Seven Stories about working in a bookstore:

Episode One

By Pablo D'stair

"Episode One Merchandise"

I was still in high school for the first few months of my stint at Bravado Bookmark. Because of where my school was with relation to my family's house (a good thirty, forty minute drive) my mother had gotten me a small apartment, provided I work to pay at least a good portion of the rent-this suited me fine, because before I had the apartment I would just stay in the town where I went to school (my girlfriend lived there, so I wanted to be there as much as possible) either spending the nights out of doors or bumming places to sleep where I could from friends.

It was my friend and classmate Morgan Wire who had gotten me my first (short-lived) job at the movie theatre in the same strip mall as Bravado. He was the sort who was chomping at the bit for the release of the new Star Wars films, doing whatever he could to get his hands on pieces of information, leaked trailers, etc. I had no feeling about the films, one way or the other, other than a half-formed (mostly borrowed from people older than me) stance that the films were a bad idea, the originals should have been left alone.

***

One day I was working with Peter Crisp, the manager, when a shipment of very large boxes came in. On the outside was very prominently stamped in several places Sensitive Contents-Do Not Display Until 05/19/1999. Peter lorded over the boxes as though they were the discovery of the modern age.

"What's all this?" I asked vaguely, tapping titles in to the special order computer just to see what would come up. He rubbed his hands, really made an excruciating performance of cutting the tape. "Doesn't it say don't open that?"

"We just can't display it, I'm locking it in the office-we could get in big trouble if this stuff was left around, even in the back room."

An exaggeration if ever there was one, as the back room was technically more secure than the office partition-I suppose his logic was that he held the only key to the office, but even that might not have been true.

In the box was all manner of Phantom Menace merchandise-kids stuff, for the most part, from colouring books, to sticker books, to poster books, to First Reader storybooks of this or that sequence from the film. Peter counted the product in, assembled the point-of-purchase displays and clogged up the office with all of it.

"You gonna see that?" Peter asked.

"Probably. My friend works at the movie theatre, so I think the staff is all gonna see it a day early or something, I might get in on that."

He nodded, really impressed, like he was kind of deflated that he didn't have such power.

***

For some reason or another, I mentioned to Morgan that all of this stuff had come in-he was especially excited when I told him that, yes, technically the entire storyline of the film was contained in the various picture books and some of the things (the sticker books for example) had images from the beginning of the film all the way through to images from the end.

True to my nature, I told him that I could easily nab all the stuff for him, provided he agree to trade with me this old-time, handheld movie camera I knew he had from when I'd hung out at his house one evening-it ran on spools of film, had one in it (probably already used and ruined from exposure) and was in working order, my thinking being that I could get it fixed up, someplace, and having such a thing might motivate me to actually work on making a film (an objective of mine since ninth grade). He agreed to this, but the condition was that I get the things to him before the film premiered-he would have no need for them afterward, he wanted advanced knowledge, just couldn't hold off knowing.

I had a few weeks, but told him I'd bring them in the Monday after the upcoming weekend.

***

The store staff was being bizarrely adherent to the policy of keeping the merchandise secreted-we were not even supposed to look at it, ourselves, it had to remain totally under lock and key. This was twice as odd because neither Pamela or Shalvo (I didn't know about the two other part-timers) even cared about the film-I think with them it was just the idea of something easy to be authoritarian about, they could successfully do their job by doing nothing.

***

My plan was fairly simple-I would just climb over the office-area partition from the rise inside the storefront window, grab one copy of everything there was to grab, bag it, toss my bag over by the magazine section and either let myself out the door (if it wasn't so completely locked as to not open from either side) or climb back over, an operation I didn't estimate should take anything more than five minutes. I was thinking to it on one of the weekend mornings, when I would be alone with the store for a good bit of time and when the odd customer was less likely to come in (I didn't want to climb into the office, have a customer need assistance, only to find that the door didn't open from the inside and so I'd have to tell them One minute and climb out, again, it would be too weird).

Of course, I kept my eyes opened for opportunities, as the flaw in waiting was that if anything went wrong, I'd be out the camera, because I didn't work next until Wednesday (and that was a whole shift with Shalvo who didn't even use the bathroom or take breaks) and then Friday, by which time Morgan might've decided it didn't matter so much.

***

It wound up coming right down to the wire, as Peter showed up for no reason during my Saturday shift and sat in the office making phone calls, asking me to step outside with him while he smoked cigarettes, in between.

"My ex is a real mess, man. You have a girlfriend?"

"I do."

He shook his head. "Yeah, well my ex is a real mess, man. She's bugging me about some old payments-what am I supposed to do, right? 'I moved out here because you wanted me gone!'" he said, addressing the brick pillar that he then flicked his hardly lit cigarette at, bending over to pick it back up so as not to be wasteful. "She's a mess. She wants me gone, but then she needs help with her taxes and then she wants to know if her mechanic is screwing her about something with the engine. How would I know what's going on with the engine? Am I there to hear it? 'If you want me to fix the engine I'll fix the engine you wanna give me a plane ticket back out there,' right?"

"Right," I nodded solemnly, "that seems fair. Like what's she doing, just wanting it both ways with you?"

