The Store Read online

  The Store’s publishing arm was churning out e-books, and every once in a while they’d hit upon something really popular. Okay, Megan and I thought…if you can’t beat ’em…

  So as soon as the painful impact of Anne’s rejection sank in, we did the only thing left to do. We moved over to the opposition: we flipped open our laptops, quickly pulled up the Store page, then clicked over to “Independent Publishing.” We had no other choice. Why the hell not? Megan and I were sure we had a bestselling e-book.

  Within less than a minute of logging on, I was having my first e-mail conversation with my “contact rep.”

  At the beginning, our e-mail conversations were all warm hugs and wet kisses. A few rewrites. Our promise to start a Twitter account, a Facebook page, an Instagram profile—the usual social-media journey to the bestseller list. It was going great…only a matter of time until Megan and I would be looking at book-cover concepts.

  Then came the not-so-inevitable kick in the balls.

  With one tap of the Send button, the Store destroyed our plan. They suddenly rejected The Roots of Rap. No reason was given. Their e-mail sounded like a ransom letter: Your project is no longer viable. The Store.

  My index finger raced to the Reply tab. Hey, folks, what gives? All of a sudden? This idea is a winner waiting to happen. This book could really live online. It’s about music. You know, music downloads. The YouTube clips. The cross-ref…

  Came a one-line response: We are as sorry about the outcome as you are. The Store.

  It was clear: the Store was finished with us. Or so they thought.

  But we were not finished with the Store. Not by a long shot.

  Chapter 3

  “NEBRASKA! THAT’S nuts!” Chuck McKirdy shouted. “You two will be moving to freakin’ Nebraska?”

  Megan stepped in and answered the question with her usual patience.

  “That’s where the jobs are. So that’s where we’ll be going,” she said softly.

  “What’s Nebraska’s nickname? The Cornhusking State?” Sandi asked.

  I corrected her. “The Cornhusker State.”

  “Go, Cornhuskers!” someone shouted.

  The chant was quickly picked up. “Go, Cornhuskers! Go, Cornhuskers!”

  “Okay,” I said. “The annual asshole convention will now come to order.”

  Megan smiled, then began a little speech. She said it was hardly a secret in our social group that our most recent nonfiction effort had been rejected “not merely by faithful friends who shall remain nameless”—at this point Anne Gutman jokingly hid her face behind her unfolded napkin—“but also…and you’re not going to believe this humiliation…even rejected by the Store.

  “So with The Roots of Rap totally without a future, and Jacob and I—not to mention our two kids—totally without a future, it looked like we were doomed. But just when things looked darkest, lo and behold, the Store came through for us.”

  We stopped talking. Just for a moment, but long enough to run the risk of screwing up our story. And it was a story, almost a fairy tale. It was a highly fictionalized account of what had really happened.

  At that very moment Megan and I were about to tell a very big lie to our closest friends. And even though we had rehearsed it carefully, my stomach was rolling, my chest was filling with acid, and Megan’s hands visibly shook. But the starting pistol had been fired. We had to talk. So Megan took off.

  “Well, it’s sort of crazy what happened next. We thought it was all finished between us and the Store. And Alex and Lindsay even started joking about being so poor that they’d have to decide which relatives to go live with.”

  I interrupted. “Nobody wanted to go with Megan’s family.”

  She punched me gently. (We had not rehearsed the ad-libs.)

  “Anyway, we got a message from the Store HR people, and they…offered…us…jobs.”

  “Doing what?” Chuck asked. “Writing ad copy or catalog stuff?”

  “Well, that’s the sorry part,” I said. “They’re kinda crappy jobs. We’ll be working in their fulfillment center. You know, filling orders and getting them out to people. But…” I paused. I was lost.

  Megan was not going to let that sentence hang there in space. “But,” Megan said, “because the Store is so big and growing, we’ll be eligible for promotions and advancements within three months. Just three months.”

  “And that’s the story,” I said, hoping that the strength in my delivery would let me recover and seal the deal with my friends.

