Miami Herald Tropic Magazine
November 11, 1986

[Click here for the editorial introduction to this article, "The Shining," by Gene Weingarten.]

CONFESSIONS OF A COMPANY MAN

by T.M. Shine

This is for the working man whose smile says, "it's too late for me." This is for those of you who can still remember your expectations, even if you just wanted to be a railroad conductor at 6 or a Guitar Man at 14; for those of you who shudder when you remember how old you really are. That anticipation, those daydreams--have they all gone away? Or are they hidden, tucked up in your gut somewhere--trapped for good?

The paycheck is our foundation. We build from that foundation, but we don't necessarily grow from it. The kiddies--the big-eyed bombers who are watching you--will you be a jerk to them or an inspiration? And when they look at you, smelly and stubbled on Sunday morning, what will they see? That hole in time where their father disappears, where love seems to get chopped up? Will they understand that the grinder that crushes and digests us also gives us something in return--survival, food, a place to sleep. A place where we can stop dreaming?

Will they ever have to ask, "What the hell did you do with your life?"

The choice is yours. But you have no choice.

Me? I'm in retail.

"I'm a doctor," he squawked. He looked like a doctor, as if he couldn't care less if anyone lived or died. Punch-drunk and a face as scrunched up as the paper bag he was returning his disposable razors in. Two people in line in front of him and he is A Doctor.

"I want to return these," he turned, eyeing my name badge. "They're useless."

"You used them," I said, staring in at the stubble and dead skin on the blades.

"Yes, but they're no good."

"But they're disposable."

"Yeah, but I'm not going to throw them out. They're useless. I..." My eyes focus. The pores on his puss become tiny speakers. "Want... The breath is heavy and sour. His tongue droops, then rolls back up like a New Year's Eve tooter. Here it comes...here it comes..."my money back."

This I understand. Now we're talking. I'm willing to take the loss. I'm taking a lot of losses running this drugstore. I lost my love handles last December, and I shed my inhibitions somewhere between the bonus size Ivory and the trial size Poppycock. No, no. There are no doctors here, or lawyers, or policemen. Here, you are a shopper, like the fat man and the woman in boxer shorts who always asks for Camels with an accent on the L. Here you'll stare at the back of someone's head for as long as it takes, and, if we're out of an item on the shelf, we'll eagerly go digging in the stockroom for it, not because you're a doctor, but because it's our job and you are a big part of the day. You are the work. The madness.

Sometimes it can be so basic. So realistic. Big jelly faces and perplexed jerky motion. Panting. Hands, a thousand hands. Hatred, up close, provoked by minor skirmishes. Rabid claims of honesty and alliance. "We always shop here. All my neighbors shop here."

I have no idea where my neighbors shop. Has age brought intimacy to the masses? Are they all sharing one big goose-feather pillow?

We are smiling above our name tags--whether you notice or not. And our belly buttons are clean; our minds are clear except for everything that is on your mind. Our tattoos are hidden. We are representative of the people who make less money than you and have less time to enjoy less money. Which works out kind of nice.

Less money, more keys. I've got the keys. Keys to the pharmacy, keys to the safe, the valuable room, the alarms, the cosmetic cases. The keys you guard with your life. The keys you touch your hip for several times a day to make sure they're still there. To be sure you didn't leave them in the washroom or pack 'em up with the UPS returns. Without your keys you're an invalid. You're a high-wire man without a balancing pole. You're a BMW driver without a beard.

We just hired a deaf-mute stockman. No one can bother him. He's a stocking machine. Customers can't ask him where a million things are. Even the Musak doesn't get on his nerves. All he does...is work. But word must travel fast among those who can't hear or speak because a cavalcade of deaf-mute applicants has bombarded the store. We don't know what to tell them. My assistants aren't trained in communications, and our hands have become poor puppets. Of course, we have a brother on the premises, but to take him away from his stocking to interview applicants would defeat the purpose of having someone working who doesn't have to listen to anyone.

