Dooley Takes the Fall

by Norah McClintock

  “Other people, they just sit here and talk to you?”

  Kingston nodded.

  “And that makes a difference?”

  “It does, yes.”

  Dooley didn’t see how.

  Kingston looked at the clock. “Time’s up,” he said.

  “Maybe you could hold off on talking to my uncle,” Dooley said. “Maybe we could give it another try.”

  To be honest, Dooley couldn’t figure out which was worse—having wasted all of his uncle’s money by sitting here like a slab of stone for the past three months, or wasting any more of it by taking a shot at what he should have been doing all along but, to be honest, he still didn’t think would do any good.

  Kingston just stared at him.

  “You never know, right?” Dooley said.

  Kingston stood up, about to move to the door to let Dooley out.

  “I’ll put you in for next week at the same time,” he said. “After that, we can re-evaluate.”

  Dooley was surprised at how relieved he felt.

  Two hours later, Dooley was antsy and wishing he could have a drink or smoke some weed, anything to take the edge off. He’d been inside eighteen months with only a couple of slips and outside three months with nothing except that one sip of beer. You’d think he’d be over it by now. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t even sure half the time what made him so jangled, which, of course, was the whole point of seeing Kingston. He was supposed to develop self-awareness. He was supposed to understand what made him tick. He was supposed to identify his danger areas and his flash points and then learn coping mechanisms that would help him get through the day. When he thought about it, the same question always popped up, namely: was that the best he could expect from life—being hyper-aware of all his problems as he trudged through one mind-fucking day after another?

  Today everything was putting him on edge: school, what had happened after school, Kingston, work. Beth.

  When Dooley was in detention, he’d had regular sessions with a psychologist named Dr. Calvin. Unlike Kingston, Dr. Calvin actually talked. A lot. He also gave advice such as, when your past starts sneaking up on you, when it starts calling your name, trying to get you to do something that deep down inside you knew you shouldn’t, just tune it out. It’s what his uncle told him, too: You don’t like it? Let it go. Tune it out. Well, gentlemen, there is no better way to tune out life—all life, past, present, and future—than by clerking in a video store. You step in behind the counter and in five seconds flat your brain switches from active mode to screen-saver mode, because there’s nothing going on in the central processing unit that is your brain. It turns out that everyone is right—the same picture scrolls past your eyeballs over and over. You really don’t need a brain to do Dooley’s job, which consists of, one, emptying the drop box; two, checking that the DVDs are (a) inside the cases that are being returned and (b) not scratched beyond redemption; three, scanning the barcodes so that the titles are registered in the computer as being returned; and, big finish, four, re-shelving everything. It’s all about turn-around, get the product back out there on the shelves where the customers can find it so they don’t go across the street—Kevin was always yelling those words at Dooley and the rest of the clerks … er … customer service associates—to Blockbuster where they have entire walls of the same title. Dooley wanted to strangle Kevin sometimes— well, okay, so he wanted to strangle him most of the time. When Dooley felt like that, he knew (from Dr. Calvin, not from Kingston) that it was time to come up with an alternative scenario.

  Dr. Calvin: Instead of strangling Kevin, what could you do?

  Dooley: Homer him with my baseball bat?

  Dr. Calvin: What could you constructively do?

  Dooley: Ignore him?

  Dr. Calvin: Splendid! Yes. Ignore him.

  Right. Except that Dr. Calvin didn’t have to spend four times six hours a week plus eight hours on the weekend—a total of thirty-two hours a week, every week—with a dork like Kevin who was always telling you do this, do that, all of the things he wanted you to do, trained monkey shit that you didn’t have to be told to do, you already knew. Geeze, as if Dooley was going to let the DVDs pile up on the front counter where no one could find them and rent them. As if he couldn’t remember to put them in alphabetical order. As if he couldn’t remember to check the computer if he wasn’t sure if the Bruce Willis movie some middle-aged customer was for some reason desperate to rent but couldn’t find was in the action section, the thriller section, or the sci-fi section. As if he couldn’t remember that he wasn’t supposed to argue with the customers, which Kevin had made clear to him right after Dooley told some fifty-something action junkie that, no, as a matter of fact, he didn’t buy into the theory that movies in which Bruce sported a bad toupee were bad Bruce whereas movies that featured Bruce with his natural hairline, which is to say a hairline that began and ended at the back of Bruce’s neck, were high-quality Bruce. In fact, if the customer wanted Dooley’s opinion, which, it turned out, he didn’t, there was no such thing as high-quality Bruce. What Kevin didn’t understand: it wasn’t that Dooley couldn’t remember not to argue. It was just that sometimes, with some customers, he couldn’t resist.

