“Fine,” Joe answered, dragging out the word for dramatic effect while pushing himself to his feet. “I’ll come too.”
“Way cool!” Jacob said, nearly bouncing in place as Joe shuffled across the room.
“Grab a few, if you can,” Dave shouted as the four of them headed for the hall. “We can take turns getting a few hours of sleep. I doubt tomorrow’s going to be any better than today.”
“Yes sir,” CJ answered for the reconnaissance team of young men. Mostly because he was the last one out of the break room, but that didn’t stop him from giving Dave a respectful salute, which Dave returned.
“Have you guys ever played Call of Duty?” Dave heard one of the twins ask.
“Me and Ben love that game!” Joe replied as their voices faded down the hall.
Pam saw Carl wipe a finger under one eye and pull it away damp. “Are you okay?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” he croaked. He cleared his throat and said, “You’ve got some fine sons, Pam.”
“So do you, Carl. You should be proud of them,” she replied.
“I am,” he said, wiping a finger under his other eye. “Neither of them had many friends when they were growing up. Kids are unbearably cruel, and the boys were… you know.”
“Innocent,” Pam offered.
“Yeah. I suppose that fits. Anyway, like I said, thank you,” he replied without elaborating further.
“Sorry about being an asshole earlier,” Dave tells Carl.
“It was probably just as much my fault as it was yours,” Carl replied. “Besides, I might be a little overprotective when it comes to the two of them. I’m sure we’re both just worried for the people depending on us. For what it’s worth,” he continued. “You have my word I’ll do the same for your kids if anything happens to the both of you.”
“Thanks, Carl,” Dave said. “But it’s completely unnecessary. If anything bad happens to Pam and me, we’ve agreed to take the kids with us.”
“What’s that?” Zack asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Dave replied, shaking his head. “The first thing we need to do is find the keys to the generator room and take care of those outside lights,” Dave said, turning to Pam. “Honey, can you and Brigette look around for the keys? Zack can keep an eye on the boys.”
“Why do you want us to look for them?” Pam asked as a sly grin spread across her lips. She knew the answer. She just wanted him to admit men couldn’t find shit if it was handed to them.
“Because the two of you are mothers,” he answered. “And like it or not, that comes with an innate ability to find things men and children misplace. You two are the best chance we have of getting those lights turned off without having to shoot them out. And, I think we’d rather not be forced to do that. I’d ask your mom to help,” Dave said, pointing to Mike and Lynn. “But they’re basically propping each other up. One false move and they’re both spilling onto the floor,” he rolled on, the slightest of smiles spreading across his lips. But he knew Pam could see it and that’s who it was meant for. “They’d probably end up breaking a hip or something in the process. They might take out an innocent bystander. Then we’d be forced to put one of them down. Maybe both! Frankly, I’m nervous about going anywhere near them for fear of the obvious consequences.”
“Is he serious?” Carl asked Pam. He looked like he was once again, reconsidering the alliance he’d agreed to forge.
“Mostly,” Pam tells him. “That’s close enough,” she conceded to Dave. “What are you going to do?”
“Me and the rest of the weaker sex, are going to take a look around in the warehouse. See what else is back there we can use,” Dave answered.
“It still doesn’t feel right to just take what we want and leave,” Carl said.
Leaning over to one side, Dave extracted his wallet from his hip pocket and pulled out one of the three credit cards he usually carried.
“I’ll tape this and a note to one of the cash registers when we leave,” he tells Carl.
“That’ll have to do,” Carl said.
“Where’s the manager’s office?” Pam asked.
“Down the hall, on the way to the warehouse,” Carl said. “But Bob Seavers’ office is between here and there. Do you want to start there?”
“There won’t be extra keys in the owner’s office. I’ll bet he only comes here a couple times a week to check on things,” Brigette said.
“If there are extra sets of keys, they’ll be in the store manager’s office,” Pam replied.