I've always despised work. I have to be honest. I'm looking for the work place where no one has responsibility; no one is in charge; no one delegates. There'd be no one to hide from, no one's back to talk behind, no one to steal from or battle with. Just work. I could be on to something. It must have been tried. The jackhammer, put your head down and do it kind of work. Wouldn't that be mature?

Man's walking around with a painting. We don't get much art in here. Maybe a windsurfer on a T-shirt. I'm standing back trying to appreciate it, but the aisles are too narrow. I remove some of the huge diaper boxes and climb onto the counter. So this is what it feels like being on the shelf watching art. Everything must be art to a case of Huggies: the Terminix man in his distinguished uniform wielding a chrome canister. Performance art. But I wonder if it's like me and this painting. I'm so close I can't make out a blessed thing. All I see are colors and angles. Meaningless.

UH OH. We've got one of our people on the video monitor in Aisle 4A lifting up her skirt and slipping on numerous pairs of men's underwear. At first glance, it appears to be between six and seven pairs--but wait, she's coming back into the spotlight. She's more sure of herself. It looks like she's putting them on two at a time. She's lithely coming back up the aisle wearing upwards of 12 pairs of briefs, still looking slim. It must be her tan. Our security man, who periodically comes into the store unnoticed in a jogging suit and carrying two briefcases, has reviewed the film and come to the conclusion "the tramp must be rippin' them off for her boyfriend." I agree and nod to save us both time. But where does he get off calling her a tramp? Just because she stole from me, does he think he can say anything he wants to me and it will be acceptable? Does he assume we're buddy-buddy now because we watched an underwear film together? Is he going to call somebody slut next time he's in and expect me to giggle and make him coffee? Don't talk to me at all. Do your job and get the hell out of here. We have nothing in common.

Every year, the company executive steps to the podium and says, "If you don't love your job, then by God, get up and walk out of here." Wouldn't that be grand if I could just say, "This was all a mistake. Thank God we caught it in time." And damn you for stating my choice so simply when you know simplification is at the heart of my failure. I'm standing here behind your drugstore counter watching the wrong parts of my soul get pulled to the surface. That face you're wearing behind the podium, you think you can make me wear it, too. You think you can multiply yourself in an army of company men. Forgive me, I'm driven in the opposite direction. You're not talking to a future board member.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a working man. I love my family, and I'm going to take care of it, and I have no right even to think about walking out of here, with my responsibilities.

Besides, they always save the executive's speech for last, so, if we did walk out, we wouldn't miss anything. The first year I heard the speech I accidentally ended up in the bathroom alone with him right afterwards. The second I saw him, I made believe I was on my way out. "Excellent speech," I said. So I'm the phony, and he's for real. He called me son, and I closed my zipper with good solid speed. There's always next year.

The preacher's here. He comes by the same time every day with the same announcement. "I've been black three times. I was a black baby. I was a black boy, and now I'm a black man." I can't understand that. He always buys a fifth of peppermint schnapps with exact change, and his golden teeth make for a gaudy smile. That I understand.

Filth. The knots of my ties are looped in grime. I cannot make a tie. I don't want to know how. One day, you're doing the Welsh knot, and the next thing you're voting. I have other people build the knots for me, and they stay in all year round. I match the ties in the morning with whatever I'm wearing. I know that blue goes with brown and brown goes with brown. I stretch the tie over my head, then I grab the knot with my dirty hands and squeeze it tightly up around my throat. Day in and day out, my dirty hands are on that same knot. Everything changes but the knot in my tie.

"What's best, what's best?" They always want to know what's best. I don't know what's best. I know what sells and who has the best advertising. I know what smells funny, but believe me, I don't know what's best. All I know is I'm here. My face is a label; that's how familiar it is. I'm here every time you come. I know nothing about you, yet you know how I schlep around most of the day. You could probably guess I have a chunky wife, two autistic children, a Toyota, and a freezer full of poultry. Well, you're wrong. My wife looks like Ann-Margret in her prime, my kids speak Chinese, I drive a black Corvette and have a freezer full of poultry. Who's closer to the truth?