  After his appointment with Kingston, Dooley had taken the subway back downtown, pushed open the door to the store, and walked in past the front desk, down between the aisles that ran the length of the store, and into the back where he shucked his sweatshirt and put on a red golf shirt with the store logo over his heart and, above that, a badge with his name spelled out using one of those tape machines. Dooley’s badge read: Hi, my name is Dooley. Kevin had had a fit when Dooley made the label: “Look at my badge,” he’d said. “It says Kevin, not Sanders. Get it, Dooley? See what Linelle’s says? It says Linelle. Your badge is supposed to say Ryan. Hi, my name is Ryan. You get it, Dooley?” Dooley had glanced at Linelle, who was turning pink from trying not to laugh out loud. He bet she was thinking the same thing he was. They were both thinking: Did Kevin ever listen to himself? “We’re a friendly place,” Kevin said. “People call us by our first names. That way they feel like we’re their friends.”

  Right.

  In Dooley’s experience, people weren’t interested in being friends with video store clerks. They thought video store clerks were brain-dead, going-nowhere semi-human beings who if they had any potential at all, even a dribble of it, would be working at a real job, which is to say, not retail, not part-time, and not for minimum wage.

  “People call me Dooley,” Dooley had explained to Kevin that time. “It’s my name.”

  “You going to tell me your mother calls you Dooley?” Kevin said.

  Not that it was any of Kevin’s business, but, yeah, that was exactly what Lorraine called him, usually giving it a bitter little spin when she said it. Dooley’s father’s name was Dooley. Dooley didn’t remember him—he’d gone missing, Lorraine said, when Dooley was just a couple of months old. Lorraine must have had high hopes for the guy; she’d registered Dooley under his name instead of her own, which was McCormack. Once in a blue moon, if she was in one of her nostalgic moods, she used to smile at him and tell him he reminded her of his father. Most of the time, though, especially when she was loaded or when she was coming down, she’d look at him like he was his father, that no-good asshole who had knocked her up, made some promises, and then blown her off. Like it was Dooley’s fault.

  “It’s Dooley,” Dooley had told Kevin. Sure, his teachers insisted on calling him Ryan. And, sure, he was called Ryan whenever he went to court. His uncle called him Ryan, too. Dooley never even tried to argue that one. What was the point? Apart from that, well, listen to Kevin—even he called him Dooley. And because he knew that Kevin knew where he had been the previous eighteen months (even though Kevin wasn’t supposed to know), he had stood up as tall as he could (which was a minimum of two inches taller than Kevin) and stepped into Kevin’s personal space, close enough that he could smell the Listermint strip melting onto Kevin’s t
ongue.

  Kevin smiled a twitchy smile and said, “Whatever,” like he didn’t care but, boy, it was obvious that he did. He cared in the worst way. He wanted to fire Dooley—which he (a) couldn’t do without passing it by the store manager (Kevin was only a shift manager), who, go figure, got a kick out of Dooley and (b) was afraid to do because he was scared shit-less that if he did, Dooley would meet him out back with, say, a lead pipe or a tire iron or his personal favorite, a baseball bat, and beat his brains in. Dooley did nothing to soothe Kevin’s fear. He couldn’t control what people thought, he’d developed that much self-awareness. Besides, if people were going to think something and it turned out it was to your advantage, well, whose fault was that?

  Friday night was the busiest night at the store. Saturday was bad, too, but a lot of people went out on Saturday, whereas on Friday most people were exhausted from work or school or whatever and all they wanted to do was pop something in their DVD players and sprawl in front of the tube. So there was Dooley, emptying the drop box up front, stacking DVDs, and wondering what to do about Kingston, when the sensor over the door bonged and in walked Beth. Rhodes was with her. They walked down the far aisle. Neither of them looked at him, but Dooley sure looked at her. He finished stacking the DVDs from the drop box, picked up the scanner, and started scanning bar codes, watching her the whole time. She was over in the far corner, in the foreign film section, which, as far as Dooley could tell, was her favorite. He wondered who was picking the movie—her or Rhodes. She moved along the aisle, bending down now and again to look at some of the cases on the bottom shelves. Rhodes just stood there, waiting, so that answered Dooley’s question. He ducked his head when she turned and headed for the cash so she wouldn’t know he’d been watching her, Rhodes right at her side.

