The After Hours

Ever since I read Corduroy as a child I have been obsessed with staying in a store past closing time. I spent the twilight moments between waking and sleep imagining how I would do it, if I would sneak in or break in, or hide behind a display or inside a circular garment rack, devising strategies until I began to doze off. Of course, by the time I was old enough to execute one of these plots, no more of the behemoth department stores existed, and malls were becoming derelict, supported by gadget kiosks and nail salons and massage chairs, fast food pavilions and sometimes a half-deserted movie theater. Everyone did all their shopping from The Company, whether for food or clothes, books or movies. I don't like to use their name ever since they successfully sued that South American tribe and put them deeply in debt, even though this tribe had never even developed the concept of currency, but I think you know who I mean.

Then there was an announcement that The Company was taking over an enormous abandoned historical building downtown that once housed one of the major department stores in our town. They were calling it Mortar, short for Brick and Mortar. They were going to install showrooms where a person could browse a physical store, then scan a QR code to purchase any item instantly. By the time they got home from shopping, a drone would have delivered their purchase to their front door lockbox.

When I first read about Mortar, my long-abandoned fantasies of staying the night in a department store repopulated my mind. I programmed a phone app to scramble their facial recognition software so I could get into the store without being tracked. I checked my A-Bux account, and I saw that I had $250,000. Some of the kids I grew up with blew theirs as soon as they could open an ATab, buying autobikes and VR implants. I was really mad at my parents then for making me an outcast among my peers, but at least now I'm not in debt and I have some imagination and skills.

I started doing recon at Mortar as soon as it opened. I would visit once a week, taking pictures of their vulnerabilities in the guise of scanning QRs. I found a blind spot near a clothing rack, and that seemed to be my best option. I would explain more, but I have been told that it's since been fixed and that writing down my strategy would be tantamount to corporate espionage, so I am not going to detail it here.

As I left to go home to prepare, I winked at one of the pretty mannequins that they had near the doorway. “Wish me luck, bright eyes!” I said. For a moment I imagined a flutter of her eyelashes, which were so masterfully rendered they seemed nearly real, even though they were visibly made of plastic.

I scheduled vacation time and waited until the middle of the week so as not to arouse suspicion. I packed a kit bag with soft snacks, a water bladder, and a phone charger and a power pack. I was nervous and excited. I knew the risk, of course, but I couldn't stop thinking about doing it. It possessed me, and would continue to do so until I stayed the night in the store.

I went to the store an hour before it was supposed to close. I napped all day in anticipation of staying up all night, and I used their restroom just before the customers started to thin out, then I hid in my blind spot until I felt like it was safe to disappear into the garment rack. It was all I could do not to give myself away by laughing, my plan was going better than I had anticipated.

The lights started to go out, one by one. In the distance, I could hear the machinery of cleaning drones starting up, vacuuming, mopping, and scrubbing the entire store in moments. I poked my head out of my hideout and looked around. Everything was silent, and there were no more customers. I was alone.

I got out of the garment rack and stretched my legs, which had fallen asleep. I walked around the store, looking for the biggest bed I could find to jump on, when I heard a deep voice say, “Man, oh man, do I have to pee!”

I turned around. There wasn't anyone else in the store.

“Me too!” said a woman's voice. “This fucking shit is taking so long to dissolve today!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it: a mannequin moved its arm, slowly at first, the hinge of the elbow, then the arc of the shoulder.

He looked at me. “Hey, how did you get yours off so quick?”

“Um, what do you mean?”

“Your bezolyne. Ours is taking forever.”

“Oh my god!” said the woman's voice. “He's not one of us! He's that creepy guy who's been coming here!” I looked over to see Bright Eyes pointing at me, then bending her knees as if attempting to spring up, but she was fixed to the floor.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked.

“We could ask the same thing,” said a man's voice behind me. He was taking slow, staggering steps towards me.

“Jesus. I was just leaving and I got lost in the store...”

“We've heard that before. Call security. Tell them we've got a Corduroy.”

“No, I was just looking for an exit.”

“Wait here,” said one of the mannequins.

“Jesus Christ, creep. All I wanted was to take a shower and go to sleep. We have an early day tomorrow.”

“Of being a mannequin?” I asked.

“Our title is Autonomous Branding Representative, assface.”

“What are you? Some sort of android?”

“Are you fucking stupid? I'm a person. Just like you.”

I was shocked. “You mean you stand in one place all day?”

“Yes, I stand in the same place all day. Jesus fucking Christ, you're a dumbfuck.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I needed a job, fucknut. Why do you do what you do? What do you do? Dip shit?”

“What?”

“Tell me, how much shit would a dipshit dip if a dipshit could dip shit?”

“Hey, I'm an engineer. I design machines and program them.”

“Well join the fucking club.”

Just then, a big hand clapped my shoulder. A massive man said, “Follow me, sir.”

I flopped like one of those inflatable tube guys as he dragged me behind him. He threw me into a dark room and locked the door.

I took out my phone to call my mom. No signal. I called my dad. No signal. I tried calling 911. There was no signal.

After a couple of hours, a man entered the room.

“Hello,” he said. He handed me a clipboard. “Here are your orientation materials. Feel free to familiarize yourself with our policies before your shift begins at 6:00.”

“My shift? I don't work here.”

“You've been transferred. I recommend that you pay particular attention to the Sexual Harassment policy, please.”

“How have I been transferred? I work for a completely different company.”

“Yes, a completely different company that was acquired about 45 minutes ago.”

“Acquired by?”

“Don't act naive, please. We have a strict No Corduroy policy that you violated. It's in the terms of service that you agreed to.”

“I agreed to?”

