Bentley Little - The Store

Or her dad had talked to Newman King in Dallas and King himself had arranged this.

No. It wouldn't have happened this fast.

She left her uniform and her _Employee's Bible_ in the locker, went back out onto the floor, stopped by the Customer Service desk to find out about her last paycheck, was told to leave The Store immediately, and then she was outside, in the parking lot, and she was free.

Free!

She almost felt like dancing.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't want to go home yet, and she got in the car and drove aimlessly and happily around town, finally pulling up in front of Diane's house.

She sat in the car for a moment, not sure she was brave enough to go up and knock on the door, but before she could make any sort of decision, Diane opened the front door and started up the walk toward her.

Shannon tried to read her friend's face, couldn't.

"Hey," she said.

Diane smiled shyly. "Hey."

She blurted it out. "I just got fired from The Store."

"They fired you?" Diane was up to the car now, leaning in the passenger window.

Shannon nodded. "Thank God."

Her friend laughed. The awkwardness that had existed between them for most of the summer seemed to have disappeared, and Shannon was glad she'd come by.

"So what are your plans?"

"Don't have any."

"Want to come in?"

Shannon thought for a moment, shook her head. "Want to cruise around?"

Diane nodded. "Okay. Let me tell my mom." She ran back inside the house, emerging a moment later with her purse. She opened the passenger door, hopped into the car.

"Still friends?" Shannon said.

Diane smiled. "Always."

"It would've been a long senior year without you."

"Tell me about it." Diane looked at her. "I'm glad you're back."

Shannon smiled. "I am, too," she said, starting the car.

She put the vehicle into gear and burned rubber toward Main Street.

THIRTY-TWO

1

For the first three days, Bill was kept alone in a completely dark room.

Solitary confinement. There was no light, no sound, no furniture, only padded floors and walls, rounded corners. No one opened the door to feed him, but there were sacks of potato chips, bagels, and fruit against one wall, plastic bottles of water and soft drinks next to them. There was a toilet in one corner, a trash can in another.

This was supposed to be training?

He should have expected something like this from The Store.

He couldn't help thinking that he was being watched, observed, videotaped with an infrared camera, and even in the pitch-dark he felt acutely self conscious about his movements and behavior and facial expressions. He could not relax, could not get comfortable, was always performing for an audience that might or might not be there, and when he was finally let out, blinking and flinching from the light in the training facility's main corridor, his muscles were knotted, tense, both his neck and back hurting.

He'd been allowed to keep his clothes on in the dark room, but now he was stripped and placed naked in a glass cage in the center of a crowded office, pointed to and laughed at by secretaries and executives. He was left there for twenty-four hours, forced to defecate in front of staring strangers, since the office never closed and workers were at the desks night and day.

What in God's name had possessed him to agree to this? If he'd said no, he would be back in Juniper now, with Ginny and Shannon, and Samantha would be over-seeing The Store.

Maybe.

He had only Newman King's word that he could have refused with no repercussions.

The truth was that they could all be dead now if he had refused. King could have had them all killed.

He would not put it past the man.

Or whatever he was.

They might be dead anyway, his wife and daughters. There was no way to know, no way to check, and it was the uncertainty of the fate of his family more than his own discomfort and embarrassment that consumed him.

He was let out of the cage by two guards, a collar looped around his neck, and led naked and filthy through the office of giggling secretaries, down a long corridor, to an all-white room, where a huge blond man sat on a white bench.

"Good morning, Mr. Davis. I am your instructor."

Bill licked his cracked lips, trying to wet them. He hadn't eaten since he'd left the dark room more than a day ago. "I thought this was supposed to be management training."

The instructor smiled coldly. "It is."

"But what's the point of . . . all this?"

"Humiliation is the key to cooperation. That is why we turn out such effective and efficient managers here."

Bill licked his lips again. "Can I get something to drink?"

"In a moment." The instructor stood, and Bill saw that behind the huge man was a freestanding black rectangle with several handles poking out from a hole in its top. Even from here, he could see the shimmering air of heat waves radiating from the object.

The guards pushed Bill forward. They tied him naked to the bench, bending him over, buttocks up.

"You will now receive The Store brand," the instructor told him.

Behind him, he heard sizzling. He craned his neck, twisting to see the instructor holding a red-hot branding iron that he'd taken from the black rectangle.

"No!" Bill screamed.

"This is going to hurt," the instructor said.

The hot metal seared the flesh of his buttocks, and he passed out.

When he came to, he was strapped to a chair in a darkened cell, facing a gigantic television on which Newman King paced back and forth in a featureless white room, talking to himself. The pain was tremendous, unbearable, and he passed out again almost instantly, but he awoke sometime later in the same position, and Newman King was still on the TV screen, talking.

"Greed. It's the impulse that drives us. Not sex, not love, not the desire to help others, but the desire to acquire, the need to own. It is from this impulse that love and sex spring. Relationships are a form of ownership . . ."

He passed in and out of consciousness, in and out of sleep, and always, whether his eyes were open or closed, he heard the melodious voice of Newman King. ". . . If people don't want it, we make them want it. We make sure that everyone around them has it and they feel left out if they don't. We use peer pressure to our advantage. We exploit their . . ."

Hours went by.

Days.

Sometime during the week -- he'd lost track of time -- the television was turned off. He was released from his bonds by a man dressed in a doctor's white smock, was given an injection in his arm and was allowed to stand and walk around the room.

The pain in his buttocks had completely disappeared.

He was fed a sumptuous meal of deliriously unhealthy junk food brought in on a cart by a gorgeous, bikini-clad young woman. As he ate the meal, the instructor returned with a portable chalkboard, and using lectures and drawings he explained the duties of a manager, went through the organization of The Store. He read extensively from both _The Employee's Bible_ and _The Manager's Concordance_, and Bill was allowed to stop him at any time and ask questions.

The lecture continued after he had finished his food and the woman had taken the table away. Bill was so grateful to be able to talk to someone, to be able to again communicate, so thankful for any sort of human response, that he paid close attention to what the instructor said and asked as many questions as possible.

That evening, he was brought by elevator to what appeared to be a huge, expensive hotel suite, complete with a walk-in closet filled with fine clothes, a king-sized bed, and a whirlpool bath. It was, without a doubt, the most luxurious place in which he had ever stayed, and after the deprivation of the past several days, it seemed to him like paradise.