Chapter 8

June 8

"Mr. Gwafin, are you paying attention?"
 "Yes sir, Mr. Sapperstein."
 "Then what did I just say?"
 "You said to put the bread on top," I guessed.
 "Right. Sorry, it looked like your mind was wandering. All right, back to the training..."
My mind wasn't so much wandering as it was fleeing at a dead run. I had weighed my options carefully before settling on this job. It was nice to have options. It had been my first chance in quite some time to turn someone else down, if only by default. I could have signed on at one of the fast-food joints. On the upside, these offered discounted food for employees. On the downside, it was their food. I could have opted for the graveyard shift at the Corner Save Store, a position that seemed permanently available. All sorts of upside to that job. I wouldn't have had a boss looking over my shoulder, for starters. And as long as a Corner Save employee shows up on time and doesn't steal from the register, he'll make manager in a month--which, as I understand it, entitles one to an extra 50 cents an hour and the right to claim unsold pornography. But the essence of the job was to sell beer and cigarettes to teenagers with fake I.D.s, an endeavor that while not exactly evil, certainly was a measurable distance past disreputable. If I was going to sell my soul for a job, I expected a bit more than minimum wage for my trouble. Plus the Corner Save had been robbed twice in the last year, an incredible statistic for a small town in Maine where most people still left their doors unlocked. Why would anyone rob a 24-hour store certain to have a clerk on duty and a security system in place rather than just pick a house at random and walk in? It seemed a poor choice to me, but then I had to admit I wasn't a thief, so it wasn't really my place to criticize. Perhaps there were union rules to contend with.
 In the end I'd settled on the supermarket job, for two reasons:
1. I'd be working for a big company, Sanafin Brothers, Inc., the multi-national conglomerate that operated Shiveler's supermarkets. Sanafin employed many people in respectable office jobs that did not require one to wear a nametag, and even a few in upper management that didn't require a paper hat. In an emergency, I might be able to con someone into believing that I had one of those non-hat jobs. Hell, I might even be able to delude myself that I was working my way up in the organization. Not that rising through the ranks of supermarket hierarchy was something to which I particularly aspired…And not that it was immediately apparent how I could display any special talents and move upwards in the Sanafin corporate structure when the entire secret to my current job was putting the bread on top. 
2. Why live in an observatory if I was going to work the Corner Save graveyard shift and never see the stars?
 "Training" had been going on for forty minutes now. Forty minutes of watching Mr. Sapperstein, my new boss, bag and re-bag the same groceries, always careful to put the bread on top. It seems that Mr. Sapperstein himself had worked his way up from humble bagger to full-fledged bagging manager, and was cognizant of the job's key challenge. Sapperstein was still talking, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the bag. 
 In went the dented can of tomato juice. (Trainees were started with already damaged goods to limit the potential losses of training accidents, Mr. Sapperstein had explained at the outset. His idea, he'd added proudly.) 
In went the opened box of Froot Loops. 
In went the stale bread. 
In went the torn sack of flour, leaving its usual white trail behind.
 "Bread goes in last," I corrected, not even waiting for the inevitable question.
Mr. Sapperstein beamed--he was pleased to see I was learning. "Another few runs and you'll be ready to try yourself," Sapperstein said, unloading the bag.
Maybe I should have taken the Corner Save job, I thought. I'd shopped at the Corner Save myself, and it was abundantly clear that its employees were not forced to endure anything along the lines of training. Or bathing, for that matter. 
 Well, no point tearing myself apart over the decision, I decided finally. It's not like I was going to flip open the Wall Street Journal one day and find out I'd cost myself millions in stock options by turning down the Corner Save. And bagging training was only an hour I had no better use for anyway. Okay, I probably could have come up with something better than an unpaid hour watching old groceries being bagged. Probably. Another pause in Mr. Sapperstein's speech. "Bread goes on top," I said.
 "That's right, but I asked if you thought you were ready to try it yourself."
 "Yea, let's do it," I said with as much enthusiasm as I had left that day.
 "Now, don't worry if it takes you a few tries. No one gets it perfect on their first go. I squashed the loaf a few times myself that first day, as we say in the bagging game."
Tempted as I was to see Sapperstein's reaction if I got it wrong, my desire to get the hell out of that storeroom as soon as possible was greater. I quickly filled the bag, saving the bread for last. 
Mr. Sapperstein stood stock still for a moment. "Let's see that again," he mumbled finally. 
I bagged the groceries again.
 "A natural. Mr. Gwafin, I do believe you've found your calling," Sapperstein announced. He might have thought it a little odd when I didn't appear overjoyed by this compliment. "Now let's try it with eggs. You unpack the bag, and I'll explain the egg rule."
 "Screw the egg rule, Sappy," I said. "Just bring on them bastards, and let's get bagging."
Sapperstein might have been insulted by such language from other trainees. But there were special rules for the gifted in any field, and to his credit, Sappy knew this. Geniuses always were a bit different. Sapperstein threw caution to the wind and handed over the eggs. "Now be careful, Bob," he said. "Those are real eggs." Then he added, with a touch of fear in his voice, "Extra large."
The groceries went back in the bag, bread on top, eggs just below. "Wait here," Sapperstein blurted, and rushed out of the storeroom. Four minutes later he was back with his boss, the assistant manager of the store, in tow. "Mr. Flallerman, have a look at this. Bob?"
I obediently emptied the bag, then refilled it. Oddly, I found the idea of being a world-class grocery bagger even more repellant than just being a grocery bagger. It was, perhaps, akin to the difference between accidentally leaving one's fly down and accidentally leaving one's fly down and having a room full of people notice.
 "First day, you say?" Flallerman asked.
 "First day--first hour," Sapperstein replied.
 "First hour?" Flallerman asked.
 "I trained him myself."
 "I see," Flallerman said. "Good work Sapperstein. You're going places in this organization."
Sapperstein's joy was evident as Flallerman left the room. He turned back to me. "Let's start from scratch--with double bagging."
 