My grandfather owned a drugstore. Owned--that's a big word. If this were my own business, I'd be happy sucking crud out from between the bathroom tiles before I went home at night to sleep like a bear. If this were my own business...but then I'd have fewer hours to be with my family, more responsibilities, less security, more worries, and a mound of self-respect that might as well be puke for all it'd be worth.

A mysterious woman wants my opinion on some perfume. It seems my nose is the same size as her husband's. She starts spraying perfume in the air. I'm throwing my nose into the mist, bobbing, weaving. "A bit nervy, but too unsettling," I say. She's valuing my opinion. She keeps it up, one scent after another, comparing two, thee at a time. It's all becoming paint fumes. I'm getting dizzy. She's aiming at her body now. It's on her left wrist. Then it's on her right wrist and left elbow. My snout is leaping across her body. My eyes glimpse the freckles on her chest. We're in a cloud of cheap pluming vapors. Then it's on her back. I'm brushing her hair aside for the big sniff and...

Supervisors...I see her once a month. She must have been stunning about the same time Maid Marian was enchanting. Right now, she looks like Barbara Walters with her blood and veins removed. She drives with her legs crossed. I've seen this. She is heartless. She has become a dented can with the label removed. Rotting. She's shopworn. I don't want to watch someone in the management field rot. I'm a company man. She turns to me and calls my assistant stupid in front of four other employees. I nod, which is about all I do these days. And again, where does it come from that someone thinks she can call a person stupid? And her, of all people. She has a step-up job because she fell into someone's good graces a thousand years ago. And me kissing her ass because I've learned. I've learned well.

We have a new employee starting today. Her name is Sudsy. On her application, under experience she put: Father is A Building Inspector. That and her New York accent made her a shoo-in. We usually begin training with the obligatory films--Cashier Survival Skills. "Here. Watch this." But we've had some problems with the critics recently. It's not uncommon for new employees to punch out for lunch on their first day and never come back. It's a clean break. The card is inked In and Out. Sometimes they even have time to make a friend and say goodbye.

"She said she wasn't hungry and she wouldn't be back," one of the girls reported. "I thought she was kidding. I only knew her for a couple of hours."

You don't really know people in this business until you've known them for a couple of hours. One girl, we'll call her Angela because that was her name, got up in the middle of a film on her first morning and disintegrated. No one has seen her since: not her parents, her teachers, her dog. Poof! I save the films for the second day now.

Some things do disappear. I haven't seen Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop in years, and there used to be these mints I bought by the pound that have become extinct. I myself have gone into the thin air, but I always come back.

I am the store manager. But I can't manage every incident. If an employee is having an epileptic fit, I can't be expected to take charge even if she wrote down epileptic on her application and I inadvertently ignored it.

The cashier is flat on her back but appears peaceful and sedated. I can see myself in her glasses. "She can't breathe; she can't breathe!" Suzie screams. I lean down and begin mouth-to-mouth.

"No, no, she's gonna swallow her tongue; she's an epileptic," Suzie screams a second too late. I've already sucked her front teeth out.

"You need a spoon to hold her tongue down. She's gonna swallow her tongue."

We have spoons and assorted silverware on the four-for-a-dollar dump table, and Suzie waits for a command. She knows I'm in charge.

"Suzie, get me a spoon off the table."

I quickly trade her the false teeth for a spoon and press it down on the tongue. The cashier's eyes are sputtering like an old film projector. She doesn't look so peaceful anymore. It's almost time for lunch, and I twist my neck to check the hour hand.

I go back to the office some afternoons and pull the store directory. We've got over a thousand stores now from Puerto Rico to San Francisco. On Page 58, in the Memphis district, there is a store listed on Elvis Presley Blvd. For some reason, I feel if I was working there everything would be all right. I don't know why.

