Waiting for Joe (27 page)

“Okey-dokey, you’re qualified, then,” Clara says. “I may close early today, so if I’m not here, you know where to find me.”

Laurie is approaching the bridge on Albert Street, referred to on one of the postcards as being the longest bridge in the world to cross the smallest body of water. It spans a narrow creek on one side and the man-made lake on the other, where she can see people walking along a path beside the water. From the bridge, the grass edging the lake is like brushed suede, and the lacy treetops in the park beyond the lake path are like crochet. A fountain shoots a fan of water high into the air. She’s almost halfway across the bridge when she comes upon city workers in Day-Glo vests seated on stools with jars of paint open on the sidewalk around them, oblivious to the traffic going by while they concentrate on hand-painting the intricate pastel designs on the balusters, the small glazed columns that look slightly Egyptian.

Yes! She’s buoyed by the number of people riding bicycles along the bridge, the dogs loping beside them, their
tails flags of exuberance. By what looks like a Fisher Price city arranged on a floor mat of green parks and a lake bobbing with geese and kayaks.

Although she’s still on the same street, the scene changes when within a few minutes, she comes near the commercial area where the green glass towers dominate the skyline. She peers in their direction down a broad and welcoming tree-lined street, and promises herself to find that park with the buffalo. But there’s a certain dull grittiness to the buildings along Albert Street now, aging and in need of paint—a tattoo and body piercing parlour, a used bookstore. The street narrows as she approaches an underpass; she touches the brakes and drives down under it, leery of the sudden darkness and the guardrails so close to the side of the Meridian.

When she emerges from the underpass she begins counting the number of streets until she reaches Clara’s red circle on the map, relieved then to see the name of the street where she’s supposed to turn. According to the map spread across the seat beside her, she must continue along that street until she comes to the next set of traffic lights. When the light changes she rounds the corner, thinking that this must be a warehouse district, given the number of slightly sinister-looking red brick fortresses along the way. She drives past buildings fronted by fences in which debris is caught. Beyond one fence, tall weeds grow through an apron of pavement around a closed-down gas station. When she reaches the traffic lights, she turns north onto another main artery and travels along it for several blocks. You’ll soon see Value Village, on the left, set back on a corner. You can’t miss it, Clara said.

And indeed Value Village is hard to miss, a large square cinder-block building painted bright yellow and blue. While she waits to turn at the intersection, she eyes the parking lot and notes the few vacant and rather narrow looking spots. When the light changes, she decides to drive past to search for a place to park on the street, though as she does so, she becomes wary of the growing number of dilapidated storefronts, the security bars on dirt-encrusted windows that are piled high inside with what appears to be a haphazard assortment of junk. Only yesterday while walking along Albert Street from the shopping centre, she observed that there didn’t seem to be any discernible plan to the kinds of business being carried on side by side. Here, there seems to be one single trade—used goods. On the sidewalk in front of one of the small rundown buildings there’s a display of furniture and several people stand among it, watching as a man plops down into a couch as though testing its springs.

She’s fortunate to find a parking spot large enough a block and a half down, and now as she hurries back past the used furniture display, she tries not to look at the people, all of them appearing to be native. Two men emerge from the store, one of them carrying a floor lamp and the other, the shade. As they begin to cross the street toward her she finds herself calling out to them, “Hey, that’s a great-looking lamp.” Cheerful. Preparing for the interview with the manager. Prepared to be generous and accepting, as likely most of the people she’ll be working with will be native.

The men stare at her. Then the man holding the shade calls out, “Okay then, thank you very much.”

This will work, she tells herself.

When she steps inside Value Village she’s stopped by the sheer vastness of the space, it’s like a curling rink. The employees, men and women in red vests, move among the racks of clothing at the front of the store, and none of them, that she can tell, are native. She becomes aware of an odour that reminds her of school, when the janitor would sprinkle dustbane over someone’s sickness to hold down the smell. On one side of the store near the front is a roped-off area where people line up in two rows waiting for the fitting rooms, which are like washroom cubicles with clothing flung over the tops of their doors.

