Tabulation Machine
Or, The Perils of Commerce
Borders Books and Music hires me as holiday help in October 2003. I’m not guaranteed anything beyond Christmas, but I make a good enough impression for them to keep me on full-time. They assign me to the inventory team, which means I have to go in at six in the morning to restock the shelves, but I don’t mind. I work with Casey, who instantly becomes (and remains) one of my favorite people in the world, get a forty percent discount on books and a thirty dollar in-store credit every month on top of my paycheck, and I fall in love with my supervisor.
Our general manager learns of our relationship well before we’re ready to announce it. We’ve been seeing each other for only a few weeks, and we decide to get donuts on a Sunday morning. We’re that annoying couple who’s all over each other in the Dunkin’ Donuts line until I spot our boss over Annie’s shoulder. Lisa is at the back of the line, and we both pretend we didn’t just make eye contact. Instead, I turn around and whisper to Annie that she’s behind us, and tell her not to look. Annie goes stiff, and we get our donuts and go out the side door.
It’s worth a good laugh on the way home, but the next morning, Lisa tells us that either we need to break up or one of us needs to change shifts. Naturally, she’s all for ending the relationship because she doesn’t think I’m good enough for Annie. Plus, she doesn’t want to redo the schedule. But I already know I’m going to marry this girl, so breaking up isn’t on the table. And since Annie is the supervisor and I’m the lowly grunt, it only makes sense for me to dive on the grenade. I move to swing shift and become a bookseller.
Borders is a cool job. I triple the size of my library working there, and I form a whole new circle of friends, many of whom will stick around for the long haul, even after we all spread out across the country. But it’s still a job, and a low-skilled retail job at that. I’m constantly disappointed by what books move the needle, and the customers are always lowering my opinion of humanity.
What do you mean you can’t find the book I want? I told you it had a blue cover!
How can you not have an Australian translation of She’s Just Not That Into You on the shelf? That’s racist!
I’m quite sure Hemingway wrote The Maltese Falcon, and I don’t appreciate your tone, young man.
I shouldn’t have to pay sales tax. I served in the ROTC in high school during Vietnam.
I brought in three crates of my self-published volume of poems about my dead dog and took the liberty of throwing them on the shelves wherever there was empty space. Do I talk to you about cutting me a check or do I need to see the manager?
And those are the normies. (Normies being a relative term.) Like any business serving the public, Borders has its fair share of eccentric regulars. We give them nicknames after they make enough visits to reveal their defining character trait.
There’s Gay Priest, which isn’t a judgment on his sexuality. None of us care about that, but it is somewhat disconcerting when he comes in every week in his collar to special order extremely graphic erotica. One time, he storms right back in after placing his order and slams a parking ticket down on the help desk counter. “What the fuck is that?” he asks.
The profanity catches me more off guard than the porn. “It looks like a parking ticket,” I say.
He rants about where he was parked on the street and how long he was gone, until I interrupt him. “Whadda you want me to do about it, man? I work in a book store. Take it up with a cop. Or find a meter maid.” He storms off in a huff, grumbling under his breath, but he’s back the next week to order more erotica.
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Tube Socks is a café regular. He’s an overweight senior citizen with white hair and matching sneakers, and he always wears tennis shorts and socks pulled up to his knobby knees. He looks like a giant egg waddling around the store, and none of us have any desire to see what’s inside, should he ever hatch. He treats his wisp of a wife like shit, forcing her to sit with him in the café all day while he works on his “projects.” He never goes into detail about these projects, but they must have something to do with Facebook, because that’s how he spends most of his time.
As far as I know, nothing ever comes of his work, and his crowning achievement is scarring my friend Les for life. Les is the daytime barista in the café, and he walks into the restroom, only to see Tube Socks taking a leak at the urinal. He has his shorts and tighty-whiteys pulled all the way down to his ankles like a toddler, past his high socks, and his fat, wrinkly ass is hanging out for anyone and everyone to see. Les is so scarred by the sight that he nearly faints, and he takes the rest of the day off to go home and consult his bong for therapy.
Compared to them, Conspiracy Theory Grandma is almost a treat. She never says much to anyone, but every Tuesday night she comes in and clears off an entire shelf of our speculation section. She carries the books over to the sociology alcove because it has the comfiest chair in the store, according to her, and flips through them until closing time. She never buys anything, and she never puts any of the books back.