"Did you take the grocery job or the market job?" Dave asked when I returned. 
 "Grocery job."
 "How'd you decide on that one?"
 "The reasons were many and multiple."
 "You picked it because it was 100 yards closer, didn't you?"
 "No, no, I said my reasons were many and multiple and I stand by that."
 "If you'd gone with the market job I could have come over and hung out there all day while you worked."
 "If you were going to hang out there all day anyway, why not work there and earn a few dollars--it's not like there's a whole lot more to the job than hanging out all day."
 "So we're back to that again, are we? I'm supposed to feel bad because I'm not working? Do you want me to apologize for being who I am? I won't do it."
 "Dave, why do I feel like we're married sometimes?" 
 "Ah, take it easy Gwaf, I'm just kidding. You can pick on me all you want. It's the price I pay for my choice of lifestyle."
 "Lazy is a lifestyle?"
 "No, lazy is just how I am. Unrepentantly lazy is a lifestyle."
 "You ought to form your own organizations and lobby groups."
 "We ought to, but clearly we never will."
 "Maybe you could get someone from a workaholics group to freelance for you."
 "That's not a bad idea. Someone should set something up like that."
 "I see your point."
 "You do? I wasn't even aware that I had one."

Dana's escorts escorted her as far as Mexico City. From there, Dana was on her own, or rather, as on one's own as one can be when one is a lost-looking attractive young American woman in a Latin American airport, which is to say she was surrounded by men offering to sell her things and men trying to buy her drinks. Dana suggested that the men trying to sell her things instead sell the other men drinks and cut her out of the loop entirely. But the joke must have lost something in translation. Dana found a phone and called One Planet. 
 "We're aware of the situation in Spanish Guyana," the One Planet representative assured Dana. 
 "If you were aware of it, shouldn't you have let me know about it before I was thrown in a Spanish Guyanian jail cell?"
 "They threw you in a jail cell?"
 "Well, more of a conference room, really," Dana admitted. "But they did lock me in."
 "Oh, that's too bad. It's always great for fund raising when we can tell people our volunteers are rotting away in jail cells."
 "What difference does it make where I was rotting away? The point is I was locked up."
 "For how long?"
 "I can't really say. They confiscated my watch. Maybe half an hour."
 "You were in a conference room for 30 minutes and you expect us to use that in fund raising? This morning I was stuck in a meeting for two hours and you don't see me complaining about it. Did they at least torture you or something?"
 "No, no torture."
 "No scars, bruises, cuts?"
 "Nope."
 "Cigarette burns on your arms, maybe?" he asked.
 "I'm afraid not."
 "None? Not one? I actually got a nasty paper cut at that meeting I mentioned. Sounds like your day was easy in comparison."
 "I really don't think you're focusing on the problem here. I was supposed to spend a year in the jungles of Spanish Guyana distributing food. Instead I was thrown into a war zone, then thrown back out of the war zone the same day."
 "I'm aware of that."
 "You keep saying you're aware of things, yet you seem to have done nothing about them. I really don't see…" then in a flash Dana did see. "Did you know the city of Pianosa had been completely overrun by a plague of diseased wombats fleeing the fighting?"
 "I'm aware of that."
 "Ha! I just made that up. There is no city of Pianosa and wombats aren't indigenous to the region, and even if they were they're not an animal particularly prone to overrunning anything, other than maybe the occasional grassy field. You're just saying you're aware of things because you don't want to admit you had no idea what was going on in Spanish Guyana, even through it was your job to know. I'm right, aren't I?"
 "Uh…no."
