Shelf Monkey (7 page)

Aubrey chuckled. “Yeah, it’s pretty repugnant. But realistic. More real than the real thing, you ask me.” He hugged himself. “Gives me the willies just thinking ’bout it.”

“You’re just letting your personal feelings get in the way,” said the big man. “Ignore who it is, and admire what it is. Myself, I’m in thrall to it. I feel its spirit about us. Aubrey, can you feel it? He’s here, right now. Munroe is watching us through his plasticine representative. He’ll show us what to do.” Warren prostrated in front of it, salaaming shamelessly. “Oh, great Purv, you are so wise! Show us what to read! Tell us how to think!” He rolled over onto his back, convulsing and dribbling spit onto the floor. “I feel the spirit, it’s in me! I am the Purv, and he is I!” He then began babbling in tongues, shivering violently.

It may have been a delayed reaction to the attack, or perhaps it was the near-lethal amounts of anti-depressants coursing their way
throughout my anatomy, but either way, I couldn’t control myself. I laughed helplessly.

Aubrey made a show of solemnity, placing his palms carefully on Warren’s head. “I feel it within you, my son. It is an evil presence, foul and black.”

“Save me, father! Save me!” Warren yelled.

“Unclean demon, I cast thee out!” Aubrey’s hands flew upward, pushing Munroe’s spirit to the skies.
“BEGONE! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!”
he wailed, before collapsing into giggles beside Warren. I tried valiantly to get my laughter under control, before giving in completely, leaning against a bookshelf for support. The three of us stayed there, clutching our stomachs and cackling for no reason we could understand other than we had hit a nerve with each other. Customers wandered by, unperturbed by both the gibbering idiots and the great head of the beast.

Gradually, we managed to sober up and silence ourselves, except the occasional exhausted giggle. Aubrey rose unsteadily to his feet. “Dude, get up,” he said, offering Warren a hand. “C’mon, seriously, before Page sees us.”

“Ah, whatever,” said Warren, remaining prone on the floor and breaking into a fresh spasm of giggles. “You own her, dude.”

“Now, you know that’s not true. And even if it was, you certainly do not own her, so get up before you get yourself fired.”

“All right, all right. Buzzkiller.”

“So, what’s it for?” I asked. “The head.”

“Promotion,” said Aubrey. “The Purv here’s got the world’s most powerful book club. This graven image is going to sit above a display of the books.”

I’d heard of the book club, of course. Ever since Oprah had lent superstar status to the book industry, clubs were big news. Just mentioning her name in the same breath as a novel shot it up the charts. I took a take-it-or-leave-it approach to most of her selections, but I admit she picked some winners. Ann-Marie MacDonald, of course, and Franzen, even though he eschewed the honour. Toni Morrison, for everything she ever wrote or thought of writing. Anyone who convinced people to read Rohinton Mistry was okay by me, even if a lot of them couldn’t understand it.

Then Oprah stopped, and the world stopped with her. Sales
sank. Publishers panicked. Audiences mourned the loss of someone to tell him or her what to read. She eventually started up again, but the damage was done. Attempts were made to fill the void with little success. No one cared what Joan Lunden thought of a book. Ditto the ladies of
The View.
One book club even succeeded in
raising
the illiteracy level of America; an author, despondent that Kelly Ripa recommended his novel, tore out his own eyes rather than face the shame.

Munroe Purvis, though, he operated on an entirely new plane of televised existence. Curly headed, overly plump, and oozing sincerity from his pores like so much sweat, he made Dr. Phil look like a paedophile, and Maury Povich look like . . . well, like an even greasier Maury Povich, if such a thing is possible. Women loved him, in a completely asexual “want to take him home to meet mom and dad but would never sleep with him it just wouldn’t be right” sort of way. Donahue meets the Beaver, but softer. An oversized couch-cushion of a man. He was the biggest thing to hit the publishing industry in years.

The thing that rankled, the thing that prodded your open sores with a vinegar-dipped poker, the thing was, his book club publications were, to a one, vile. Literary merit held no meaning for him. Style, originality, composition, character, these were terms anathema to his authors. Purvis was the ultimate in indiscriminating consumerism, happy if he could read a book in less than a day, and ecstatic if the binder’s glue held the pages together. His choices were obscene in their banality. Nora Roberts was too edgy. Movie novelizations were too long. Reader’s Digest Condensed editions? Too dense by half. God help him if a novel’s content challenged his sense of self beyond the rigours demanded by the weekly edition of
TV Guide
. In a Munroe novel, B followed A, C followed B, the end. B would never take a detour to R to catch a flick or engage in a little stimulating subtext.

Munroe’s personal appraisals of his choices were nonsensical, devoid of any hint of valid criticism beyond liked it, loved it, or a combination of the two. His print reviews, carried by all major newspapers, were almost poetic haikus of hot air, faultless examples of how to distil any topic into seven words or less, preferably never more than two syllables each.

Munroe Purvis was ghastly. Abominable. Atrocious. His book club choices sold in the millions, and his audience clamoured for more.

“But why the head?”

“Simple,” replied Aubrey. “It’s the next generation of the life-sized cardboard cut-out, a synthesis of modern technology and old-fashioned hucksterism. Purvis sells books. Therefore, duh, a giant head in the likeness of Purvis will point people toward what he commands they buy. Therefore, whatever is placed underneath the head will also sell.”

“His choices, you mean.”

