BLUE WALLS TO REMIND him of still waters. Charlie’s quiet oasis, his festering nest in the back of a carpet store warehouse in a rundown industrial park.
He pushed aside the wall, actually a blue rug he’d hung like a curtain on the pallet rack in front of bunker 49A, stepped into the aisle and clutched his balls in the cold.
His nose twitched, clogged by dust. He sneezed.
Gotta move. Get out of here before somebody showed up for work and discovered he was sleeping in the back. He had been for weeks.
Charlie Mills had built a hidey-hole in the bottom bunker in the last row of the last aisle in the warehouse of Area 51 Flooring.
He usually woke early, gave himself a whore’s bath with a wet washcloth before his coworkers arrived, then took off in his car returning a few moments later to walk through the front door fashionably late.
Pat, his boss and owner of Area 51 Flooring, never noticed. He was a money guy, not a people guy. Hank, the warehouse supervisor, might have discovered Charlie’s sleeping place, full of blankets and piled up rugs, if he wasn’t drunk half the time and dense as hickory the other half.
Charlie pushed into the men’s room, slogged through his morning rituals and changed out of his sleeping sweatpants and T-shirt. He slipped into his grey suit, which he’d hung on a stall door and steamed to release the wrinkles last night, checked himself over in the mirror — hair, jacket, shirt, face — shit, he should have gotten up earlier and shaved.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t cost him. Today was Bonnie’s first day taking over for the boss, who had skipped off to a warm holiday. Charlie suspected she’d be harder to slip than Pat. It was her first day as boss and she would be keeping a tight watch for shenanigans.
Job One, Charlie thought, was protecting his nest in the warehouse. He had to keep Bonnie from finding out he was sleeping in the store. In a couple of weeks, a month tops, he’d find a new place, then he’d be golden. But until then, keeping his den in the back secret was critical.
Charlie had been tossed from his duplex a few weeks back, after his landlord, a skinny cowboy type, sold half the building out from under him.
Cowboy claimed he’d sent Charlie plenty of letters about it. He said he even slipped a couple of notices under the door and handed over two final warnings to Charlie in person.
It could be true. Charlie didn’t know. He did remember being asked to make an offer on the place more than a year ago but he didn’t want to own property in that neighbourhood and assumed it had all been forgotten.
The bell above the store’s front door chimed. Someone was here.
Charlie’s nose crinkled. He checked himself in the mirror one more time and headed to the sales floor at the front of the store.
It was Bonnie. “You’re here early,” she said.
Charlie waved, started to make coffee on the small table behind the sales counter. “Uh-huh,” he said.
Bonnie nodded and tapped the counter. “Good, you’ll be at the staff meeting then. I thought I might have to phone you. Thirty minutes in the lunchroom.”
And she was gone
The lunchroom smelled like puke or maybe cheese. Charlie decided on ricotta cheese, sharp and sour. He checked his breath by blowing into his hand in front of his face.
Two young lads, the installers Don and Hugo, sitting to Charlie’s left at the round table, chuckled.
Charlie winked at them.
Bonnie’s voiced droned in the background. Charlie barely heard. It hardly mattered. It wouldn’t be important.
He checked the clock on the yellow wall, stained by cooking oil, dust and grime. 9:18.
Jeez, that’s it? It seemed like Bonnie had been talking for an hour already. Has it really only been 18 minutes?
Charlie stared at the clock, imagined moving the minute hand with the power of his mind. No luck. Not a single tick. And just when he was near to interrupting the meeting to squeal in mock anger at the broken clock, it jumped. 9:19.
Charlie shifted his attention to Bonnie’s meandering speech. She might touch on something he needed to know.
Yeah, we get it, he thought. The boss put you in charge. Blah, blah, and we all have to pull together as a team, blah, blah, blah.
He combed his hair back with his fingers. How much longer? He had fake sales calls to make.
The clock clacked forward another minute, but it felt like 10 to Charlie.
Twenty years on the job and they snub me for what? For this, for Bonnie?
Luckily, the money was decent, good enough to keep Charlie comfortable and coming back to this crap mini-mall every day. It supported his casino habit.
