"Greed. It's the impulse that drives us. Not sex, not love, not the desire to help others, but the desire to acquire, the need to own. It is from this impulse that love and sex spring. Relationships are a form of ownership . . ."
He passed in and out of consciousness, in and out of sleep, and always, whether his eyes were open or closed, he heard the melodious voice of Newman King. ". . . If people don't want it, we make them want it. We make sure that everyone around them has it and they feel left out if they don't. We use peer pressure to our advantage. We exploit their . . ."
Hours went by.
Days.
Sometime during the week -- he'd lost track of time -- the television was turned off. He was released from his bonds by a man dressed in a doctor's white smock, was given an injection in his arm and was allowed to stand and walk around the room.
The pain in his buttocks had completely disappeared.
He was fed a sumptuous meal of deliriously unhealthy junk food brought in on a cart by a gorgeous, bikini-clad young woman. As he ate the meal, the instructor returned with a portable chalkboard, and using lectures and drawings he explained the duties of a manager, went through the organization of The Store. He read extensively from both _The Employee's Bible_ and _The Manager's Concordance_, and Bill was allowed to stop him at any time and ask questions.
The lecture continued after he had finished his food and the woman had taken the table away. Bill was so grateful to be able to talk to someone, to be able to again communicate, so thankful for any sort of human response, that he paid close attention to what the instructor said and asked as many questions as possible.
That evening, he was brought by elevator to what appeared to be a huge, expensive hotel suite, complete with a walk-in closet filled with fine clothes, a king-sized bed, and a whirlpool bath. It was, without a doubt, the most luxurious place in which he had ever stayed, and after the deprivation of the past several days, it seemed to him like paradise.
There was a phone, but he could not dial out, could only call for room service, and there was a television, but he could watch no network or news stations, could only watch cable movie channels or view videotapes of recent blockbusters. He was still in the Black Tower, he knew, but aside from those small reminders, the illusion was perfect, and through the huge windows in the bedroom he watched the sunset dying over the desert.
After the orange ball of the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, he looked through the leather-bound menu, called room service, and ordered lobster and filet mignon, with wine. The meal was again delivered by a gorgeous woman, this one in an evening gown. She offered to remain with him, to bathe him and give him a massage after dinner, but he told her that he wanted to be alone, and she left.
She returned a half hour later to take away the empty plates, and he locked the door to the suite and went into the bathroom where he soaked for a long time in the whirlpool, letting hot jets of water massage his muscles. His head resting on an inflatable pillow, he watched a Tom Hanks movie on the bathroom television set.
This was nice, he thought. He could get used to this.
He put on the robe that had been provided, walked out into the bedroom. He fell asleep almost immediately after crawling into the soft bed, but his sleep bound imagination was not at all influenced by his surroundings.
He had nightmares.
There were several, but in the only one he could remember, Newman King showed up in class with the instructor. The CEO seemed even stranger and more frightening than before, and Bill could not look at him at first, was forced to focus his attention on the instructor, the chalkboard, the bare walls of the room.
"This will be a short test," King said. "I just want to see how you're progressing." He smiled. "As a Store manager, you may be called upon to do things that are personally repugnant to you. But it is your duty and your obligation to put the welfare of The Store before any of your own personal concerns. As an example, I will let you watch the termination of one of our employees who has not performed to expectations."
A black-raincoated man brought out Samantha.
Bill's heart lurched in his chest. "No!"
"Yes."
His daughter was squirming and crying, her eyes filled with terror. The man held her firmly while another Store employee in an identical black raincoat carried in a stunned-looking middle-aged man, walked up to the front of the room, and stood on the opposite side of the CEO.
King smiled. "Now, here's the test. One of these two must be terminated.
Which one should it be?"
Bill shook his head. "No. I'm not falling for that. I'm not playing this game."
"Come on. It's your decision."
"No."
"Choose."
"I can't do it."
King nodded to the other manager, held out a knife. "Kill her."
"No!" Bill screamed, jumping up. Hands grabbed him from behind, forced him back down into the chair.
King's smile broadened. "Very good, Mr. Davis. You've made your first decision. You'll make a manager yet." He turned toward Sam, handing her the knife. "Kill him."
The man in the raincoat let her go; she grabbed the knife and moved past the CEO. She pushed back the other manager's forehead and drew the blade across his throat.
Blood spurted onto her face, onto her clothes, splashed onto the raincoats of the other Store employees. She fell to the floor, dropping the knife, laughing or crying, Bill could not tell which. He wanted to rush to her and hug her, wanted to scream at her and hit her, but he could do nothing, could only sit there, with the strong hands on his shoulders holding him down, and watch as Sam was led out of the room.
King patted Bill on the head on his way out. "See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"
He was provided with a wake-up call the next morning, and after he finished his breakfast, he was brought back to yesterday's classroom, where his lessons continued.
