EVER YOUR SERVANT

or

how retail really sucks

CHAPTER ONE

"Flipping pastel hell." Joelle Lachance gazed on the uninspiring vista of department store aisles that expanded from her door. Whatta gin joint. She turned back to her vitamin order and thrummed her pen impatiently on the service desk. A's, B's, Multis with Niacin. The multis weren't moving--the Niacin Flush wasn't exactly a selling point. Joelle sighed. Oh, by the by, ma'am, these might turn you red as a baboon's ass. Itchy, too. Oh, for goodness sakes no, it's not an allergic reaction. Your blood vessels just dilate a little--it's a scream!

"Talking to yourself again, Miss Lachance?"

Joelle gripped the underside of the desk. Her nails made crescent-shaped indentations in the particleboard. Giving it her best Lauren Bacall try, she raised her eyes very slowly. She missed her mark and had to site down a few inches. "Afternoon, Mr. Paxton."

The Manager of Weatherstons Department Store sized her up with his colourless eyes. "Having a slow day, are we?"

"You just missed the rush."

"I see." He didn't like having to look up to make eye contact, she could tell. Tough tooties. "Health Food figures have been--"

The store intercom crackled to life, arresting him mid-sentence. "One to three-six-nine, please," droned a vapid female voice. "One to three-six-nine." Willard Paxton's gaze rolled upwards and sideways in recognition of the cloak-and-dagger code that summoned him to another department. At the very least, mused Joelle, he was Numero Uno to somebody. And he'd be leaving soon, always a value-added bonus.

Taking his time, Paxton blinked. He reached down and gave each of his shirt cuffs a little tug so they peeked out from under his grey suit jacket. It would have been too easy to ask him if he'd been reading GQ in the can again. Joelle bit into her bottom lip and kept her mouth shut.

"Health Food figures have been down for two months, Miss Lachance."

She made a show of stretching her back, and then lowered things to his level, bracing her hands on the desk. "We don't have a lawnmower or barbecue season at the Health Food Shop, sir. Summer's cellulite time, and frankly, it's not my philosophy to flog weight loss products."

"Perhaps you'd better learn to cross-sell, then," muttered Paxton dryly as he turned on his heel.

Joelle sucked in her cheeks as he trailed a fingertip along one of her glass cosmetic shelves. "When was the last time you took a vacation, sir?"

Paxton glanced over his shoulder. "I don't take vacations."

"Maybe that's your problem."

He narrowed his eyes. "It's fortunate that you're a Concessions employee, and not a Department Manager, Miss Lachance. It's much harder to fire you." His beige head rotated back to face forward position.

"Three cheers and a baboon's ass for me."

Paxton's shoulders rose slightly, but he kept walking.

She couldn't have counted ten before the shop's back door swung open and the Hardware Manager poked his head in. "So! Godzilla versus Mothra--The Blonde Vitosaurus does battle with the Musty Suit. How'd all that go? Did Old Man Paxton get your--" He took a stride or two toward her. "Oooooooo, you're pissed."

"How can you tell?"

"You're rubbing your Goddess something fierce, lady."

Joelle glanced down at the sandalwood beads that hung from her neck, and the obsidian figure of the many-armed Goddess Kali she grasped between thumb and index finger. "Whatever," she said, taking up the order book again.

"Aw, c'mon, now--don't get all je ne sais what with me." He rounded the desk and wagged a finger at her. "I could see that little hollow in your cheek from across the store. And your nose gets all pointy when you're mad."

"Bugger off, Geraint McKellar."

"Exactly what I had in mind. Let's take a tour." He said it 'tor', like a crusty Maritimer.

"Where?"

"Around the store. Live a little. See a few sights."

"I can't."

"Ah, but you can. You must. Your spirit requires it."

"My bladder requires it."

"There you go, lady--what's the saying: Drink when you're thirsty, pee when your eyeballs are floating?"

"Something like that."

"Off with us, then."

Joelle threw up the chain with its battered BACK IN FIVE sign and they strolled down the aisle past the Photo Studio's complement of screaming children.

"Couldn't they pump something in there--like a fine Ritalin mist?" Geraint wondered aloud, and grunted as Joelle jabbed him in the ribs.

She glanced over at the Hardware Department, where Tom Cowan waved a length of copper pipe in the air. Across the way, in Seasonals, Said Hussein responded with the headless pole of a patio umbrella. Geraint snickered.

"What's with all the phallocentric shaft hoisting, McKellar?"

"It's a debate in progress, lady, spurred by your recent head-to-head with Paxton."

"How so?"

"Well, which one do you think The Old Man wears up his--"

"That'll do, Bandsaw Boy." Joelle accelerated, leaving him to fling his arms wide in her wake.

"The answer could be of earth-shattering importance!"