  Okay, they were surprised. Very surprised. And yes, our friends were still spitting out a few farmer jokes, a few Republican jokes, a few Cornhusker jokes. But as I looked around the room I could tell everyone believed me. Someone mentioned a good-bye party. Someone else mentioned a group bus trip to Nebraska. Yes, it looked like everyone believed us.

  Well, almost everyone.

  I glanced out the apartment window and saw a drone hovering. It was recording everything going on at our dinner table.

  I also noticed that Anne Gutman was looking directly at me. We were good friends, old friends. She had a weak smile on her lips. And I could tell that Anne wasn’t buying a single word of our story.

  Chapter 4

  OKAY, WE had told our friends a lie. But it wasn’t a total lie. I say that as if a partial lie is somehow more acceptable.

  Yes, we were moving to Nebraska. Yes, we were going to work at the Store. But here’s what we left out:

  The Store had not invited us to work there.

  The real truth was that Megan and I had made all this happen. And like a lot of things, it all started with a simple idea.

  Here’s how the bean stalk grew: after the Store had rejected our manuscript, I was burning with anger and resentment. Sure, they thought they could screw me. Well, here’s some news. I was going to show them. If I sound like a crazy person, I think it’s because I was.

  Megan and I would infiltrate the Store. We’d unearth their secrets and their plans. Then we’d write about it. We’d get even. But first we had to get hired.

  Some good news (finally): it turned out that getting hired by the Store was incredibly easy. The Store’s business was growing so fast that apparently they accepted almost everyone who clicked on the link that sat at the bottom of every Store Web page: “Be part of our team.”

  I clicked on it one day, and within seconds an application form appeared. The form was hardly detailed, but I was sure it was because the Store would be doing their own investigative deep dive.

  When they asked why we wanted to work there, we had planned the perfect answer: we were tired of the New York rat race. Tired of alternate side of the street parking, homeless beggars on every corner, squeezing four people into a crappy walk-up apartment built for two. We had a sincere desire to raise our kids in a proper community, with a real backyard, grass, trees…blah, blah, blah. We were writers. We knew that people outside New York loved anti–New York opinions, and even Megan, usually a very bad liar, followed my lead and fibbed like a pro. It worked.

  Two days later I was having an online chat with a “marshal of human resources” who had the male-or-female name of Leslie. Leslie stated the Store’s position unequivocally: You’re superqualified for marketing or business positions, but at the moment we can offer you employment in our beautiful new New Burg, Nebraska, fulfillment center. I was aching to write the book. We were busting to be…well…spies. I was willing to take the job. So was Megan. We made a deal. And the Store made it clear that Megan and I were not being assigned to high-level, white-collar corporate jobs. No way. Ours were strictly factory jobs, filling orders and pasting on mailing labels. Yes, it was a truly shitty job. It required nothing more than a grammar-school education and a strong back.

  Small computers would hang from chains around our necks. The computers would sputter out orders, and we would find the merchandise, collect it, and bring it to the packaging department (itself the size of a football stadium), then steer our little e
lectronic go-karts back for another pickup. Only this time, instead of, say, a carton of Cap’n Crunch, a tube of hemorrhoid cream, a glass coffee table, and four copies of Naked Hot Yoga at Home, we might be fetching a chain for a John Deere hay baler, four jars of tangerine marmalade…you get the idea.

  The add-ons were surprisingly seductive. The Store was supplying us with a three-bedroom house. They would also pay half the monthly mortgage of four hundred dollars. A fraction of what we’d been paying for our dingy apartment. We were sure that the Store must have made a mistake. But as we came to learn, the Store never makes mistakes.

  Another e-mail said that our new house would be located in one of several Store-built communities. Most of your neighbors will be employees of the Store. Excellent: neighbors who might be possible sources for gossip and inside information.

  It was starting to sound perfect. But of course, as spies, we were going to find the imperfections in that perfection. I’d be lying if I didn’t say we were scared—two long-unemployed New York softies going to battle at one of the creepiest and fastest-growing companies in the United States.