Through the lunchroom window, the store’s giant sign in the parking lot blocked the view of almost everything else.
“Area 51 Flooring,” it said in lettering readable from the moon. Then beneath it, “UFOs have landed — Unbelievable Flooring Options.” Then beneath that. “Great Spaces, Great Prices.“
Pat wasn’t subtle when it came to marketing, but he gave Charlie his freedom and Charlie valued that. He pretty much came and went as he pleased, so long as he kept ringing up sales.
The pitch of Bonnie’s voice changed. Oops, he better pay attention, this sounded important.
Bonnie was clarifying the need for staff to properly fill in sales receipts, purchase orders, service orders, employee time sheets and vacation requests.
Charlie folded his arms over his chest. Wrong, he thought. It wasn’t important at all. It’s not my job to fill in forms, it’s hers.
He wasn’t bothered, much, that Pat had chosen Bonnie over him. People might think it bothered him but it didn’t. Besides, that wasn’t the point.
The point was making sure Bonnie lived up to the promises she made, he thought.
Somebody nudged his ribs.
“You awake, Charlie?” Bonnie sat on Charlie’s right.
“I’m doing just fine. Thank you for your concern,” Charlie said.
Bonnie smiled at him. “Good to know. Now, where were we? OK, to recap, I’m in charge until Pat returns. Let’s stay focussed on our jobs and work how we always do for the next two weeks. Nothing needs to change.”
Bonnie sipped coffee, carefully casual. “I want you to call me if you need anything. If you’re sick or if you need to rearrange appointments, I’m here for you. Also, I want everyone to let me know when you leave the building. I want to know where everybody is.”
Charlie’s ears perked up. Nope, that’s not going to work.
“I manage my own time. It’s worked that way for a long time,” he said to the room.
Bonnie was prepared for Charlie. He never passed up a chance to tell everyone he was the most senior employee and top sales earner in the company.
She shifted in her chair and faced him
“Whatever you and Pat do when Pat is here, that is between you and Pat. I don’t know anything about that. But I’ve been tasked with keeping the store operational for the next two weeks and I intend to keep it humming. So if you could just let me know what you’re up to, where you’re at, that kind of thing, just until Pat returns, I’d appreciate it.”
Charlie scratched his chin, regretting again that he hadn’t shaved. He surmised his 24-hour shadow would cost him a couple of Bonnie Bligh demerit points.
“But,” he said, “what if it’s for sales appointments off-site? I go out on calls first thing in the morning all the time before coming into the office. You expect me to check with you every time?”
Bonnie nodded. “Just call in. It’s only for a couple of weeks. I’m sure you can manage it.”
Charlie winked again at Don and Hugo.
“What if me and the boys are doing an install off the company books. The boys and I take on a fair amount of freelance work.”
Bonnie’s stomach tightened. Keep it professional, she urged herself. Keep it businesslike.
“If it’s not about work for Area 51 and not during company work hours, why would you report to us, Charlie?’
“Hmm, I see, I see,” Charlie said, rubbing his chin like a cartoon philosopher. “That’s good to know, good to know.”
Don and Hugo snickered. Bonnie bristled. They would take his side, she thought. Old boys and new boys, they all stick together.
Hank sat on the counter next to the sink and hushed Don and Hugo from behind. Besides those three, and Charlie and Bonnie, two sales reps, Diane and Nancy, were present.
Diane, the next senior sales person after Charlie, waved Bonnie off. “Ignore them. They’re just being stupid.”
“Whoa,” Charlie piped in. “I’m just asking the question. Can’t I ask a question?”
Save it Broom Hilda, he thought. I make more money for the owners of this rinky dink, small-potatoes farm than you, Nancy and Bonnie combined.
Blissfully, the meeting came to a close.
Hours later, perched on a stool at the front counter, Bonnie pinched between her eyes at the memory.
She got it. Charlie was pissed off that Pat hadn’t chosen him to be in charge. Bonnie expected it and she believed she handled it well.