“Yes, you agreed to the the terms of service as you entered Mortar. Here it is.”

He handed me a thick contract, flagged to a page. I opened it to the page. It read, Any customer will be considered in violation and subject to penalty whoever to attempts to reenact scenarios from Corduroy, Mannequin, Mannequin 2: On the Move, The Twilight Zone...

He tore the agreement from my hand. “Because you violated this policy, you are required to serve in the capacity that we deem fair.”

“And what is that capacity?”

“What else? As an Autonomous Branding Representative.”

“But I'm an engineer,” I explained. “I have an excellent job.”

“You had an excellent job,” he said, “but because you violated our policy, you're in arrears to the company.”

“Oh, what's the fine? I can pay it. I have $250,000 A-Bux in my account.”

“You had 250,000 A-Bux in your account. Now you're deficient by 750,000 A-Bux, but don't worry. You can work it off starting on the floor.”

“How much will I make on the floor?”

“Um, we start at 4.50 an hour, minus the fees for bezolyne application, which come to about 30 A-Bux.”

“One time fee?”

“No, daily.”

“So after the fee I get about 24 A-Bux?”

“Minus insurance and taxes.”

“So my debt will be paid in,” I calculated, “86 years?”

“Well, there is interest to be considered, but look on the bright side, you might get a promotion. I just gave an employee a promotion to the warehouse, as a matter of fact.”

“What did they do to get it?”

“He turned you in.”

***

The process is this: you sleep. While you're sleeping, your body is injected with a solution that hydrates and gives you nutrients, as well as makes you sleep without interruption. You're never thirsty or hungry, but you always feel like drinking or eating something. You want a taste in your mouth besides the tooth cleanser that they put in a mouth guard to whiten and clean your teeth every night. When you awaken, you have a minute or so to use the restroom, the whole group in the same room. Then you have a group shower. You have to keep your eyes straight ahead because if you look at any of the others, even in their eyes, you are considered to have violated the sexual harassment policy, which adds to your fine.

Then, after the shower, you put on undergarments and get sprayed with bezolyne, a temporary polymer that helps you keep the position you're standing in the whole day. You have mere seconds between being sprayed and getting to your position in the store. At first, you're tempted to stand in a unique position, like standing with your hand under your chin or making a silly face, but the fatigue sets in much more quickly if you do that, so you learn very quickly to make a very relaxed pose.

I was assigned to the space across from Bright Eyes. As her bezolyne would harden, she would mouth to me, “I hate you,” and I would watch that mouth until it stiffened in a round O shape.

Having nothing better to do, I studied all of the objects in my field of sight, the rows and rows of products, the surveillance cameras, the people coming in and out. A little girl came in and pointed at me and said, “Mommy, I don't like that man.”

“Oh, honey, he's not real, don't worry,” her mother said.

I began to feel less and less real. Every night I waited for the bezolyne to melt. I stopped trying to talk to Bright Eyes. It was bad enough not feeling like somebody, it was worse having somebody confirm it.

I was walking toward the back room one night when Bright Eyes came up behind me and whispered something in my ear. “I know, you hate me,” I said.

She nodded at the keypad to the freight elevator. “Eight two,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“I hate you,” she replied.

***

The next night, Bright Eyes started mouthing something else to me, “For sex.”

I blushed.

Every night she mouthed that to me, and I began to look forward to it more than anything, even though I knew there wouldn't be an opportunity for us to have sex, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I would watch her dressers put on her clothes as she mouthed “For sex” to me, and I would imagine myself in my old apartment--who knew who had it now—tenderly undressing her.

“You have to do it,” she said on our way to the back one night.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You have to punch it in. Eight two four six.” She nodded to the keypad again. “We're escaping. I need you to punch in that sequence,” she said under her breath.

“When? What's the plan?”

“Tomorrow night. We just run. No plan.”

“Why me?”

“Because you follow the rules and don't talk to anyone else.”

***

We waited for the store to close and the bezolyne to melt. The cleaning drones swept and mopped to store as the stiffness left our bodies. We walked toward the exit with the rest of the representatives, then I broke off. I ran to the freight elevator and punched in the sequence. The doors opened, and I ducked in. I held it until Bright Eyes could come in, then I hit the button for the top floor.

“What the fuck, dumbass?” she yelled. “We should go to the garage and run.”

“No way. That's the first place they'd look.”

“What then?”

“We're going to roof, then we're going to jump to the apartment building next door.”

“That's fucking crazy,” she screamed.

“That's what we're doing,” I screamed back.

“Okay, goddamn it. I wasn't prepared to jump.”

“You can make it,” I said, and I gave her a kiss.

She spat out, “What the fuck did you do that for?”

“For good luck?”

“Goddamn it, you're a creep,” she said.

The door of the freight elevator opened, and we got out. We ran to the roof. I opened the door and let her go past me, straight into the arms of the portly security guard who I knew would be there.

“This was her plan,” I said. “She masterminded it, and I can show you on the surveillance tape how she did it.”

“Jesus Christ, you're lower than pig shit,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said, “but I'm getting promoted out of here. Goodbye, Bright Eyes,” I said.

“Go fuck yourself, dipshit,” she said, and she spit on my shoes.

“Why do you curse so much?” I asked.

“Because I've always been surrounded by fucking douchebags like you,” she yelled, being dragged away.

***

Sometimes, I go back, as a customer now. I worked my way up through The Company, starting in the warehouse and through security, into systems. Sometimes I go back to look at those bright eyes of hers, and I see how they fill with such hate when they see me looking at her. I scan the QR code of her outfit whenever they put her in something new and I have it delivered to my mother.

I can afford it. My A-Bux account is enormous.