Anomaly in Abnormality, Part II

“I can’t believe I just had a shouting match with some idiot over a price!” Cadby said, walking into the break room, his hand over his eyes. “What do they think I am? Fucking insane?”

“You’re not yet?” Nick asked, flipping through a book. He was making rather a mess with the muffin he was eating, but then again, who can eat a muffin without a good half of it turning into crumbs?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cadby snapped.

“Oh, it’s not a personal thing,” Nick said. “It’s just part of the job. Either you’re insane when you walk in, or the job drives you to it. Really fast. Fast like downhill without a—”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up, I get it. Look. People have got problems. I’ve got problems. We’ve all got our damn problems. But their problems are not my problems!”

Nick waited a beat, and then continued: “Brake. But they can be pretty fun sometimes, because they think they’re right all the time. All the time.” The repeating-things bit was starting to get on Cadby’s nerves. Nick turned a page. “Do you think Hobbes is a real tiger, or’s he just in Calvin’s head?” he asked, looking up.

“What are you reading?”

“Calvin and Hobbes. Ever read it? Comic strip, awhile back?”

“Not… that I remember…”

“Oh, you poor, deprived soul.”

“Wha?”

“Nothing.”

***

Some time later—days, weeks, months, it didn’t matter; Cadby’s memory of time was all clumped together in one giant puddle of Silly Putty—he was sitting in one of the Comfy Chairs during his break, flipping through a book. It was, incidentally, Calvin and Hobbes. Another one of the Regulars—Geek Squad as he was known among the employees—sat a ways away typing on his laptop. He really did look like a geek, now that you thought about it—he had the fucking glasses for it, for Christ’s sake.

Nick was at Customer Service, playing with a paddleball he’d found in the kids department. He was the only employee that ever seemed to have spare time. For the rest of them there was always something going on, stocking this and keeping an eye on that. Even when there wasn’t, they continued to look busy, or at least like they took their job seriously. Look, of course, being the key word.

But Nick was always bored or amused. When he was bored he was doing something to entertain himself, like playing with a Slinky or picking something random out of the bookshelves. When he was amused someone else was doing something to entertain him, usually not consciously.

The tap, tap, tap of the ball was an interesting background sound when the music paused in between songs. Geek Squad over there took no notice. He was probably programming or hacking or trying to find a network or whatever it is that geeks do.

At one point he closed his laptop and tucked it under his arm, much like a book—Cadby finally realized in one of those stupid moments of inspiration you wonder why you never had before that this was why the things were sometimes called notebooks—and walked over to Customer Service. He asked about a book with “illustrations… regarding CSS programming, and written by the same person, at least I assume, that wrote the book about JavaScript because the font’s pretty much the same.”

“I see,” Nick said, intensely interested, hanging onto the man’s every word. “And do you have a title for this book?”

“I can’t seem to remember. Can you find it for me?”

“No… I need a title or an author.”

“Well, you should know it. It’s a pretty well-known series, in and out of the computer industry.”

“Not well-known enough for you to remember it, though…”

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s not clicking? Anywhere? Can you find someone else, another employee that’s more knowledgeable about computers?”

Nick walked out of the little counter that was Customer Service, and around to Geek Squad, who was still going on about his book. He took the laptop from under the man’s arm and opened it towards him.

“You look like someone knowledgeable about computers,” Nick said. “Why don’t you Google it so the rest of the nerds—I mean, fellow workers in the computer industry can tell you your book’s title?”

The scene froze for a second or so, and then Geek Squad snatched his precious portal to the technological world out of Nick’s hands. It snapped shut as he tucked it under his arm again and walked away.

“Logic,” Cadby heard his coworker say. “They never see it coming.”

***

And then there was the Librarian. She was old, and ran a school library. For these two reasons, she thought she knew everything about books, and therefore had an excuse to make really stupid demands.

Alyssa and she never got along too well. Mostly because Alyssa was the manager, but the Librarian thought she should manage the manager. For instance, there was the one time that the books were stacked just the wrong way, and why didn’t Alyssa arrange them so the best-sellers were more towards the front end? Or the time that she thought she deserved a discount for being a librarian. Or the time that the “10% off” stickers were placed on the wrong parts of the book—“The spine! You put them on the spine so it doesn’t block the cover!”

Nick had it down to a science. At one point he was in the break room and the Librarian argument of the week was taking place just outside, so he took a marker and drew on the whiteboard the exact steps he knew they were going to go through. Not that it mattered that the week’s schedule was already there—he just erased it without a thought.

***

Then there was the Preacher, who got offended at the “anti-Jesus” books the store had to offer. After Gregg had had his fill of the man the first day he complained, Nick got a description of him—just in case he should return to try to spread the Good News by complaining about everything that was Bad News.

Cadby sometimes saw Nick as a very selfish little bastard, but when he dealt with the Preacher it seemed as if he was never anything of the sort.

Nick recognized the man several minutes after he entered the store. He made sure to place Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code somewhere on one of the display tables where it could be easily seen. Actually, though, the Preacher didn’t take the bait—instead, Nick found him looking disgusted in various sections of the store.

Cadby was at Customer Service when Nick asked to switch. He still got a pretty good view from the register he was at.

The Preacher was direct—he marched straight up to Customer Service and demanded he see the manager.

“I’m afraid she’s busy at the moment—” Nick began.

“Well, I’m shocked!”

“Shocked at what?”

He listed a whole series of books whose points of view he completely disagreed with, and would probably like to toss into a bonfire, or use as a substitute for toilet paper.

“Ass,” Cadby said quietly to himself.

“Sorry?” the person he was helping asked.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. I apologize. Not you.”

“Oh, no, I understand. I really understand.” The customer’s face turned into a scowl, and his voice quicker and deeper. “Hell, I really, really understand. Did you know that last week, my boss told me—I work at a cable company—he told me…”

Cadby continued to go through the regular motions of scanning and bagging while allowing his hearing to drift off, making sure to nod and smile and say things like “That’s awful” from time to time. He’d leave eventually.

“Well, I couldn’t agree more,” Nick said to the Preacher. “I go to church every week to worship Christ, and personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that. But some people just want to undermine everything because they can’t find Him.”

“Exactly! Exactly!” the Preacher declared. “If you want to find the Lord, you have to listen! To have patience! You can’t go bashing about everything He says.”

“I know, I know,” Nick agreed, agreed. “But I believe that God has given us all different minds. And sometimes people turn from Him. But that’s their business, not mine.” Only the last sentence sounded like it could have come from Nick.

“Quite, quite. God has designed us all to be different, I know that.”

“Well, that’s why I don’t rip the books off the shelves every day. I think He wants us to know there’re different people out there… no matter how much they might not like Him, it’s too bad, because He made ’em to begin with. They can’t escape that!”

The Preacher chuckled. “Yes, that’s true…”

“If you’d like to buy something religious, please feel free. A lot of good stuff’s over there…”

“No, thank you. I’m late for a meeting. But thanks for this talk. It’s nice to see God around here.”

“Thank you.”

Cadby was fucking impressed. Yes, he too used the idea that the Customer Was Always Right, but that took talent.

The Preacher walked out of the bookstore. The instant the doors closed behind him, Nick cupped his hands and yelled out, “Sucker!” The word wasn’t just carried by the air, it decided to take a shortcut and sliced through it. He looked around. “Sorry, sorry about that. Please. Go on with your lives. Don’t mind me, I was just checked out of the mental hospital today,” he said as he crossed over to Cadby. “Hey, Cadby, thanks, that was a lotta fun. I’ll take the register, it’s your turn to play idiot.”