JPod (45 page)

As for Steve, my old employer decided it needed to enter the gore sector of gaming, and wouldn't you know, Steve had our Ronald package all ready to go. He's golden and is going to turn around yet another company. He also got us all paid as consultants on the project, and we earn money doing sweet fuck all.
Wheeee!

Yesirree, life sure is good.

Yesirree, nothing could possibly go wrong with everything being so good.

But of course, in books, good is boring.

Good is a snoozer.

Good makes people close the covers and never reopen them.

But you know—you'd think that just
once
when life finally started going my way, that cosmic writer out there would allow me and all of my co-characters to simply enjoy things for just a little while. I mean, what kind of a prick would end a book just when everything's going so well?

Play again?

Y/N

KEEP READING...

Turn the page for an advance peek at Douglas Coupland's wonderful and rich new novel,

THE GUM THIEF

Learn the secrets and joys and tragedy lurking in the aisles of Staples.

Meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged, and bitter "aisles associate" condemned to restocking reams of 20-lb. bond paper for the rest of his life.

Meet Bethany, early twenties, another "aisles associate" at the end of her Goth phase who's looking at fifty more years of sorting the red pens from the blue in aisle 6.

In Douglas Coupland's ingeniously twisted new novel—sort of a
Clerks
meets
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf-
—these two retail workers strike up an extraordinary epistolary relationship. Watch as their lives unfold alongside Roger's novel-in-progress,
Glove Pond.
A complex layering of narratives,
The Gum Thief
"once again highlights Coupland's eye for the comedy, loneliness, and strange comforts of contemporary life.

THE GUM THIEF

Hardcover $23.95

Bloomsbury USA

Available in Fall 2007 wherever books are sold

Roger

Me? I like to flatter myself that I represent some form of third option, the invisible forty-three-year-old man.

I like the fact that I'm invisible to my co-workers.

Strike that.

It
kills
me that I'm invisible to them. The fact that they don't see me means that I'm truly old, and it's hard to grow old in a place—a city—where everything is so young. Being old means no sex. Being old means never being flirted with. Being old means that Shawn and Kelli make spooked eyes at each other when I come in from my smoke break and grunt a hello in their direction.

Psychol

I miss sex. I used to be pretty hot stuff. I flatter myself that blowing off carbs for a month will turn me into a Riverdancer. Once upon a time I could take off my shirt and walk down by the beach carrying a Frisbee and there wasn't a girl there I couldn't confidently chat up. That was my prop, by the way, the Frisbee. Couldn't toss one worth a damn, but people see you holding one of those things and in their minds you're suddenly this well-balanced person who's never had gonorrhea or police issues—and you can probably summon a well-groomed, cheerfully dispositioned golden Lab with a single whistle.

Last month I plotted out how I'd win the attention of these junior shits here who speak and think like chimps. I was going to work my butt off, totally kiss ass with the regional boss and thus win Employee of the Month. Imagine the no-hopers coming in and seeing my picture on the little wall plaque. Dear God, it might actually give them hope.
Hey! If Roger can do it, then I can do it!

I don't know why I work here in hell at Staples and not someplace else. Bethany here is confronting me on this issue and I don't know what to say. I've had so many real-world jobs—in offices where people have their own parking spaces and where biweekly meetings are held, and where they have Christmas parties. I drank my way out of all of them. Pre-Internet I could get away with it. These days if you type LUSH into Google, I'm the first hit.

Fucking Internet.

I can't even move to someplace remote where they still speak English, like Tasmania or South Africa. They'll know my dirt.

They.

So until I figure out an escape clause, it's Staples for me. It's okay in its own way. It demands little of me and I demand little of it. I like being rude to customers. I like starting to serve them and then vanishing for a smoke break for fifteen minutes. They always ask for the supervisor, Clive, but Clive knows that I'm here for a longer haul than the younger workers so he doesn't discipline me. Even on the days where I get hosed on vodka and stack cartons of 20-lb. bond all day, not a shred of discipline. Hah!

Discipline
me.

Master! Master! Beat me\

I'm an adult. Discipline me and I'll bury you alive.

Roger as Bethany

Did you find everythingyou were lookingfor today?

That's this dorky phrase I have to say every time I ring in a sale, even to kids. It'd be great, for once, if somebody looked me in the eye and said, "Well, I wrote the word FUCK on a piece of paper in the felt pen section, and then I drew an anarchy symbol, and then I stopped thinking or breathing or anything, and I had this experience where time stopped and I wasn't on this planet anymore—like I was sucked out of myself—and I didn't have to care about the world or people or pollution, and instead all I had to do was be in awe of the stars and the colors and the effort that went into making the universe safe and warm like a womb. And then I snapped out of it and I was staring at the Crayola boutique and the moment was gone. After that I walked around the aisles like I'd been clubbed. I was going to steal the felt pens instead of paying for them, but I'll steal them some other day. Right now I'm still in the afterglow of experiencing the universe. And you ask me, did I find everything I was looking for today?"

I have to wear this red shirt at work. We all do. It's like scientists got together and selected the one color from all the known colors in the universe that makes everybody's skin look bad. In any other shirt, I look white as a ghost. When I put one of these things on, my skin pinks up like a strawberry milkshake—my mouth is a black olive.

Schtooples lighting was selected by the same scientists who chose the shirt color. It possesses strange powers. For example, if you have blackheads like Rudee does, this light
actually amplifies them.
If you have other blemishes, this lighting acts as a lens to make them larger and far more apparent. At least we people who work here know this and can cover up the worst of things with concealer. One of the few joys of this job is seeing how bad some customers look when ambushed by the lighting system. We're like a species of beige toads.

Roger's skin is okay, but only barely. It's all that booze he soaks up. And he's the world's worst shaver. Women have to spend half their lives indignantly shaving hair off legs and armpits, while guys only have to shave their faces—how hard can it be?

It's weird shaving your legs when you're not in a relationship, or there's not even a possibility of becoming close to someone. Who's going to see me? My mother, I suppose. Did I mention that I'm in my twenties and still living at home? Yes, that is correct, I am a loser.

Here's something weird: Roger went to high school with my mother. That's how old both of them are. I wonder if they both won the yearbook award for Most Likely to End Up in Depressing Lifestyles?

Oh God, I just imagined the two of them on a date, at some generic place, like Denny's, and they're both trying to be nice to each other, and they're both trying to figure out how much booze they can order how quickly without looking like lushes. And then they stare at the menus—the laminated ones where all the food in the photos is pumped on steroids and sweating nervously, like it's lying to you. My mother knows that if she eats one and a half pounds of food, she will gain one and a half pounds; she has no metabolism. She's trying to see if she can order only a celery stick, and then realizes she can order a Bloody Mary with a celery stick, and so she's happy. Roger picks up on this momentary happiness and uses this little happy window to order a double rum and Coke. The two of them are practically dancing like Snoopy in their orange banquette seats.

But then they have to make conversation and the mood vanishes. They talk about where their old friends are—divorces, money woes, surprise careers, the odd death—and they both feel sadness not simply for themselves but for the planet. They feel sad because life is over so soon. They feel sad because they've blown it. They feel sad because they have to order food, except suddenly the photos on the menu aren't food anymore. They're dead animals and chunks of starch. The two of them aren't vegetarian, but they're off meat for the time being.

But back to me.

I had a thought today—not an original thought, but it's better than no thought at all. Wouldn't it be great if stars turned black during the day—the sky covered with dots like pepper?