“No, but that is the first necessary step. It is much better to have passion for something and no experience than too much experience and hating your work.”
“Most of the people working here have experience of what they do. Do you think they would follow your order after knowing that you are less experienced than them?” He set aside the typewriter and set back in a relaxing position, finally giving her his undivided attention which made Alicia nervous. She turned her neck thinking about a clever reply. One of the supervisors was winking at her from behind the glass wall. He was the same man who showed her the office earlier. He winked at her, showed thumbs up and then went away chewing.
“I think it is very easy to be experienced at mediocrity.” She said and then instantly felt horrible. Here goes my single hope of getting the job. Wasn’t it the first rule of giving interviews that you were not supposed to belittle other people?
The man pressed his lips and looked at her skeptically. Few seconds passed in silence then he spoke. “There is a situation here that you should know before joining.”
She kept looking at him questioningly.
“Our inventory is going missing.” It took her a moment to get what he was saying then it dawned upon her.
“Someone is stealing?”
“Yes and No. On the face, nothing is wrong, I did an inventory count last week and a whole set of dictionaries were missing. We have cameras all over the shop, but still after going through the videos, I was unable to spot a thief. The set was there one month ago and then suddenly it was not there, like it was vanished in thin air.”
“You think one of your employees did it?”
“They can’t. I closed the shop myself every night. If they try to steal something before that, it will be captured by CCTV camera.”
“But what if they try afterwards?”
“This is the problem. Anyone can try afterwards. If someone is using a master key to unlock the door and take books then it can be anyone, not necessarily my employees, and to be honest, they are not so fond of books anyways that they try to steal them. If it was money, I would suspect one of them but books are worthless to them.”
“How many books are stolen so far?” Alicia started to get curious.
“Twelve of the same set, but this is not the end of it. More are getting stolen every day. I had put an alarm in the shop in case someone is intruding in after hours and only last night, it went off twice. When I came back to look around, the door was securely locked as I had left it and there was no one inside. I asked the alarm company this morning and they assured me that it was not a glitch. The only way alarm can go off if someone enters the shop and does not enter the correct password in the alarm set.”
Alicia was just looking at him. Her sixth sense said it was not about books. It was more than that. Finally, she asked, “Can I ask your name?”
He coughed slightly and said awkwardly, “Sorry I forgot to mention that. It is Kenneth. You can call me Ken.”
“Ken, don’t you think I am the perfect candidate for your shop in the current situation?”
He nodded, “That’s right and that is the only reason I am telling you all the details.”
“You stay here all day, I assume. Why do you want a manager anyways?”
He sighed, “I cannot open the store before three o’clock due to some personal commitments. If I get a manager, I would get three to four more business hours.”
“I am in.”
He looked worriedly at her enthusiastic face, “You are not grabbing the situation. It can get deadly.”
Deadly might bring me back to life.
Alicia smiled at him and also at her thought.
CHAPTER THREE
The Robinsons
It was the last day of August. Flora had made a plan to visit the museum today with Alicia. It was her last free day as she was going to join the bookstore from the next day. They were roaming around the museum aimlessly which was mostly empty on a weekday, except for tourists. Flora was looking for a special plant in the botanical section which was said to have healing qualities or so she had read in a journal. The plant was a native English plant and if she found it, she would ask the curator to give her a branch of it. It was highly unlikely in Alicia’s opinion. It was a museum, not a nursery, she tried telling her, but Flora turned a deaf ear.
There was a collection of plants in the botanical section consisting of hundreds of native and non-native specimens as the curator was a botanist, so he kept expanding the Botanical section whenever he got a chance, until the locals didn’t start doing some noble deeds.
She left Flora arguing with the curator and wandered around. In the main hall, a tourist was recording the portraits on her cell phone, of all the famous and notable people born in Georgestown which was naturally dominated by the Robinson family. She was lurking behind a tapestry when the tourist called her.
“Excuse me?”
“Yes.” She turned to him.
“Can you tell me more about him?” he pointed to a portrait.
She looked; it was the portrait of the mayor of Georgestown, Clarke Robinson.
“He is our present mayor and he has been getting selected as a mayor since last twenty years which is a record in the history of England. Before him, his father, Richard Robinson, had served in the Second World War and he also became a mayor subsequently. His grandfather was an astronomer and was a Fellow of the Royal Society. In reality, the chair of mayor has never been taken away by anyone outside of the Robinson family. They also own most of the local businesses around.”
“He must be succeeded by his son. What about his family?” the tourist asked; he was visibly impressed.
“In fact, he doesn’t have a son, but he has a daughter who might succeed him. His wife died in an accident and he didn’t marry again.” She avoided the details surrounding the tragic accident which shook the whole town.
“What does his daughter do? Does she take part in social causes?”
