Chapter 4
FOUR
WIL
“She’s here.” I slam the folder with Abbey’s application onto Sam’s desk.
“Who’s here?” He doesn’t look up from scanning in a drop shipment of CDs. “You need these Alanis Morissette CDs, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s not important right now. You’re never going to believe this, but that woman from last night? She was here and she applied for a job as a media specialist, and Jeremy hired her. I think she’s the one. I think she’s the person who can pull the department out of this slump.”
Sam sets down his scanner and swivels his chair to look at me, eyes wide. “No way. Are you sure it’s her?”
“One-hundred percent sure.”
“Okay, that’s uncanny, but what do you mean, she’s the one?”
I sit in Eric’s chair, which is typically empty because he’s always somewhere in the bowels of the warehouse or helping customers with carry-outs and shooting the shit with Donnie at the front door.
“She’s the one who’s going to save my ass on the next merch eval. Mr. Wilshire wanted me to poach someone from another store. We hired her instead.”
“How did you find her?”
“I didn’t. She found us.”
Sam shakes his head. “I’m so confused.”
“I wasn’t sure it was her at first. But when she came up to the front lanes, I knew. I knew it was her. Same purple lipstick, same hair.”
“Purple lipstick?”
“Well, maybe not purple, but this deep purplish-red. I don’t know, what do you call that? Plum? Maroon?”
“Nah, maroon is more red than purple.”
“Plum, then. And goddamn, those eyes. They do things to me.”
“What the hell, Wil? Do you want her to work in the media department, or do you want to bang her?”
I huff out a laugh. No. No, even if I wanted to have sex with her—and believe me, last night I totally would have if things had worked out the way I imagine they might’ve—today, she’s off limits.
Maybe it’s a good thing that we left when we did.
Abbey might never have walked through those doors today if I’d gone home with her.
She’s got a broad taste in music—I’ll give her a pass on the Mellencamp, who’s not my favorite, although I can see the appeal with Farm Aid—and she’s going to be perfect for the job.
“Earth to Wil.” Sam grins. “Still thinking about banging her?”
“Shut up.”
“Does she have a lot of retail experience, then?”
“No, she’s a journalist.”
He laughs. “Why does she want to work here?”
“Layoff. She worked at Mr. Movies in high school.”
“A video rental place is not the same as the complicated world of entertainment media at Hometown Electronics, Jaws.”
“I know that.”
“So why do you think she’s going to save you?”
“I’m sure this will sound uncharacteristically optimistic of me… but I can’t explain it. I just know.”
Sam snorts. “I know that you can trust your gut. It’s hardly ever steered you wrong, except for, you know, those four years with Candy, and the time at the Dig Me Under concert when you—”
I cut him off. “Shut up. Never bring that up again. Or Candy, for that matter.”
“Anyway,” he continues, “your dad is going to think you’ve lost your marbles, thinking this girl who has no real retail experience is going to save the department and/or keep your career out of the toilet.”
“Woman,” I say.
“Huh?”
“She’s a woman, not a girl.”
It’s something Mom drilled into us growing up. Nobody calls your father or any other grown man a boy, she’d say. No, I’d agree. Everyone calls my father an asshole.
They divorced when I was still in elementary school, after she’d helped him take Hometown Electronics, the company he’d started in 1970, to the next level.
I learned a lot from their relationship: how not to treat people from Jefferson A.
Wilshire III, and from my mother, that you can still treat others with respect and grace even when they shit all over you.
When I was in high school, Mom married a different CEO, one who, in addition to having more money than he’ll ever know what to do with, heads up his own private foundation. They travel the world to help build schools in LDCs—least developed countries—among other philanthropic activities.
God, I miss her. I haven’t seen her since my brother’s college graduation, and even then, she could only stay for a few hours before she and Gregory had to catch a flight to Haiti.
The fact that she’s doing humanitarian work does little to ease the sting of living without her.
It’s a double-edged sword, this feeling of abandonment and the guilt of feeling that way when she’s helping people who need her more than I ever will.
“Apologies. Woman,” Sam says. “Are you going to tell Jeff?”
“Nope. I’m going to let the merchandising and sales speak for themselves.”
