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Stock Boy
Stock Boy
Stock Boy
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Stock Boy

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Clarence Smith, a lonely stock boy toiling away in an upscale department store, entertains visions of a grand life when he tries to hook up with a beautiful and aloof store executive. But when he begins to shoplift expensive merchandise to sell to a shadowy fence in order to raise enough money to impress her, his life, as well as hers, take an unexpected turn when he discovers that she has been shoplifting too, but for a wholly different reason.

Check out this 55,000 word romantic thriller with plenty of laughs and memorable characters to keep you turning the page.

Other titles by T.L. Peters that you might enjoy include An Ocracoke Affair, A Pittsburgh Affair, What's Wrong With Donny Speck?, Gracie and the Preacher, An Imperfect Miracle, An Outer Banks Vacation, A Pittsburgh Caper and many more.

"There's no question that Peters is a master wordsmith." Gerry B's Book Reviews

LanguageEnglish
PublisherT.L. Peters
Release dateAug 23, 2011
ISBN9781465808325
Stock Boy
Author

T.L. Peters

"There's no question that Peters is a master wordsmith." Gerry B's Book Reviews About the author: T.L. Peters is an ex-lawyer who enjoys playing the violin and giving his dog long walks in the woods. In between, he writes novels.

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    Book preview

    Stock Boy - T.L. Peters

    Stock Boy

    By T.L. Peters

    Smashwords Edition

    Copyright 2011 T.L. Peters

    License Notes

    This e book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

    To read more about the author and his other books, go to http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tlpeters.

    There’s no question that Peters is a master wordsmith. Gerry B’s Book Reviews

    Stock boy noun: a boy or man employed to stock shelves

    Miriam-Webster

    Chapter 1

    I'd just gashed my finger on a rolling wooden crate crammed with Jones of New York dresses and was feeling a little raw and ornery at the world. I hated those crates because they always gave me splinters whenever I unloaded them solo from the delivery truck to the loading dock. The containers weren't so much heavy as awkward, and if the driver didn't back the truck in just right there was always a little crack where the truck bed ended and the metal dock floor began. Then I'd have to get a running start to cajole the crate to roll smoothly out onto the dock.

    It wasn't easy either. If I didn't apply just the right amount of pressure, the container would either rebound right back into my face when its little plastic wheels hit the crack, causing me to forfeit a tooth or two, or the wheels would spin sideways and end up getting wedged all crooked and bent inside the crack. In that unfortunate circumstance, the crate would quickly start to groan and creak before finally tilting over and crashing onto the hard concrete floor, which as you might imagine triggered a whole new set of headaches. It was like life, one simple pointless little thing leading to another, and then all of a sudden calamity struck.

    The past few weeks I had decided to be clever for a change and put on gloves whenever I was unloading, but like everything else in my world the gloves had quickly worn thin. So when I confidently grabbed the crate and began to roll it out of the truck, my finger slid over a wayward sliver that ripped my skin wide open right across the fleshy pad at the tip. At first it didn't so much hurt as scare me, and I began scampering around the stock room and then all over the store cradling my bloody hand like some lost derelict. I didn't mind grossing out the customers either. After all, I'd worked at Mannheim's Department Store for nearly fifteen years and knew better than to care what the customers thought.

    Stock boys are supposed to be invisible, hanging out in grimy back rooms all day, only to make brief forays onto the selling floor to wheel out merchandise or pick up hangers or handle other crummy little jobs that nobody else wanted to do. But I had always insisted on making myself known, or at least seen, by taking long and frequent sojourns through the store, regardless of the shape I was in. How else was I supposed to check out all the good looking women?

    I don't really mean to be so crass as to suggest that all I cared about was gawking at girls. Rather, the great commonality of the vast store and all its many customers and employees afforded me the sense of constantly being in the midst of life's random busyness without having to actually participate in any of it. That was the main advantage to being a stock boy so far as I could tell. It hadn't always been such a passive experience though.

    When I'd first started working at Mannheim's, there was a certain masculine pride that came with steering a big flat bed cart pell-mell through the wide aisles with one of my buddies pushing the cart as hard as he could from behind. The customers would scatter like bowling pins, and the store's second in command, Mr. Winters, would get so ticked off at us that his already narrow face would tighten up like a dried fig. I guess he was worried that we'd run over some old lady or flatten some little kid and trigger a massive lawsuit. We never did though. We were swashbucklers in the best sense and took pride in our reckless ways.