She had only started at the company five years ago and was behind Charlie, Diane and Nancy in seniority. She was junior to Hank, too, although Hank never got involved with office politics.
But she’d fought for everything she had. She deserved it. She put herself through school, got her Master’s in Business Administration working nickel and dime jobs at cheap diners and hacking a pirate taxi. It made perfect sense for the boss to choose her over Charlie.
She resumed work on a stack of time sheets on the counter in front of her. She frowned, holding a bottle of Wite-Out in one hand, with the brush ready in the other, covering superfluous zeros and ones on the forms, muttering under her breath. It annoyed her when people didn’t follow simple rules. Charlie chanced a look over her shoulder.
“The company’s legal name actually includes the number 000-001,” he said. “You’re wasting your time poring though all those forms blotting out the number. It is technically correct.”
Bonnie placed the brush back into the bottle. “Ain’t nobody calling this store Area 51 Flooring, zero, zero, zero, dash, zero, zero, one.” She turned back to her work.
Charlie rattled his head, told himself to walk away. Ignore it and return to the breakfast sandwich he had left at the far end of the service counter.
But he didn’t, couldn’t. She’d been a mess at the meeting earlier that morning, throwing out orders like a drill sergeant and it felt like time to clarify matters.
“Bonnie,” he said, “honestly, you don’t need to blot out that information.” He pointed to the forms. “You realize the legal name for the store is Area 51 Flooring 000-001. The box on top of the forms asks for the company’s complete name and that’s what it is. I don’t know what the number is for, but it is part of the legal name.
Bonnie scoffed. Fuck Charlie and his 1980s ideas about women in the workplace.
“I assume,” she began strong and smug, “that the number is there because owners planned on future expansion. But it’s just legal business licence bullshit. All the forms and letterhead we have, identify the store as Area 51 Flooring. All our deliveries arrive addressed to Area 51 Flooring. The small type at the bottom of the forms, the legalese, mentions the number but nobody cares. The numbers are meaningless. Everybody I’ve ever talked to calls his store Area 51 Flooring. Period.”
Charlie laughed. Was she really prepared to search through a whole year of employee time sheets hunting down rogue zeros and ones? What a nut bar. Anybody with that mentality will never change their mind, no matter how much I try to convince them. A voice in his head told him to give up.
But his real voice, the one that tumbled from his mouth, had already made it a mission to show Bonnie the insanity of her ways.
“Look, it says right in the fine print on the back of the form.”
He grabbed the sheet from under Bonnie’s hand and flipped it over. “We are store number 000-001. That’s the number you enter in the empty square at the top of the form here.” He flipped the paper back over and pointed to the top right corner.
“See? It says ‘Store Name’. It is Area 51 Flooring 000-001, that is its correct name.”
Bonnie grabbed the paper and waved it. “Nope. We are Area 51 Flooring, everybody knows that. There is no other store location and no other place with this name, so adding the number makes no sense.”
Charlie crossed his arms. “Legally, which is what the box at the top of the form asks for, the name is Area 51 Flooring 000-001.”
“No. Fuck no.” Bonnie flipped the form and slapped it down on the table. “Absolutely wrong. I don’t believe you’re challenging me on this.”
The argument grenade had been tossed. This was no mere fight about the store name any longer and it inflamed Charlie all the more.
He tried to interject, but Bonnie waved him into silence.
“Nobody writes that. The store is Area 51 Flooring. You and others around here are entering it wrong. It is Area 51 Flooring. That is all.”
Bonnie glared at Charlie, with his slicked back grey-black hair and beard, like some greasy, fat, old biker wanna-be. She should laugh in his face. Pat had chosen her. Charlie would have to study up quick and learn to deal with that fact, she thought.
“You can’t just change the name because you feel like it,” she said.
Charlie blew a raspberry and slapped his hand on the counter. “I’m not saying we have to write out the name and number every time. I’m only saying that for you to go through an entire year’s stack of time sheets looking for offensive numbers is crazy.“
Bonnie sniffed. “I prefer to have things correct.” She slapped the binder shut, collected her things and headed for the manager’s office.