“Unless he has a secretary,” Brigette said.
“Right,” Pam agreed. “Then they’ll be in her desk.”
“You see why I wanted them to look for the keys?” Dave asked Carl.
“Well then, the fella you’re talking about would probably be Scott Russell,” Carl replied.
“Do you know everybody who works here?” Dave asked.
“Follow me,” Carl said, moving across the room for the door. Dave, Pam, and Brigette exchanged shrugs and followed him into the hallway.
“I’ll be fine,” Zack stage-whispered to his wife.
“I hope so,” Brigette replied with a wave.
Carl casually walked down the center of the hall, the hard rubber heel on his work boots echoed softly on white, vinyl-tile floor. The bulletin board across from the break room was divided in half down the middle. One side had the usual stuff pinned to it. Someone was selling a bedroom suite. There was a request for volunteers to work the day after Thanksgiving. Carl must have been right about Bob Seavers being a decent guy because he was offering double-time to anyone willing to forego turkey and cranberry recovery to work a shift. A photocopy of the current work schedule was pinned near the center along with other inspirational quotes for the day. Taking up the entire other half of the board, was a sheet of thin white plastic mounted from the corners. It was being used as a cheap version of a dry-erase board announcing they’d gone forty-one days without an injury, which would probably need to be reset. This was in the same balloon style lettering on the banner around the roofline.
“There’s Bob’s office,” Carl said, pointing out the door on his left without stopping. The sign on it said Bob Seavers and the bar below it said Owner. Unlike the break room door and the signs outside on the cars, the placard on this door was professionally made.
Carl stopped at the next door he came to, pointed to the door and said, “Here you are.”
The sign on this door said Scott Russell and the smaller bar below it said Store Manager. Carl and Dave stepped aside letting the professionals go to work.
“See you soon,” Pam told Dave, blowing him a kiss as the two women went inside.
“The next door down is the storeroom,” Carl tells Dave. “A couple mops and other cleaning stuff. Bathroom supplies and what-not on one side, office stuff on the other. The door after that’s the locked one with the generator. The last one opens to the warehouse.”
“Here you go,” Pam said a split second before a jingling weight struck Dave in the chest and fell to the floor.
Dave bent down to grab the ring of keys from the tile, noticing the surprised look on Carl’s face. He examined the set of keys in his hand. They all appeared identical, except for the different words stamped on each one. Other than the keys on the ring, there was also a hard, plastic fob with some writing on one side.
“I can’t believe you didn’t find those,” Pam said, stepping into the hall.
“Where’d he hide them?” Carl gaped.
“They were in the second place we looked,” Brigette said.
“Me and the boys searched that office from top to bottom,” Carl exclaimed confounded.
“Uh-huh,” Brigette replied, nudging Pam in the ribs.
“Where were they?” Dave asked.
“They were cunningly hidden,” Pam replied.
“Where?” Carl asked, squinting sideways at Pam.
Dave thought Carl’s tone suggested he believed finding the keys that qui
ckly, without divine intervention, was near impossible. Interrupting things that way, he knew Pam felt Carl was directly calling her and Brigette low-down, fucking liars. He took an involuntary step away from Carl, instinctively distancing himself from the prey. Pam was usually very tolerant of most people’s foibles, but she wouldn’t tolerate questions about her integrity.
“Since you asked,” Pam began. From the stony look on his wife’s face and the set of her jaw, Dave feared for the man. He let out a short, manly shriek when she snatched the keys from his loose grip. She hung them on her finger with her palm turned up and her fingers curled in, in front of Carl. She wanted him to have a good look at them while she was speaking.
“The tricky bastards hid them in the lower right desk drawer,” Pam continued “This was a brilliant move because the desk has five whole drawers to choose from. I’m sure this felt like an infinite number of possibilities for you men.” Carl took a breath like he was going to object, but Pam cut him off. “Let me continue. These keys were in a square tin box, and my first thought when I saw it was, Pinhead. But that was all wrong. You wanna know what gave it away.”
