Wherein homicidal tendencies are tested and Anne Rice loses a sale
The day after graduation, I was due back at my part-time job. I hadn’t left town yet. This was our dry run. My clone would work my job, while I would find something to occupy myself and stay out of sight of anyone who might realize I was in two places at once. My clone didn’t understand why it was such a big deal, because he was me in every way. He even said that he wanted me to go; he said that if he was stuck here working, he at least wanted to enjoy it without having to share.
I worked in a bookstore. That could have been cooler if I didn’t happen to work in a bookstore in the mall. Trade in the musty book smell and interesting finds for corporate masters, overdone lighting, and more James Patterson than you can shake a stick at. Rather than having a good spread of titles, they focused more on having many copies of the “It” titles. They’d rather keep shelves full of extra copies of NY Times bestsellers and Oprah’s book club novels that no one was buying than use that space for variety.
Of all the people I worked with, there were two that stuck out: Sebastian and Marina. Sebastian was in his thirties, skinny, long scraggly hair, an equally scraggily beard, and an opinion about everything. He talked and moved if perpetually on a caffeine high, which was probably more or less accurate. He somehow knew where every book was in the store, though he wasn’t always forthcoming about it. He never moved up to management, but instead carved out his domain in the SciFi section. He was the only one who stocked it, the only one who cleaned it up. The end caps were changed only by him, often in defiance to our corporate handlers. He put the books that he felt people would want to read. At least for scifi, this actually worked, and it was often that a regular customer would ambush him and hold him for ten minutes or longer just talking about scifi.
Marina is strangely relevant for this story, in that I always wondered if she was a clone. Nearly every bookstore seems to have one of her, especially the corporate ones. The names may change, but they’re all essentially Marina. They are always older, in their mid to late thirties, sometimes in their forties. They wear glasses and dress in almost grandma-ish patterns of pink. They are always overweight to a high degree. It is obvious they have never had sex in their lives, yet they always manage the Romance section of the store. That’s not a cop-out by any means. Romance novel management is a full time task. Many titles come in weekly, and are intended to only last a few months on the shelves before being replaced. So there’s good there, but unfortunately, they also tend to be pedantic and nosy. Why every store has one, I don’t know. Maybe there are cloning vats at corporate headquarters. Maybe the Harlequinn romance section is the siren call to them, which makes them dedicate their lives to it like some heathen god of fabricated love.
Marina nearly saw me when she looked out the front of the store into the crowd. I turned quickly and took a bite of my gelato, which caused me to wince because I have cold-sensitive teeth. I’m sure she didn’t see the camera. When I looked back, she was going about her business. I didn’t want her to see that I was both outside the store in street clothes and inside dressed for work.
Yeah, I was spying on my clone.
I didn’t trust him. Whether he meant it seriously or not, Victor did suggest that the clone could be homicidal. I would think I’d know that by now, since he had slept in the same house with my family, but maybe he didn’t want to kill family. Maybe something had to set him off. I also admitted that he might not be homicidal, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t evil. I wanted to see that he’d be fine without supervision before I got out of town. I was going off to seek adventure, but I wanted a life to come back to. I didn’t want to return to find my life in shambles and my good name ruined.
I sat down at a mall bench across from the store. People passed back and forth in front of me often enough that no one in the store would notice if they didn’t look. Besides, from my experience, when you work in a store, you focus on the store and don’t spend much time looking at what’s outside of it. I had a camera with a high powered lens and a long range mic. Thanks goes out to Trevor for letting me borrow the gear from when his father was suspicious his mother was cheating (she wasn’t).
I sat on the bench in a long coat which concealed the gear, an earpiece to listen, and sunglasses just because. It was June, so a man wearing a long coat indoors attracted some attention. In retrospect, I’m just glad mall security didn’t question me on suspicion of being a flasher.
I tuned in my mic to hear my clone. I had to tune out all the closer noises. On most days at the store, I worked the information desk at the back of the store. I had always hated ringing people up at the register. I was much more satisfied answering questions, furiously typing things to look up in the computers, then racing to the shelves to put a book in someone’s hand. Someone else could deal with the repetitive task of taking their money and shuffling them out the door.