  But damn it, the book idea was too good to give up on.

  Chapter 5

  “MAN! THIS is soooo sweet!”

  That was Alex’s reaction when he first saw our new house at 400 Midshipman Lane, New Burg, Nebraska.

  Frankly, we all had pretty much the same reaction.

  It wasn’t a mansion, but it was…well, man, soooo sweet. The kind of house that a midlevel tech executive might live in, not some guy who was packing toothpaste tubes and algebra textbooks into cardboard boxes. The house was white brick; it was long (very long) and low, with a three-car garage for our leased Acura.

  The inside of the house was equally cool. Everything—from the ten-seat U-shaped charcoal-gray sofa in the living room to the crystal-and-bronze chandelier in the dining room—was LA trendy and top of the line. It was, as Megan pointed out, exactly how we would have decorated if we’d been able to afford it. Then we all took off in different directions to explore.

  “Jacob, come in here. You gotta see this,” Megan called from the kitchen.

  By the time I joined her, she had already opened a large pantry cabinet.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “They told us in an e-mail they’d stock the place with some basics.”

  “Basics? Look. It’s every brand we use. Not just Jif peanut butter and Frosted Flakes and Bumble Bee tuna but also Wilkin and Sons gooseberry conserve and Arrowhead Mills pancake mix.”

  A cabinet in the dining room contained Grey Goose vodka and J&B Scotch.

  As we were studying the bar, Lindsay appeared at the dining-room door. She looked a bit confused.

  “Look at this,” she said. Then she held out the stuffed animal—Peabody the penguin—that she had owned since her first birthday.

  “Hey, it’s Peabody!” I said. “I thought you said you left him on the airplane.”

  “I did,” Lindsay said. “But this is him. See? He has the tear on his collar and the chocolate stain on his chest. This is Peabody! He was waiting for me on the bed in my new room.”

  Lindsay looked nervous. I was about to examine the penguin more closely when I heard Alex’s voice coming from the kitchen.

  “Hey, Dad. There’s a bunch of people at the back door.”

  Chapter 6

  NOT JUST a bunch. A big bunch. Nine of them. Smiling, happy, good-looking men and smiling, happy, pretty women huddled around our back door like a sports team. They even seemed to have a captain—a very attractive woman in her early forties with shoulder-length brown hair and very tight jeans.

  “I’m Marie DiManno,” the woman said. “These are a few of your neighbors, and we’re here to help you unpack.”

  I said exactly what I was thinking: “That’s freaking amazing.”

  Megan clarified. “He means that’s really very nice of you.”

  Marie added, “We saw the moving van outside, and we all texted each other. That’s what friends are for.”

  I half expected them to launch into the song.

  Fact is, we had been so engrossed by the penguin incident that we hadn’t heard the moving van pull into the driveway. I looked over the heads of our neighbors and saw the movers. The four of them were dressed in navy-blue jumpsuits bearing the slogan THE MOVERS FROM THE STORE.

  As the movers began carrying boxes into the house, Marie walked inside, told us to introduce ourselves to one another, and followed one of the movers up the front staircase.

  We hit the receiving line—a group of people right out of central casting.

  First we met the good-looking “older” couple. They were both trim and chic, with gray hair and elegant haircuts. They looked like a couple in one of those Cialis commercials.

  Then a good-looking African American couple in their early forties, she in an impeccably faded denim shirt, both of them in light blue J.Crew Bermuda shorts.

  Then the inevitable young, good-looking blond couple. The college quarterback and the college cheerleader.

  And finally the all-purpose sitcom couple—the bald-headed guy with a potbelly and his wife with a wide mouth waiting to shoot out a wisecrack.

  “I’m Mark Stanton,” said the handsome black guy as he shook my hand. “Welcome to New Burg. This is my wife, Cookie.”

  Cookie said, “Welcome to the Store, and welcome to the Store family.”

  “That’s a lot of welcoming,” I said.