Charlie watched her go. He’d lost the argument, but considered her frustration a small victory.
A few minutes later, Bonnie reappeared carrying a large box.
Charlie squinted for a better look. Is that the training module?
Bonnie set the box down on the counter.
Charlie scrambled to his feet. Oh, no she isn’t, he thought. She wouldn’t.
She lined up carpet samples across the counter.
“Everybody, I want your attention. Gather around,” she called loud enough to be heard throughout the store while staring at Charlie. “We’re going to conduct some training.”
The box contained rug samples used to train newbies. The recruits would pore over the pieces and identify them by fibre, stitching, backing and style and try to estimate the quality and price. Then they’d read through the accompanying study guide to learn about the pros and cons of different carpeting and which types of carpets are better for different uses.
No, no, no, Charlie thought. You’re not sticking the training wheels back on me. He pushed his way through the swinging aluminum doors that led into the warehouse.
Bonnie didn’t try to stop him.
Charlie stomped down the aisles between pallet racks where the bunkers were stacked three high with hardwood, laminate, tile and other flooring panels. Others bunkers contained rolls of carpeting, linoleum and vinyl flooring.
In the far dark back, area rugs lay in piles against the wall, a few were hung against the wall. One hung across the front of the bunker where Charlie had made his nest.
If he had cigarettes, he’d smoke now. He’d quit 10 years ago but the urge poked away.
Somebody shouted his name. He stopped pacing.
Diane, stuck her head through the warehouse doors and hollered. “I’m busy with a customer, Charlie, and another couple just came in. Can you see to them?”
“Yeah,” he said. He guessed Captain Bonnie must be tied up blotting out numbers in binders.
Out on the sales floor, Charlie showed the couple around. They were looking at hardwood, or something like it. Maybe laminate, or tile if it suited.
Charlie guided them through the displays. They paused over several types of hardwood and also seemed pleased at a couple of laminate options.
Charlie manoeuvred them to the engineered flooring display and Bonnie bounded over, huffing and flapping her arms.
“Charlie, thank you so much, but I’ll take it from here.”
Charlie’s look said, back off or I’ll stab out your eyes.
“Huh? What are you talking about?” he said. “I’ve got this.”
Bonnie patted him on the shoulder, like a school principal taps a misbehaving pupil.
“It’s just that you’ve never taken the courses to become certified in engineered flooring, Charlie. Every one else on the sales team has.”
Charlie watched the customers shift uncomfortably and drift across the aisle. “I don’t see how that matters, Bonnie. I’m sure I can show these people what they want.”
The woman customer cleared her throat, the man turned his attention and pretended to examine a tile display.
Bonnie was firm. “But you’re not certified to talk about engineered flooring, Charlie, and I’m sure these people want to hear all the options we have.” She turned to the couple. “Isn’t that right?”
The woman shrugged. “Sure, why not?
“Charlie, you can still sign up for an online course in engineered flooring. Come to my office when I’m done here and I’ll give you the details.”
Charlie slunk back to the warehouse seething, thinking he might put into his overnight bunker and take a nap.
If he had a home to go home to, he’d take off for the day, but that was out of the question. He could take his car and go park down by the baseball diamonds. He’d be right to walk out. He shouldn’t have to stay and put up with Bonnie’s B.S.
He should have been put in charge anyway. Pat should have asked him to take over operations, not Bonnie. Not because he wanted the job, but it would have been nice to be asked.
After all my hard work for them, they still treat me like shit, he thought.
He threw on his jacket and steeled himself to walk out through the front doors past Diane, Nancy and Bonnie. He’d run the gauntlet and all their questions. Charlie is no coward. He’d exit through the doors, right in front of their smug faces.
He collected his jacket, took keys in hand. I’ll just wave over my shoulder as I leave, he thought.
Then he remembered. Damn. It was cake day.
Don’s birthday was today and there’d be cake in the lunchroom at 4 p.m. Sure would be a shame to miss out.
He tapped his fingers on his thighs, pondering next steps. Then, confident he could avoid contact with Bonnie for two more hours until Don returned and cake was served, he headed for bunker 49A to lie down.
