The Cool Part of His Pillow by Rodney Ross

Author:Rodney Ross [Ross, Rodney]
Language: nld
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: erotic MM, Romance MM
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Cape Fear

I COME to regret that pager.

That I corrected my name.

That I supplied a Social Security number.

My first week I have worked, conservatively,

ninety hours. I woke yesterday holding a rol of thermal

credit card machine paper in my hand. I am not sure

how it got there or why I brought it home.

Marjorie has stayed away, but her pages are

incessant. She was up al night worrying, she yawns in

my ear, if we’l ever unload those 400-plus teddy bears

wearing a Phantom half-mask. I am more worried

about the carton of Twin Tower toast holders I

happened upon in a drop-down storage area. I wonder

who approved a prototype that holds just one bread

slice and what morbid spinster would buy it.

From another page, I decline her offer to circulate

an e-press release about my hire. She does it anyway,

quoting herself extensively, listing her citations and her

affiliation with Annie. She also misspels manager. I am

the new manger. It is reprinted verbatim in several

industry publications. I now know how Alexander felt,

being caled a bother.

She paged me to inquire if the employees are

accepting direction from an interloper.

“They’l close ranks on you,” she warned.

Actualy, the staff, who alternately cal the store

The Lish or T-Lish, seemed grateful that the pressure’s

off. Many were quick to blab how Marjorie first offered

each of them my position and sneered what ingrates

they were when everyone immediately refused it. I take

it as a good sign when someone scatters my desk chair

with straw after the whole manger debacle.

I am trying to, but cannot, remember al of the

employee names. There are so many more than Great

Rooms! Some work as little as five hours weekly; few

get more than a total of twenty-five hours. Marjorie

imposed these insanely smal shifts. She occasionaly,

after posting schedules, changes up everyone’s hours so

“no one gets comfortable,” which means we have too

many employees, yet not enough, since they’ve al had

to take second and third jobs. They’ve also been

screwed out of paid time off, promised free tickets that

never materialized, you name it, so a bunker mentality

permeates—more accurately, a bunkbed mentality,

when I realize how little they’re paid. She’s worked

very hard to earn this disrespect, and it wil be just as

hard to salvage any esprit de corps from such a

dispirited bunch. The store should be renamed

Theatrivicious. My last two decades are so steeped in

drag queen reveals that I keep waiting for her armadilo

shawl to split like a chrysalis and a pleasant Marjorie to

emerge.

This doesn’t happen.

Actual Marjorie sightings are not dissimilar to

those of a UFO: vivid yet fleeting, verified by witnesses

left scorched or violated. When our mothership lands,

caling other occupants of interplanetary craft, the

pyrotechnics are at first awe-inspiring, but closer

inspection reveals it’s just an electrical malfunction and

the sheen is silver primer slapped over rust. Her

hyperactive arrival anywhere else would be folowed by

an immediate “ma’am, I’m caling Security.”

Most of the rude nicknames cooked up for

Marjorie and her signature capes have been passed

from one generation of disgruntled employee to the

next. Some are obvious, like Psycho Nanny; some are

pretty good, like Sylvia Miles o’ Fabric; some, like

Cape Cod, are borderline offensive, even if it came

from a female; some are obscure, like The Other MLK,

which are her initials.

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