I've got a shopping cart full of discarded packages from stolen items. You find them in the bathroom, inside hats, inside the pharmacy bench. Mostly personal hygiene and daily requirement items: Tylenol, suppositories, Dr. Scholl's insoles. I can't help but admit we follow around the girl with the spiked hairdo or the dude who just wants to get drunk on cheap mouthwash. We are only fooling ourselves. It's the alligator-necked bandits and the professionals who are cleaning us out, and I think it's becoming harder to distinguish between the two. Where are all the suppositories going? Do they pass them around like Jujubes on the bus ride home? Do they split them up in the kitchen, one for me, one for you--OK, we've got enough to get us through the holidays. Are they leaving the box because they don't think they need the directions for an enema? Or are they so paranoid they think we have alarm sensors in our Sucrets? Come forward, maybe we can start a program.

Trading has begun in the underground. It has begun as quietly as the pillows slipping into their cases. There is not a junkyard within a 30-mile radius of our store, yet, each night, as we straighten the store, we find big bulky auto parts in place of everyday items--a flywheel where the coffee filters were, a master cylinder sitting on a Wisk-It. Some of our employees believe Americans are bulking up otherwise empty shopping bags for show when they enter, then filling their bags and leaving the debris for our cleanup crew. I'm not buying. This isn't shoplifting, this is the future. I've begun saving the parts, and I'm building a Mad Max heap in the stockroom that is going to burn me through to the other side. I'm beginning to believe this is why I've been here for 3,171 days.

Three thousand one hundred and seventy one. Those are the numbers on the label of the box I received my company watch in. We all got 'em. We were at a company dinner, and they were waiting by our plates, part of the setting, between the soup spoons and the dessert spoons. We discussed the numbers while we ate. We didn't know what they meant. Everyone's was different, but we knew there must be a reason for them. The optimist thought there would certainly be a lotto, and someone was going to Aruba. I thought it was some kind of quota. How many gummi worms we would have to sell each week. Then they made the proud announcement: "We went to a lot of trouble to figure out how many days each of you has worked for the company."

I find it easier and easier to decide when to be grateful and when to be insulted. Count my days; count the meals I've missed; count the times I was too tired to make love to my wife, and I don't mean sex. I mean sitting down with my family, laughing, sharing, wishing this was everyday. It's not work that I've grown so weary of, it is the preoccupation with why I'm doing it. So don't tell me how many days I've traded my name for a name tag. Tell me how many days I have left. Tell me how long I have to live. Tell me I'm going to live 12,286 days in a row and then get shot out of a cannon while a lone saxophone shrieks.

A place for everything, and everything in its place. I don't belong here. My grandfather belonged here. It was his own business; his heart was in it. I just can't make believe anymore. Sometimes I'll awake in the morning sure I'm a phony, and I want to know I'm not the only one. I want to know that if I peel back my skin there will be somebody else there. Someone who will make it to work every day. Someone to absorb the name-calling, the anger, the emptiness. I am not naive enough to believe I am living in a fairy tale, but I am frightened enough to think it is forever after.

Shattered. And over the aisle are the bits and pieces. "It was beautiful. Beautiful! The woman cringed. Her husband was laughing profusely, polo ponies on his trousers, a paper towel stuffed in his pocket for a sweat rag. "Two hours we spent pickin' the freakin' thing out, like it was from the ying yang dynasty or something." I start to sweep it up and the woman pulls at my shoulders. Gives me a good old-fashioned rattlin'. "Don't sweep it," she squeals, "you're scratching the pieces. Pick it up, watch me, one piece at a time." "Watch her," the old guy howls, "like it was from the ding dong dynasty or something."