“What?” Carl replied. For an old man who should have been enjoying his later years in life, Carl sounded
condescending.
“Dude!” Dave finally blurted. “Have you never talked to a woman about anything before? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Shut up, David!” Pam snapped. “I’m getting to you.”
“Yes ma’am,” he replied, lowering his eyes. Dave wasn’t pretending. She’d used his full, first name to silence him with fear. He had no clue what he’d done to require being gotten to, but the thought terrified him.
“As I was saying,” Pam began again. “The only thing giving the box away, is that it had been cleverly marked with Store Keys in black Sharpie on the top.”
“Devious bastards,” Brigette mocked.
“You’re not helping,” Dave chirped at Brigette while trying to sound carefree and fearless.
“I’m not trying to,” she chirped back.
“There were three fucking rings of keys in the box, Carl! Three!” Pam repeated, jingling them closer to his face. She wasn’t even near him, not even with the keyring still dangling from her crooked finger, but Carl still took one stuttered step backward.
“I still can’t believe you guys didn’t find them,” Brigette smirked.
“Even if they had found the box, and decided they should open it, they’d still be there trying to figure out which two sets were the decoys, and which were the real set. Two of the sets were obviously decoys,” Pam replied.
“How did you know which was the real set and which two were the decoys?” Carl asked.
“For the love of God,” Dave muttered.
“There are no decoys!” Pam fumed.
“But you said there were decoys,” Carl protested for a second time and then seemed to replay the last ten seconds of their conversation. “Wait…” he said.
“Look,” Pam said, hammering the last few nails in Carl’s male dominance coffin. She held the plastic fob for Carl to see. “This says manager set number seven, and the other ones say sets two and four. All of them are identical. Each is stamped with the lock they’re for. Front door,” Pam said, showing Carl the words stamped into the bow of the key. “Back door,” she said, ticking them off like she was counting on her fingers. “Break room. Storeroom. Roll-ups. That’s probably to the loading doors so we better keep an eye on this one. It might be important later. Office. Seavers. Gas! That’s probably a good one,” she continued, coming to the last key. “And this one,” she said, holding up the entire keyring by the tip. “Is to the generator room.”
Turning his head to the side, Carl tried to read the key.
“How do you know that. It’s only got numbers on it, smartypants,” he said.
“It’s 8-6-7-5-3-0-9!” Brigette blurted. “Gawd!”
“Jenny?” Pam offered the clue.
“Huh?” Carl replied.
“Don’t!” Pam snapped at Dave, as he took a breath to offer his rendition of the chorus to Tommy Tutone’s only hit. He swallowed the breath out of self-preservation. Pam held the two men at bay with her raised finger. If so much as a twig snapped at this moment, this scene might end in a flurry of violence.
“We got the mattresses!” Ben announced as he and the other three men came chatting through the door from the warehouse.
“Ben’s right. There’s all kinds of stuff out there,” Joe said. His happy expression faded quickly as he took in the scene in the hall and nearly choked on the tension. “What’d we miss?” he asked hesitantly as they all fell silent.
Pam put her finger away and said, “Everything’s fine.” And eventually, it would be. For now, every set of testicles in the hallway knew better than to push her any farther.
“My sincerest apologies, Pam,” Carl said softly. “I didn’t mean to ruffle your f…” he began but caught himself and started over. “I had no intention of insulting you.”
“And…?” Brigette said.
“Thank you?” Carl replied.
“You’re welcome,” Pam said with a nod, stuffing the keys back into his hand.
“I’m happy everything’s just fine,” Ben said. Trying to divert the remainder of the storm, he changed the subject. “While we were in the warehouse, CJ and Jacob had an idea I think you should hear.”
“What’s up?” Dave asked.
“Let’s go back in the break room and we can talk about it while we inflate these,” Ben said.