  “Hey, Linelle,” Dooley said, putting down the scanner. “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll handle cash for a while.”

  Linelle gave him a look. “You hate cash, Dooley.”

  She was right. Scanning, shelving, even vacuuming and mopping at end of shift, those were tolerable, primarily because they didn’t involve interacting with customers. But cash? Cash was always a pain. People were always surprised by something, but never pleasantly. “Two movies, a large Coke, and a package of microwave popcorn cost how much?” “Restocking fee? What the hell is that? You telling me you hire special people and pay them extra to put movies back on the shelf when they’re returned late?” “But I returned that movie last week, I know I did.” “What do you mean, my credit card is rejected?” Shit like that.

  Beth and Rhodes were halfway to the front of the store.

  “Give me a break, huh, Linelle?” Dooley said.

  Linelle glanced at Beth. She shook her head and stepped aside. “You owe me, Dooley.”

  “You sound like an American tourist,” Beth was saying to Rhodes as she approached the counter. “They travel the world and expect everyone to speak English to them.”

  “You miss half the movie when you have to read subtitles,” Rhodes said. “Dubbing, okay, at least you can concentrate on what’s happening. But you can’t read and watch the movie at the same time. That’s all I’m saying.”

  Beth put the DVD on the counter and started to rummage in her purse.

  “Hey, my treat,” Rhodes said, reaching in his pocket for his wallet.

  “You’re not even going to watch it,” Beth said. “Why should you pay for it?”

  “Who says I’m not going to watch it?”

  “It’s my homework assignment.”

  “I’m a great tutor.”

  She laughed. “I don’t need a tutor. I’m at the top of my class.” Most people, when they said something like that, it came across as boasting. But not her. When she said it, it sounded right.

  She pulled out her wallet and looked across the counter at Dooley, noticing him for the first time. Her smile slipped, but just a little.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.” He picked up the DVD and scanned it. “Did you find everything you were looking for today?” It was what they were supposed to ask, but Dooley never did. Well, almost never. He heard Linelle gag and shot her a look over his shoulder.

  “Yes, thank you,” Beth said.

  He glanced at the DVD cover. Roshomon.

  “It’s a good story,” he said.

  Rhodes looked surprised that Dooley had watched it. Beth didn’t.

  “I’m writing an essay on it for my media class,” she said.

  Media class? He wondered what school she went to. There were no media classes at Dooley’s school.

  “You’re lucky,” Dooley said, “getting to write about movies. I have to write an essay on Hamlet.”

  “I like that play,” she said.

  Dooley didn’t think much of it himself. What do you make of a guy who’s sure his uncle murdered his father, but he doesn’t do anything about it? Okay, Dooley could see maybe if Hamlet didn’t like his old man. But that wasn’t the case, was it? So what was his problem—other than he was a wuss?

  He scanned her movie. She handed him some money. She said, “So, did you remember anything else yet?”

  “Remember anything about what?” Rhodes said.

  She didn’t answer. Her brown eyes were fixed intently on Dooley. He wished he could tell her what she wanted to hear.

  He shook his head.

  “Remember about what?” Rhodes said again.

  “Nothing,” she said, still watching Dooley.

  Dooley slipped her DVD into a plastic bag along with her receipt.

  “It’s due back next Friday by eleven,” he said. As she walked away, he heard Rhodes say, “Remember about what? How do you even know him?” Then they were out the door, gone.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess, I’ve had enough of a break, I can go back on cash now,” Linelle said dryly. She slid back in front of the register. “She was in here the other night asking about you.”

  Dooley was watching her through the window. She was walking down the street with Rhodes, but she wasn’t holding his hand or anything.

  “I saw her on TV, too,” she said. “On the news. She’s the one whose brother died, right?” Dooley nodded. “Is she going out with The Winner?”

  “The Winner?”

  “The guy she was with. Rhodes. Winston Rhodes.”

