CHAPTER 40

A Ten-foot-high Teddy Bear

(October 7, 2016)

Mr. Little, the manager, tore into me again near the beginning of my shift. He said I’d been slacking off more and more lately. He said my head had been in the clouds for the past couple of days. He said this in front of the whole store. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bill snickering into his collar. Mr. Little asked me if I wanted to lose my job.

“No,” I said.

“Can you afford to lose your job?”

“No,” I said. I tried to be calm. I knew Mr. Little had some self-esteem problems. I tried to take that into account. He was 5'3" and his name was Mr. Little. I felt sad for him. It must’ve been a strange sight for the customers: this bald little man in a suit and tie pointing his finger up at me as I towered over him nodding docilely.

“Do you have more important things to think about than your duties here?” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Well, you’re certainly thinking about something, and I know it’s not your job. Maybe you’d like to share it with the rest of us, hm? I’m sure we’d all like to hear the existential quandaries you’re contemplating on company time, Greeley.”

“Okay,” I said.

Mr. Little planted his hands on his hips, gestured for me to proceed.

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” I said.

Everybody in the store burst out laughing. Mr. Little quickly turned bright red. I could see him shrinking into himself. He began to bluster, then at last managed to choke out the words: “Get back to work, Greeley, and do your job from now on!”

I nodded. I was confused.

Why was everybody laughing?

Later I was in the stockroom unpacking a shipment of the new E.L. James novel (not the same one as before, a new one, also about bondage) when Bill came up behind me and slapped me on the back.

“Hey, that was great how you embarrassed The Midget like that. I didn’t know you were so good with a comeback.” He snapped his fingers three times in row.

I smiled. “Oh, thank you.” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

“Man, I wouldn’t have the balls to say something like that. I can’t risk losing this job. I’m saving up money for college. You think I want to stay here all my life? I want to open a business someday, maybe a bookstore of my own. Then I’ll have my own employees to push around. Yeah.”

At that moment Little stuck his head into the room and said, “Greeley! I’d like to see you in my office. Now.”

Bill almost jumped out of his pants. When Little had disappeared Bill patted me on the shoulder. “Good luck,” he said and continued unpacking the E.L. James novels for me.

I entered Little’s office. He was sitting behind his desk with his hands folded in front of him. I noticed he had a lot of hangnails. His fingernails were bitten to the quick. He told me to close the door. I did so.

He just stared at me for a few seconds, then said, “Do you think you’re funny?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Do you think you’re funny?”

I stared at him silently. I had already answered the question.

“Well, maybe you’ll think this is funny.” He picked up a black felt-tip marker and scrawled two words on a blank sheet of typing paper. He held up the sheet of paper for me to read, his pinkies sticking out primly.

“What does that say?” he said.

“‘You’re fired,’” I read.

“Do you think that’s funny?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t feel good to be made fun of, does it?”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

His face began to redden again. “Aren’t you going to get angry?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m firing you!”

“Well, what can I do about it?”

“Nothing! That’s exactly the point, isn’t it?”

“The point of what?”

He crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it toward the trashcan. It missed and landed on the floor. He shot up from his chair and said, “Get out of here! Now!”

I nodded.

I left.

I had about two hours to kill before I went home, so I just wandered around for a while, sometimes stopping to peer through the store windows and look at all the pretty things I couldn’t buy.

I’ve got a few hundred dollars in the bank, I told myself as I stared at a giant teddy bear in a toy store. It was ten feet high. Why would anyone want a ten-foot-high teddy bear? I thought, then realized I was getting off-track. Focus, focus. The money I’ve got in the bank will last me a few weeks at least. By then you’ll have found a new job. Heather doesn’t have to know. Why worry her? She worries too much already. God, it used to be so much easier just walking onto a stage and talking. A ten-foot-high teddy bear. What the fuck?

I wandered around in a daze for the next hour or so, then caught a bus for home. I wandered around the block twice before I entered the apartment building.

“Just in time for the debates,” Heather said as I came in the door. She was sitting on the sofa, hugging a throw pillow to her chest. “Too bad you had to work late last night. You missed the next President mopping up the floor with that idiot. Who’s Audrey?”

“Audrey? What’re you talking about?”

“Some girl called. Said she met you at a club. She was going through these phone numbers she’d written on the backs of old receipts and wondered what you were up to now. That’s what she said. Oh, yes, and she said she thought you were hilarious.”

I remembered the girl. I’d met her at Prospero’s several years earlier, right after one of my best performances. My fellow comedians assured me my monologue had been a masterpiece, divinely inspired stream-of-consciousness. Audrey had been a sexy teenage groupie flashing doe-eyes at me all during my set. She’d had a mean-looking, monstrous golem of a boyfriend, but he hadn’t been paying much attention to her that evening. With just a little sweet talk I probably could’ve convinced her to come back home with me. As with Esthra, however, I barely even tried. Why? Who knows? I recalled getting her phone number, but I’d lost it long ago. Around the time that everything changed.

“What … what did you tell her?” I said.

“I said you were at work. Then she asked me who I was, and I told her. I told her to fuck off, that’s what I told her.”

“Oh, Heather. There was no need to do that.”

“Did you fuck this girl?”

“No … I-I think I know who she is. She came up to me after one of my gigs.” Sweat began to pour down my cheeks. My head hurt. I felt a migraine coming on. “I don’t even remember giving her my phone number. I must have, though. I mean, she probably asked for it.”

“I’m sure she did.”

“I can’t imagine being brave enough to just give it to her.”

“Did you kiss her?”

“No.”

“Did she kiss you?”

“We never kissed each other.”

“Well, what did you do? It must’ve been something special. Why call you after all this time? Everyone knows you’re not … hilarious anymore.” Sweat was pouring down Heather’s brow too. “Neither am I. Neither is Danny. Neither is… .”

“We didn’t do anything. We hugged each other.”

“What? She let you hug her, but she didn’t let you kiss her? C’mon.”

“I wasn’t trying to kiss her.”

“But would you have, if she’d let you?”

I sat down beside her and closed my eyes. I knew she was just being playful, in her own way, but I wasn’t in the mood.