“You all go start on that. Carl and I’ll meet you in there after we take care of the lights outside. It should only take us a minute,” Dave said.
“How long did it take Mom to find the keys?” Joe asked. Dave scowled in reply, warning him to drop it.
“Come on Carl,” Dave said.
They weaved their way through the crowded hall to the locked door. The key slipped into the slot and Carl turned it with little effort. He pushed the door open to a small room that was home to the water tank and an industrial-sized heater big enough to keep the storefront nice and warm and the warehouse above freezing for most of the winter. Mounted on the wall was a large, grey, metal box full of circuit breakers. Past the bank of switches was another door. Dave reached for the knob, noticing there was no lock on this one, and turned it. Pushing the door open, the rumble coming from the generator increased substantially.
“Let’s see if we can find the switches for the lights outside and the ones in the store,” Dave shouted over the noise. “Maybe we can keep them on in the offices and warehouse.”
Carl nodded and started to walk past Dave into the room with the generator. Dave stopped him, spun him around by the shoulders and lightly pushed him toward the circuit breakers and closed the door to cut down on the noise.
“We’ll need to leave the generator running so we have lights on where we need them,” Dave said.
Each one of the double rows of switches were clearly marked in ballpoint pen. They flipped the four marked Lot Lights and the three labeled Main Floor Lights. Each one of the switches clacked loudly into place. Satisfied with their effort, they left the room, making sure the door was unlocked before they closed it all the way. From the hallway, they could see most of the lights in the store were out, but a few remained on. He considered going back to the room and looking to see if he could figure out which breakers controlled those. He decided he might need to consult Pam about it and there was no fucking way he was doing that right then. They also needed to confirm the lights in the parking lot were off, so they walked quickly past the break room, seeing the lights were still blazing in there, and to the doors separating the sales floor from the other parts of the store. Just as he thought. Each corner of the front of the store had a single light shining in it, providing lighting in case of emergencies. The parking lot was blessedly dark with the brilliant, sodium floodlights quickly fading to black. Deciding the emergency lights could wai
t, he and Carl returned to the break room. Joe, Ben, Jacob, and CJ were racing to see which pair of brothers could inflate one of the two air mattresses they’d brought in first, using nothing but lung power. They squatted on the floor, a pile of unfolded, heavy vinyl between each pair. Plastic valves were pressed between lips and all four of them looked as though they’d be passing out from hyperventilation at any moment.
“I didn’t have the heart to tell them there’s probably an air compressor in the warehouse,” Pam whispered, meeting them at the door.
“Or at least a fucking foot-pump,” Dave chuckled as he watched.
“At the very least,” Carl agreed. “Truly sorry about that,” he said to Pam, looking her in the eyes to make sure she was certain of his sincerity.
“About what?” Pam asked, brushing the earlier unpleasantness aside. Carl started to explain what he was referring to, as Dave set his hand on his arm.
“It’s over,” Dave told him.
Carl stared at Pam for a moment. She’d taken a few steps away from the two men for a better vantage point of the contest. To her, it looked like a race to see which set of brothers would pass out first and which was going to puke. Everyone else was watching them, cheering their favorite team on to victory. Carl shifted his attention to Dave, studying him for another second.
“The two of you make a funny couple,” Carl said, scratching his head.
“Do you mean funny ha-ha, or funny like clowns?” Dave asked.
“Closer to clowns, I think,” Carl replied.
Dave frowned as Carl turned away in time to see Jacob and CJ declare victory in the mattress inflation race. Theirs was full enough to easily bounce a coin on it. After Joe and Ben had lost and basically stopped trying to finish filling their mattress, everyone convinced them they were close enough. You could still bounce a coin off their mattress, but it would require throwing the coin really hard. It might also take standing the mattress up, allowing the thrown coin to fall from the mattress, rather than bounce.
The F*cked Series (Book 3): Mean Page 9
