And after just weeks on the job, in spite of the aches in our backs and the dullness in our brains, we were on our way to a great book.
“Look,” I would often say. “A year from now we’ll be back in New York, sitting on top of the world.”
Megan would agree. Then she would say that we were going to be found out, that she and I and Alex and Lindsay would disappear from the face of the earth. We’d talk. We’d even cry sometimes. And then we did the only thing we could: we’d get back to work on the book.
So when the notice went out on everyone’s personal message boards that the job of assistant group manager, reporting to Sam Reed, was available, Megan and I never even considered applying.
A few days later, while loading twenty cartons of environmentally friendly lightbulbs and three hundred cases of Fancy Feast Classic cat food on my Stormer, I received the following text message from Megan:
Unbelievable! They promoted me to the Asst Mgr job!
When Megan and I spoke at lunch, I said that I was shocked; she hadn’t even applied for the job.
Megan said, “I would have been shocked, too…except our asshole manager Sam Reed is the one who told me about it. He said it was mainly his decision. He said it’s because I have ‘such a sweet attitude.’”
“And such a sweet ass,” I added.
We both laughed. But let’s face it. This kind of thing never makes a husband happy.
Megan and I agreed that the best way to proceed would be to act grateful to Sam and try to create more opportunities to get information for our book. So at the little congratulatory party for Megan (a few hundred people, exquisite Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux, and the same little caviar treats they’d served at Dr. Werner’s rant), when Sam raised his glass to toast Megan and said, “Who’d have thought we’d welcome so much sunshine from New York?” Megan smiled.
Then she said, “I can’t think of a nicer place to shine than right here in New Burg.”
And the Oscar for best performance by a woman in a leading role goes to Megan Brandeis.
I couldn’t help but think—at least for a second—that tomorrow Megan would be behind a desk and I’d be behind the wheel of a Stormer. Then I glanced toward the front of the room and watched Sam Reed and Megan. They were posing for photos. Phone cameras were clicking all over the place. I watched as Sam put his arm around the back of Megan’s waist. I watched his hand inch slowly down to a place it shouldn’t be. I watched and waited for Megan to push Sam’s hand away. It didn’t happen. Maybe she had to let Sam hold her. But then again, maybe she didn’t.
My paranoia was not over the edge, but it sure as hell was heading in that direction.
I decided that all would be well for a while. Maybe I was being stupidly influenced by all those signs around the fulfillment centers that said NO WORRIES.
Chapter 30
“ALEX, YOU can turn off that damn camera right now,” Megan said. Her voice meant business.
We had both spotted Alex and Lindsay in our workroom-office, hiding behind a stack of old issues of the Wall Street Journal. They were making yet another video of us on their flat-vids, the little slim steel contraptions that let them text, phone, record, and edit videos.
For the past three days they had been shooting us nonstop. They shot us having coffee in the morning. They shot us on the phone, at the supermarket, washing the car, everywhere but in the shower and on the john—and I wasn’t even sure we had escaped that humiliation. They told us, “We even have lots of great shots of you guys sleeping.”
They said it was for a school project called Home Sweet New Burg.
“It’s a collage-type thing,” Alex explained. “Lots of quick cuts, you know? A really cool music track. Maybe Beck. Just like a really interesting documentary, you know?”
I didn’t know. And the incessant filming was getting on my nerves.
“Okay,” Lindsay said. “If you don’t care about our school project, we’ll just sit here quietly.”
“Of course we care about your school project,” Megan said, taking a deep breath. “But your father and I are working now. You know how important our project is.”
“So we can’t just sit here quietly?” Alex asked.
“Why would you even want to?” I asked.
Both Alex and Lindsay still had their standard New Burg smiles, but when Lindsay replied, there was a definite edge to her voice.
“Yeah. You’re right. Why would we want to?”
She turned to Alex. “Let’s go,” she said.
And they disappeared out the door.
“Were we too harsh?” Megan said.
“No,” I said. “It’s unnerving—this sudden interest the kids have in hanging out with us.”
“Maybe it’s just a sign that they’re growing up. They want to be with us.”
“I never wanted to be with my parents,” I said.
Megan said, “I’m not surprised. I’ve met your parents.”
“Now, that’s harsh.”
“They just like to hang out with us. Is that so terrible?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems that a lot of the time they spend with us they’re not exactly…interacting. They don’t talk very much. When we’re online, when we’re reading. They even come up to the office and…” I struggled for the words.
Megan said, “And hang out.”
“No, not just hang out. Watch us. I feel like they’re watching us.”
She laughed. Then she leaned in and kissed me.
“The only things watching us,” Megan said, “are the drones and the surveillance cameras.”
“And now the drones and the surveillance cameras are watching our children watching us. Look. I’m worried. Sure, they love school. They love their friends and their teachers and…well, here’s the thing. This project is a perfect example. They are so intense about it, so into it…it’s like they’re turning into…I don’t know. They’re just not the Alex and Lindsay I know.”
“I understand, but it was bound to happen,” Megan said.
“That they’d become strangers?”
“No. That they’d grow up.”