My favorite regular is the Fake John Clifford. John Clifford, the real one, is the writer of the cult classic film, Carnival of Souls, which was produced and filmed in Lawrence. He comes into Borders nearly every day and works on his laptop in the café, as far away from Tube Socks as he can get. I hear about him from Les, though I don’t have any interactions with him myself until a gentleman introduces himself as John Clifford when I’m working the front register on a Sunday afternoon.
He buys three Lindor chocolate balls for a dollar, and he certainly matches the portrait I have in my head of what a writer should look like. The guy wears a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, and he carries a briefcase, which I assume has his laptop inside. He even smells how I think an old school writer should smell, with the scent of pipe smoke wafting off his coat. He says he’s writing a novel that will put Carnival of Souls to shame, but all I ever see him do is sleep in one of the chairs in the literature section. Sometimes I can see the outline of a flask in his jacket. Oddly enough, this display of the writer’s lifestyle only reinforces my dream of becoming an author myself someday.
I boast to Les that I finally met John Clifford and point to the guy sleeping one off with an unopened paperback on his chest, but he is visibly confused. “That’s not John Clifford,” he says, and he takes me to meet the real one, who is typing away like a madman in the cafe.
The real guy is very friendly, and his face matches the picture Les pulls up on IMDB. He also doesn’t wear the same clothes every day, which probably should have been my first giveaway. This fella has no idea there’s an impostor pretending to be him in the same bookstore, and I don’t have the heart to bust the faker. Or maybe I just want to figure out what he’s up to before I blow the whistle.
On that score, I’m denied any satisfying revelation. About a month later, the Fake John Clifford bounces a check for his three Lindor balls and disappears, never to be seen by me again. I assume he was embarrassed and moved on to a new haunt, although it’s possible he was worried the jig was up, whatever the jig was supposed to be. Borders loses a dollar and seven cents on the bad check, but the mind-blowing thing is the name printed in the corner of it. I swear to God it said John Clifford. Say what you want, the guy was committed to the bit.
Most of these weirdos are harmless, but that isn’t true of all of them. Shakes is the one who worries us the most. He’s a massive oaf of a man, and he can’t stand still. The guy practically vibrates in place, and he mumbles so bad he’s nearly impossible to understand. This might be for the best, because he gives off definite creep vibes.
Shakes latches onto a cute girl, either an employee or customer, and follows them around like a lovesick puppy dog. Except this dog is 6’6’’ and strikes us all as the kind of guy who can snap and turn rabid in an instant. If that happens, it will take an entire team of us to subdue him, and he’ll do a helluva lot of damage on the way down.
The only problem is he’s technically not doing anything wrong, and we can’t kick him out or call the cops just because he gives us the heebie-jeebies. So we do our best to run interference for any girl in his sights, and I am especially tense whenever he approaches Annie. Luckily, she can retreat to the employees-only area in the back, but our customers aren’t so fortunate.
No one is upset when Shakes suddenly stops coming in altogether around six months after his first appearance. I have no idea what happened to him, and I don’t care. I’m just glad he’s gone. Maybe he and the Fake John Clifford caught a freight train to nowhere.
None of this remotely prepares us for Milo Carrington, however. I am at the help desk with Clyde when Milo comes in the first time. Clyde is my closest Borders friend, and it’s a relationship forged over video games, pro wrestling, and a shared desire to make our own Francis the Talking Mule movie. Originally from western Kansas, Clyde is a few years older than me, and he is back in school at KU. Like me, he is also an aspiring writer, and I admit he is better than me. I’m taller than him though, so it evens out.
His wife, Lauren, also works at Borders, though she is frequently knocked out by bouts of rheumatoid arthritis. She’s been dealing with it since she was a teenager, but she excels at putting on a happy face. Lauren is a natural at customer service, which comes in handy, because Clyde and I are not. She smooths over more than a few rough exchanges with customers before they are reported to management, but she has a sharp, almost acidic sense of humor off the clock.
I like them both a lot, and Annie and I hang out with them whenever Lauren is up for it. When she’s not, Clyde and I often drink a few beers and watch black and white movies. He owns an impressive collection of film noir on DVD. I’m intensely jealous of it, and even with my Borders discount and monthly gift cards, it will take me years to build a comparable collection. Luckily, there’s no need, since he has no problem with me treating his shelves like a library. I’m about to ask him if I can borrow Robert Siodmak’s classic, Criss Cross, when Clyde nudges me with his elbow and directs my attention to the front of the store. “What in God’s name is this?” he says.