“Well, good luck with that. So far, the merchandising has been saying, ‘Hey, look, I shit the bed!’”
The doorbell to the dock rings, loud and shrill and insistent.
“Ah, right on time,” Sam says, heavy with sarcasm. I glance at my watch. It’s truck night and the driver’s two hours early. “Good luck, Jaws,” Sam says again as he stands and pushes his chair flush against the desk. “I hope everything works out the way you hope it will with this new woman.”
“Me, too, Sam.” I already know it won’t, not exactly, because whatever I might have hoped would happen last night at The Golden can’t happen now. “Me, too.”
The next night after a late close, I sit on my couch watching South Park with a Sam Adams Boston Lager and takeout tacos from La Cuchara, the Mexican restaurant across the parking lot from Hometown.
I’m exhausted after a long day, including a couple of hours working with Kevin, one of Aurora’s media full-timers, to organize overstock in the media warehouse.
It’ll be another couple of days before the results of Abbey’s background check come back, and we shouldn’t wait for her to start fixing all the things that have gone wrong since Aurora took over the department.
I sink deeper into the soft, comfortable cushions of my sofa and put my feet up on the ottoman.
This is my third place since college, and I’m finally making enough to afford something nice: a corner apartment in a newer building not far from the Woodlake store with enormous windows that overlook a park reserve and a small lake.
It’s too much for one person but I feel like I’ve earned it, especially after some of the loser roommates I’ve had.
I splurged on nice furniture, good cookware—even though I’m hardly ever here to use it—and a new mattress.
There are two small guest rooms, too, where Uncle Howard and my grandparents—Mimi and Bob, Mom’s parents, who are still active with the nonprofit—stay when they’re in town.
Seems like I’m gone more than I’m here, I don’t know any of my neighbors, and there are always way too many kids at the outdoor pool. But even though I’m still working on making it feel more like home and less like something off the showroom floor at a furniture superstore, it’s mine.
Candy used to ask why I chose to live in “dumps” when I had “all that family money.” There’s no family money.
Dad pays me a salary, and nothing more. I wouldn’t want his money, anyway.
Even if he offered it—which he hasn’t—he’d see it as a sign of weakness.
Sure, he paid for my education, but if I quit Hometown before those required ten years are up, I owe him every penny.
And the clock didn’t start ticking until the day I graduated.
My cell phone chimes with a text. It’s after midnight, and I don’t get many texts outside of my coworkers and occasionally my siblings. And with my ten-texts-a-month mobile plan, I don’t send many myself. I grab the phone and wake up the screen.
In London for a few more days before we return to Angola. Would love to catch up.
Mom. She’d love to catch up.
I don’t have the energy for this right now.
She’s my mother, not some classmate you “catch up” with at reunions every five years.
And what would I tell her? Yes, still on rotation.
Yes, Dad’s still an unreasonable blowhard.
No, I’m not seeing anyone, but I’ve met someone who loves Junior Watkins.
There’s no chance for a future with her because she works for me now.
Yes, still putting Hometown first. Always.
Sometimes, I think about what life might have been like if my parents hadn’t divorced, or even if they had, if Mom hadn’t met Gregory and left the U.S.
I wouldn’t have moved in with Dad and his new wife, Chanelle, or started working at Hometown while I was still in high school.
Maybe I would have studied harder or taken a gap year to backpack across Europe or not gone to school at all.
Maybe I would have joined a band and toured in a bright yellow coach bus like HollowPoint.
It doesn’t make sense, I know, to think about life in terms of what if. Not about my past, not about my future. Not about Mom. Not about Abbey.
The phone chimes again: Saw Steely Dan at Wembley last weekend.
Well, that’s great. Good for them.
I love Steely Dan, so she probably thinks dropping that nugget will compel me to respond.
Yes, I’d love to hear how the show was, but I resist. She occasionally texts or calls from their home base in London on the rare occasion that they’re not in some poverty-stricken country.
I’ve never asked Kaplan or Kelsey if Mom sends them the same types of messages, or how often she reaches out to “catch up” with them.
I don’t want to know about their relationships with her, actually.
And I’ve got more important things to worry about than my flimsy, nearly nonexistent relationship with my mother.
I set the phone down, drain the rest of my beer, and go to bed.