He scoffed, big windshield wiper hand gesture scattering the long breath out of smoke. "Oh no, she wanted me gone. I have problems, I have problems-everything in the world is my fault and so she wants me gone. Well, I'm gone, now, right? I'm gone now. I'm so glad I got this job, don't have to be anywhere near her headcase scene, man."

This rant worked him up good and he went right back in to the office to make some more calls. When he came out, he was decked out in his rollerblades, wriggling his helmet to place.

"I'm gonna get out of here, today. You okay with things yourself?"

I was supposed to have had the shift to myself until four, anyway, but didn't bother brining this nuance up, just told him "Good luck" and he made a gesture of slapping the back of his hand into the opposite palm, looking at me smiling and said "Right?"

"Right."

***

Within twenty minutes he was rolling back up to the shop door, holding two sodas from a fast food restaurant. I was sunk to see him, as now there was no way I was getting into that office. He handed me one of the sodas and I told him Thanks. Then thinking about it, I said "Hey, you know I can do my own paperwork if you left me a key, right? That way you don't have to come in mornings just to do stuff like that."

He gave a curt headshake. Apparently the district supervisors were really strict about keys and paperwork. "And I have to have it in case something went wrong with stuff like the Star Wars merch, you know? That's why it's in there, not in the back. I actually asked them if I should just keep it at my hotel, but they said I'd better not do that, as technically it would be considered releasing sensitive content and could cost us a distribution contract."

I doubted every word of that, but let the matter drop.

***

Sunday came and hook-or-crook I was going to get the merchandise out. Peter wasn't there when I showed up-he might've already come in and done the paperwork, but he might also have just been leaving it till afternoon or until the next day, there was no way to know.

I had my backpack with me, ready, and decided I'd just seize the day. I checked out in the parking lot to be certain that Peter wasn't in eyeshot, at least (not that I could get a good idea one way or another, it was more just nervous compulsion) then I got the three-step ladder out, set in in front of the partition from inside the storefront display window (realized I hadn't tested out if the partition wall was likely to fall if I set my weight to it wrong) and just scrambled over, leaving a big footprint on papers out on the desk. I cursed, rubbed at the dirty spot as best I could, but couldn't let myself get distracted.

I stuffed my bag full with one of everything, less impressed with the selection now that I was in the moment, tried the door but found it locked. So I tossed the bag out onto the sales floor by the magazines, stepped back up on the desk (worried at what marks I was leaving, but no way to clean any I might have inadvertently left) then clambered myself back over just as a customer wandered their way through the door.

"Hi," I said, speaking first to minimize the oddness, "forgot my key."

It was just some old grouch who worked at the grocery store and he went to the porno, pretending he was going for the News Weeks or something. I saw him notice the bag on the floor, so I waited a minute before retrieving it.

"Is this your bag?" I asked and he looked over, burped a little head shake No.

The whole charade was pointless, but it was compulsively coming out of me-I wandered around as though making sure no one else was present. I reflected, once the man had left, that having done so really only made me look guiltier if he suspected me of something (though what I thought he would suspect me of, I had no idea). I guess my worry was that, as he was a regular, maybe he knew Shalvo or Pamela or even Peter and during some offhand conversation would mention seeing me climbing out over the partition-old people who work in grocery stores cannot be trusted to keep things to themselves, I'd be a fool to not plan out some narrative to explain myself.

But the more immediate problem of what to do with the bag took suddenly hold of me-why hadn't I thought this far ahead (my more or less failed career as a criminal to date occurred to me, but I shook of the panic and focused).

Knowing my luck, Pamela would insist on a bag check when she got in, so I needed to get the thing out before shift change. My first thought was to dash it over to the dumpster area, hide it behind something, but this seemed kind of risky.

It was a sink hole, a real sink hole, I had no idea what to do about this.

I dialled the movie theatre and Morgan wasn't on shift.

"The Bravado Bookmark"

Then one of my childhood theft methods popped to mind-I needed to disguise the items as other items I could legitimately have, bag check or no (when I used to steal from the Crown Books when I was twelve, thirteen I'd buy a box of hard pretzels from the grocery store, empty it and tuck Far Side collections and dirty magazines inside, for example).

Sure, but there was a lot of stuff-what could I use to accomplish this?

Well, I needed to do something-I couldn't even reasonably put the merchandise back, at this point, it was all in all the way, now, a real mess.

In the end it was seat of my pants improvisation, waiting until Pamela showed up and then when she was in the toilet I slipped out the front, got down to the bushes where there were public benches, left the bag there and dashed back-Pamela was already at the cashier's station when I got to the shop door and she looked at me kind of sideways and I (probably mile-a-minute) explained that my friend had just walked by and I'd stepped out to say Hey to him.

"Well, you can't leave the store unattended" she said.

"I know-well, you were in the bathroom, I was only like three steps away."

"Still," she said, a stern pout like I was being a smart-aleck, "me being in the bathroom isn't the same as me watching the store."

"I know. You're right. It won't happen, again."

Pablo D'Stair welcomes reader contact/comments. He can be reached at [email protected]