 "Uh huh, then tell me everything you know about the situation in Spanish Guyana."
 "Well, there's this war, see, and they're deporting foreigners. And there have been some rumors of scattered wombat attacks, but reports are sketchy…Everything else is, uh, classified."
 "You're just repeating what I just told you."
The line went dead.
Dana was sure she must simply have caught this man on a bad day. Certainly there could be no doubt that he was a good person. He worked for One Planet, after all, and One Planet was the most respected of all social activist organizations. The group was founded back in 1971 by a small but dedicated group of environmentalists based in the northwest. They'd banded together when it was learned that the U.S. government intended to test atomic weapons on a tiny, uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. These righteous environmental crusaders, equipped with nothing more than a small fishing boat and their high ideals, determined to stop them. And against all odds they did. Well, actually, they didn't. But they tried. And their efforts earned them the respect of intelligent, right-minded people around the globe who understood that good intentions are far more important than results. Today One Planet has more than 30 offices and nearly three million members worldwide. Dana wasn't going to let a few minor problems interfere with her unquestioning approval of the organization. But neither was she going to give up so easily.
She redialed. "Someone Else speaking," the same voice answered. 
 "I think we were disconnected."
 "No, I don't think so," the man said.
 "We were just talking about Spanish Guyana."
 "I haven't spoken with anyone about any of the Guyanas," he said.
 "Listen, I don't care who you are and whether we were just talking or not. I just want to know where I should go now and how I should get there."
 "There really isn't anywhere else…"
 "Otherwise I'm coming back to New York, where I'm going to explain to everyone who will listen that you, personally, are responsible for almost getting me killed, and for getting my wristwatch confiscated by a guard."
 "I have something perfect for you," said the man immediately. "Lesser Morrell Island, a small Pacific island where you'll be the very first representative of One Planet, and where, coincidentally, you'll have no good way of calling New York. The assignment was supposed to go to the man you were to have replaced in Spanish Guyana, but we can't seem to find him for some reason. It might be wombat related. Get yourself a plane ticket to Lesser Morrell Island, and send the bill to us."
It was nice to know that One Planet's personnel could respond so well to an emergency, once properly threatened. "I want a new wristwatch, too," said Dana.
 "Fine, bill us for a new watch, too." The line went dead once again. 
Thus mollified, Dana checked the departures board for Mexico City-Lesser Morrell Island flights. Nothing direct, she saw. Not even if she settled for something connecting in Greater Morrell Island. 

It wasn't an easy conversation. The woman at the Mexico City airport ticket counter kept smiling and nodding, but it wasn't a nod that meant yes, Dana eventually realized. It was more a nod that meant I'm trying to be agreeable despite the fact that I can't understand a word you're saying, and there are hundreds of fleeing Spanish Guyanians in line behind you. 
 Dana had come to the conclusion that either her Spanish wasn't as good as she thought, or everyone else's wasn't as good as they thought. It was probably the former, she admitted to herself, but she did reserve some doubt, in as much as her grades in Spanish class always had been quite solid. 
For the purposes of booking a flight to Morrell Island in a foreign language, it didn't help that no one involved in the conversation knew where Morrell Island was. In the end, the best Dana could find was a flight through L.A. to Honolulu. So she bought that. And a new watch.