"Don't care," she called over her shoulder.

She had to check her step as a couple of ambulance attendants, preceded by the store's Assistant Manager, whizzed past her with an empty stretcher. They dashed along the aisle and disappeared into Sal's Skillet, Weatherstons' in-store restaurant. It didn't take long for a crowd to accumulate around the wrought-iron barrier that cordoned off the little greasy spoon from the rest of the store.

Geraint moved up behind her in the press and ground his chin into her shoulder.

"Get off me." Joelle reached back with one hand and made him yelp.

"Hey, lady! In some parts they'd call that assault."

"Particularly those parts. Shut up and enjoy it, McKellar. It's about as close as you'll ever get to heaven."

He rubbed his goatee thoughtfully. "You may have a point, there."

Tom Cowan slid up and bumped Geraint's elbow. "So what's the deal, buddy?"

"I haven't the foggiest."

The crowd parted to admit a police officer, who disappeared in back behind the grill.

"Paxton's in there with two more cops, " muttered Fred Murphy from Electronics, moustache undulating. He tapped the fingers of one hand fitfully atop his substantial beer belly. "I have a bad feeling about this."

Geraint rolled his eyes. "It's called indigestion, Murph."

"Where's Sal, anyway?" demanded Joelle.

"Oh geez. I think that's him." Tom pointed to the stretcher that had just rolled out of the kitchen. A body lay supine on it, covered in a white sheet.

Dead silence ensued as the ambulance attendants wheeled their burden past the eyes of the curious, the bereaved, and the hungry.

"Shit, Sal."

"Oh wow."

Geraint shoved his hands in his pockets. "Nuts. Where'll we go for a decent ulcer now?"

"I don't like this," Fred Murphy kept saying. "I don't like this at all."

Joelle turned to him with her hands on her hips. "What's not to like, Fred? He's dead. End of story. If he's lucky, he won't be reborn as a cockroach." She stalked off by herself and took the escalator upstairs.

Tom and Geraint exchanged glances.

"She liked Sal," theorized Tom. "He sent her a lot of traumatized digestive tracts."

"That," shrugged Geraint, "or her bladder's just reached critical mass."

They weren't quite sure what had killed Sal--a sudden spontaneous hardening of the arteries, a severe bludgeoning with a blunt phonebook, or an abortive rapture attempt--there hadn't been a mark on him. In any case, he was barely tepid, let alone cold, when Willard Paxton received a phone call from Weatherstons H.Q. in Montreal.

"A what will be replacing the restaurant concession?" The Old Man regarded the nails of his left hand with feigned indifference. He used his right to prop the receiver disdainfully against his ear. "A cyber café? With a jazz-era theme. Honestly, Merrill, isn't that a little passé? Oh excuse me--retro. But is it really a project for a small Southwestern Ontario store? Why not Montreal, Vancouver, Toron--he what? Solid market research, you say? Oh, I hardly think our local population merits--"

An elegantly bound business proposal landed with a plop on his desk. The placement was perfection--just centimeters from his unoccupied fingers. The cover appeared to be real leather, black with gold-leaf lettering. Paxton looked up. He nearly dropped the phone. "I--I beg your pardon, Merrill, but something's come up. Yes, yes, of course--I'll call you tomorrow." The Old Man experienced some difficulty replacing the receiver in its cradle, but he managed. After all, that was what he always did. He took a moment to narrow his eyes at his watch before giving any more attention to the creature that stood before his desk.

"Good evening, Mr. Paxton. I believe you were just discussing a matter of some concern to me."

Willard's uninvited visitor was tall and leanly muscled--in fact, he was the size of an athletic pine tree. That he dressed head to toe in black merely underlined his height and his anemic pallor. From his nape snaked a thick raven braid, and his eyes were the colour of amber. He couldn't have been more than twenty-nine years old.

"Begging your pardon," the Store Manager told him frostily, "but you have no appointment, and it is eight-fifty-nine p.m., sir. Weatherstons closes precisely at nine. Now if you will excuse me, I have some business to--"

"It is actually eight-fifty-eight," retorted the visitor, who didn't appear to be wearing a watch, "and if I may be so bold, I think you will find that your business pertains to me." There was a slight European intonation in his speech. His words sounded vaguely like they rolled off a bass drum.

Willard blinked.

"Maximillien Lambert," said the stranger, pronouncing it lã-bear with the nasal 'a' of a Frenchman. He extended his hand. "I am the proprietor of Weatherstons' new Cyber Café."

The Old Man stared at those well-formed fingers for a long moment before he took them. The handshake was predictably bruising. It was also horribly cold. Willard cleared his throat. "As I was about to tell my District Manager, Mr. Lambert, I'm not certain I approve of the idea--much less the reality--of a cyber café in my store."

