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When Gertrude reentered the large back room, she found Roderick holding several bras.
“I’m just going to hang these out,” he stammered, answering a question she hadn’t asked.
“All right,” Gertrude said, because she didn’t know what else to say. Then, grateful for the empty room, she darted to the nearest bin and began digging. Nothing. She dug through the next. She found a shiny pizza cutter she desperately wanted, but resisted the urge to steal it. Other than that, nothing. She had pawed through every bin but one when Willow returned. Gertrude, out of breath, tried to look nonchalant, but she could feel that last bin calling to her.
“What have you been doing?” Willow asked. “You’re all red!”
“Hot flash,” Gertrude lied.
“OK, well, let’s start pricing then.”
Gertrude groaned, but followed her, and for the next several hours, Gertrude and Willow priced donated clothing and took it out to the racks. Gertrude couldn’t believe there were enough people in Mattawooptock to donate this much clothing. Where had it all come from?
Gertrude’s feet hurt. She was actually considering abandoning the investigation, and her new job, when Willow declared a smoke break.
“I don’t smoke,” Gertrude said, confused.
“But I do,” Willow said, and left the room.
Thank God, Gertrude thought, and scurried over to the final bin.
But there was nothing in it. Nothing but clothing and one clown puppet with half of its glass face shattered. Gertrude shuddered and buried the clown in clothes. Where on earth could that damnable lamp be? Gertrude wondered, looking around. Then, with a sinking feeling, she realized it could be in one of the recycling boxes. These were huge. And tall. She looked around for something to stand on and was relieved to see that someone had donated a small, wooden bookcase. She dragged it over to the glass recycling box and leaned on it, putting all her weight on it to make sure it was sturdy. It appeared to be. Then, very carefully, she climbed the bookshelf like a stepladder, and, clinging to the edge of the box, peered into the glass recycling. There was a lot of it, but as she scanned each inch of the pile, she became confident she could see nary a shade of green.
“What are you doing?” Willow barked from behind her, startling her. She wheeled around, trying to look innocent, but as her left foot came off the bookshelf, it began to wobble under the weight of her right foot. Just then a loud bell sounded, further startling Gertrude.
“Ahhh!” she cried, afraid of plummeting to her death in front of the minivan that had just pulled up to donate more puzzles.
Willow ran to her and steadied the bookcase so that Gertrude could climb down, which she did, gingerly placing one hand on Willow’s shoulder for support. Willow’s grimace made it clear that she was barely tolerating that hand.
“Thank you,” Gertrude said, when she had returned to the safe cement and leaned on her walker with both hands. “Much obliged.”
“I repeat, what were you doing?”
“I, um, I ... accidentally dropped my ring in there.” Willow didn’t look convinced. “I think,” Gertrude added.
“You dropped your ring in a box that is taller than you are?”
“It is not,” Gertrude snapped, and then realized that was beside the point. “Well, I was throwing something in there and my ring flew off. I thought it went in there.”
Willow looked skeptically at Gertrude’s hands.
“What?” Gertrude asked, afraid to look down.
“You’re wearing rubber gloves.”
Gertrude looked down at her hands. “Oh. Yeah. I guess I am.”
Willow rolled her eyes again. “You know what? I don’t care what you were doing. Let’s get back to work.”
Gertrude and Willow finished the clothes and then moved on to book pricing, which bored Gertrude to death. “I didn’t know this many people read books,” she said at one point.
“Again,” Willow responded, “I’m not surprised.”
The book pricing and stocking took them right to five o’clock.
“Time to go,” Willow said, sounding relieved.
“I’m going to stay just a bit longer,” Gertrude said.
“Absolutely not,” Willow said. “If anyone is going to get extra hours, it’s not going to be you.”
Gertrude furrowed her brow, confused for a second. Then, “Oh. Right. Extra hours. Yeah. That’s what I wanted.”
Willow looked puzzled, but she turned to go. “Come on, let’s go clock out.”
There was no actual process for clocking out. They just told Sherri they were leaving.
“How did it go?” Sherri asked.
Willow and Gertrude answered at the same time: “Oh, about what you’d expect” and “Great!” respectively.
Sherri smiled. “Good to hear. See you both tomorrow.”
When Gertrude saw that Willow was really leaving, she turned around. Sherri glanced at her. “Just forgot something in the back. I’m going to go fetch it,” Gertrude offered. Sherri nodded and turned to help a customer.