"Tis the season." Always. The Christmas merchandise starts rolling in at the end of August. This is the big one. Retail's bread and butter, licorice and catnip. You name it. You think you spend so much money on the holidays, but we're the ones who really pay. When it comes down to the wire, we have to be in our stores every day sunup until sundown from Thanksgiving to Christmas. That's an order.

I can be selfish. You can be selfish. But when a company takes on that characteristic, I think it is committing a crime. I know, I know, I should have known what I was getting into--retail and all. Long hours and no thanks. And, when I was on my own, I didn't give it a second thought, but I have a family now; I have children. Tell me I'm supposed to find the situation understandable. Tell me I can't be with my family between Thanksgiving and Christmas for the next 20 years except for a good night kiss.

What was I supposed to be? The doctor tells me I've only got 50, maybe 60 years to live. There are things I haven't done, Doc. I've never mowed my neighbor's lawn at 3 o'clock in the morning. I've never driven in a Trans Am. A Camaro, yes, but I hear, mind you, that it's not the same. And I've never taken my dogs for a walk and gone to the bathroom with them. I've never screamed while making love. I'm working, working, working. I've got a stand-up routine that's a riot. I turned the radio off on the way to work and sang a song off the top of my head. I swear I never heard it before. It's my own personal once-in-a-lifetime hit. I could be an all-round entertainer, like Sammy. I can spin six shooters. I can do skywriting. I'm not afraid. I could run a tugboat. I could be something more than a drugstore manager. I could be a writer.

News. We get the news below the cancerous fluorescent lights. It was the souvenir salesman who told me the pope was shot. He had a large inflatable alligator in one hand and a case of Florida sunshine in the other. The salesman, that is.

And the space shuttle disaster arrived with a defective Mr. Coffee and a battered woman, mad at the universe. "This thing spits hot coffee in my face, three circuits in the house go out, the space shuttle blows up in my back yard. Useless inventions." The news, in that order. With a commentary. The baloney express. It enters and exits with as much thought as it deserves. We don't want to know what's going on. That's someone else's job. That's why we hire politicians.

A rigid gent just squared the corner wearing a scarf, his hair plastered back like he's in the cockpit of a biplane. Army fatigues--looking like an assassin. Why is it I always think assassins are going to be wearing government issue? In his left hand, he's holding what appears to be a karate chop. I'm down low, my neck wide open, putting narrow ruled filler paper on the shelf. A southpaw, this is a bad match-up. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as he walks: His boot straps drag. But he doesn't pass, he's directly behind me. Towering. There's a click, and I figure he's going to carve his initials into the bald spot on the back of my head. I'm trying to come up with some stratagem. I listen for smells. That's what a pro would do. I don't even know if I'm alone. Maybe he's already taken out the girls on Registers 1 and 3. This pricing gun, I must have taken it apart and put it back together in the dark a hundred times, but now it's useless. His throat clears. Clam on me, do it. I can take phlegm. "Buddy, you have those mints that are like wafers in all different colors, but they all taste the same and they're solid sugar?"

"No, no sir," my voice cracks like a little girl's. My subconscious must have already been planning to plead for my life. "I've been searching for those mints myself."

Why didn't he kill me?

A flasher's been spotted in the store, but there is only one witness and the flasher's an employee. It's her word against his word, or his whatever, besides I'm short on help so we'll have to let it go this time.

The seven commandments arrived today. Someone at the top's idea of rules to live by in the work place, but they are more comparable to a listing you'd see posted at a public pool. This list reeks of horseplay: Do not threaten. And it knows where our strong point is: Do not use sarcasm. Though I've only had it a few moments, I've rested my eyes on what is always going to be my favorite, Number 7: Do not nag.

I've seen my share of celebrities. There was Leonard Nimoy at an auto show. I've had Flip Wilson's brother wait on me at Schrafft's, and I once saw the Playboy jet from a Greyhound bus. But what I'm about to talk about is different. This is football. We're a big company now, we're rich, and we're spending our money on old football players. The first time it was Gale Sayers giving us a speech in a banquet hall, reading off a sheet like it was an eye test.

