Bentley Little: The Store

Bill was crying by the time he was finished, but Ginny was stone-faced, and he thought then that their marriage was probably over. He didn't blame her.

He understood her feelings. He'd feel the same way.

Still, he was glad he'd told her. It might ruin his life, but at least it liberated him from the influence of Newman King. At least he knew now that he was free to do as he chose without having to worry about his misdeeds coming to light.

Ginny was still not speaking, still staring at him with that hard, unreadable face, and he continued, explaining what had happened tonight in The Store, describing Newman King's anger, the CEO's inability to break the contract he had made, the possibility that he could be defeated.

Afterward, Bill collapsed on the couch, exhausted, emotionally drained.

Ginny continued to stare at him. "I understand," she said finally. "I'm not sure I can forgive and I definitely won't forget, but we'll wait until all this is through before sorting it out. Right now, our first priority is to get rid of Newman King. And to get Sam back."

_Sam_.

Bill swallowed, nodded.

"I think your idea's good. I don't know if it'll bring down his whole corporation, but taking the individual Stores away from him is bound to hurt him. I think you need to contact the other managers."

"I'm going to."

They stared at each other in silence. Bill wished he knew what she was thinking, but her face was unreadable to him. He took a deep breath. "Where do you want me to --" He cleared his throat. "Where should I sleep?"

She looked at him, thought for a moment. "The bed, I guess." She held up a hand. "This doesn't mean I forgive you, but I understand that these are not normal circumstances."

"I --"

"And I don't want Shannon to know. As I said, we'll sort it out afterward."

Bill nodded.

Ginny sighed, and now there was a tear in her eye. She wiped it away with one strong finger. "Come on," she said. "Let's go to bed."

3

He was in his office at The Store the next morning, paging through the rambling, incoherent notes his predecessor had left on the computer, when the phone rang. His personal line. He picked it up immediately. "Hello?"

"Bill?" It was Ginny. "I got a package from Sam. Federal Express."

His heart lurched in his chest.

"I haven't opened it yet. I thought you might want to be here."

"I'll be right over," he said.

She'd opened the package by the time he got there, but she had not watched the videotape, and she sat there, solemn and pinched, holding it in her hand.

She looked at him when he walked in, thought for a moment, then handed him the tape. "I'm not sure this is something I want to see," she said.

"It's not," Bill told her.

She nodded. "Do what you want with it."

He dropped the videocassette onto the floor and stomped on it, breaking it into pieces. He picked up the pieces, unspooled the tape, threw everything into the big garbage can in the garage.

"Have you called any managers yet?" Ginny asked.

He shook his head. "I've been trying to get up the courage. I just keep thinking, what if they're on his side? What if they don't want to do anything differently than the way he tells them? What if they decide to come after me on their own, on his behalf. The contract prohibits him from harming me. I don't think it applies to them."

"Didn't he say his worst enemies make the best managers?"

"Yes," Bill admitted.

"Then how about the other managers you met in that training course? You got along with them, right? Why don't you start there?"

He nodded. "That's a good idea." He sighed. "But King's probably blackmailing everyone. Just in case the training didn't take. He sets us up, then uses it against us."

"But if they're strong enough to stand up to him, if they're strong enough to admit their mistakes and face what they did wrong and accept the consequences . . ." She left the sentence unfinished.

"It might work," Bill said. "I'll contact them."

"But be careful."

"I know. King's probably monitoring my E-mail, bugging my phones. I need to find another way to get through to them."

"Mail," she said. "Regular mail. Or Federal Express."

"The old-fashioned way."

"It's secure."

"As long as the other managers don't have a Mr. Lamb opening their mail for them."

"It's a chance we have to take."

He was still nodding. "We might be able to pull this off."

She kissed him. For the first time since he'd told her about his betrayal.

"Think positive."

"We _will_ be able to pull this off."

"That's the spirit."

He'd been provided with a list of all of the other Stores in the United States, as well as a business number for each, but there were no managers' names listed, and he sure didn't want to talk to them while they were at work.

He ended up calling each Store, asking the manager's name, then dialing information for each area and obtaining the managers' home phones. Two were unlisted, and he let those slide. He called the rest individually, at night or in the early morning, and though he was awkward and hesitant at first, not sure how to bring up what he needed to say, it became easier as he went along, and he discovered that most of the managers were like him, forced into their positions, unwilling participants, and most of them secretly hated Newman King.

A few of those he dialed seemed suspicious as he felt them out over the phone, and for those he invented some business-related reason why he'd called.

They might be willing to go along with the scheme, but they might also be King loyalists, and he couldn't take a chance of trusting them if he wasn't a hundred percent positive.

He was lucky that the first manager he called, Mitch Grey, the man to whom he'd spoken most often in the training classes, seemed to hate Newman King almost as much as he himself did. Mitch was now in Ohio, and he caught on to the idea right away. He even offered to help contact other managers.

"I'm going to put together a package," Bill explained. "Send it through the mail to everyone's house. I'll describe what happened here. I'd like to have some sort of simultaneous switchover, a prearranged time when all the managers take over their Stores at once and start rolling back what King's done. I've been doing things gradually here, sequentially, but if we all did that, it might give him time to prepare, time to come up with something, a way to fight us. I'd like to catch him completely by surprise. And I think we really might be able to hurt him if we drain his power all at once."

Mitch was silent for a moment. "What do you think he is?"

"I don't know," Bill admitted.

"Why do you think he's doing this?"

"I don't know."

"You really think we can fight something like that?"

"We can try."

"But do you think we'll win?"

"Yes," Bill said. "I do."

Mass firings, he decided that night, were the best way to signal the start of the war. Get rid of all King loyalists at every Store in one fell swoop, then immediately start cutting back on The Store's power. He wrote out a tentative schedule, an outline, and saved it.

The next morning, he called more managers.

Within two weeks, it was all set.

Videotapes, ostensibly from Sam, had been arriving by Federal Express each day, but he and Ginny destroyed them all without watching them. King called his office daily, left voice mail and E-mail messages, sent unordered merchandise that had to be shipped back, contacted employees at home, ordering them to carry out his will, offering them promotions, did everything he legitimately could to destabilize Bill's power, but Bill had chosen wisely in his Wrings and firings and the loyalty held fast. The Store's influence was almost completely gone outside the borders of its property, and slowly but surely Juniper was sloughing off the yoke of Store oppression.