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  “Please, sir,” said the attendant.

  “Jacob, please, just do it. I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Megan.

  The two flight attendants took the backpack, and they brought it through the open cockpit door.

  “I’m going to see what’s going on,” I said to Megan, and I started to unbuckle my seat belt.

  “Just stay put,” Megan said. She spoke firmly. She seemed amazingly calm herself.

  Within a few minutes, the male flight attendant returned with the backpack.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, sir. No problem,” he said.

  “What were you looking for?” I asked with a touch of impatience.

  “Just a precaution, sir. Thank you. Can I get you some Champagne or fresh-squeezed orange juice, sir, when we reach our cruising altitude?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  Captain Heller’s voice again: “Flight attendants, please prepare for takeoff.”

  The plane taxied down the runway, and we were off.

  “Tell me what happened in that speed-check place,” Megan said.

  “You and Sam saw it,” I began.

  “No, we didn’t. We didn’t know anything was wrong.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “They took me off the line. They brought me into a special room, and two guys searched me. It was…forget it. The details are kinda gross.”

  “Gross?” she said. “What happened?”

  “I had to strip down to my underwear. So I stood there, practically naked, and they wanded me…everywhere—my ears, my neck, my armpits, my crotch. They both had rubber gloves on, and one of them put his hand…”

  I paused. For some reason I felt like I was about to cry.

  “Oh, forget it,” I said. “You can imagine the rest.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “That’s horrible. No wonder you’re so upset.”

  I closed my eyes and opened them about five minutes later. Megan had taken out her laptop and was busily tapping away at it. When I looked out the plane window I saw at least forty drones flying alongside the plane. They looked like huge black-and-gray birds in a formation flying south for the winter.

  “Holy shit!” I said.

  “What the matter?” Megan said.

  “Out the window. Around a million drones.”

  Megan glanced out the window for a few seconds.

  “Oh, Jacob, please. They’re delivering merchandise.”

  I was silent for a few seconds. Then I turned and looked at her squarely, face-to-face, close in. I spoke.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  There was only a momentary pause, but that moment felt like an hour.

  “No. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re tired.”

  “But the drones—”

  “Jacob. C’mon. Like I said. They’re just delivery drones. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Chapter 41

  SUITCASES, LAPTOP cases, carry-on luggage, shopping bags. Megan and I arrived through the back door and into our kitchen late that evening. Back home in good old New Burg.

  Okay, Lindsay and Alex were way past the stage when they might welcome us yelling, “Yay! Mommy and Daddy are home!” when we returned from a trip. But the least they could do was come down and say hello. Instead our welcome-home greeting consisted of a shout from Alex in his room.

  “Who the hell is downstairs?”

  “It’s us!” Megan shouted.

  “Oh, hi,” Alex yelled back.

  I walked to the bottom of the hall staircase.

  “Where’s your sister?”

  “How would I know?” Alex yelled.

  I swore to myself that I wouldn’t get angry.

  “I’m up here,” came Lindsay’s voice. No hello. No welcome back. Just “I’m up here.”

  So much for swearing that I wouldn’t get angry.

  Megan joined me in the hall.

  “Couldn’t you guys come down and say hello?” she shouted up the stairs.

  “In a few minutes” was Alex’s answer. Lindsay’s response was even worse: “Can’t. Busy.”

  Megan shook her head and walked into the kitchen, but I didn’t move, except to sit down on the bottom hall step. I used my hands to try to wipe the heavy perspiration from my face. It was not a particularly efficient method. Then I buried my wet face in my wet hands. The feeling I had on the plane returned, the feeling that I might at any moment burst into tears.

  A sense of confusion. A kind of sadness that was mixed with anger. Megan’s impatience. Bette and Bud’s transformation into smiley faces. The SUV accident. The drones crowding every piece of sky that I walked under.

  I stood up and climbed to the third step. And I screamed.

  “Get down here right now. Right now! Do you hear me? Right now.” I couldn’t stop yelling. I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling so fiercely out of my mouth.

  “Are you hearing me? Are you two deaf? You two are wanted down here immediately!”

  My daughter and son appeared.

  They looked confused.

  My arms and hands were shaking. My stomach tightened. My legs and head ached.

  By now Megan had also appeared.

  “What’s wrong, Jacob?”

  “What’s wrong?” I bellowed. “Our kids couldn’t even come downstairs and say hello to us. That’s what’s wrong.”

  Deadly silence.

  “What’s the big deal?” Alex said. But I did not have the energy to continue my rant.

  “What’s happening to you, Daddy?” Lindsay said.

  Instead I said quietly, “Never mind. Just go back to whatever you were doing.” They looked at me suspiciously. Then they turned and went back upstairs.

  I looked at Megan. “I worry that we’re losing the kids,” I said.

  “I worry that we’re losing you,” she said.

  I thought I had spent all my anger and energy, but suddenly I could feel it building up again. The tension returned to my limbs. The throbbing returned to my head.

  “Megan,” I said. “I’m going upstairs to do some work on the book.”