My clone was at the information desk with Sebastian. The managers by now knew that Sebastian hated working the register, and let him stay at the info desk. He was a legacy at the store some eight years, going through a long succession of managers, so each new manager had just stayed with what worked. My clone was slouched over, leaning on the desk, his head in his hand. It was a boring day. Sebastian was rattling on once again about his theory that the Dune books post-God Emperor are the best of the series, due to Herbert’s style really coming into its own. My clone’s response was the same I always tiredly give: “I just can’t buy the idea that Duncan Idaho is suddenly the most important person in the universe.”
Sebastian harrumphed and then shut up. Momentarily at least. Then he embarked on another familiar rant, this time about how Robert A Heinlein’s writing career was just a complicated ploy to get him laid. Not that I didn’t think there might be some truth in that, I just had heard it so many times before. It looked like a boring day in there. That was no good, I wanted stress to test out his homicidal urges. I knew I would have to try to set my clone off.
I pulled out the voice modulator I had also gotten from Trevor. His dad had been hardcore. He had even called his wife’s work with a fake voice to find out more. Luckily I just needed it for this task. I grabbed a quarter and called from a nearby payphone. I still had a great angle to see from the phone.
Sebastian grabbed the phone first when it rang. I cursed and hung up. The look on Sebastian’s face was priceless. I needed my clone to answer. If I asked for him, it would seem suspicious. I ended up waiting for twenty minutes for a customer to ask Sebastian something, which had him rooting in the Self-Help aisles. Then I called again. My clone picked up.
This was a particularly dark time to work in a bookstore. For the previous few years, Anne Rice’s Vampire novels had been big sellers, and there were a fair amount of people who came in looking for either those or the erotica she wrote under a pen name. But this year was particularly bad. Hollywood had come out with the feature film of the first book, Interview with a Vampire, starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. This put the interest in the book to overdrive. Now it was no longer just gothy teens and awkward women who denied their interest had anything to do with unrequited sexuality. Now there were women from all walks of life requesting it because it was a movie, or because it had Brad Pitt. Worse, they would send their boyfriends in to grab the book. The movie-fans and their boyfriends never knew the name of the book. They’d walk in, look at the shelves distractedly before coming to the info desk and asking confusedly, “I’m looking for that book with the vampires. They made that movie.” Whoever at the desk would sigh heavily, then lead them over to a gigantic display of all of Anne Rice’s novels that the customer had blindly passed by. More often than not, the person would then just stare stupidly at the display. We’d sigh, then take and hand them the correct book before walking away, dejected and with all faith in the reading public gone.
My clone got on the line and gave the typical bookstore greeting. Hearing “How can I help you?” said to me in my own voice was still odd.
“Yes,” I said, speaking into the voice modulator. “I’m looking for that book. The one with the vampires.”
He sighed. “Yes, Interview with a Vampire.”
I took a long pause. “No, that’s not it.” I paused again. “I’m trying to remember something else about it.”
“Okay, do you know anything else about it?” he asked.
“Well, I think they made a movie of it.”
“Interview with a Vampire?” he suggested again.
“No,” I said distantly. “That’s not it. I think if that were it I would remember the title.”
“So what else do you know about it?” he said. I could tell he was already very irritated. “Was it Poppy Z Brite? I think you want Poppy Z Brite.”
“No, not that Zebright person,” I said. “I think… I think it the movie had Brad Pitt in it.”
“Yes! I know, you’re talking about Interview with a Vampire! It has Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in it!” I could see the spittle flying out of my clone’s mouth through the camera lens.
“Yeah…” I said distantly. “No… no, that’s not it. I’m sure that’s not it.”
“WHAT?”
“I saw it in another bookstore and I just didn’t pick it up. It’s a thick paperback. It’s like black, and has this like gothic white writing on it with just the title and the author’s name.”
My clone still stood at the info desk, the phone held to his ear and a nervous tick in his eye. With pure hatred in his eyes he stared across the store at the Anne Rice display where black paperbacks with “Interview with the Vampire” written in white flowery writing taunted him. I swear I could see a pulsing vein in his forehead.
Through gritted teeth he responded. “I’m. Going. To. Put. You. On. Hold. For. A. Moment. While. I. Check. Is. That. Okay?”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Did I mention they just made a movie based on the book?”
My clone slammed down the phone and I immediately heard the phone slam down. Through the camera, I heard the door to the back room of the store slam. The break room and stock were kept back there. It was the only private place the employees had away from customers.
