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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN#/ ISBN# issue/book “Falling” cc&d, v310 (the June 2021 28-year anniversary issue) Order the 6"x9" paperback book:

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I Will Be Callous

Vadius Wilburn

    “When they come in, the customer comes in, you can just lay back and say, how’s it going. And if you see them looking at something in particular, then you know, you can be more specific and ask them what they are looking for, is there something specific that they are looking for.”
    “Oh okay, so like not immediately asking them what they are looking for?” said K.
    “Exactly. So then there’s no sales pressure. So they feel comfortable.”
    Do you feel comfortable? K. thought. He said, “Oh okay, wow that’s brilliant.”
    K. was speaking to Doug, his manager. K. had told Doug in the interview two weeks ago that he was comfortable around people and considered himself a generally social person. It was a lie. He also said that this job was something he could see himself being passionate about, because he was providing “real value” to the customers—and that it was only in situations where he didn’t believe in the product, that he had difficulty persuading someone to buy. This too was a lie—he found it extremely uncomfortable to convince anyone of anything, ever.
    “You could also be super clever and comment on the product that they are looking at and see their reaction or open a dialogue and from there qualify them for what they are looking for,” Doug said. “Remember the handbook. Everything’s in there. You’re gonna do great. Heck, you’re already doing great.”
    Doug returned to his post by all the expensive suitcases. It was a luggage store in the mall. There was nothing to do and K. stood behind the counter and read a PDF on the register’s computer. Instead of the handbook, he read The 48 Laws of Power, and his coworker said things to him and he laughed and said, “Haha yeah.” He was self-conscious about reading this PDF in the middle of the store at the register, and the coworker asked him what he was reading. He answered him.
    The coworker spoke with a customer and now there was another customer and Doug winked at K. which meant that he was supposed to talk to the new customer. He finished the paragraph and minimized the window and initiated his approach.
    K. said, “How’s it going,” and tried to smile.
    “Oh you know. Just shopping around.”
    “Nice, well let me know if you need anything.” K. read the packaging of a wallet.
    “Do you carry Samsonite?”
    “Yeah all that shit’s over here,” K. said, showing him.
    “Oh okay.” The customer looked at K. and laughed.
    This place is so fucking gay, K. thought. K.’s coworker was moving swiftly between suitcases and having a back and forth dialogue with the other customer. They were laughing and the coworker was talking about this suitcase and its zippers and opening it to show the features. The customer was asking about the features, about pockets and contraptions. In this moment the coworker and the customer were deep into this task which brought out their respective personalities. “Yep and then voila, look at that, check out this part, this is my favorite part about this suitcase compared to the alternate size.”
    K.’s customer was also looking at a particular suitcase. K. said, “Would you like me to show you that—” and then said, “help yourself, yeah you can open it and look at it. Whatever you want haha.” The customer was feeling the interior cloth of the suitcase. “Are you from here?” K. said. “No,” the customer said. “Oh cool where are you from?” asked K.
    “Does this come with a warranty?”
    “Yes.” K. was wearing a fine linen button down shirt. It was tucked into a pair of jeans. The store was bright white with fluorescent lighting, which spilled out upon the greater traffic of the mall. Inside the store there were products on the walls and at stations throughout. A general theme of the store was about wanderlust and travel and the joys of vacation, which you could notice by the images of people with luggage in foreign countries. There were various maps, products sporting greetings in multiple languages. There was even a suitcase which bore stickers and markings from travel through many countries, and this was the suitcase that an employee could use when travelling. It had been lent out to so many employees over the years and was a communal point of celebration and upheld the company’s spirit. Doug had told K. he could use that suitcase anytime if he were to travel abroad. This suitcase was in the corner and sometimes customers asked about it, and it was easy to talk about.
    K. was standing by the customer while the customer examined a bag which interested him. The customer asked, “If I am in Europe and it breaks is there a factory in Europe that I can ship it to and get it replaced without having to come back to the States?”
    I don’t know, thought K. “Yes,” he said.
    “So if I’m in Europe and I buy it now there is a European warranty number and they’ll take care of me over there?”
    “Yep.” Fuck, I don’t know.
    “So I won’t have to ship it to the States? Basically I’m asking if I’m over there for a long time will I be good if the suitcase breaks and I need a new one.”
    “Yes. Yeah. Yeah.”
    The interaction was becoming macabre and solemn. He didn’t know what to do.
#
    When he was back doing nothing at the register he looked around the store and thought, it’s like everyone’s doing something cool, which is in fact not even cool. In the window there were backpacks and handbags that shared the same pattern. But somehow it’s still the cool thing that everyone does, but in fact is totally fucking, not cool. But everyone thinks it’s cool.
    “Did you take lunch? Take lunch,” Doug said.