  “Well, what about the luggage and dinner and checking e-mail and—” she was rattling away. I interrupted.

  “No! Not now. Leave me alone. I’m going upstairs to do some work on the book. I’m fresh right now. I want to work now.” I picked up my computer case and began running up the stairs, two steps at a time, three steps at a time. I was outside the workroom door. In my head I heard the umpire shout.

  Safe at home!

  Chapter 42

  I PULLED open the attic workroom door with so much energy that a screw popped out of one of its hinges.

  The workroom was totally overwhelming me with dry heat. I actually loved it. I loved that my eyes burned and my skin exploded with sweat. I pulled off my shirt like a fighter who was late for a match. I used my shirt to blot the sweat from my face and hair and neck.

  I spread my notes—scrawled on scraps of paper, the backs of envelopes—across the dusty floor. I hadn’t felt this excited in days. The anger within me had been replaced by an almost uncontrollable energy.

  I zipped quickly through my computer notes, transferring important topics and facts onto the ever-growing pile of index cards. As the pencil lead wore out or broke, I’d grab a new one and keep going. I could not write fast enough.

  I wasn’t clear, but I think my plan was to get as much done as I could before Megan showed up to tell me that what I was doing was wrong. It wasn’t too many hours away from tomorrow, when I’d once again be lifting gallons of apple juice and boxes of microwave ovens and cartons of hedge clippers and…

  And then I had an idea that I knew was great. I also knew that if Megan had been there she would not have agreed that it was so great.

  I would actually start writing the book itself. The notes could wait. Sure, there was a lot more research to be done, a lot more investigating, a lot more index cards to put in a lot more shoe boxes. But I f
inally understood the phrase “I thought I might explode!”

  I began typing.

  Who actually created hell? Some say it was God. Some say it was the devil himself. But if you’ve ever spent time in New Burg, Nebraska, you would quickly discover that it was neither God nor the devil. Hell was created by a company called the Store.

  I pounded away for another half an hour. Maybe longer. I don’t remember. I stopped only when I heard Megan open the door and enter.

  “Jacob, it’s an oven in here. Turn on the air conditioner,” she said.

  “I will,” I said. But I kept typing.

  “What are you doing? You’re typing like a crazy man,” she said.

  “I’m doing what I said I’d be doing. I’m working on our project.”

  “No need to be nasty,” she said. “Jacob, you are so sweaty. You look like you’ve been swimming.”

  I wanted to say, “Stop talking, goddamn it. I’m thinking.” But I ignored her and just kept writing. Finally I stopped. I just stopped. I was a race car that had suddenly run out of gas. I let my head drop to my wet chest. I was breathing heavily. Megan looked concerned.

  She ran her hand across my bare back as she sat in the chair next to mine.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “In a way,” I answered.

  “In a way? What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  Megan flipped open her laptop, and I eventually gained enough composure and energy to click over to my e-mail. I looked at the long stack that had accumulated since I first checked it early that morning in San Francisco. My eye immediately went to the e-mail with the subject line written in big red type. URGENT STORE MGMT SF, CA.

  I opened it.

  Hello, Jacob Brandeis,

  We are sorry to inform you that your presence at the Store fulfillment center in New Burg, Nebraska, is no longer required at this moment.

  We are sorry for contacting you on such short notice, but circumstances have prevented us from doing so sooner.

  In keeping with our ongoing philosophy—No worries—we will be in touch soon with more information regarding your future with the Store.

  The e-mail was unsigned.

  “Holy shit!” I said softly.

  “What’s the matter?” Megan asked.

  “Holy shit!” I said it again.

  “Jacob, what’s going on?”

  “I think I just lost my job.”

  Chapter 43

  FROM THAT moment on everything was different.

  Megan and I still awoke early every day. But while she left for her supervisory job at the Store, I went up to our attic office and worked on the book.

  I made it my job, and it turned out to be a job that I really loved. I was fueled by my disgust for my former employer, and I was especially fueled by the fact that I had been fired in a painful, careless way. So working on the book was almost like a drug for me. As I slapped away at the keys and constantly rearranged index cards, my heart beat fast and loud. When I made phone calls to informants I hoped could help me—former Store employees, former suppliers, a retired judge in Denver whom the founder, Thomas P. Owens, had briefly clerked for—I was quick and smooth and mildly aggressive. I was, I thought, doing God’s work. And other than an occasional break to use the bathroom or nibble on a piece of cheese like a happy rat, I spent all day at my desk.

  I was happy at my unpaid freelance job, but I was not happy with my family and my life with them.

  All three of them never seemed to tire of reminding me that they had warned me about my behavior. Mind you, they were never mean when the subject came up, but it came up way too frequently.

  “How many times did I tell you to calm down and get with the program?” Megan would say.

  Then Alex would chime in: “I told you, Dad. I told you more than once that you were losing it.”

  Megan would circle back around and say something like, “Yeah, even the kids noticed. First we made them change their lives by bringing them out to the middle of nowhere. And when, miraculously, they adjusted—when they even liked it—”

  “We loved it,” Lindsay said, correcting her.