The strangest man I have ever laid eyes on is barreling straight for the info desk. Fortunately, none of the other shoppers absentmindedly step into his path, or else he would have plowed through them like Lawrence Taylor pretending Joe Montana was a coke dealer who stiffed him. The way he moves, slightly hunched over, but with a speedy intensity, makes me think of a roly-poly enemy coming after me in a 2-D platformer video game. I’m tempted to climb up on the desk and jump on his head like I’m Mario, but he is on us before I can act out my 8-bit fantasy.
“Greetings and salutations, my esteemed purveyors of prose,” he says, following it with a nervous, rodent-like chuckle. His voice has a slight sniveling quality to it, but it’s hard to know where to begin with this guy.
He wears a tweed coat, not unlike the Fake John Clifford, and the dress shirt he wears underneath it is buttoned all the way to the top. The shirt is tight, like something under it is straining to bust loose, but the bowtie he wears at the top keeps whatever it is at bay. I can’t see them, but I’m positive there are large stains pooling beneath his arm pits.
His pants are tan and corduroy, and the ensemble is topped off by a pair of black Chuck Taylor’s that clash with everything else. “I wonder if I might temporarily interrupt your cerebral philosophical musings to offer an inquiry into the availability of an obscure tome pertaining to the scholarly assertations I require to facilitate my recreational proclivities?”
Clyde and I share an uneasy look. “Huh?” Clyde says.
His words come at us in a rapid-fire staccato, like an old-fashioned typewriter spewing short bursts of dialogue in rhythm with a machine gun. He blinks constantly while he speaks, and each opening and closing of his eyelids is magnified by the thick Coke bottle glasses he wears in blocky, fifties-style frames. “Pardon my debilitating social shortcomings,” he says, but I can’t focus on anything else.
He has a nervous tic with his hands, constantly rolling his fingers while he speaks. At least, that’s the best way I can describe it. The motion looks like he’s trying to pop each of his knuckles in succession with his thumb, but his thumb won’t quite reach and he ends up only stretching his fingers instead. I talk a lot with my hands, and this is adjacent to that, but the unconscious gesture is its own kind of odd. “I require your gentlemanly assistance in locating a volume currently eluding my own admittedly limited skills of detection.”
I’m too distracted to listen to the word salad coming out of his mouth. This guy has to have stepped out of a time capsule from 1955, but I’m not convinced he would have fit in any better then. His skin is unnaturally white and pale, and he sweats profusely. A layer of perspiration covers every inch of him, giving him an unhealthy ghostly glow that contrasts with the jet-black hair on top of his head.
His hair is thinning noticeably and receding, making a sharp widow’s peak even more pronounced on his forehead. I suspect he dyed it with shoe polish, but I can’t smell anything and the color doesn’t run, despite the sweat dripping from his scalp. All of it put together is enough to overload my senses. Clyde, on the other hand, is somehow able to block enough of this out to interpret his speech. “You’re looking for a book?” he says.
The strange man’s face lights up. “Ah, outstanding, my curious comrade. That is exactly the motivation for my visit to your remarkable literary emporium on this fine day.” He reaches into his inside jacket pocket and takes out a small flip notebook and one of those half-pencils used for miniature golf.
He scrawls a title and author in his chicken scratch handwriting, rips out the page, and slides it across the desk to Clyde. Then he gestures to the computer. “Unfortunately, this particular manuscript has proven frustratingly difficult to acquire. I am pessimistic that said opus currently resides on the shelves of your fine establishment, but perhaps you can enter that information into your tabulation machine and ascertain its present whereabouts.”
Clyde shoots me a sideways glance and I silently mouth the words tabulation machine? 1955 might have been generous. More like what century is this guy from? I look over Clyde’s shoulder and decipher the title he’s written down. Training Animals as Servants by Lucius Paulding. This book can’t possibly be real. At least, not the version I’m imagining. “Is that for like seeing-eye-dogs?” I ask. “Or helper monkeys?”
The man out of time nods enthusiastically. “Indubitably,” he says. “Among other exotic species available for domestication.”
I have so many questions, but Clyde surprises me by pulling up the book on the monitor relatively quickly. “It’s out of print,” he says. I check the copyright date on the screen. 1967. That tracks. “But I can get a used copy, if that works.”
He considers it for a moment. “And at what selling point would said manual be priced by its current distributor?”
This guy just didn’t let up, but I am far too fascinated by everything about him to let it bother me. I’m sure as hell not going to tell him to cut to the chase and speak like a normal person. Because he is better than a normal person in every way. He’s a bona fide character. Neither Clyde or I could have created this weirdo on the page if we had tried, but we’re both already plotting how to fit him into any of our current works-in-progress. “Seventy-eight bucks,” Clyde says.