"Reality, my dear Mr. Paxton?" His visitor fixed him with the most chilling stare. "The venture will succeed here, and your store will make a great deal of money."

Willard scowled. "Frankly, Mr. Lambert, I find all this most irregular."

His guest's lips furled upward at the corners. "I think you will find that I do things a little differently."

"Apparently."

"There it is, Mr. Paxton. I will take up no more of your precious time. Après tout, all we have is this ever-passing moment, yes? Bonsoir. The pleasure has been all mine." With a nod, Lambert disappeared from his office.

Willard glanced at his watch. It read precisely one minute after nine p.m.

Sal hadn't been in the ground a week and a half before the contractors arrived. Thick plastic lined with tobacco paper leapt floor to ceiling around the perimeters of the old restaurant; it was impossible to see inside. A reassuring cacophony of bang-rip-pry ensued, however, and that satisfied people generally as to the new occupant's sense of purpose.

Fred Murphy could have charged a buck a pop for the peephole he'd staked out on the Electronics side of the construction zone. "Sad to see the grill go, Mr. Murphy?" Willard inquired one evening from directly behind him.

Fred's feet left the floor. By the time he'd landed, his heart had probably missed a few beats. "Uh, oh--Mr. Paxton, I--" Fred laughed nervously and gestured to the hole he'd cut with a penknife in the dust barrier. Drywall dust powdered his coppery Irish forelock.

The Old Man delighted in the tiny nervous tic that pulled at the salesman's moustache. He allowed him to carry on both sides of the conversation for a while longer before he interceded. "So tell me, Mr. Murphy, what do you think of this Cyber Café idea?"

Fred readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and folded his hands behind his back, then in front of him again. "Well sir, it's--" He cleared his throat. "I, uh--I think we'll all miss Sal, sir. I mean, it's all happened so fast, we hardly…" He leaned forward and whispered haltingly, "Is it all above-board, Mr. Paxton? I mean, it just seems a bit strange. Maybe a little suspect, if you catch my drift."

"It's an experiment, Mr. Murphy. That's all." Paxton turned and walked away.

Almost immediately Fred returned to the peephole and pressed his forehead to the plastic. He tottered backwards with a sharp intake of breath. Clutching his chest, he beat a hot path back to the Electronics Service Desk.

On the other side of the barrier, Maximillien Lambert drew away from Murphy's peephole. He smiled sardonically and wiped stucco from his fingers with an old rag.

"So'd you getta load of that Cyber Café guy yet?" Geraint leaned on the Health Food counter and watched Joelle break open a box labelled "Shark Cartilage." Extracting large bottles of the powder supplement, she lined them up alongside his arm and pulled out the pricing gun, adjusting the digits. "Jo?"

"No, why should I? What could I possibly have in common with a techno-geek? Except every time his flunkies come in for a juice they track drywall dust across my floor."

"And yet you do not seem to mind cemetery mud." Maximillien Lambert stood in the doorway, arms folded over his chest, head cocked to one side.

Geraint cast a sharp eye at his own Doc Martens.

"Yes--Mr. McKellar, isn't it?"

"It is."

"Your father is something of a sexton, oui? He handled Sal Iannelli's burial. You assisted him. There is still mud on your shoes."

"My dad runs a memorials business." Geraint frowned. "Beg pardon, but just how do you know so much?"

"I was present for the service, of course. I knew Sal rather well."

"He never mentioned you," interjected Joelle.

Her mildly hostile tone drew a broad smile from Lambert, who strode closer and bowed deeply at the waist. "You must forgive me, Mademoiselle. Maximillien Lambert--and your humble servant."

Joelle's brows converged beneath the fringe of her bangs. "Uh huh. Charmed, I'm sure."

His eyes swept her as he rose, settling on the Kali pendant that hung below her throat. "Om Krim Kalyai Nama."

He didn't rate a smile, but she gave him an extended once-over. "Om Nama Shivaya," she said finally.

Lambert steepled his hands beneath his chin and made another small bow.

"Uh--" Geraint raised a finger. "You lost me way back--on the cemetery mud thing."

Max treated him to an indolent blink.

"I wore boots."

"Ah, but you changed out of your present shoes on the site, Mr. McKellar. I'll wager this is the first time you've worn them since."

"You sound pretty sure about that."

"Burial ground invariably stinks of decay, my friend." Max tapped an index finger alongside his nose.

"Get outta here."

Lambert shrugged and turned back to Joelle. "Mademoiselle." He raised her fingers to his lips. "My contractors will leave their boots at your temple door." Releasing her with an expansive gesture, he departed the shop.

Joelle stared a long time at the spot where he'd been standing.

"Slick bastard." Geraint tugged on his goatee. "I resent being told my Docs smell like dead guys."