She goes over to the nearest cashier, a young woman with spiked bleached hair and several nose rings, the sight of them making her eyes water. “Could you tell me where I might find the manager? Tracy,” she adds to give weight to her request.

“You must be Laurie,” the young woman says, her friendly smile revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth.

“Yes, I think she’s expecting me.” Before Laurie’s finished speaking the young woman has picked up a telephone. Her amplified voice booms out, “Tracy, your person is here at number five.”

“There she is,” the cashier says, and Laurie turns to see a determined-looking short blonde woman in jeans and T-shirt, come charging along the aisle.

“Clara sent you over? Laurie, right?” Tracy says and extends her hand. She squeezes Laurie’s hand so hard her rings cut into her fingers, and she can’t help but wince.

“Sorry, I tend to do that,” Tracy says with a little laugh. “You made it over here fast. Good. I usually give my spiel
first thing, but we’re so busy today I’m going to take you straight back to production and show you where I need someone to start work, like, right now, if possible. That way, if you decide the job’s not for you, I get to save my breath.”

Just then another voice reverberates over the intercom as someone calls out rather impatiently for receivers to come to the loading dock.

“Wait here just a minute. I’ve got to see about that. There’s a big delivery coming in right now,” Tracy says and takes off at a sprint toward the back of the store.

While she waits Laurie wanders over to a rack of goods set up beside the cash register, and thinks, even here, while waiting to go through to the checkout there’s something to keep the eye busy. A tea set—oriental china, a pot and several cups arranged on a matching tray—not as pretty as her Japanese tea set was, and not priced as high as she had priced her own either, she discovers when she turns over the pot.

A small piece of porcelain catches her eye then, what seems to be a jam or honey pot, given the tiny spoon sticking out from the lid. She’s about to reach for it when Tracy returns, followed by two young men who must hurry to keep up. The men shoot on past Laurie toward a large open doorway at one side of the store where she sees another set of doors opened to the street and the truck backed up in front of it, a man unloading boxes.

Tracy stands beside her, watching for a moment. “You could likely work in receiving. You have to be able to reach and lift. Most of the guys around here are pretty small. When a load comes in they tend to head for the washroom
and I’ve got to go and haul them out.” She rolls her eyes.

No jewellery, no cosmetics, not an unfriendly person, but not friendly, either.

“Come with me,” Tracy says, continuing to talk rapidly over her shoulder while they go through men’s clothing, the shoe department where there are more shoes lying about on the floor than there are on the shelves, and then along the side of a large open area that is a clutter of used furniture and exercise equipment; Laurie thinks of the elliptical trainer she almost had to beg someone to take away. These are what are called the side departments, and housewares is the largest of them. Around five thousand items make it to the floor in a single day, Tracy says, as they head toward the swinging doors leading into what she calls the production area.

Laurie is stopped at the sight of a row of workers standing on both sides of a long wide table, some of them wearing protective masks, all of them wearing gloves. She’s overwhelmed by the noise of a huge ventilation fan sucking dust and lint, the bad smells, up through the roof. Some of the sorters use box cutters to slash open bags of clothing, while others tear them open with their hands, dump the contents on the sorting table and paw through them, quickly discarding soiled and torn garments into a barrel beside them. The workers take hangers from the rod that runs the length of the table, drape apparel on them, then hang the clothing on the racks parked behind them. When those racks are full, someone appears to wheel them away to the pricing area.

“Is the stuff washed?” Laurie asks. A dumb question, she knows as soon as she speaks.

“Are you kidding?” Tracy shouts, louder than is necessary to be heard.

“I just wondered. Because you’d think there’d be more of a smell, but there isn’t. This place smells pretty clean,” Laurie says.

“Really? That’s good to hear. The minute I get home, let me tell you, I’m in the shower.” Tracy plucks at her T-shirt and wrinkles her nose.

“So what happens to the rejects?” Laurie asks flailing about for something to say.

“They’re sold for rags and other things,” Tracy shouts. “And whatever we can’t sell on the floor is recycled. It goes to Africa, Asia, South America.”