The expression on the man’s face tells us he wasn’t expecting it to be so steep, but he quickly talks himself into it. “That will be acceptable,” he says, taking his checkbook out of an anachronistic satchel attached to his side. Of course, he’s paying by check. “To whom should I make out my involuntary donation?”
“You pay when it comes in,” Clyde says. “Just in case something goes wrong and we can’t get it. It’s easier that way.”
He looks disappointed. “Is there no way it can be delivered by post to my personal domicile?”
“Sorry. We’re not set up for that.”
Another moment of hesitant consternation passes. “Well, I suppose my stubborn automototron jalopy can make another delightful odyssey into your fine burg.” I’m pretty sure he’s making up words now. He gives us his contact information, a phone number and his name, Milo Carrington. His name fits him like a glove. Milo thanks us in his roundabout way and speeds out of the store in the same determined way he entered. Only after he’s gone, do we kick ourselves for not following him.
We spend the next few days attempting to convince our coworkers that Milo Carrington is real. I’m not sure any of them, except for maybe Lauren and Annie, out of spousal solidarity, believe us. Nevertheless, Clyde and I let our imaginations run wild, speculating on what he intends to do with a guide to making animal servants. It doesn’t take long for us to construct a whole Island of Dr. Moreau scenario for him while we kill time at the help desk, along with several alternative theories of escalating goofiness.
I picture Milo living in a gothic mansion on top of a hill on the outskirts of town, not unlike the Munsters’ house, only with a gorilla butler and giraffes to dust the chandeliers. Clyde suggests Milo entertains himself with reenactments of I Love Lucy and The Dick Van Dyke Show staged by squirrels and other woodland creatures he’s brainwashed into being his slaves. Nothing we throw out there sounds too ridiculous for Milo, and by the time the book arrives two weeks later, we are set on learning more about him.
Unfortunately, the book is sealed in cellophane when it comes in the mail, and Lisa forbids us to remove it. We have a shrink wrap machine in the store, so it isn’t a big deal to reseal it, but she won’t budge. I suspect this is her petty revenge for Annie not dumping me. Clyde negotiates a deal with Brett instead. One of the three of us is on the desk at all times, so Brett agrees to give us a call if Milo comes in to pick up his book when we’re not there. Then he has to stall him until we can get to the store. We are going to follow this guy home and see how he lives.
Annie rolls her eyes when I tell her the plan. “You guys are setting yourselves up for disappointment,” she warns. “He probably lives in a regular apartment and wants to teach his dog some tricks.” She’s likely right, but even that prospect would be intriguing in its own way. Whatever the case, it can’t be helped. We have to know the truth.
All three of us are working when Milo comes in to claim his prize. Seeing him for the first time, Brett is stunned to discover we weren’t exaggerating at all. He struggles to nod politely while Milo thanks us profusely with an abundance of unnecessary words and clutches the book like Gollum with the one ring. While he hurries to the registers up front and Lauren runs his check, Brett recovers enough to cover the help desk so we can sneak out.
Clyde and I casually follow Milo outside to the parking lot. I fully expect to see him driving a Model T or a Stutz Bearcat, while wearing driving gloves, a cap, and goggles. In fact, I can’t picture him behind the wheel of anything else. So we’re both shocked when he gets into a cherry red 1965 Chevy Corvette.
The car is in pristine condition, and it roars to life before settling into a steady purr. “What the fuck?” I say. “Didn’t he call his car a jalopy?” I know for a fact that he did because I’d never heard anyone say that word outside of an Archie comic, and I made a mental note of it. At least he pauses to wrap a white scarf over his jacket before he puts the car into drive. So I wasn’t wrong about everything.
We get into Clyde’s car and follow at a safe distance with another car between us. He drives slow, despite the Corvette’s capabilities, and I silently brace myself for the letdown Annie warned us about, while simultaneously hoping for the best. The best, in this scenario, being the most ludicrous thing imaginable. Meanwhile, there is a cement truck in front of Milo, and we pass a sign marking the start of road work on Vermont Street. And that’s when it all goes off the rails.
Our convoy follows the cement truck for three blocks, until it turns off into a parking lot where the curb has already been torn off. The car directly in front of us continues down Vermont, but Milo unexpectedly turns and follows the cement truck into the work zone like his car is on autopilot. “What the hell is he doing?” I ask.
Clyde pulls over to the cones marking the side of the road so the cars behind us can pass. We don’t want to lose track of Milo, and this is as good a vantage point as any. The cement truck stops abruptly in the stripped parking lot, and the Corvette’s tail lights flash. Milo has nowhere else to go, so he brakes with his bumper nearly touching the rear of the truck.