    But since then everything had been tamped down to run a lot calmer and smoother. The store had even cut back on the number of stock boys, pushing more and more of our work onto the clerks. So all my old comrades were gone, mostly toiling away as baggers in grocery stores. And now even those jobs were being automated out of existence. Everything was just so much more regimented and boring, but I hadn't let it get me down too much and still tried to make myself the center of attention whenever the opportunity arose.

    I played up my predicament as best I could as I roamed the store holding up my blood drenched finger while begging everyone as loudly as I could, even some of the snippy buyers and assistant buyers over in Fine Jewelry, to lend me a spare band aid and maybe a dab of antiseptic ointment. But as usual nobody could help me, or at least they said they couldn't. So now I was back in the stock room still cradling my bad hand in my good one trying not to drip all over my pants. I was already worried about getting gangrene and kept waiting for some angry red line to begin crawling down my wrist and up my arm.

    I knew the cut would get infected sooner or later, because my cuts always got infected. From my earliest memories Mom was always harping on how weak I was, physically I mean, because my brain was always pretty active, though it had never shown to its best advantage in school. She'd told me to let my cuts bleed a while, because if I got lucky the flow might carry all the bacteria and germs out with it and I'd be okay. Her advice, as well intentioned as it must have been, had never seemed to work though. But I was still willing to give it a try, because Mom was a good hearted person who had always professed to love me, and I guess I was a sucker for outward displays of affection.

    But now Mom was dead and Dad too for that matter, whisked away together a few months earlier in one of those blazing car wrecks that local TV stations always like to lead the evening news with. So I had been left with little recourse but to fend for myself against what I generally regarded as a depraved and vicious world. That was what had led me to begin stealing stuff from the store, appliances and ladies wear mostly but other things too, everything I could get my hands on really, and then to sell the contraband to this Jonah fellow who hung out at a big Catholic Church not too far from downtown Pittsburgh, the city where I was born and raised and had never ventured away from except one summer to drive with my parents to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a week's vacation.

    My recent entry into the larceny business had caused me to revise my normal practice of always shirking hard work in favor of a more cooperative policy of unloading the delivery trucks by myself from time to time. It was a lot easier to pilfer the merchandise that way. But I'm getting way ahead of myself, since right at that moment I had some pressing business to attend to that went beyond even the grim matter of caring for my wounded finger.

    You see, my diehard enemy, Veronica Powers, was in trouble. I call Veronica my enemy even though I loved her, or at least I thought I loved her, because it's really tough to tell for sure about such things. She had hardly shown me much affection in return though, at least not in any conventional way. It had only been a week since I had aroused her scorn by brushing up against her hips on my way to pick up my paycheck in Human Resources. Veronica had apparently misinterpreted my friendly gesture and immediately unleashed a nasty elbow into my ribs. It was an intentionally sharp blow too, or so I surmised, because right after the attack her eyes had begun twinkling malignantly at me as she sashayed along with her hips swaying way more than usual. It was as though she were taunting me to have another go at her, which I might have attempted if I hadn't been all buckled over and panting for air. But I was pretty hard up for affection and took some solace that at least now I knew that clobbering men was one of the ways that Veronica got her kicks.

    When it came to chasing after women I didn't have much pride and was willing to do almost anything to attract them, leastways while I was working at the store. Away from the store, like maybe at a bar or a ball game, or even the few occasions I visited the gym to flex my flabby muscles, I just couldn't seem to bring myself to talk to a girl. It didn't matter how friendly or hostile she was, or how striking or homely she looked, or how desperate for a man she seemed to be. I guess I was an equal opportunity sluggard in that respect. Mostly it was because I couldn't think of anything to say that didn't sound stupid. But even if I happened to figure out some reasonably clever line, I just couldn't pry open my mouth long enough to talk to her, as though it were glued shut by all my insecurities and doubts.