“Melanie is a lawyer and works in London these days.” She sighed talking about Melanie. Melanie Robinson, the golden girl of the small city. She remembered choosing law in an effort to follow her footsteps, that was the extent of her infatuation with her.
Now when the tourist asked, she also wondered. Melanie had never shown any interest in any social or political causes in the city. She had not appeared in the election campaigns of her father since many years. Who would succeed the Mayor if she won’t?
Georgestown had no other alternate, except the Robinson family.
————
“From where have you collected all these?” Alicia looked at the object in her hand with curiosity. Flora was busy in applying a face pack.
Flora had brought all of her old inventory gems, pendants, charm lockets and bracelets from the shop to clean and polish because it was Alicia’s last free day.
“These are presents!” Flora said.
Alicia did not press the subject that how she managed to get so many presents. She had seen bags full of amethyst, zircon, garnet, peridot, sapphire, ruby and all other types of gemstones in every possible color and size, along with a bag full of old coins. Alicia asked her what these were for but Flora always dodged the question. They were odd objects. Some were round; the others were rectangular.
“Nobody uses it these days.” She applied some cleaning solution on the soft linen cloth and rubbed it really hard.
“These are a treasure to me.”
“How will you recognize what is treasure and what is trash?”
“If you can learn something from it, it is not trash.” Flora closed her eyes after applying the pack. “Tell me how is your job going to be?”
“Well … I don’t know. It sounds interesting at least.” She had told her about the book stealing at the store. However, she had cleverly concealed it from her mother who would have had thrown a temper tantrum if she learnt the truth that her daughter was going to work with shady people. Flora also knew how mu
ch to share with her younger sister.
“How is your boss?”
“He is like this,” she flipped the coin.
“Is he young?”
“I guess.”
“Attractive?” Flora didn’t want her dear niece to end up like herself; she used to say that a lot. And what is wrong with you, Alicia had questioned her back. At least I will become a clairvoyant, she had teased her, and that was the only time when Flora did not talk to her favorite niece for a whole day.
“Perhaps, depending on your criteria.”
“Hmm,” Flora looked at her.
She rubbed the coin harder, “what the hell is stuck on it?”
“Dirt! Layers of dirt! When you don’t give importance to something, it gets dirty,” Flora said looking at the ceiling, “people are also similar to objects, Alicia! When they don’t get attention they need, they also get layers—hideous layers.”
“Is it a warning for me?”
“Yes.”
“I am loved by you,” she grinned at her.
“But you also need love of a partner.”
“Getting a partner does not guarantee love,” she avoided her gaze.
“No but still there is hope.”
She set aside the coin and the cleaning solution and looked at the face of her beautiful aunt which was covered with a coat of herbal mask. “What do you want me to do? Pick the first guy on my way and knock myself up?”
Flora sighed, “I would be really proud of you if you could do that, but unfortunately you don’t have the stomach for it. I am only asking you to meet Harry.”
“Where did Harry come from?” She looked at her in bewilderment.
“He is back and he wants to meet you.”
Alicia felt a ping of anger. “You met him?”
“No. That was a coincidence. He saw me at the grocery store and came to talk.”
“Since when you started to go grocery shopping.” She looked at her suspiciously. Steve never allowed any of them to buy groceries, because they were all idiots, who could not distinguish apples from oranges, in his opinion.
Talking about me, behind my back—with my ex-boyfriend, can you backstab me even more?
“I always do grocery shopping for my personal items.” Flora said proudly. She still thought Alicia could not detect lies.
“Why does he want to meet me?” Alicia still remembered their ugly breakup. If the breakup itself was not enough, the things said by both sides were enough to not see each other for the rest of their lives.
“He invited us on a party next week at his house.”
“What is the occasion?”
“He didn’t tell me. He said it was a surprise.”
“He might be getting married.” That was the only thing that made sense.
“In that case, he would never invite you. He doesn’t look like a vengeful person to me.” Flora’s contented tone was making her more spiteful.
“Because he is not your ex. He doesn’t need to be vengeful with you.” She said loudly in frustration.
“I hate to say this but you are behaving really petty. People turn foes turn friends. This is life, and develop some stamina to accept it.”
Suddenly, the door opened with a crashing sound. Steve, the only man in the Stone family, was standing in the doorway. His tummy was two steps ahead of him. It was a puzzle for all of his family members that how a skinny man can have such a big tummy. He was all bones from head to toe except for his abdomen. Flora thought that it happened because of lack of physical activity but Steve insisted that it was the structure of his bones. Can homo-sapiens have such a bone structure, that was a question for scientist. Anyhow he got another reason to not meet people and stay indoors.
“I had told you to clean the living room before lunch.” He said on the maximum volume. He was in habit of talking loudly as if everyone was deaf. He was staring at Alicia as if she was responsible for everything bad in his life, from his mother’s death to his bulging tummy.