June 9

Bagging groceries wasn't any better than grocery bagging practice, I'd decided five minutes into my first shift. Well, okay, it was a little better. I didn't have to mumble "Bread on top" every three minutes. And I got to work with undamaged groceries. Odd that there was no adrenaline rush from that. Most importantly, bagging groceries was $5.00 an hour better than practicing, before taxes. After taxes I'd be taking home maybe $30 for today's eight hour shift. Thirty fucking dollars. I bagged a loaf of Wonder Bread under a quart of laundry detergent in a moment of silent protest. So much for professional pride. But at least it was busy enough that time moved along. I'd spent the past month obsessing about my problems. It was nice to have a chance to go to work and shut my mind off for a while.
 "I'll tell you one thing," I said to a fellow bagger during my state-law mandated 10-minute paid break. "I'll never again look down on anyone because they work in a supermarket."
 "You looked down on people because they worked in supermarkets?" asked my colleague. His employee name tag identified him as Timmy.
 "I suppose I never really thought much about it, Timmy," I answered, making my best effort at diplomacy. "I guess I figured no one over the age of 16 would work for $5 an hour unless they had something wrong with them."
 "I make $5 an hour. Are you saying there's something wrong with me."
 "No, no, you don't understand. I'm saying I was wrong."
 "So now I don't understand. I suppose I'm not as good as you because I work in a supermarket."
 "Hey, Timmy, try to get a grasp on this. I work in the supermarket, too. See the name tag, see the apron. Do you understand that we're both standing in the employee lounge, by which I mean the damaged goods storeroom? Look, I wasn't looking for a fight. I was just trying to make conversation."
I sidled away from Timmy towards the middle-aged women who was standing by the coffee machine and trying to look like a young woman. Assuming her Shiveler's Groceries employee badge was to be trusted, this woman was "Tammy." "Hey, is that guy okay?" I asked.
 "Who? Timmy? Sure, he's okay. Why?" 
 "I tried to talk to him and he nearly bit my head off."
 "Oh, yea, he's just a little upset today. He was the number-one bagger here until some jerk comes out of nowhere and steals his spot. Now Sapperstein won't stop talking about his new golden boy."
 "There's a pecking order among supermarket baggers?"
 "There is to Timmy. And apparently this guy aced the bagging test on the first try. A perfect score. No one's ever done that"
 "Test? That's funny. I didn't have a test. Sapperstein just had me put groceries in a bag over and over again." With that, Timmy, who had apparently been listening in on our conversation, left the break room, slamming the door behind him.
Tammy was looking at me as if I was the reason cosmetics no longer hid her flaws. "Bagging the groceries was the test," she said finally. "So I take it you're the guy. You might try not joking about this. Not everyone is such a natural. Not everyone went to a fancy college to spend four years learning this kind of thing. Most of us had to learn the hard way. And maybe we did crush a few loaves of bread, but does that make us bad people?" Tammy now had the attention of everyone else in the room. "Last week Timmy was in line for the assistant manager's job when Sapperstein retired in 10 or 15 years. Then you arrive full of college-taught grocery bagging techniques and Timmy could be stuck as a bagger forever. How's he supposed to support his kids?" Tammy stormed out, followed by the rest of my colleagues.
I sat quietly on a crate of expired lima beans, sipping my coffee and thinking about the accusations for a moment. I had alienated my coworkers without even trying. But it was something else that was bothering me. "Timmy has kids?" I finally asked the empty break room.  