The real training was nothing like his dream. Despite his prejudice against The Store, despite his animosity toward Newman King, he had to admit that a lot of what he was being taught made sense. There seemed to be a lot of merit in The Store's approach to everything from retail strategies to labor relations, and he found himself understanding and agreeing with a lot of what he was being taught. The knowledge seemed useful to him, the ideas effective. Power might have been misused in the past, but it was not intrinsically bad, and even King could not have total control over everything that went on beneath him. On the surface, at least, King's methods seemed far less extreme than those of his proteges, and while he had absolute power in regard to his empire, he delegated authority and gave each manager complete autonomy over The Store to which he or she was assigned. The CEO wasn't necessarily aware of and didn't necessarily approve of everything that was perpetrated in his name.
As taught by the instructors, King's managerial theories and entrepreneurial goals seemed sound.
Maybe King wasn't the threat after all, Bill thought. Maybe it was the petty bureaucrats under him, the over-zealous managers who misused the power they were granted.
The training went on for several days. In addition to lectures from three separate instructors, he was given readings and worksheets that reinforced the lessons he'd been taught verbally, and tests that measured his retention of that knowledge. He memorized the standard Store layout and the hierarchy of positions within each retail outlet. Eventually, he was brought into another classroom with other management trainees and they all participated in a roundtable discussion of general Store management techniques and addressed specific problems and incidents that were bound to come up during the course of their work. His fellow trainees proved not to be incipient monsters or tyrants in training but merely ordinary men like himself who were trying to make the best of their situation.
He even became friendly with several of them.
Each evening, he was rewarded for a good day's work with a generous present, always accompanied by a humorous card signed by Newman K
ing. One night it was a palm-sized camcorder and a large-screen television, one night it was keys to a new Lexus, one night it was a gift certificate for free ski lessons and a week's stay for him and his family at The Store's executive condo in Aspen, Colorado.
Each evening he was also offered a bath and a massage by the parade of beautiful women who delivered his dinners, and though he always declined the bath, he accepted the massage his second night. His muscles were aching, and the woman said that she was a certified masseuse. The idea of having trained hands relieve the pain and tension in his muscles sounded wonderful. Following her instructions, he undressed in the bathroom, came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, and lay down on the bed. She did his back first, and the massage was indeed fantastic. All pain fled beneath the ministrations of her expert fingers.
She rolled him over and started working on his thigh muscles, and against his will he became aroused. She noticed, slid her hands under the towel and touched him there, but he pushed her away, feeling guilty and embarrassed. Smiling, she continued with the massage.
The ritual was repeated each night.
He began to take all of this luxury for granted. It was not a hard thing to get used to, and he started to feel that he deserved to be pampered after his long day of lessons. Restraint, denial, and asceticism were worthy and noble, all well and good, but there was something to be said for the high life.
As King wrote in _The Manager's Concordance_, rejection of and disdain for the material world were merely ways for the have-nots to make themselves feel morally superior to the haves.
"And in retail," he wrote, "we are only concerned with the haves."
The man was on to something, Bill thought that night as he sipped champagne and received his massage. The man knew what he was talking about.
He closed his eyes, let the beautiful masseuse do her work.
2
Training ended with a daylong practice session in which he acted as manager over a group of employees in a huge Store mock-up.
The week had been building up to this, with an increasing number of tests and quizzes focusing on appropriate reactions to specific in-store situations.
King's rules were harsh, but within his broad boundaries he provided a lot of leeway for individual managers to assert their own personalities, and it was clear that today Bill was supposed to show King and his corporation the stuff he was made of.
There were no other trainees in the classroom today, only himself, and he was issued a black leather uniform and told to put it on. He did so, and was taken by elevator to a gigantic room that was an exact double for the Juniper Store. For all Stores. He walked slowly up the main aisle, marveling at the thoroughness of the illusion, the extent of the make-believe. There were employees and customers, fully stocked shelves, and piped-in Muzak. Everything, down to the last detail, was perfect. This was all located somewhere within the Black Tower, but it was indistinguishable from a real Store.
He was led by the instructor to the manager's office, was given a Xeroxed sheet that described a short history of the "problems" facing this particular Store, and was left alone to perform his managerial duties.
He loved it.
The power felt good, and he was comfortable exercising it. He found that he liked having authority over people, liked having them answer to him, liked making decisions, and he easily and quickly addressed the problems that had been created for him. He held a meeting with the department managers, went over sales figures, approved exchanges and refunds. While performing his rounds of the departments, he caught a teenaged boy shoplifting, and a feeling of satisfaction coursed through him as he ordered security to detain the boy and call the police. On a monitor in the Security room, he caught something none of the observers did -- a female clerk smoking marijuana in one of the rest room stalls. He fired the girl and was gratified to see her cry.
He was on his feet all day. The experience was tiring but exhilarating, and back in the classroom that evening he was handed a printout that critiqued his performance.