"Stop wearing them to the graveyard, then."

"Now hold the fort here a minute, lady. You don't find that in the least odd?"

"There were a lot of people at the service. And he's got a good memory. Big deal." Joelle began pricing bottles.

He raised his voice over the rapid-fire KA-CHUNK, KA-CHUNK of the gun. "He said he could smell my shoes."

"He's yanking your chain, McKellar."

"You sound suspiciously like an apologist to me. I think you like him."

"Please."

"No, really. What was all that Om Nama Mama stuff, anyway?"

She dropped the pricing gun and took hold of her pendant, thrusting it toward him for emphasis. "Om Krim Kalyai Nama, Geraint? It's a mantra: I bow to the Goddess Kali, Who Takes Away Darkness."

"Doesn't sound very French to me." He squinted dubiously at her dangling goddess with its distended tongue and sword-waving arms.

The blonde rolled her eyes. "It's Sanskrit. So he's read a couple books on Hindu cosmology. What's the mystery? Any first-year undergrad could crack one text and ream that off."

"Fine, Miss Smarty-Pant-a-lons-I-have-a-Religious-Studies-Degree. The Slick Mon-sewer's a wannabe egghead. Now how 'bout you? What was that Sheev-hiya thing you told him?"

"It's probably the most common Hindu mantra--Om Nama Shivaya. Adoration to Shiva. Shiva is the Hindu god of destruction--"

"Another one of those four-armed guys?"

She looked very annoyed. Her nose was getting sharper by the second. "Yeah. Four arms. He's also the mate of Kali--or Parvati, or Sati, when the Goddess manifests in those forms. In tantra, Shiva and Shakti, the Male and Female Principles, are the two halves of the Cosmic Whole."

"Like some kinda ying-yang thing."

"Similar, only that's Chinese, not Hindu. And incidentally, it's yin and yang, McKellar."

"Uh huh." Geraint clucked his tongue. He was tempted to ask the blonde if this Shiva guy had so many wives, why'd she pick the most hideous one to wear around her neck, but he figured that would send her right over the top. "Alrighty then. To recap for those of us who aren't Ph.D. material, the Slick Monsewer and you basically exchanged cosmic phone numbers."

"What?"

"I mean, is that all a guy has to do? Waltz in, slobber on your hand, and suddenly POOF! Om Nama Mama--he's a god?"

"Scarcely, you ass." She took an armful of bottles and hauled them over to an empty shelf.

He scooped the stragglers, following her over. "I zeenk eet eez much more zeeerious zen zhat," he said as he crouched and handed them to her one by one. "I zeenk you haf made a Freudian zleeeeeep."

Joelle's head swivelled toward him. She looked at him quite a while, long enough for Geraint to notice the flecks of green in her eyes. Then she stood up, placed a pointy-toed granny boot on his arm, and shoved him flat. She stepped around him, narrowly missing the side of his face.

Back at the counter she bent over the inventory ledger. She flipped her hair over one shoulder and made check marks. Her graphite pencil scratched dryly across the page.

"It's Sal, isn't it?" When she didn't answer, Geraint continued to study her from the floor, arms folded behind his head. She'd got that hollow back in her cheek again. He gazed up at the ceiling for a while, with its nondescript beige tiles stained here and there by water spots. "Cough, Lachance. Why are you taking it so hard?"

She'd started on another box. Geraint listened as she stabbed through the tape seal and tore it open. The price gun KA-CHUNKED for a minute or two, and then her boots clicked across the tiles. The hem of her dress brushed his knee. A small oblong box dropped onto his chest, and he took it up, turning it in his fingers. It was loose-packed tea inside, apparently--sheep sorrel, burdock root, slippery elm, blessed thistle…

"You know what this shipment is, McKellar?"

He glanced at the price tag. "Expensive. But then I'm an insensitive SOB, remember."

Joelle started shelving the little boxes right above the shark cartilage. He couldn't see her face anymore, just long skeins of blonde hair. "Sal had terminal cancer, Geraint."

"What?" He sat up. "He looked great!"

"They told him two months, initially, inoperable. That was last November."

He handed over the box of tea, watching her align everything labels forward. "You were feeding him this stuff. Jesus."

"It was working. He was in remission." She stood up and exhaled. "So you know what? I don't care about the Weatherstons Cyber Café or whether its new owner has a nose on him like a goddamned bloodhound. And let me tell you something about Shiva: they call him The Destroyer. He hangs out in the cremation ground, and when He dances, the world comes to an end." She turned away and pressed her hands to her spine. "He's not in my best books as a deity right now, comprenez?"

"Gotcha." Geraint considered patting her shoulder, but thought the better of it. He was pretty sure she'd deck him. He got to his feet and stepped out quietly, leaving her to make peace with her tea and the cosmos.