End of Part One
Part Two
Part One synopsis:
Tossed from his home, Charlie Mills is sleeping in the warehouse at Area 51 Flooring, where he works as a sales rep.
The owner is away on vacation. He’s put Bonnie in charge and while Charlie adamantly rejects suggestions that he wants the job, he’s been jousting with Bonnie all day.
He’s fed up. Marches for the front door, ready to leave and throw Bonnie his big, warty middle finger as he walks out.
But then, fuck. He remembers. It’s cake day. He can’t leave and miss cake day.
He heads into the warehouse to lie down.
Charlie woke from his nap annoyed. It shaved away at the back of his teeth. He wanted to bite hard on something, peel the shitty plastic shrink wrap off a pallet of tile with his teeth. Ugh, he wanted to fucking scream.
He creaked his body from the bunker where he slept and dropped to the cold concrete, where he crunched 10 sit-ups, 10 push-ups.
Better.
He didn’t know how much more of Bonnie he could take. She’d made him her top target, that much was plain and her demeaning actions demanded he retaliate. But he’d have to stow it for now. Leave anger and retribution for later.
It was cake day.
He’d play nice, keep his head down and stay out of her hair until cake time at 4 o’clock.
The warehouse was dark and cold. He needed water and headed for the doors to the sales floor.
He peeked in. Diane, Nancy and Hank were discussing a pick-up order. No sign of Bonnie.
“He’s coming first thing tomorrow morning,” Nancy said. “Can’t we get his stuff ready to go? We can pile it by the loading doors.”
“Sorry.” Hank raised his palms up in apology. “My back. I can’t lift things until things loosen up a little.”
Charlie stepped in. “I can look after it.”
Nancy turned, sighed relief. “Could you really, Charlie? Because that would be so great.”
Charlie shrugged. “Yeah, it’s no problem. What are we talking about?”
Nancy showed him the receipt — $30,000 worth of engineered flooring panels.
Fuck, Charlie swore to himself. It was a sale from the couple he’d shown around earlier. The commission should have been his. What’s 20 percent of $30,000?
“Who’s commission?” he asked. It better not be Bonnie’s, he thought.
“Mine,” Nancy said in a halting voice, as though fearing a backlash. “Sorry, I know Bonnie pulled you away from these customers, but I made the sale and closed the deal.”
Charlie waved her off. At least it wasn’t Bonnie. “It’s fine.”
He snatched the order paper from her hand and headed to the warehouse.
The forklift, the kind where the operator stood on a platform at the back, was plugged in, batteries charging. He unplugged it from the charging socket, turned the key and backed out of the parking spot.
Bonnie stormed through the doors, frowning and stamping at him to stop.
“Are you certified?” she asked.
“Certified for what? The forklift? I’ve been driving this thing practically every day for the past 10 years since we got it.”
Bonnie reached over, turned off the key and pulled it out. “That’s not what I asked. I asked if you’re certified to operate the forklift, not whether you’ve driven it before.
“Well, are you? Because we’ve had a lot of safe operating courses and I don’t recall you being at any of them.”
Charlie rested his elbows on the instrument panel in front of him. He started to argue, but it was cake day, dammit. And it wasn’t your standard office carrot cake, either. It was smooth, rich, red velvet cake with cream cheese icing. He’d seen it in the lunchroom earlier. He wouldn’t put that at risk and stepped off the back.
He handed the order paper to Bonnie. “They want 50 boxes of Holly Bannister solid maple engineered flooring, style number 000-234-2456.” He placed added emphasis on the number.
Bonnie grabbed the paper from Charlie and climbed onto the forklift. “Lead the way.”
Charlie walked slowly while Bonnie followed on the forklift. He felt her impatience at his back and he walked even slower.
“Here,” he said, stopping next to Bunker 11. Bunker 11A was ground level, 11B, the middle and 11C was the top.
The stuff they were after was on the bottom and Charlie slapped the cube-stacked pile of boxes, plastic-wrapped on the pallet. Easy pickings.