The afternoon dragged on express lane two. I could feel Timmy's eyes burning into me from aisle three. He was waiting for me to make a mistake. Every once and a while I'd pretend to juggle something non-shatter resistant just to toy with him, and I always was rewarded with a dismayed half-human noise when I averted disaster yet again. The competition wasn't doing Timmy's work much good, though. One of Timmy's customers had a bag fail before she was even out of the store. A glass bottle of cranberry juice crashed to the floor, sending a gallon of bitter red fluid over a range of things better left unjuiced, including both the customer and Mr. Sapperstein. That's why the express lanes are reserved for the very best baggers--folks don't use carts to get nine items to their car; when something goes wrong, it happens right here, for all to see. 
 Before the cranberry juice even had been cleared or the customer calmed, another of Timmy's clients was given paper after distinctly asking for plastic. Supermarkets had begun offering shoppers the choice a decade before without considering the added stress levels on their already challenged baggers. Sapperstein reprimanded Timmy within earshot of his co-workers and at least five shoppers with 12 items or less. Timmy forced out an excuse, something about how it wasn't his fault, then gave in and managed an apology. Finally, when Timmy dropped a 14-ounce glass jar of Pine Sol cleaner, Sapperstein took him off bagging, and told him to go find a mop. 
 For Timmy, this was a major blow: clean-up crew was a big step down for any bagger, for this former star of the bagging game it was a near-mortal wound. It was like asking Joe Montana to end his career as a holder on the field-goal team, assuming Joe Montana had been supermarket bagger instead of a Hall-of-Fame quarterback, and assuming he was too stupid to understand that he pretty much would have been a loser in either of the supermarket jobs. A few of Timmy's coworkers offered encouragement: "Could happen to anyone," "It's Pine Sol, it nearly cleans itself," and "Your mind's elsewhere, that's all." This last I thought a real possibility, although exactly where Timmy's mind might have been is a matter I'll leave to science. 
 I said nothing. I couldn't decide between a sympathetic comment and a cutting insult. Sympathy might score me a few points with my coworkers, but I risked sounding insincere. And insulting Timmy would be so much more fun. It was a tough choice. Before I could decide, I noticed that Timmy had recovered from his daze enough to shoot me a truly hateful look. And Timmy wasn't alone; a number of Timmy's supporters glanced in my direction as well. It appeared that Timmy's ineptitude was being blamed on me. I chose. 

"You really ought to come work at the supermarket with me," I told Dave that evening over a dinner of stolen campus-lecture potato chips. "You'd fit in. Everyone there's got something wrong with them."
 "Oh yea, like you're a beacon of stability." 
 "There's this one moron there who thinks he's in a bagging competition with me," I continued. "The guy's whole life is bagging groceries, and I'm ruining it by being better than him at it."
 "This bothers you?"
 "A bit."
 "You could ease up a little so he doesn't feel so threatened."
 "If I eased up any more I'd fall asleep."
 "You could talk to him and try to explain that you're not a threat."
 "Tried it. Talking to Timmy doesn't go so well. He doesn't seem to listen."
 "You could just be really friendly."
 "I'd rather not. He pisses me off."
 "You really hate the guy?"
 "Hate? I don't hate anyone. There's no malice in my heart. I just dislike him. And the people I dislike I like to dislike and I love them for it."
 "So what are you going to do."
 "I've decided to crush him."
 "I suppose you do need a hobby."
 "Yea, and this will give me something to think about at work. The job itself certainly doesn't provide much mental stimulation."
 "Could you think about stealing us some food so we don't have to eat campus snacks until your first paycheck?"
 "Steal? Jesus, Dave, what do you take me for?"
 "Sorry. I guess I forgot about your high moral code. By the way, it's your turn to go liberate snacks from campus lectures."
 "Stealing from the college isn't the same. They still owe me from my tuition."
 "And you think the supermarket is paying you what you're worth?"
 "That's different."
 "'Different' how?"
 "'Different' they're not to blame for the fact that my life is going nowhere. I never understood why people with dead-end jobs get mad at their employers. It seems like if anything, they should get mad at all the other, better, employers who haven't offered them anything."
 "It's probably because they don't have to look the other employers in the face ever day, year in and year out."
 "There might be something to that. Maybe if I'm still there in a year or two I'll come around on the stealing food issue."
 "Gwaf, you said that if you were still there in a month I should kill you."
 "Good point. I suppose that means you're not getting any stolen supermarket food."
 "Well, I guess I can survive on pretzel rods and potato chips for a few more days, if your high moral standards leave us no alternative. So, any ideas how you're going to ruin Timmy's life?"
 "Haven't considered the problem yet. But it shouldn't be too hard. It was pretty close to ruined before I ever met him."
 "Some sort of freak bagging mishap maybe? Is there any heavy machinery at the supermarket?"
 "Nope, no machinery--although I suspect that Timmy would eventually suffocate himself in one of the plastic bags even without my help. Anyway, I don't really want to kill him. Just make him suffer enough that it makes me feel better about my lousy life."
 "You know, Gwaf, in many ways you might be the worst person I've ever met."
 "Bullshit. The only difference between me and everyone else is that I'm honest enough to say out loud the things other people only think."
 "No," Dave said, "the bigger difference is that you actually do the things that other people only say out loud."
 "What kind of person would I be if I didn't follow though on the things I said?"
 "A person much less dangerous to Timmy."