store,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. Her bright red lipstick stained the paper cup. Before I even had a chance to respond, I heard it.

“Floater to bakery, floater to bakery, please.” The voice of a woman with a Russian accent crackled through the static of the dated intercom.

On my way to the bakery the lights went out in half the store.