“Did he mean to go in there?” Clyde asks. But before all the words are out of his mouth, cement gushes out of the spout at the rear of the truck in a sludgy flurry.
“Oh shit!”
Wet cement covers the hood of the Corvette in an instant and keeps on coming. From half-a-block away, we can hear the thump of the heavy liquid against the frame of the vehicle. It floods over the side, filling the empty space in the wheel wells and coating his white-wall tires.
Milo bolts out of the driver’s side door while he still can, and jumps up and down like an agitated cartoon character. Clyde rolls down the windows and Milo’s nasally voice carries over the sound of the machinery. We can’t understand what he’s saying, but I’m reasonably sure he’s not using big words anymore. From where we’re sitting, it’s nothing but panicked, furious grunting.
A foreman finally notices what is happening and rushes over to add his voice to the chorus. He shouts at the truck driver to stop, and a few seconds later, the flow of wet cement mercifully ceases. The puzzled driver gets out of the truck and I’m pretty sure I can read his lips. “What the fuck is this asshole doing here?”
Milo steps toward him, but the foreman gets in between them. Milo looks like a bizarro Muhammad Ali talking trash to an opponent at a weigh-in, wagging his finger at the driver. The driver takes exception to that, and the foreman orders him to take a walk, pointing in the opposite direction with his thumb. Luckily for Milo, the guy does what he’s told, but only after offering a parting insult that gets under the strange man’s pale skin.
Milo turns his rage on the foreman, and the guy handles it far better than I would, considering Milo is clearly in the wrong. But even the foreman can only take so much before he barks back. On the other side of the parking lot, three workers stop what they are doing to watch. They ask the driver what’s going on and erupt into laughter. One of them is laughing so hard he falls over. I can’t blame him. Clyde and I are barely holding it together in the car.
Milo is still plenty pissed, but he realizes the window to salvage his car is rapidly closing. He halts the shouting match and gets back in the Corvette. Slamming it into reverse, he spins out of the parking lot with a sense of urgency that puts his previous pace to shame. The tires fling wet cement as he tears down Vermont Street. The car makes a gritty, grinding noise as it goes. Clyde puts his car in drive and we follow close behind. There isn’t a need to be subtle anymore. Milo is clearly preoccupied, and we don’t want to lose him.
He pulls into the nearest car wash, and we park across the street. It takes him a minute to get out of the Corvette, either because he’s looking for quarters or he’s too rattled to work the locks. He stumbles and nearly falls on his face, dropping several coins in the process. The poor guy gets down on his hands and knees to collect them. By now, every other person at the car wash has stopped what they’re doing to watch him. “I’m starting to feel bad for him,” I say.
Clyde nods. “Damn shame about that car too.”
Milo drops his quarters in the meter one by one, and pulls the hose from its holster. He sprays down the hood, but the cement doesn’t want to budge. He pushes some of it off with his hands, ruining his peculiar outfit, but it helps a little. Now that some of the weight is gone, the hose finally cuts through the gunk. The process is laborious and time-consuming though, and he adds quarters two more times before he calls it quits. The front end is clean, but chunks of paint come off with the cement, leaving the hood pockmarked. I comment that a new paint job won’t be cheap. “Maybe he can use that book to train his cat to paint it for him for free,” Clyde says.
“Yeah, and if the engine’s fucked up, maybe he can hire a team of cheetahs to pull it around the metropolis,” I add, lapsing into a half-hearted Milo impersonation as I go.
We have another good laugh at that, but it isn’t quite as funny as it was before. Poor Milo definitely isn’t laughing. He kicks the tires, which are still coated, but nothing comes off. They’ll likely need to be replaced too. Defeated, Milo gets back behind the wheel, and at least the engine starts when he turns the key.
He pulls out of the car wash, but this time we don’t follow. I’m no less curious about Milo, but I’m not sure I can handle the whole truth. Not today anyway. Clyde agrees. Sometimes the world is simply too strange for its own good, and it’s important to know your limits. We decide to pick this up again at another time, but Milo Carrington never comes back to Borders.
We never find out why, but you better believe we have some whopper theories.
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Pulp. Ya know, I was thinking about the caption above, and while it’s not exactly the same thing, I still have a bookshelf that came from Borders. So, in a roundabout way, I could display Shivering in Hell on a Borders bookshelf. But what about you? If not bookstores, I bet a lot of you have worked retail in your lives. Please feel free to share stories about your most memorable customers.