We both returned to our laptops. But not for long. There was a knock, and suddenly Alex appeared in our workroom.
“Oh, honey,” Megan said nicely. “No more video. Please.”
“No,” he said. “No more video. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you both.” The smile was still on his face. So how bad could it be?
“Go ahead,” I said.
“This book you two are doing…”
“What about it?” Megan asked.
“Stop it. Stop doing it. Stop writing it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Please, just stop it,” he said.
And again I asked, “But why?”
“It’s a bad idea.”
The ever-present smile suddenly and completely left his face. Alex walked to the door. Then he turned and spoke one final time.
“A really bad idea.”
Chapter 31
ON MONDAY morning Megan’s boss, Sam Reed (known to Megan and me as Sam Slimeball), informed Megan that he and she would be attending a five-day conference for Store supervisors. It would be held at the main office, in San Francisco.
On Monday night I dreamed that Megan and Sam Reed were standing naked in the fulfillment center, loading a two-thousand-count carton of Trojan Ultra Ribbed lubricated latex condoms onto a Stormer that I was driving.
Okay, I know it was a fairly sick and predictable dream, but the next morning I told Megan that it might be a great idea if I tagged along on the San Francisco trip. After all, workers who had just started at the Store were automatically entitled to five vacation days.
“Don’t waste your vacation time, Jacob. What’s more, you’re patronizing me. I’m no little girl. I can take care of myself.”
“Look, we both know he’s going to try to jump you when you two are away together,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll try to pull some shit. But I’ve put him in his place before, and I’ll do it again…and again…and again.”
“C’mon. I’ll buy myself a cheap ticket and go. Maybe between the two of us we can get some really hot info for the book. Just tell Slimeball that I’m coming. I won’t be in the way. Tell him we’ve never been to San Francisco, and we always wanted to climb Nob Hill.”
“Well, first of all, that’s a lie. We have been to San Francisco,” she said.
“Big deal. Twenty years ago, when we were barely out of college and totally broke,” I said. “Camping out in Golden Gate Park, eating lunch at soup kitchens, walking—”
Megan cut me off before I really started to stroll down memory lane.
“Okay. Much as I hate lying, I can live with that lie. But I know Sam’s going to have a shit fit when I tell him you’re joining us.”
“Good. That makes me feel even better about going.”
Megan turned out to be absolutely right about Sam Slimeball’s reaction. He was pissed and disappointed and tried like hell to dissuade her. He said point-blank that this was an “opportunity” for him and Megan to really get to know each other.
Megan told me that she said, “That’s exactly what I was afraid of: you want to really get to know me better.”
Her response to Sam Reed’s comment sounded a little too aggressive to believe, even for a strong woman like Megan.
But what the hell. Like I said, Megan wasn’t lying. If that’s what she said she said…then that’s what she said.
I sure hoped I was right about that.
Chapter 32
IT TURNED out that Megan and Sam were booked on a separate charter flight with a big group of executive-level people from the Store. That group was flying out of Omaha, the airport where my family and I landed when we first arrived here.
Me? I was leaving two hours later from NBU—the airport code for New Burg, Nebraska.
If you accidentally happened upon New Burg International Airport, or—amazingly—had to fly out of the place, you’d think it was just another sleepy Midwest airport, home to a few business flights, a few private planes, some commuter flights, and a handful of crop dusters. If you ignored the two jet runways all you’d see is a smallish ramshackle wooden terminal. Like most everything in New Burg, the building is quaint and small and designed to be cute—in this case, sporting gray weathered shingles and storm fencing around a parking lot that could accommodate only around a dozen cars.
But like almost everything in New Burg, looks usually prove to be wildly deceiving.
I parked and removed my suitcase from the trunk. It is one of my really stupid affectations that I refuse to use a suitcase with wheels. Every time Megan and I are at an airport, whether it’s Rio or London or New York, she never tires of pointing out the many men younger than I am who are easily rolling a wheeled suitcase.
The doorway to the simple wooden terminal was not automatic. It actually had a doorknob. I turned it. I walked inside, and a woman dressed in a red skirt and a blue blazer, a woman who looked like she might have stepped out of a 1950s television commercial, greeted me.
“Welcome to NBU, sir. May I see your boarding pass?” she said. She was neither sweet nor sour. She was perfectly New Burg polite.
I showed her the boarding pass. After she examined it she handed it back and gestured to a closed door behind her.
“Use this escalator here, sir,” she said. This door did open automatically. I stepped aboard the escalator, and I swiftly descended. Within moments I was in the most elaborate modern room I’d ever entered. It had things you’d find in other airports—moving sidewalks, flashing arrival and departure signs, steel desks that seemed to signal airline gates—but the sidewalks were faster, the signs brighter, the steel desks taller.
Everything seemed bigger than normal, better than normal. The walkways were wider. The domelike ceilings were higher.
I looked at the departure board, yet I saw nothing that indicated flights to San Francisco. No SFO. Lots of LGAs and JFKs and LAXs. But nothing to help me. The suitcase was beginning to feel heavier.
Then a woman—attractive, young, not wearing a uniform—approached me.
