“One of the tightest I’ve slayed in my time here,” Frank continued. Truthfully, I hadn’t expected this. I thought he’d drone on about how he would do her, or had planned to, but the fact that he already had? That was crazy to me.
Either way, my question distracted him from what had been on my mind—writing this novel. As we walked to the front of the store, he elaborated on their sexcapades, explaining how they went in the back storage area one evening after closing when no one was around. He went on about this little cupcake tattoo just under her left breast, right above her rib cage. I asked him to describe the tattoo, gripping my pen. It was a pink cupcake tattoo with blue sprinkles, he explained, with two cartoon eyes and a smile to match the little arms and legs. By the time I finished writing this down, we’d reached the front customer service area.
“How you finding your first day, child?” Ronda said.
“It’s going pretty all right, I suppose,” I replied. “Just kinda getting to know the pla—”
At that moment, a door opened behind her.
The customer service area was a ten-by-ten-foot room. There was an eight-foot-long counter built into the wall that separated Ronda from the customers who came to her for help. At the end of the counter, where she sat, was a latch that allowed the table to lift up—it was attached to the wall like a drawbridge that could be retracted over a moat leading to the king’s castle.
In the corner of the room, behind Ronda, a man walked through, mumbling in Spanish—Hector. Hector was a thirty-four-year-old first-generation Mexican American security guard at Muldoon’s. He was overweight and wore a white short-sleeved button-down, a black tie, and a metal badge on his left breast. His slacks were deep blue with black stripes down the sides, and they were accompanied by a utility belt containing his flashlight, baton, and empty handcuff pouch—it was technically illegal for him to detain anyone. At the end of the day, he had no jurisdiction, was just a scarecrow Ted Daniels hired at $10.75 an hour to patrol the aisles, scaring teenagers before they mustered the courage to lift something.
“Hola, Vernon,” Hector said to an armed guard who had sneaked past me without my realizing it.
“Oh, good! Right on time!” said Ted, who was walking up right then.
At the end of every month, on the twenty-eighth at 4:00 p.m. sharp, Vernon came to relieve the store of the roughly one hundred thousand dollars in cash it had made in the month. Until then, it was held securely in a Summerfold safe in Hector’s security office, right next to the monitors that displayed a closed-circuit security camera feed. With the exception of a few blind spots, the entire store was covered—not only the aisles, but outside too, including the front parking lot and back loading dock where Frank took his frequent smoke breaks.
“How’s your day, Ted?” Vernon asked. He was in his sixties, short and frail for his age, with white hair hiding under his work hat and a bit of a limp in his left leg. His partner, Gary, was the one who drove the armored truck. Gary never left his position.
“Well, I’m just fine, Vernon,” said Ted. He smiled, his teeth protruding more than ever.
Vernon grabbed the three deposit bags and put them in a locked duffel bag. “See you next month,” said Vernon. Ted and Hector waved good-bye and returned to their daily paperwork.
“That guy looked like Father Time, huh?” I said to Frank.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Ted.
“Frank,” I said, turning my head to look. Frank was nowhere to be found.
“Well, he must have slipped away while you were standing there daydreaming. No more of that, okay?”
“Got it, Ted, sorry about that.”
“Can I see you in my office?” Ted said with a smile.
Sitting in Ted’s office was never fun. He was always so awkward. He was the boss who wanted to be everyone’s buddy, insisting that you come to him if you ever needed anything. But as he pulled his chair up next to mine, the only thing I needed was space, quite honestly.
“Flynn,” he said, looking concerned. “How are we feeling today? You’ve been acting a little aloof lately. Everything all right? Things going smoothly? Anything you need, just know that I’m here.”
“No, everything is going pretty okay, thanks,” I said. He was right. I was aloof. But that was only because I was preoccupied trying to take mental notes for my book. If I wasn’t floating or being distracted by Frank, I was plotting the story in my head, thinking of how these characters would puzzle together. Trying to figure out the rising action and climax.
“All right, well, listen . . . I just want you to know that you’re a part of this family now, and if there’s anything I can help you with, you let me know,” he said with a smile. “Oh,” he continued, “the code to the break room is 34652, okay? That’s the code to everything else around this place. I made it something super easy that I would never forget. I mean, everything is pretty much unlocked or open anyway, but, you know, just in case!” he explained, pointing at me with one brow raised, as if to say in case you were wondering.
I wasn’t.
Like that, I was out of his office as quickly as I had entered, with one thought in mind.
I hope this doesn’t become a reoccurring thing.
From the corner of my eye I caught the clock on the wall. It was 6:00 p.m. My shift was over. The day had flown by. I was feeling more comfortable with how things operated, but I was still a little disoriented. I clocked out, and said bye to Ronda. Just as I was leaving, Frank stopped me.
“Flynn, where you going?” he said.
“I’m going home, man, it’s six,” I said.
“You’re not doing it right, dog,” he said, pulling out a stack of twenties and tens from his pocket.
“Frank, where’d you get that cash?” I said.
“Umm . . . ha, where you think, Einstein? From the fucking cash register,” he jeered.
“Frank, what the fuck, man, you can’t be stealing like that, that’s embezzlement!” I said.
“Bro, I’ve been tipping myself out nightly for months and no one has said shit—it’s easy as pie,” he said as he took out a banana from his apron.
“That ain’t right, man. Your luck is going to run out one of these days,” I said.
I turned and went home.
I got home and poured the day into my Moleskine. It may not have seemed like an eventful shift from the looks of it, but it was the kind of pedestrian, humdrum nonaction I needed to set the stage for the first few chapters. I wrote and wrote and wrote until my hands hurt. I turned a page, pausing momentarily, mentally dazed from the stream.
I turned my notebook sideways and scrawled in all caps:
MULDOON’S
That was it. That would be the title. It was a rare moment of certainty. I closed the book and went to bed.
• • •
The next morning, when I came to work, I saw the old black man outside playing chess again. This was already feeling like déjà vu. As I entered through the automatic doors and walked toward the break room to clock in, I saw the crazy-looking dude holding his coffee to his nose. He sniffed intensely.
“Coffee coffee coffee coffee!!!!” he said.
“Hey, what’s your name, man?” I asked.