"Be somebody," he said.

Now, don't get me wrong, it was great when they dropped the screen and showed the old clips. I love Gale Sayers as much as you do, but I just don't have a hell of a lot in common with Gale Sayers, and he was talking as if he didn't have a hell of a lot in common with me. I don't want to look for inspiration from Gale Sayers to stock the shelves, but I wouldn't even mention this if they hadn't held another banquet, and, this time, had Rocky Bleier giving us a pep talk. This is obviously becoming a regular thing, and there's Rocky up there screeching in the rapid syllables of an auctioneer. He talked of teamwork, Mo-ti-va-tion, commitment and football. He spoke of his time in Vietnam, the flesh of his leg burning, the teamwork, motivation and commitment. He compared it to football. He touched on our work in retail, our teamwork, motivation and commitment. He compared it to football. I don't even like to think of a football game as a football game, let alone my whole life as a football game. Does this mean Vietnam was a football game? Were our forefathers putting lines on the field before they planted the corn? Is football what's kept me going all these years, or just from this point on?

Be Somebody.

There is a dead man in Aisle 6B. I wore a new suit to work today, but I didn't expect to attend a funeral. Sometimes, I myself will wake up dead and try to imitate the living. But that's not the case with this gentleman. He's dead. A woman is monitoring him, and the only connection he seems to have to life is that she drove him here. Some people can get away with walking around dead. Hubert Humphrey did it to stand on a gangway of a DC-10, waving. The party was counting on him. But to shop? I just don't see the sense in it. No matter how big of a sale it is. I can't stand to watch him, and there's nowhere to turn but outside, as if the only way to counteract death and ugliness is to watch a gold-fleshed girl riding her bicycle back and forth in front of the store. Her tennis skirt waves to me, and she is smiling even when she isn't smiling. I've never seen anyone so receptive to a new suit.

Manny's on the phone long distance from one of our stores in Liberty City. "I'm afraid," he says. "I've had so many of the brothers arrested for shoplifting and whatnot that I can't even go out for a drink in this town."

"You can't even go out for a drink," I repeat.

"I'm afraid," he repeats. This is awful.

Within the radius of a few miles a bond is born with the guys who are running other stores in my district. Your neighbor is in the same predicament, and suddenly everything is laughable. I draw the other guys in because their attitudes are predictable. Randy is stagnant, doing it too many years. Mark is brand new and doing it too many years. I'm somewhere in the middle, having done it, and continuing to do it, too many years. I always tell the ones who have doubts that they should quit, but then I ask them what they would do. They have no answers. Those who have children have no right to leave their posts. Unless, of course, you find something paying more money. Used to be they wouldn't make you a manager unless you had children.

"Then they've got you by the nuts. Do as we say or else," Rick the pharmacist says after going on to open his own pharmacy. He answers to no one, but the babbling old technician he hired who never shuts up. "What the ----" I said, paying him an unexpected visit. "In-law," he mumbled. "Someone's always got you by the nuts."

I'm called to the back hallway. Unorthodox noises are coming from the men's room. I can hear them dripping out of the vent on the door. I recognize the sound of someone washing shirts in the toilet. Several quick flushes, a false cough, then whoever it is begins whistling. I haven't got time to stick around for the encore. I've got a phone call.

It's Jeanie's mother. You all know Jeanie. She's the girl when you go into a drugstore at night when the manager's not there. She's usually leaning, sometimes sitting on the counter reading Guns & Ammo, or she's got a curling iron plugged in and is very busy. You won't get a second glance unless you're a shirtless 19-year-old male. Anyway, it seems Jeanie's liver is going. She has to stop drinking, and her mother says the doctor wants her in the lockup program on weekends. So this means I'm going to have to schedule Jeanie and her liver off on weekends. That's all it means. I'm not even going to bother showing her any more films. I've done all I can.

