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Reluctantly, she slid her hand into the crook of his arm, and they crossed the parking lot together. It was all Marlene could do not to cover herself, particularly when they entered the store and the cashiers who'd noticed her through the display window came forward for a better look.
Pike led her farther into the building, past the aisles and aisles of shelf stock that looked picked-over, like the day after a clearance sale. Marlene began to suspect that employees weren't really working for Pike but were living off of the merchandise inside the store. In one section, cashiers who'd gone off shift for the night were sleeping on displays of Sealy Posturepedic mattresses, while nearby a group of stockboys made good use of an electric grill to cook their dinners. The entire store was its own self-sufficient universe.
"I've got fifty-one employees right now," Pike explained, "including myself. Of course, anyone's always welcome, but I'm not actively looking for new hires at the moment. Maybe I'll open a superstore next year."
They'd come as far as the women's clothing department, where a salesgirl with long, sandy blond hair was sale-tagging a display of floral-print blouses, each identical to the one that she was wearing.
Marlene halted before the display. "If you don't mind, Mr. Pike, I think I'll get dressed now. I just . . . feel weird all of a sudden."
Nathaniel withdrew politely. "Of course. Help yourself to whatever you need. It's all for the taking."
She thanked him and went to find her size at the end of the sale rack. Her choices were all arbitrary; the important
"If you don't mind, Mr. Pike, I think I'll get dressed now. I just . . . feel weird all of a sudden."
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thing was to cover herself with as many layers as possible. With trembling hands, she tore open a package of plain cotton panties and put them on. Likewise, she picked out a bra, a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a cable-stitch sweater. Most of the items had security tags on them, so she brought them up to the salesgirl in the floral-print blouse. "Can you pull these tags off for me?" she asked.
The girl took the bundle of clothes and set it by her at her register.
"You're Stuart's wife, right?" she asked. "Marlene, the nudist?"
The question startled Marlene, who took a closer look at the salesgirl's tag. Hers wasn't gold, like Pike's, but a blue and white plastic card that read Allison Reese, Sales Associate. Marlene felt embarrassed at meeting Allison under such awkward circumstances. "That's me," she admitted softly.
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Excerpted from Pike's Folly by Mike Heppner. Copyright: © 2006 by Mike
Heppner. Published in arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random
House, Inc.
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Mike Heppner is the author of The Egg Code and Pike's Folly.
He grew up in Grosse Pointe and Rhode Island. Today he lives in Watertown,
Massachusetts.
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© 2006 Mike Heppner & Nerve.com
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