Good thing because he wasn’t sure he trusted Bonnie to remove pallets from the higher racks, certification or not. He couldn’t recall even once seeing Bonnie drive the forklift.
Bonnie rammed a couple of levers, turned the steering wheel, guided the forks under the pallet and lifted.
She slapped the lever into reverse to back out, turning at the same time. She heard a crack. Noooooo, afraid she’d hit the metal post beside the bunker and dinged up the forklift. God dammit.
Then she heard a yowling from behind the boxes.
“Dammit. Charlie, are you all right?”
“That was my leg. What in God’s name is wrong with you? You crushed my leg.”
Bonnie couldn’t see Charlie, but she heard him plenty.
She jumped off the back of the forklift and rushed to the front. Charlie was splayed across boxes in the next bunker, clutching his knee.
She ran up. “What happened?”
“You crushed my knee against the metal post of the rack. The front of the pallet swung out too far and got me. Is that how they teach you to drive at certification?”
“Charlie. Shit. How bad is it? Roll up your pant leg and let me see.”
Charlie squealed louder.
“OK, so you don’t want me to look. Can you at least walk on it? If we get to the front, we can have a better look at it, or have Hank or somebody else take a look.”
Charlie winced and squawked again.
“No? You can’t walk on it? OK. How about you sit on the forks of the forklift and I’ll drive you closer to the front?”
Charlie looked from Bonnie to the door that led to the front offices. It was a long way. “I’m not sitting on there with you driving.”
Bonnie was out of ideas. “What then? What do you want to do?”
Charlie breathed in. “What time is it?”
Bonnie checked her watch. “It’s about 3:45.”
The best plan now, Charlie figured, was for him to sit tight until cake time. Then he’d think of a plan.
“Let me just wait it out. Let’s see where this is going before I try and move too much.”
“OK,” Bonnie said, and sat down next to him.
“You don’t have to wait with me. I’m a big boy.”
Bonnie nodded. “Could have fooled me,” she said and smirked. When Charlie didn’t smile back, she added, “Just a joke.”
“Not funny,” Charlie said.
Bonnie filled her lungs with a long, deep breath and blew it slowly out. “This entire day has been not funny. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait here,” she said. God, she thought. Can you imagine the uproar if I left him back here on his own?
Charlie rubbed his knee. “Great,” he groaned.
She noticed his grimace. “Don’t worry, I won’t reprimand you.”
“I ought to reprimand you,” he said. “I might need surgery.”
“I doubt that,” Bonnie smiled grimly. “But I will file a complete and thorough accident report, which will include comments from you. I should have been more aware of my surroundings.”
“Is that an apology?”
“No, it’s an explanation.” Fuck your apology Bonnie thought, but then relented. She did bash into him, after all. “But I am sorry.”
Charlie pretended he didn’t hear. His knee throbbed, but he sensed it would be fine in a few days.
To think there was actually a time when he felt sorry for Bonnie. When she first started work at Area 51, she drove a junker of a Dodge Sundance, the disposal lighter of automobiles. He had to boost-start the car practically every other day after work.
He didn’t mind helping her out. She was nice then. She had a husband, who was away lots, a pilot, if he remembered correctly, and three kids, two girls and a boy. The youngest, the boy, must be in his early teens by now.
We used to joke with each other, play cards and talk about our families, he thought. We bonded over ridiculous customer demands, and derided the stooges who worked at the vape shop down the road.
Yeah, Bonnie wasn’t a bad sort, Charlie thought.
“I’m sorry for being mad at you earlier,” he said. “But I find it hurtful how Pat passed me over. He didn’t even talk to me about being temporary manager.”
Bonnie straightened. Oh, this was happening now?
“Pat didn’t mean anything by it,” she said. “I was as surprised as you when he asked me. I think he asked me because I’m in the office more. You’re out on calls all the time and he probably didn’t want to cut into your sales. You know Pat. He’s all about the money.”
Charlie grunted, unconvinced.