    “Am about to right now,” K. said, minimizing the PDF.
    He clocked out.
    He had an hour. There must be a way to maximize this hour. He could find a chair in the mall and continue reading on his phone. He could sit in a chair which would be arrayed with three other similar chairs, in the flow of traffic in the mall; flanked by rows of stores on either side. And there might be another person sitting in one of the other chairs near him, who he could think about talking to.
    There were nice, large chairs for mall patrons, and he could find a set of them rather distant from his store and bask in the anonymity of pedestrian traffic. Indeed there were people everywhere transacting and ambulating with intentions. Traffic of participation, principally; of recreation, recreating the convolute network faultlessly conferring always everything a value and meaning; and which at every component macro or micro referenced its own entirety; and which at every component (even those infinitesimal) referenced K.’s non-belonging; non-belonging—his identity, value, meaning.
    Instead of the trafficked chairs, he connived as to whether he might go sit in the furniture store and find a great expensive piece of furniture in some obscure corner and go pass his lunch thus. I could do that, and if they tell me to fuck off, I’ll just be like, I work right over there. And maybe have a conversation. I’m just like, reading on my phone anyway.
    So he sought solace in the furniture store. He ambulated intently with everyone else. He wore a fine linen shirt which his mother had bought him. It was tucked into his pants and he had a fitting belt. He was appareled as if he were party to regular value exchanges between himself and others. The dystopia unfurled before him. He imagined a planet whose terra was just an endlessly sprawling commercial compound: and maybe the external environment is unlivable, and like a mall, society just sprawls upon the planet and its denizens just ambulate along commercial routes and every sign and image is an attempt at their attention, submission. Alas; no wonder no one fucks me.
    He walked among the indoors pedestrians. Fancying this alternate society; in his vision, his emotion replicated itself across a thousand million prison cells, expressed in each instance by some sole despairing prisoner flailing about the place in despair; and each paroxysm was merely reified from the shared reticula of isolation, which fundamental reticula separated each into unfeeling, misanthropic psychopaths.
    He entered the furniture store.
    If they tell me I can’t fucking be here then I’ll fucking manipulate them into letting me hangout. How—how strange.
    There was a sales associate that K. tried to smile at. K. found a large couch in the back of the store with little visibility from any angle and sat there. It was actually cool—the furniture store, in its layout; there were so many couches and even the lamps and end tables were compelling. Prices were debauched. There were these tall floor-to-ceiling separators which cordoned the vast store into separate areas, serving to reduce the overwhelm of the sprawl; and K. found a spot in the back beyond the farthest of these barriers and found there a black couch couched behind artificial verdure and a dining set. He ensconced himself; and his workplace worriment of the prior four hours grew quiescent.
    He looked up from his phone and felt like ants crawling upon him every word he’d uttered thus far today. It burned like acid down to his heart. Fuck a warranty, I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. It means nothing to me. I don’t care. I don’t care. He was trying hard to not care because he knew deeply that he shouldn’t unless he wanted to sacrifice his potential to ever do anything. And it burned like acid on his heart. I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care. I don’t care. I can’t care. I can’t fucking care. I don’t care. Don’t do it. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of me. It literally doesn’t matter. It’s nothing. It’s literally nothing. It doesn’t matter. An opinion of me has literally nothing to do with anything, ever. It’s not real. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care—
    A man sat down at the dining table.
    “What the fuck,” K. whispered to himself.
    The man was wearing snakeskin. His shoes were a torrential blue.
    “Hey,” the man said.
    “What’s up dude,” said K.
    “What are you up to?”
    “Just uh, chillin here. Nothing.”
    “It’s cool if I sit here?”
    “Yeah—”
    “I didn’t know if you were looking at this table or not.”
    “Oh—”
    “You in the market for this table?”
    “No haha.”
    “I might snag it. It would look good on my deck. Like indoor / outdoor you know. By the pocketing doors. What do you think?”
    “Oh, yeah, I don’t know.”
    “Yeah I was going to ask Mark about it. You know Mark?”
    “No, I don’t, know, Mark.”
    “You know Mark, the dude with the corduroys. Mark. Great guy.”
    “No I—”
    “Mark. The owner. Owns this store.”
    “Oh yeah, I’ve never been here before.”
    “What you’re just, let me guess, on break? You work in the mall?”
    “Yeah. Exactly. Yes.”
    “Haha relax relax I’m not gonna like, throw you out of here.”
    “Yeah.”
    The man was standing now and inspecting the angles of the table. The surface was concrete.
    “What do you think about the concrete surface?” the man said. “See the color and shape are perfect—the dialed-back grey setting a background for the succulents I’ll put on it... but I just don’t know about concrete, like conceptually. Half the shit in my backyard is already concrete. You know. And I’m not trying to like, revive nineties industrial.” The man looked at K. He had his hands in his pockets. “I just don’t know about the concrete, like conceptually I mean.”
    “I think it looks cool,” K. said.