    The store seemed like my only comfort zone, the one place where I felt relaxed enough to hit on a girl. Plenty of guys are just like me, I think. We need some sort of institutional identity, even one so flimsy as carting crates around, to bolster our confidence. If you ask me, that's why there's so much sexual harassment in the workplace. It's just guys lacking the nerve to ask a girl out all on their own, and so they have to bring their pathetic quest for love with them to work.

    Of course, like most prying parents, my late dad had a different and far more personal view of my hang ups. He said that I was a sniveling introvert cowering in the flamboyant outward veneer of an extrovert, which he claimed explained everything. Even though I wasn't nearly as smart as old Dad, who had actually had a real job all his life, an engineer or something, I had never taken his argument seriously.

    First of all, I had no clue what he meant, and he had never bothered to explain it either. Second, it sounded like an insult to me and I didn't like it much. And third, I simply didn't have any faith when it came to delving into somebody's psychology, mine or anybody else's. It was just too shaky and unreliable a way to live as far as I could tell, judging people's motives I mean, and I rarely attempted it even on myself. Of course, that was another problem with me and women. How could I tailor my personality to best suit their quirks and desires if I didn't know what made them tick? But then again, how could a man ever really know what made any woman tick?

    Nonetheless, I just couldn't resist trying to figure out Veronica, despite the obvious risks to my health. The sorry fact that I had struck out so miserably with every other girl I'd ever tried to hit on in the last decade or so didn't deter me either. Veronica had just started working at the store a year earlier, and I feared that she might be my last decent chance at a date for a while, since turnover at the store had been rather scanty lately. It seemed well worth the effort. Veronica was six three in her bare feet and had long smooth jet black hair styled like some aloof Egyptian Princess.

    What I mean by the Egyptian reference is that her bangs were cut straight across a half inch or so above her exquisitely waxed eyebrows, and in back and on the sides her hair was loped off just as severely. She was built hard and lean, like a man were it not for the obvious contours, and she liked to wear tight black sweaters and skirts to show off what a scary broad she apparently was. She barely ever smiled, even to customers, and her voice was hoarse and angry, as though she'd worn out her vocal cords bawling people out and would forever hold it against them.

    She had sharp black little eyes that would widen noticeably and then roll up toward her leathery forehead whenever she was ticked off, which was a lot of the time. And her skin was a deep burnt brown, so brown that it looked almost phony, as though it had been painted on with a few generous coats of shiny latex gloss. I'd heard her pontificating in the snack lounge one day about how she used Botox to smooth out the skin above her brow and fillers to plump out the wrinkles everywhere else. But I didn't really care what Veronica did to herself in her spare time. Whatever it took to get her to look the way she did was fine with me.

    Veronica managed the Sporting Goods Department, and I'd often seen her doing pull ups on one of the many exercise machines as I strolled past during my frequent jaunts around the store. She did bicep curls too with forty pounds on either end of the bar and she always raised and lowered the weight slowly and methodically, as though she knew what she was doing and wasn't bothered at all by the heavy weight. The first time I had seen her working out I nearly collapsed in awe of her feminine virility. According to Webster's there is no such thing as feminine virility, but after getting a load of her sleek powerful muscles in action I knew better. From then on all those wispy flat chested girls in Cosmetics, or even the more robust and voluptuous clerks in Hosiery, all of whom had given me the cold shoulder by the way, just didn't seem to measure up anymore.

    I had even told Mom just before she died about my strange love-sickness for Vernoica. She had asked me why I didn't try to hook up with some nice girl instead and settle down and raise a family.

    But I don't like nice girls anymore, I'd told her.

    Why not? she'd asked.

    I just shrugged and mumbled that I didn't know and then loped away. I really couldn't tell her why not, since I didn't have a clue. All I knew was that every time I spotted Veronica strutting that big lanky body of hers around the store mouthing off to some poor scared little runt like me, I nearly fell over with excitement. I was sure that she wasn't married because she didn't wear a ring, and since I had never seen anybody picking her up after work, I suspected that she was unattached. I was hardly surprised either, because most guys, cursed with a weak and brittle self image, tend to shy away from women who enjoy kicking the snot out of them. But I was desperate and thus prepared to take extraordinary measures, especially since the store had so degraded the job of stock boy that I saw no hope of deriving much pleasure from it anymore.

    In any event, Veronica

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