This is when I expected to find out how evil my clone was. What would he do? Maybe he had guns out there and would go on a shooting rampage. Maybe he was a knife person. I guess I could do shivs if I were really angry. Stabbing just seemed so unpleasant with the blood and everything. Bombs? Was he a bomb person? Maybe I needed to move back. There was a possibility that he would reveal his true nature as the diabolical herald of some eldritch god, and his anger would cause him to open three mouths and chant the litany to summon the demonic beast to our world, the gate opening right over New Orleans to make sure Anne Rice got what was coming to her.
None of these things happened. I almost thought we were at DefCon One when Miranda wandered back to the information desk. She looked around and then opened the back room door, asking in a pestering voice why no one was at the information desk. I leaned forward, just waiting for the moment. If I were going to start a killing spree, she wouldn’t be a bad first target. It would set the tone for the whole thing. I could just see Sebastian giving an interview: “Officer, if you had her nagging her, you would also consider going postal. Thirty-seven stab wounds? Yeah, I guess that is excessive. I would probably have stopped after twenty. Why? Tennis elbow. Twenty is my limit.”
Unfortunately, this also did not set my clone off. I heard an angry shooing from the back room and Miranda walked off in a huff. But no killing. I began to doubt my homicidal clone’s commitment to being homicidal.
After two minutes, my clone came back out, red-faced and breathing heavy. His arms were slack but heavy. Sebastian came back to the info desk, immediately slowing, his look alone asking what happened. There was a brief conversation where my clone told Sebastian the story. I couldn’t tell if Sebastian was genuinely concerned, or that face was all he could do to keep from busting a gut. After the story, Sebastian suggested my clone “go shelve some books”, and that Sebastian would handle the call.
This effectively ended my attempt to push my clone over the edge. So I guess I should have hung up. But I wanted to see if I could push the joke farther.
“Hello, thank you for holding,” said Sebastian as he picked up the line.
“Hi!” I said. “Someone was helping me. You can tell that guy that I think the movie had Brad Pitt in it!”
Unfortunately, Sebastian had worked there enough years that he was sly with customers. He winked at my clone, who had come by the info desk with an armload of books. My clone stopped to listen. “I’m sorry, sir,” said Sebastian. “We don’t carry that book.”
“But you didn’t even figure out which –“ I protested.
“I think I know the book you’re talking about,” he said, “But I can’t remember the name. But Barnes & Noble across the way has it. You should give them a call.” We loved fucking with the Barnes & Noble guys. They always seemed to high and mighty with their café and copious amounts of square footage. If we had that square footage and freely running caffeine, maybe we could’ve been a real bookstore too.
There was not much I can do. “Okay,” I said sadly. “I’ll call them.” Then I hung up.
I switched back to the mic.
“You just lied to them,” my clone said.
“It got them off the phone,” said Sebastian.
“But we had the book they were looking for,” my clone said.
“Eh, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t really care if we lose a customer. He was on the phone. Nobody’s gonna fire us if someone on the phone doesn’t come in. And frankly, one less person reading Interview with a Vampire is a good thing.”
“But it’s our job to help them,” pointed out my clone.
“Eh, fuck em,” said Sebastian with a grin. “Nobody in retail really wants to help people if they can help it. I’ve worked retail for over a decade. I know this.”
My clone nodded sadly, but still did not seem convinced.
I was nonplussed. Not only did my clone not kill someone (I was hoping he’d kill Marina), but he was actually put off by not helping retail people. Not only was he showing himself to not be homicidal, but I was also disappointed in myself. Grow some balls, Me. It was a prank call.
I dialed Bruce on the phone.
“Operation failed,” I said. “No evidence of evil found.”
“Why are you even calling me?” he said. “I have nothing to do with this.”
“You’re my assistant. You handle mission control.”
“Mission control – what? Dude, even if you wanted to include me in your weird schemes, you need to tell me. How am I supposed to know what the fuck you’re doing? I thought you were at work.”
“The clone’s at work.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Watching the clone work.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “There’s something very fucked up about you. I can never put a finger on it, but this is a good example.”
“Huh?”
“You made a clone so you didn’t have to work, yes? So the clone actually agreed to work, which I’m surprised as fuck about. But then, you don’t trust the clone, so you’re spending your day to watch the clone and make sure they work.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t follow. What’s fucked up about that?”
Click. The phone call ended.
“Hello?” I said tentatively.
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