Chapter 3
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The weather is beautiful on Friday, and Deb hopes that Mark is having an awful time at the Gwar concert. She hopes he’s lost in the mosh pit, and that he gets elbowed in the head so hard that it fundamentally alters his brain chemistry and turns him into a smart, responsible young man who never misses another shift.
“Where do you think Joe keeps his drumsticks?” Warren is searching through drawers Deb has already seen him search through at least two times each. “They gotta be here somewhere.”
“He keeps them in his ears and pulls them out when he needs them. They are not here.”
“Nah, they’re here, they gotta be here,” Warren mutters. He continues touching and moving every item in sight. Usually Deb doesn’t have to put up with Warren without some kind of barrier. He’s usually scheduled at the same time as Mark, and usually they’re both so manic and stupid that they somehow end up balancing each other out. Deb figures it’s because when two people are both so stupid, naturally one of them is always at least a little less stupid, and Mark and Warren, without realizing, are always competing to see who has at least one braincell extra. But with the store being empty on account of it being Friday, and no Mark to keep him in check, Deb is being exposed to a full blown Warren episode, and she’s feeling pretty close to assaulting him. She watches from her seat on the stairs as Warren goes back to the registers and slams one of them open. Suddenly, one of the TVs turns off.
“Oh, no, Warren!”
Deb looks up with a start. Gina, who Deb had thought was avoiding the current state of the store by rendering herself comatose in the back office, is standing by the office doors, just next to the breaker box.
“‘Oh no Warren’ what?” Warren grunts- he'd given up on insisting his name wasn't Warren the second he'd put his staff ID lanyard around his neck.
“I think you accidentally hit the TV line when you opened the register like that,” Gina says with a fake tone of dismay.
“The TV line? Why the hell would that be connected to the register?”
“No, she’s right,” Deb quickly chimes in, seeing the way Gina’s intentionally looking back and forth between her and the breaker box. She stands up and looks back at Warren, “it’s always been like that, the electricians kinda fucked this place up when they were wiring everything. We think half of them were on dope.”
“Really?” Warren looks around the store as if they’ve just told him it’s haunted rather than badly wired by heroin addicts. “…Cool.”
Gina goes to the TV and starts hitting the buttons, of course, to no avail. “Yep,” she sighs dramatically. “Dead.”
Deb crosses her arms and shakes her head, making a real show of being disappointed. “I’m sorry, Warren, I know you didn’t know about the faulty register-TV-line, but seeing as how that TV’s now dead and I’m the night manager today, I’m gonna have to send you home for the night.”
“What?! But- but-!”
“You heard her, Warren,” Gina says. “Honestly, if I were you, I’d get out of here before she gets mad.”
“Yeah, Warren, I’d hate to have to call Joe and tell him what happened, too.”
“Joe wouldn’t fire me for that!”
“Sure, he wouldn’t fire you,” Gina agrees, “but he certainly would pay the repair bill with your paycheck. And then the next paycheck after that.”
Deb nods, “especially since your whole plan in the first place was to go make use of his prized drum set back there.”
Warren looks helplessly between the two of them, but finally his shoulders drop in defeat, and he begins to slink towards the back office. Deb and Gina both watch as he approaches the doors, notices the breaker box, and goes to shut it.
“That should stay closed,” he says dejectedly. He looks back at the two of them. “See, I’m not completely useless, you know!”
“Bless your heart, Warren,” Deb laments, and she notices the way Gina’s stifling back a laugh. She has to fight to keep it together herself until Warren’s through the doors and punched out. When they finally hear the exit doors shut behind him, they both completely break down. Deb all but falls to her knees, and between fits of laughter she sees Gina’s doubled over, leaning against one of the shelves.
“Oh- oh my God,” Gina chokes out between laughs.
Deb wipes tears from her eyes, gasping to get a full breath, “that- was brilliant!”
Gina falls to the floor, still in hysterics, and crawls closer to Deb, falling onto her back and clutching at her abdomen. Deb’s own stomach aches with how hard she’s laughing, and she holds onto the hand rail of the stairs for support.
“Thanks,” she says when she’s finally able to speak again, though she isn’t done giggling.
Gina’s still giggling, too, but she takes a deep breath and glances at Deb, “yeah, well. He was driving me crazy and I wasn’t even in here.” She rolls onto her side so they're facing each other, and she’s smiling at her. “Thanks for playing along.”
Deb’s grinning so hard it’s making her face hurt; Gina’s face looks a little pink, and her shirt is in slight disarray, and Deb’s seen Gina in a lot of revealing clothing but she’s never seen this much of her cleavage-
The bell rings as the front door swings open. Deb shoots to her feet, “hi, how can I help you!”
and walks towards the customer who honestly looks a bit frightened at her bizarrely attentive energy. Maybe the customer is also weirded out that Deb’s blushing so hard, but she figures it’s way better that they see it than Gina, and she guides the customer in and proceeds to help them more with their trip through the store than she’s probably helped all her past customers combined. This kid’s into the kind of stuff Mark is into. As he picks up a Gwar cd, and he tells her he’s upset that he couldn’t afford tickets to see their concert tonight, she decides that maybe she hopes Mark’s crowd surfing instead of getting pummeled.
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