  If they detected a note of sarcasm in my voice (and I had just meant to be funny, not sarcastic), their faces didn’t register it.

  I learned quickly that Mark Stanton worked in the fulfillment “gathering” building. (So that’s what folks called the job—gathering. I’d be hearing that word a lot in the following hour or two.) It seemed that everyone who came out to help us worked in packing or shipping or gathering merchandise, except Marie. Marie was “resting” since the unexpected death of her husband. She had no “money-type concerns,” she told me, “because the Store kindly provides a resting widow’s pension.”

  The older gray-haired lady wasted no time telling me that “moving to New Burg and the Store will be the smartest thing you’ve ever done. Where else can you combine such nice work with such nice people in such a nice place? Martin and I had retired to Tampa, and frankly we were having trouble making ends meet. We have a son in Miami who’s a drug addict.”

  She gave me this information as if she were telling us that her son was a dentist.

  She continued. “Then Martin applied for a job at the Store. They hired us, shipped us out here just like you folks, and it’s…well, it’s made life worth living.”

  Our new neighbors appeared to be high-energy experts at unpacking. Marilyn Fidler, the pretty blond woman, had brought paper with which she proceeded to line the bedroom dresser drawers. (In a million years, Megan and I would not have thought to line our furniture drawers.)

  “You want everything to start out as clean as possible,” Marilyn said as she helped Megan and Lindsay fill two drawers with sweaters and sweatshirts.

  As the busy morning wore on, Alex took me aside and whispered, “Hey, Dad, you know what that Marie lady brought?”

  “A great deal of energy,” I said.

  “No. She had this plasticky kind of shirt cardboard. She showed me how you fold T-shirts around it. She said it makes them stack up nice and neat, like on a store shelf. That’s kind of creepy, no?”

  “I don’t know, buddy. I think she’s just a perfectionist.”

  Alex looked doubtful, then he saw his sister carrying a box of his video games. He took off after her.

  “Kind of creepy, no?” That’s what Alex had said. I had disagreed with him, but I knew what he meant. Charming. Delightful. Friendly. Neat. Tidy. Industrious. Why were all those good things adding up to “creepy”?

  Damn it, I thought. These folks are just being good neighbors.

  And my son and I are just two typical cynical New Yorkers, too ja
ded to appreciate the simple life.

  Chapter 7

  NOT ONLY had I made Friday night’s dinner, I was also such a cool husband that I was even doing the cleanup. Megan and the kids were outside exploring the backyard.

  The meal itself had been a huge success: boeuf bourguignonne (Julia Child’s secret recipe), Tuscan potato torta (Mario Batali’s recipe), Key lime pie (Jacob Brandeis’s recipe). Why Key lime pie? Whoever had stocked our kitchen included a graham cracker crust, sweetened condensed milk, eggs, and six perfect Key limes.

  I was on my second Brillo pad when Megan returned to the kitchen.

  “Jacob, c’mon outside,” she said.

  “Soon as I finish.”

  “No. Now. Right now.” Her voice was surprisingly serious.

  “Sure, sweetie,” I said. But I wasn’t moving fast enough for Megan.

  “Now! Please. You’ve got to see this.”

  This time her voice was urgent. I didn’t bother rinsing my hands. I simply wiped off the pink Brillo suds with a dish towel.

  “Look up there,” Megan said, and she pointed (or so I thought) to the bright starry sky above the garage-door basketball hoop.

  “It’s a beautiful night,” I said.

  Impatience filled Megan’s voice. “Show him, Alex.”

  Alex skipped a few feet to the hoop. He squatted, then he jumped and hung from the rim with his left hand. As Alex dangled he pointed to a small instrument made of glass and gray metal—almost undetectable against the gray paint of the garage. Then Alex snapped it from its holder. He dropped to the ground and tossed it to me.

  “It’s a camera,” I said. “A tiny camera, like a…spy camera.”

  Megan, Lindsay, Alex, and I stared at it. We looked like a group who had just discovered a rare diamond. And I guess, in a way, we had.