    “But conceptually? The concrete?”
    “Yeah even if you’re talking purely just how the concrete as like semantic content plays with the rest of its context, even with some of it already being concrete, the context that is, I don’t think the concrete would be like, too much or like, fucked up.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I mean what’s your concern? It will be lackluster?”
    “No I think the color is fine—but yeah maybe lackluster, conceptually, like echoing an implicit hesitance toward novelty?”
    “Dude. I think it’s sick.”
    “It’s fucking sick right,” the man said, grinning. “I’m literally gonna ask Mark to give it to me for free.”
    “What?”
    “You wanna see some dope-ass shit? Stick around you can see me finagle this out of this store. For free—”
    “Isn’t that table like six grand haha.”
    “Seven-five, yeah.” The man’s eyes were lucid. “Mark, is a great guy haha. Mark’s a good friend. A good friend. You know what I mean?”
    “Yeah I know what you mean.”
    “Hahahaha. So you just work in the mall or what? You’re kind of funny. You have this like laid-back punk vibe like you just don’t give a fuck about anything.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “You’re working right now?”
    “Yeah. On break, yeah,” said K.
    “How’s work?”
    “Bro. Fucking wack. as. fuck.”
    “I don’t even know how you could possibly work in this place with all this hot-ass pussy crawling around.”
    “Haha honestly it’s definitely like definitely a thing that you have to like definitely—”
    “I mean seriously what the fuck. Literally I fucking park my car and I’m coming here to see Mark and I see like two hot-ass chicks on my way over here. Of course I had to stop and say whatup you can’t just walk by that shit you know,” the man said.
    “Yeah. Fuck.”
    “Dude. You’re like a cool, guy, right? Like a cool dude?”
    “Haha yeah. Yes.”
    “Bro. Last week. I fucked these two hot-ass chicks on my deck. Out in PV overlooking the city. Dude—”
    “No way? Like a threesome?”
    “Bro it was my first threesome in like two months. I was fucking fiending for that double pussy. You know? Fucking fiending.”
    “Damn that’s sick as fuck.”
    “Well okay look I admit the one bitch was like a seven-five and she was just like the chick’s best friend you know and it’s cool like a seven-five eating pussy in my backyard? It’s cool seven-five can stay. And of course the other bitch, just fucking insanely hot.”
    “Jesus christ how did you like, do that?” I want you to have sex with me, K. thought.
    “You wanna see some pics.”
    “What do you mean—of you like fucking these girls? Haha yeah sure. Fuck yeah.”
    The man swiped through the gallery on his phone. K. remarked and the man took the opportunity to explain to K. where the table would go in his backyard. There was a photo of the two girls on some furniture in his backyard, and the man explained that the new concrete table would go right over there, after the furniture was moved, etc., after the succulents were rearranged. He asked K. again whether the concrete table might be conceptually appropriate, now that he had a visual on the context. He reminded K. that he wasn’t “asking about the visual presence of the concrete table but rather its conceptual function.”
#
    The man called Mark on his phone. K. sunk into the couch and stared distantly through the ceiling of the dystopia.
    “Alright Mark’s gonna come through in like two minutes. He’s dope I’ll introduce you.”
    “Okay. Yeah, thanks,” K. said.
    “You know you don’t have to be a pussy your whole life you know. You’re so atonal and toned-down you’re like stifled as fuck. You know that shit’s not real like you can do whatever the fuck you want.”
    “Okay.”
    “Ask me why I know that shit.”
    “Why do you know that shit?”
    “Cuz I fucking lived it. Lived that shit. Hahahaha you look like you fucking want to cry right now.”
    “Hahaha fuck.”
    “Honestly dude. Just say hi. All you have to do is say hi. To a bitch.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Just say hi.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Hahaha. Hahahahahaha. Cheer up bro. Work sucks I know. Fuck your job.”
    When Mark arrived the man told him, “Hey Mark—K. here makes a great addition to the ambiance of your store—anytime this dude wants to come in and loiter around you let him alright?”
    “What are you doing?” Mark said to K.
    “Just hanging—”
    “He’s just fucking hanging out on his work break,” said the man in snakeskin.
    “Okay great. Nice to meet you. K. is it?”
    “Yes,” K. said and they shook hands.
#
    When he had to go to work on Wednesday, K. had his roommate drive him to the mall. And he felt like doing something rash and felt like being unimpeded, and he and his roommate decided that he would flip a coin to determine whether he would quit his job that instant and not show up for work. Also the book he’d been reading said that he was allowed to be unpredictable, strategically. Not that there’s any end to which this is means.
    The coin landed such that he now had to quit his job and he decided to comply, even though only seconds prior he hadn’t known whether he would actually follow through. So he turned his phone off to avoid any inquisitive calls from Doug and then screamed out the window to some pedestrians telling them that he just quit his job. Doug would have to work his shift tonight. It was thrilling and he felt as he had when he was an obstreperous child but there also lurked inside him the uncertainty which never seemed to go away.

 

    This story is currently available as an ebook (released 4 October 2020) on Amazon and elsewhere. This story is part of a larger collection which will be released in its entirety before Spring 2021.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

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