  Megan continued: “When they loved it, you couldn’t adjust to it. You had to go mess things up.”

  We had that conversation, or some variation of that conversation, almost every night and more often on weekends.

  If I argued, if I protested, they didn’t seem to care. They argued louder and bigger than I could. The refrain they said over and over was, “Why don’t you just go back to your office and write your book?”

  More than a few times at the beginning of my “retirement” I’d catch the children recording me on video. I might be up in the workroom, deeply involved with the manuscript. I’d stop, feeling the presence of someone who had come into the room, then turn around and see Lindsay or Alex filming me.

  “Why? Why?” I’d yell, and their answers would be something between evasive and credible.

  “It’s for a project on our home life.”

  “This flat-vid had an upgrade. I’m just trying it out.”

  “Alex and I are doing this for a video scrapbook. You’ll be dead someday, you know.”

  I would yell, “Just stop it. Please just stop it,” and they would roll their eyes with impatience. The children would tell me to “chill,” and Megan would tell me pretty much the same thing. “What they’re doing is harmless, for God’s sake.”

  Eventually I pretty much grew used to it. I knew, of course, that I should be in charge. I should insist that they stop. I should take the damned flat-vids away. I should argue louder than the three of them. But the simple fact was that all I really cared about was the book.

  The more I got pissed off, the more I worked. And because of all that angry energy, the book was moving really fast. It moved even faster when I began the second part, the eyewitness part—based mostly on my phone calls, research, e-mails, letters, and, of course, my own experiences.

  Bette and Bud’s “transfer.” Bette and Bud’s barbecue. The no-show founder at the meeting in San Francisco. My treatment at airport security.

  My days were filled with energy, and because Megan was usually tired from her supervisory job, I became the book’s full-time writer. Megan became the part-time editor.

  I usually worked on my manuscript until around 2:00 a.m. Then I checked to make certain that my writing had been saved onto a red flash drive. Once I knew my words were safely recorded I yanked out the flash drive and kept it with me at all times. Quite simply, it never left my sight. That red flash drive was titled simply Twenty-Twenty. And someday soon I would be printing its contents—the start of something I was already thinking of as Store Wars.

  Knowing that this manuscript was safe and growing kept me as calm as I could ever hope to be. I was not angry at the constant carping from my family about “losing it” and “not getting with the program.” I was not angry when my children committed my most ordinary moments to video. I was not even angry when Megan quietly opened the bathroom door a crack and made a video of me drying off after a shower.

  All I really cared about was the book.

  Chapter 44

  BEEF BRISKET in a sweet-and-sour onion-tomato sauce. Good and lumpy real mashed potatoes. Emerald-green peas mixed with tiny little bits of prosciutto.

  It should have been a perfect meal.

  “Now, listen,” I said. “If you want me to have dinner with you, put every video and recording device away. Agreed?” I said.

  “Agreed,” Lindsay said.

  “I didn’t hear you, Alex,” I said.

  “Agreed,” he said. Okay, his voice was sullen—but he said it.

  “Megan? What about you?”

  “You expect me to take the oath?” she said, only slightly annoyed.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Are you crazy?” she asked.

  With a smile I said, “Possibly.”

  “Oh, my God,” Megan s
aid. Then she took a big breath, let it out, and very softly said, “Agreed.” She waited. Then added, just as softly, “And you are crazy.”

  Dinner began.

  “No wine for me,” I said. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Alex asked that Lindsay “please pass the pot roast.” Lindsay corrected him and told him it was beef brisket. Megan told them not to start arguing.

  As I was taking my first taste of the buttery mashed potatoes, Lindsay said, “How’s the book going?”

  “Like you care,” I said. Why was my voice so venomous, so sarcastic? I often joked with the kids (and Megan) in a funny, teasing way, but all the “how to raise your child” books always advised against anger and sarcasm.

  “Jacob,” Megan said. “Lindsay was asking a perfectly reasonable question.”

  But I could not stop.

  “Yeah, you think it’s reasonable. But I know it’s not reasonable.”

  Alex looked down at his dinner plate. Lindsay took a big gulp from her water glass.

  “My book. My book. My book.” I was shaking my head. What was the matter with me?

  “Maybe you’re spending too much time working on your book, your book, your book,” Alex said.

  I stared at him with open, angry eyes.

  “We’ve told you. The three of us. Give up on the book.”

  Then Lindsay spoke loudly, with volume and irritation in her voice: “You just don’t understand!”

  In a scary, soft tone, I said, “Oh…but that’s where you’re all wrong…I absolutely do understand.

  “I understand what a magnificently evil, powerful machine the subject of my book…”

  “Our book,” Megan said, correcting me.

  Now I was really pissed.

  “No, Megan. It’s my book. You and your children have done nothing but try to get me to stop. Well, I’ve got news for you. I will not stop. I know what a powerful machine the Store is. No one knows as much as I do. No one has looked at it so closely.”

  I stood up, and in my mind I was as inspiring as King Arthur addressing the Round Table, as wise as Christ at the Last Supper.