“Oh dear I had told Lucy that I would do the cleaning tomorrow and not only living room but kitchen as well.” Flora said politely in spite of the fact that she was not the one questioned.
Steve looked with menace at the aunt and niece sitting together and walked out, shutting the door behind him, again with a crashing sound. In her house, crashing sounds did not mean that Steve was angry. It simply meant that Steve was alive. Lucy, Alicia’s mother, lived under the assumption that it was something that all men did.
“So where were we?”
“Grocery shopping.” Alicia snapped.
“No. Harry.” Flora took a close look at her. “I think you should make a trip to beauty parlor before that. Your eyebrows are getting really thick and you have started to look like a middle aged woman.”
Alicia took a deep breath. She needed to stay calm to deal with her because, unlike her other family members, she could not simply lock her out of her life.
She tried to smile at her. “I will see.”
Flora was unable to smile back because the mud pack had successfully cemented her face, but she still nodded in encouragement and patted her back.
She closed her eyes and smiled. See if you can catch me from tomorrow. According to the job agreement, she needed to spend minimum eight hours daily at the store; however, she was planning to spend more than that. The bookstore was going to be her shelter away from home.
————
The first day at work went through smoothly contrary to her expectations. Her working hours were from noon to nine and she was also allowed to take an hour break any time after three o’clock when Ken came to the store. Her main responsibilities were to look after the operations in his absence. There were eighteen employees in total under her, including a checkout operator, two staff members, and fifteen supervisors responsible for guiding visitors in their respective sections.
The spectacled teenager, Sam, who handled checkout, turned out to be bubbly and talkative. Sam was doing this job to save enough money for MBA. He was raised by a single dad and he had big dreams for their future.
They were out having lunch together in a nearby restaurant. It was around four in the evening and Alicia was feeling really hungry by the time Ken came to the store. She asked Sam to go out on lunch with her which made him very happy. She still had some money which she saved during her paralegal job. She had felt a ping of guilt after seeing him eating something out of a paper wrap an hour ago. He must be saving lunch money as well.
“Since when you are working here?” She asked him.
“Six months,” he replied in between mouth full. She was playing with the straw in the bottle of soda.
“What about the supervisors?”
“Oh they are fine, but never have been to college. It is difficult to connect with them.” He made a face.
She smiled looking at him. She was really craving to have a friend, except Flora. It had been a long time since she last talked to any of her class fellows. She didn’t have many friends, and since Cady left town, she didn’t feel the desire to talk to anyone else. Most of them were only interested in gossips about why she and Harry broke up. Harry was one of the popular guys so it was expected that girls would avoid her like plague. It became worse when they got to know that she was staying at home. She had read that in their eyes few times when they came across each other’s path—loser, quitter, weirdo, freak, and of course, poor parents.
“How is our boss?” Finally, she asked what she wanted to know mostly. She wondered about her mission to get a boyfriend.
“He is nice and caring. I have never seen him shouting or abusing any of us.”
“Do you know his family?”
“No. He never talked about his family, but Edgar said that his family died in his childhood.” Edgar handled customer care mostly.
“He is a local?”
Sam nodded without breaking his eating marathon. If Ken was a local, Flora would know everything about him. She liked his polite and gen
tle demeanor in the first meeting. She wondered whether he would like to help her or not.
“I think we should go back now.” She looked at her cell phone. They had been away for more than forty minutes on the break. Sam took a big gulp of soda and got up.
Unlike the owner of the bookstore, Mr Kenneth Williams, the manager of the shop did not have any proper station or office to sit, but Ken had informed her to share the office with him any time she wants.
Alicia’s job description also involved taking care of décor and stock arrangement across the store as a part of aggressive sales strategy and she really looked forward to do it. She thought about changing some of the books on the main display before going home. She picked some of the classics from the back of the shop and was replacing the collector’s edition of Fahrenheit 451 with the 4 Hours Productivity Hack on the front display when someone took it from behind her.
“What are you doing?” She felt alarmed by this sudden movement. The earthy aroma hit her olfactory lobe and she got overwhelmed finding Ken standing just behind her.
She slowly took a step back. “I was … rearranging the display.”
“With this? People have already read it a thousand times.”
He pointed at the small booklets, Alicia had dumped on the ground in her effort to put classics in their place. “These books help me paying bills and wages—since ages.” He had pushed one of the booklets on her face on which a happy cheerful person was working on a laptop. Under his table, the headline was flashing in steel blue font, ‘How to change your habits in Nine days’ with a little sub-heading of Get rid of your procrastination this month.
Ken, cladded in his usual black, looked like a professional lawyer who knew what worked and what didn’t, but Alicia very seldom liked getting told.
He had noticed her shrinking eyebrows so he added, “You should take a look at the sales report of last three months and then plan to change the display.”
“All right.” The display was going to be changed anyways.
The Killing Scripture (Alicia Stone Series Book 1) Page 3