He had received an almost perfect score.
The instructor smiled at him, shook his hand, handed him a diploma.
"Congratulations," the instructor said. "You have successfully completed The Store's manager training course."
"That's it?"
The instructor laughed. "That's it. You've graduated. You are now qualified to run your own Store."
He was exhausted but happy as he returned to his luxury suite. A three course dinner was waiting for him, still steaming hot, and he ate it gratefully, sorting through the new pile of videotapes that had been provided for him. There was no woman tonight, but he wasn't in the mood for a massage anyway, and he didn't bother to call for one. Instead, like the first night, he soaked in the whirlpool bath and watched a movie before crawling into bed and instantly falling asleep.
He awoke in the middle of the night with a woman straddling him.
The room was dark, lights off, doors and drapes all closed, and he could not tell how she had gotten into his suite. He had locked the door before going to bed, thrown the dead bolt, but of course he had always known in the back of his mind that if King wanted someone to be able to enter his room, that person would be able to do so.
He felt soft thighs gripping his midsection, pubic hair touching his stomach.
He was quickly kissed by sweet feminine lips, a warm tongue was lightly flicking against his own, and a few seconds later the pressure on his midsection disappeared.
Then she was kissing him between his legs. Her mouth began working on him and it was the most exquisite thing he had ever experienced. There was no hesitation, no sloppiness, no scraping of teeth, no awkward tongue, only smooth velvety lips and an unfailingly even rhythm that made him hard almost instantly.
He wanted to push her off, wanted to tell her to stop, but he lay there unmoving, saying nothing, letting her continue. He felt guilty, horribly, tremendously guilty, absolutely reprehensible, but, God help him, he did not want it to stop. It was wrong, it was immoral, it was a violation of his marriage vows and everything he had ever stood for.
But it was also the best sex he'd ever had.
Tonight's present, he thought. His reward for today.
Courtesy of Newman King.
He told himself he shouldn't do this, couldn't do this, had to put a stop to it, but in his mind he was already rationalizing the experience. The sex had been forced on him, he'd been sleepy, too tired and confused to react; he hadn't known what was happening, and by the time he did figure it out too was too late.
He'd been tricked, coerced, raped.
He had never cheated on Ginny before, had never even considered it, but he was cheating now and it was too late to turn back and what difference did it make if he finished? The damage had been done.
Besides, there was no way she'd ever know.
The woman's lips slid to the bottom of his penis, taking in all of him, and he came in her mouth, an explosion that never seemed to stop. She did not pull away as Ginny so often did, did not gag and spit out his semen, but continued to hold him between her tightly closed lips, waiting until he had completely finished before licking the final drop off the tip with her expert tongue.
He lay there for a moment panting, trying to catch his breath. He wondered which of the massage women had been sent to reward him, and he wanted to turn on the light, but then she was squatting over his face, obviously expecting him to reciprocate. He could feel the wiriness of her pubic hair against his face, could feel the soft flesh of her sex against his mouth, could smell the muskiness of her arousal in his nose, and he began licking her, his tongue working between her vaginal lips and into her ready opening.
She was quiet, did not moan, and though he usually liked to hear a verbal reaction to lovemaking, there was something sexy about the silence. It allowed him to hear the noises of their bodies more clearly, the harsh raggedness of their breathing, the wet sounds of his tongue lapping between her legs
.
She took him in her mouth again and miraculously breathed life back into him. Soon he was hard once again, and she moved off his face and straddled him, taking him deep within her, moving carefully up and down in such a way that he could not even feel the weight of her body atop him. He grabbed her buttocks to help, and then he was coming again, the soft muscular walls of her vagina contracting and expanding, contracting and expanding, pumping out every last drop until his penis was sore and spent.
She rolled over next to him, held him close, hugged him, and he hugged her back, tears silently escaping from his eyes and rolling down the side of his face as the enormity of what he had done sunk in, thinking in the darkness, _Ginny Ginny Ginny_ . . .
The woman was gone when he awoke the next morning, and a moment later the phone rang, an old lady's voice informing him that there would be no breakfast today, that he was to get dressed immediately and then report to Newman King.
The walk-in closet was empty save for the black leather suit he had worn yesterday to the simulation, and he put it on and walked out of the suite. A blond man in an almost identical uniform was waiting for him in the hall, and he was led over to the elevator and back up to the top of the Tower, back to the boardroom. King was alone this time, there were no other men seated around the table, and the guard who had escorted him this far moved back into the elevator.
The doors closed, and for the first time he was alone with Newman King.
Even after all that had happened, even after all he'd been through, the physical presence of the CEO still seemed frightening. There was nothing rational, logical, or intellectual about it. This was animal fear, pure and instinctual, and with every fiber of his being he wanted to recall that elevator and run out of this room as quickly as possible, but he maintained a calm exterior and stood unmoving as King walked slowly toward him.
The Store Page 36