“No, I mean it,” Bonnie continued. “Listen for a second. You’re hardly ever in the office in the morning, out doing sales calls or whatever. That’s the way Pat likes it. But it makes it almost impossible to run the office. How would you even keep track of the scheduling board? You never know who is here and who is out of the office.”
“Bah, Charlie bleated. “That stuff looks after itself. We’re all adults. Everybody here can manage their own time.”
Bonnie laughed. “Are you kidding me? Don and Hugo take advantage every second somebody is not looking over their shoulder. And Hank, he’s half a bottle down by lunch time.”
“I don’t think you’re giving them enough credit,” Charlie groused.
Bonnie looked down at Charlie from over the top of her glasses. “Are you serious? Those three would spend the day in the pub if you didn’t watch them. And Dianne, nice woman, I love her to death, but she’s always skipping out doing errands, shopping or running her grandkids around town.
“If you give the staff too much freedom, they’ll run right over you.”
Charlie was about to speak, but Bonnie cut him off.
“Don’t tell me they can look after themselves or that you give two shits about managing. Do you even know where the scheduling board is?”
Charlie snickered. “Ha, ha. Very funny. It’s the big white board behind the front counter.”
“No Charlie, that’s the board for sales appointments and installation jobs. The staff schedule board is in the manager’s office.”
Charlie had never heard of it. He admitted for the first time, that attention to detail may not be his forté. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t fit to run this place for two weeks.
“It would have been nice if Pat at least kept me in the loop,” he said.
Bonnie nodded. “Agreed, yeah, that was harsh. But be honest, Charlie, you don’t even want the job. You don’t like anything about it.”
Charlie held up his hands for her to stop. “And,” he said, “you didn’t need to come on like a wrecking ball.”
She smiled. “You, Charlie Mills, know the words to a Miley Cyrus song? Wait till the others hear about this.”
“I have to kill you now,” Charlie said. “I’ve said too much.”
Bonnie grinned. “I may have been a little overzealous, but honest to Christ, Charlie, you’ve been at my throat all day. What was that shit-talk about using numbers on the forms?”
Charlie’s eyes widened. Really, she was still thinking about that? “I was only trying to save you time. The discussion got out of hand, sure, but I thought I was giving you good advice.”
“Bullshit,” Bonnie raised her voice. “That was a pure power move.”
“I didn’t think of it that way,” Charlie said.
“Bullshit,” Bonnie said again.
Charlie swung his leg, gingerly testing the knee. “Seems like the leg is going to be OK,” he said.
“And now that you mention it, I can see how our discussion about the store number might have seemed confrontational. I didn’t mean to undermine you, but it seemed dumb, the work, I mean.”
Bonnie would have to accept that as the closest thing to an apology she’d get.
From the front of the store, a clatter arose. Voices. Don and Hugo returned, obviously a couple of beers into the celebrations.
The warehouse door opened. “It’s cake time you animals,” Hank yelled.
The door closed.
“Well, how are we going to do this?” Bonnie asked. “Can you walk?”
Charlie stood, testing the knee. “I think I’m certified and ready.”
Bonnie flipped her hair.“Hardy, har-har. Ain’t you just the funniest cripple in the warehouse.”
Charlie started to limp toward the door. He pointed at the forklift. “You were actually serious about giving me a ride on the forks of that thing? What would workplace safety have to say?”
Bonnie hopped onto the back of the forklift. “I’m the workplace safety officer and I say it’s fine.”
Charlie limped away. “Thanks for the offer, anyway.”
Bonnie nodded.
“I’ll deliver this load to the dock and see you in the lunchroom.”
Thanks for sharing, Terry. I really enjoyed this! The story had a great tempo and strong character development. I'm intrigued and eager to see what a gambling-addicted salesman sleeping in the back of the Area 51 Flooring 000-001 warehouse will do now that power-drunk Bonnie has pushed his buttons.
Thanks for sharing, Terry. I really enjoyed this! The story had a great tempo and strong character development. I'm intrigued and eager to see what a gambling-addicted salesman sleeping in the back of the Area 51 Flooring 000-001 warehouse will do now that power-drunk Bonnie has pushed his buttons.