“Mr. Brandeis? Jacob Brandeis?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Wonderful.”
“Yeah, it is wonderful,” I said with a smile. She ignored my joke. I was beginning to realize that almost everyone in New Burg ignored my jokes. Maybe I just wasn’t very funny.
She was holding a small electronic device. She looked down at it and then spoke.
“I see you’re scheduled for the next flight to San Francisco. And that your wife left approximately two hours ago on a United flight from Omaha. And that you are traveling with two children,” she said.
“Well, you’re sort of right. My wife is traveling with a different group. But I was booked here by the Store.”
“Right,” she said, as if I had just told her that the sky was blue or the sun was hot.
“But you’re scheduled to fly with two children, Alexander and Lindsay Anne.”
“Yes. They’re our children. But they’re at home. They’re in school,” I said.
I was becoming nervous but not panicked-nervous. I was also noticing that almost every other person or group of people in the airport was being interviewed by a similarly attractive young woman using a handheld device. The only difference was that these other people seemed happy, almost giddy, in their conversations.
“Well,” she said. “There has been some sort of mix-up. Let me try to straighten it out.”
She punched some buttons.
Then she confirmed what she’d previously told me.
“No. The children should be with you. They must have Store child care and Store nutritional catering. They cannot be left alone.”
“You see,” I said, “they’re old enough to be left alone. We’ve left them alone many times. They’re perfectly capable.…The girl is—”
I was preparing myself for a big-time run-in with this woman. Suddenly she spoke, this time with a ridiculously wide grin.
“No problem, Jacob. No problem.”
She then hit a few more keys on her handheld and continued speaking.
“Child-Care Look-In Assistance has been contacted, and both morning and evening meals have been arranged for nutritional standardization and accurate drone delivery.”
All I could get out of my mouth was “Good. That’s good.”
“Gate 11,” she said with that damned stupid smile. “Your San Francisco flight leaves in forty-five minutes. Enjoy.”
Then she added, “Be at peace.”
“By the way,” I said. “What’s the airline I’m flying?”
She smiled. Then she spoke.
“As I said, Mr. Brandeis. Be at peace.”
Chapter 33
A LOT of things about San Francisco were unchanged since our visit twenty years ago. The charming cable cars still struggled up the hills, and the Golden Gate Bridge remained awesomely beautiful in its strange industrial orange paint.
Yet many other things had changed enormously. It wasn’t just the hundreds of new forty-story buildings scraping the heavens or all those Silicon Valley billionaires jamming up the traffic with their Porsches and Mercedes.
One group of changes was particularly frightening to Megan and me. It was as if the little town of New Burg had been exploded into a giant chic city.
Government-placed CCTV cameras and Store-placed surveillance cameras were posted everywhere: on top of traffic lights and building entrances, on the refrigerated cases in delis, hidden in the stained-glass windows of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, even on the doors of the bathroom stalls in AT&T Park.
Miniature audio pickups dotted every coffee-shop table and every department-store counter and every hotel room. There were audio recorders in the taxis, the buses, the cable cars. There were cameras in the restaurants, the parks, the ferry to Alcatraz
. Lots of people wore surgical masks, not merely because of the filthy air, I thought, but also because it helped hide their identities.
Just as depressing and creepy were the heavens above. That sunless sky was no longer just the result of the notorious San Francisco fog. No, the skies were also dark because they were thick with surveillance drones and delivery drones and research drones. The new San Francisco made me very scared, but it also made me very sad. I had seen the future, and it clearly belonged to the Store.
And oh, yes. One other thing had changed during this trip, and that other thing had nothing to do with San Francisco. It had everything to do with our obnoxious boss, Sam Reed.
Sam Reed, the same guy who couldn’t keep his hands off my wife, the same guy who spoke to me as if I were a mongrel, had suddenly turned into my best bud. For no apparent reason.
“Hey, Jacob, I scored some tickets for the Giants-Dodgers game tonight. How about Megan does some shopping at Gump’s and takes in a museum or two while we do the game? Then we can all meet up for a late dinner.” Huh?
Here’s another equally creepy and unexpected burst of humanity from Sam:
“Look, Jacob, I can’t invite you to join Megan and me for tomorrow morning’s lectures and meetings, but I can hook you in to the afternoon trip to Napa that they planned for us.”
Both Megan and I were super suspicious, to say the least—Mr. Hyde was morphing into Dr. Jekyll way too easily.
Back at the Fairmont, where I was changing for our ball game, we discussed “the new Sam Reed.”
As always, Megan didn’t care that the surveillance cameras were recording our every word. She let fly with her opinion.
“He’s up to something,” Megan said. “There’s no way someone like Sam can turn into Mr. Nice Guy overnight.”
“Let’s not push the Cynical button so fast,” I said. “Maybe he’s just sort of getting to know us, and he thinks, like, we’re funny and smart and decent and—”
“Don’t kid yourself, Jacob,” Megan said. “Remember when we asked him about Bette and Bud yesterday? He just click-clacked his iPad, and in about ten seconds he said, ‘Nope. Just transferred. Not here for a debriefing. Never were.’”
The Store Page 9