  “You know him?” Dooley said, surprised. Linelle didn’t go to his school.

  “I went with a guy who used to know him. You should see his place.” She shook her head. “Him and that girl, I guess they have a lot in common.” Before Dooley could ask her what she meant, she said, “They showed a picture of her brother on TV, too. Isn’t he that guy you—”

  “You finished scanning the returns, Dooley?” Kevin said, popping up, it seemed, out of nowhere. “Yes? So would it be too much to expect you to re-shelve them?”

  Yeah, it was mostly Beth who had him thinking about the good old days when there was always something he could reach for, something to smooth out the rough parts of the day, take the sharp edges off. But it was Kevin, too. He dumped the returns onto a trolley and headed for the back of the store.

  Isn’t he the guy …

  The store closed at midnight. By then it was just Dooley and Kevin in the store. Linelle’s shift had ended at ten. While Kevin did the cash, Dooley vacuumed the carpeted part of the floor and wet-mopped the tiled part. Then he perched on the counter while Kevin, who was in the back room, counted the cash, reconciled the accounts, and got the deposit ready. It was company policy that there always had to be two people in the store, so Dooley had no choice. He had to wait for Kevin, who didn’t emerge from the back room until nearly quarter to one.

  It was one-fifteen by the time Dooley got home. The first thing he saw: Jeannie’s purse sitting on the little table in the front hall. He went into the kitchen, pulled a box of Cheerios from the cupboard and a carton of milk from the fridge and poured himself a bowl of cereal. He was halfway through it when his uncle appeared in noth
ing but boxers, which, ordinarily, Dooley didn’t mind. His uncle was in pretty good shape for a guy his age. He ran regularly and lifted weights at the gym a couple of times a week. But, geeze, when he turned up in his boxers and Dooley knew that Jeannie was in the house, Dooley couldn’t help but think about one thing—and it wasn’t something he wanted to think about, especially not involving his uncle.

  His uncle grabbed a glass from the cupboard and filled it with ice cubes from the freezer. He took a bottle of vodka from the cupboard next to the fridge and poured a good three fingers over the ice. It was for Jeannie. Dooley’s uncle was a scotch drinker.

  “How was work?” his uncle said.

  “It was work,” Dooley said.

  His uncle looked at the bowl of cereal. “That your dinner?”

  “I had a slice of pizza before I went on shift,” Dooley said.

  His uncle shook his head. “You’re like a kid. Unless I make you a decent meal, you eat garbage.”

  “Technically,” Dooley said, “I am a kid.”

  “Right,” his uncle said. “Seventeen going on seventy.” He looked at the cereal spoon in Dooley’s hand. “You forget to pick up your ring from the jeweler?”

  Shit.

  “No, I got it,” Dooley said.

  “You’re not wearing it.”

  Dooley shrugged, looked down into his cereal bowl, and ransacked his brain for something to say. “It’s just—I’ve been thinking about Lorraine.”

  “Jesus,” his uncle said. “What’s she got to do with anything?”

  “Where do you think she is?”

  “Probably shacked up with some loser. Why? Don’t tell me you’re nostalgic.”

  That was the part Dooley never understood. His uncle didn’t think much of his own baby sister. He held her in complete contempt, as far as Dooley could figure. Yet he’d come to see Dooley when they locked him up the last time. And he’d kept on coming, even when Dooley didn’t give a shit because, face it, when you’re locked up, pretty much the last person you want coming around is some hard-ass ex-cop who keeps telling you how fucked up you are and how it’s no surprise, your mother is even more fucked up, always was, probably always will be, and, by the way, you ever consider doing something constructive like, say, reading a book? You ever considered not being such an asshole, Dooley used to think. But still, he showed up regularly and when the time came he told Dooley, you do it right, you can stay with me. So here Dooley was—straight, sober, in school, in a bed with clean sheets once a week (Dooley changed them Saturday morning—his uncle insisted on it), with vegetables on his plate (the only vegetable Lorraine ever served was fries from McDonald’s or KFC), dishes that matched, place mats and coasters on the table, and floors that got mopped (mostly by Dooley, mostly operating under orders). Dooley didn’t know exactly why his uncle was doing it or even what he thought about Dooley and his prospects. To be honest, Dooley wasn’t sure he wanted to know.