Another call. The Chipmunk tour that was supposed to make a stop at the mall smack dab in front of my store this weekend has been canceled. Some kind of contract screw-up. It's Friday, and I've scheduled heavy for the weekend, figuring the event was going to boost business. Who do we get at this late hour? Who can replace the Chipmunks?

Cigar salesman is up front, and I'm dodging in between aisles. Bless me, father, for I have sinned. I treat these peddlers like crap, and I really don't want to. They think they have to charm you. You don't charm a man into buying a gross of stinking cigars. Don't howdy-do me with last night's game scores. I haven't put an ear to sports since the Ali-Frazier fights. The greeting card lady gives me a big show and dance. She just got married, and her business card has a new last name. Doesn't she know she's just The Greeting Card Lady?

There's no business like no business: when the season has ended and even the locals are taking a vacation. No one's shopping. At last, an opportunity to think, to plan more than a minute ahead, to acknowledge the fact that this is it.

I have no rosy cheeks, no twinkle in my eye. There is no romance in my soul. I am not special. But I sense there is something special out there. There is ecstasy where no one has laid claim. There is treasure you needn't bury, because only a few of us are after it. If I only had time. But my time is already spent, pledged to that Shylock, the punch clock.

Tomorrow when your foot slaps the tile in the bathroom or the blade scrapes your face, or maybe the water is rushing, rushing over you--think of it. You have to grab the wall at some point and shiver. Look at it--the fingertips, the soap. The white body that hasn't seen the sun. This is it.

"Are you going to be a hero or a zero?" Another corporate slogan from the top. "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice." The slogans just keep coming, running like tin pan tunes. There is no one who appreciates the sound of words more than I, but this is dangerous talk to me. Maybe it's an obsession. If the work was more demanding, fresh, as it once was, perhaps my mind wouldn't focus on all these doubts. Possibly I'd understand, or fight. Or maybe the whole problem would just go away like Shari and Lamb Chop. If I even mentioned these feelings to most people I know, they would mistake them all for fluff. "Ahh, you just need a vacation." But I don't need a vacation. I need a Great Depression. I need nothing else on my mind but where do I get my next meal. I need to bake my own bread, and break that bread with my own hands for the people I love.

I need to take charge of my own life. Only I don't know how we take charge of anything, whether it be the buttons our government pushes or the filthy tie we squeeze around our throats. I do know some of you are driven by work that somehow meets your desires. You are special. But for a majority, the work seems to have found us. We never searched. And the predicament is mapped out. Your longitude is running, working, working. Your latitude is lying on your bed at night, praying to the dark.

And, by day, some suit is questioning your integrity. The company is trying to take on human characteristics. "Do you love your job?" Love, my God hasn't love been smothered enough? And then they start to use the word "family," and you start to smile until you realize the family they're talking about is the corporation. That is the family that has the biggest claim on you. You need no sense of the outside world. Your globe is the size of your fist, and your heart and soul are dead. And that is probably why, in the end, when the energy is burned from frustration, work, and life, none of us really fears death. The stench of the years just piles up, and that's when we decide not to breathe.

I ask no one to accept an existence that bland. Only you have to. I reach for more, but my reach is nothing but a twist of flesh in the wrong direction.

So I accept the job, the pay, the gratification of knowing for whom I am doing it. I find failure rewarding because I am failing for love. I try not to forget the simple fact that there is something in family and love that can't be taken away. The reason I work at the drugstore is for those things that can't be taken away.

The man with the painting is back. I'm determined to see what it is. I'm moving backward, knocking down one counter after another until my sight is clear. The painting--it's two people holding one another, a garage-sale portrait with Spanish angles. The couple seems younger than I. They are certain of themselves. Lightly touching. I want to grab on, hold tight. I don't see where the painting fails, where the art ends and real life begins. In the next painting they will have children, and they will hold each other--tighter and tighter. The are scared, naturally scared. So natural it needs no reason, no explanation, no happy ending.