“For charity.”

Tracy shakes her head vehemently. “The people there buy it. You know, anything that’s too worn, maybe needs to be mended. People wear that stuff. However, a portion of what we make here in the store does go to charity. This is a for-profit not-for-profit business,” she shouts. “We employ twenty-five people back here in production, people who might not get a job otherwise, and in the front there’s another fifteen or so part-timers.”

Again a voice calls out on the intercom and Tracy stops talking to listen. “I was expecting this. I’ll be right back,” she yells and takes off.

Laurie walks along the table to the end, where a man has wheeled a rack of clothing and is now fastening price tags to the items. He turns as she approaches, as though expecting her.

“How do you know what price to give it,” she asks, thinking the man looks Mexican.

“Oh, it’s pretty standard. Except for the high-end labels, they’re a couple of dollars more. We try and keep an eye out for them, but sometimes we miss something. But not often,” he says and indicates a poster board tacked to the wall above his work area.

Style & Co., Peter NyGaard, Jones NY, Perry Ellis Portfolio, Kenneth Cole, IZOD, Liz Claiborne, all labels Laurie would recognize in an instant. If she worked here, her experience would be useful.

“We actually get more stuff that’s low-end. There’s so much of the cheap stuff going through here, we can’t keep track of it.”

She sees him ticket a jacket now, without seeming to even look at it. “And that? How did you know how to price that?” she asks.

“Oh, this one was easy. Feel, it’s wool. The general rule is, the itchier it is the cheaper it is,” he says and grins.

“Do you get first dibs on anything? What if you see something you’d like to have. Do you get a deal?” she asks.

“No way,” he says. “We’re just like everyone else. We put the stuff out on the floor and if it’s still there when our shift is over, then, okay. We buy it. And we pay the same price as everyone. There’s no special deals.” He says this so emphatically, she wonders if he suspects that she’d been sent to trip him up.

Laurie notices a particular sorter looking at them, a man without a face mask. She takes in his undernourished appearance, straggly and uncut red hair. He might be seventeen or he might be seventy-seven, it’s hard to tell from his haggard features. He’s a kid, she decides as she watches how quickly he works, swings a garbage bag up onto the table,
slashes it open and spreads the contents about and begins to sort, his gloved hands flying. He senses her watching, and their eyes meet. And then he laughs. At her. She’s stung by the realization that the abrupt convulsion of his thin shoulders, the tiny spurts of wryness are directed at her. At what he sees in her. And at what he concludes she’s thinking and deducing about him. You know nothing, he tells her without saying a word.

She turns away feeling caught in the act of pretending she wants to work here. The mountains of plastic bags are stacked up on either side of the table as high as the ceiling. Pull one out near the bottom and the sorters would be buried in an avalanche. Of vomit. That’s how she sometimes thought of the garage sale, the inside of the house regurgitated on the veranda, spilling down the steps and across the lawn, the excess of an all-night party gone out of control.

Laurie hasn’t heard Tracy come up behind her and is startled when the woman shouts, “Come on. I’ll take you into the side departments.”

Which prove to be two smaller spaces beyond the clothing sorting room, what look to be caves hollowed out of a solid mass of junk. A dishevelled and confused-looking man holds an armful of shoes and glances up at Laurie as she goes past, as though in a plea for help. Beyond him several women chatter loudly while they unpack boxes of housewares, books, mirrors and bedding piled up the walls and around them.

“So, are you interested?” Tracy asks when they emerge through another set of swinging doors into the furniture department, which is relatively calm and pleasant-smelling.

“Yes,” Laurie says, thinking that she owes it to Clara to at least finish the interview.

Within moments she is sitting beside Tracy’s desk in a small windowless office, perching on the edge of the plastic chair Tracy directed her to, while Tracy explains the salary, pleased to be able to say that it’s slightly above the minimum wage, to explain the option of company benefits, the hours, the future.

“Anyone who wants to can make it in this company,” she says and Laurie gets the feeling she wants to say,
Look at me. I’ve made it
.