Gertrude returned to the back room and was relieved to find it empty. She dragged the bookcase back into position and climbed up to peer into the electronics box, which was nearly empty. She didn’t need the bookshelf for the computers box. That one was much smaller. Nothing. Then she climbed back up to look into the paper and cardboard box. Again, mostly empty. She was starting to get cocky when she climbed up to look into the clothing box. Then she groaned. It was chock-full. Just then, Matt entered the back room through the swinging doors. Without thinking much about what she was doing, Gertrude hoisted one leg onto the box and then rolled into the pile of rejected clothing. Not impressed with the way the pile smelled, she instinctively sat up, but then thought better of it. He might see her head pop up out of the box. So she started to dig. Very carefully. And dig. She had almost dug clear to the bottom when she heard Matt say, “Hey, Roderick. Looks like Willow got everything done for us today. If you want to man the door, I’ll go neaten up the floor.”
“Sure, Matt,” Roderick said.
Gertrude was relieved. She thought it might be easier to sneak past Roderick than Matt. Matt seemed pretty sharp, though probably not as sharp as he seemed to think he was.
As she dug, she found a few things that were probably too good to throw away, and wondered if stealing them from the recycling box was actually stealing. She shook her head to refocus herself. She heard the loud bell again, and seconds later the donation door opened. She felt the blast of cold air from inside the box, and welcomed the fresh smell of it. There was some rustling, more footsteps, and then she heard Roderick say, “Sorry, sir. We can’t take that kind of television.”
Then she heard a stranger cuss out Roderick. She was thinking about climbing out to jump to his defense, but before she could make up her mind, the man stomped off. He must have dropped something else off though, because within a few minutes, a large pair of dingy women’s underwear landed on her left hand. She stifled a scream. Then she dodged a pair of one legged jeans that soared into the box.
She felt through every inch of that box, but there was no lamp. Disappointed, she began to think about climbing out of the box. She could still hear Roderick moving around, but she was willing to bet he wasn’t very observant.
She was wrong.
When she poked her head out of the box to have a look, Roderick screamed like a Stephen King prom queen. This frightened Gertrude so, she screamed right back.
Roderick stopped screaming. “How long have you been in there?”
“Oh, just a minute,” Gertrude said. “Accidentally dropped my ring in here.” She was no longer wearing rubber gloves, so now this lie was far more plausible.
Gertrude looked down and noticed that Roderick had moved the bookcase. “Where’s the bookcase?” she asked. Then she noticed her walker was missing too. “Where’s my walker?”
“Oh, sorry,” Roderick said. “I thought it was donated—”
“Where is it?” she demanded, her panic escalating.
“Out on the floor,” he said, looking terrified.
“Go get it!” she screeched.
A woman she didn’t recognize came flying through the swinging doors. “What’s going on?” she asked and then noticed Gertrude sitting in the box of recycled clothing. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Who are you?” Gertrude countered.
“I’m Rose, the night manager.”
“Oh. I’m Gertrude.”
No one else said anything. Roderick was staring at the floor as if he’d been caught in something shameful.
“What was all the screaming about?” Rose asked. “And why are you in a recycling box?”
“I’m looking for my missing ring, and this birdbrain is trying to sell my walker!”
Rose looked dumbfounded. “Do you work here?” she asked Gertrude.
“No. I mean, yes. Started today. Can you please tell him to go get my walker, before someone buys it? Everything I own is in that walker pouch!” This was a small exaggeration.
Rose looked at Roderick. “Did you put her walker out on the floor?”
Roderick nodded. “I didn’t know it was hers.”
“Can you please go get it?”
Roderick nodded again and then left.
“So,” Rose said, looking at Gertrude, “can you climb out of there?”
“Sure,” Gertrude said, as if that was obvious, “if you can get me a bookcase or something to stand on.”
“How about a stepladder?”
“Oh? We have one of those? Why, sure, that would work just fine.”
By the time Roderick returned with her walker, Gertrude had climbed out of the box. She leaned on the walker gratefully, and as she tried to catch her breath, she noticed the price tag. “Ten dollars?” she cried, looking up at Roderick accusingly. “Are you bonkers? Do you know how much I paid for this?”
Roderick didn’t answer her. He just looked scared.
“Oh never mind. I have to go home.” She was exhausted. And she missed her cats.
As she headed toward the door, she heard Rose ask, “Are you sure she works here?”