“Well, yes. Amongst others.” Aubrey pointed to Warren, busily stacking the display shelves from a set of boxes along the wall. “Most of those boxes contain his latest picks. But one box, you will note, contains several copies of Chip Kidd’s
Cheese Monkeys.
” He removed a copy of Kidd’s novel from a box, and slapped a gold sticker embossed with the words munroe recommends this! on its cover.

“Purvis recommends
Cheese Monkeys?
” I was impressed.

A vicious grin lit up Aubrey’s face. “Yeah, that’ll happen.” He happily put the novel on a shelf, obscuring several copies of Munroe’s latest release, Laureen Hoper’s
Lightbulbs and Dreams
. “I’m just tryin’ to help a brother out, y’know? Boost the sales of someone who deserves the recognition. By placing Kidd’s novel in with the dreck, it guarantees that someone will buy them, maybe even read them.”

“And this works?”

“You tell me. Last month, we sold twelve copies of Will Self’s
Great Apes
before anyone complained. Hey,
caveat emptor,
right?”

“Yeah, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” Warren chimed in, cheerfully putting munroe stickers on copies of William S. Burroughs’
The Soft Machine
and chuckling all the while. “This oughta send a few customers into therapy.”

“You want to try?” Aubrey asked me.

“What, you serious?”

“Almost never.” He held a page of stickers out to me. “Go grab something you like, I’ll put it out here.”

The notion that I should not do such a thing — that it would
be tantamount to quitting the job before I had a chance to honestly screw it up — made a brief appearance in my thoughts, but the ten
RECOMMENDS
stickers, reflecting fluorescent light on my face, taunted me into action. I looked about eagerly. What would tick a Munroe-ite off? Something sacrilegious, yet seemingly inoffensive. Nersian’s
The Fuck-Up
popped itself into my head, but the title was too off-putting for anyone to believe Munroe had ever even cracked its spine. Ditto Burrough’s
Queer
. The lightbulb clicked on and I took off, hoping against hope until I laid my eyes upon it. Seizing my pick, I hightailed it back, chuckling giddily as I proudly held out my choice to the two shelvers:
George Bush, Dark Prince of Love
, by Lydia Millet. Warren applauded as I stuck a gold star proudly on the cover.

“Very nice choice,” Aubrey said.

“I figured the title might fool some into thinking it’s a biography,” I said, flushed. Aubrey placed the novel dead centre on the display. Man, it was such a rush.

“I know, it’s strange,” said Warren as if I’d just spoken this aloud. “I’ve had almost every narcotic known to man, but I never feel as good as when I perform this little act of sabotage. Well, almost never.”

“Wait, how did you know I’m not like a secret shopper?” I asked. “I could get you guys fired for this.” Aubrey brought his hands to shoulder-height, palms up to indicate
what’s life without risk?
It’s fair to say, I admired Aubrey from the moment I met him. “I’m Thomas,” I said, extending a hand.

He shook it cordially. “Aubrey. And the immense man there is Warren.” The giant arched an eyebrow in acknowledgment. “You here for a job, Thomas?”

“How’d you know?”

“You’ve got the glazed, nervous aura of the hoping-to-be-hired about you,” he said. “I also know that we’re looking for people at the moment.” Aubrey pointed down one of the endless aisles. “You want Page’s office, the end of Aisle 9, right next to Food, Vegetarian.”

“Thanks.” I walked toward the mouth of the aisle.

“Oh, and Thomas?” Aubrey called after me. I turned around.

“You remember Great Cthulhu?” I nodded. “Well, Page isn’t that
bad, all things considered, but it’s a close thing.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Just watch out for the shoggoths, and you’ll do fine. Oh, and don’t make eye contact, she might think you’re flirting.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“Very bad.” Aubrey said. Behind him, Warren shuddered.

Click, click.

“So, why would you like to work for
READ
?” She pronounced it
red
, which I supposed ended the argument. Her pen clicked in her fingers. Open and closed. In and out.
Click, click.

“Well,” I began, bracing myself for the onslaught.
Click, click.
“I’ve always been a big reader. I mean, huge. Ten, eleven books a month, easy.”

“Really.” She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. Idly, remembering Aubrey’s flirtation warning, I imagined myself having sex with Page and immediately regretted it, the image of my penis flattened in a laundry mangle imprinting itself onto my soul. I covered up my wince with a cough. Page Adler is not the sort of woman men dream about. There is something unsettlingly severe and Dickensian about her pinched features; Miss Havisham without the whimsy. You could say she just missed being pretty, but that would be a level of benevolence on par with Gandhi. There is a disquieting incompleteness to her features. Perhaps it was due to her hair, done back in a severe bun and stretching her skin so tightly the plates of her skull were rearranging themselves to accommodate the stress, her facial pores now tiny mouths yelping for mercy. The parts all worked separately (two eyes, one nose, various other cavities and fissures), but taken as a whole, she looked like a child’s jigsaw puzzle. Several puzzles, thrown into a box, then randomly put back together by children with severe visual impairments.

Click, click.

“Ten or eleven books. Impressive.”

Click, click.

“Nowhere near what Aubrey reads, but impressive.”

Click, click.

I found myself entranced by her hair, amazed that she could
even blink with it so tightly wrapped behind her head. My eyes began twitching involuntarily, expecting the snap of the hair band at any moment.

“Why do you think that might be an asset here at
READ
?” She pronounced it
reed
this time, a tiny smile twitching at the edges of her mouth as I soundlessly processed the discrepancy. Would I have the gonads to mention it?
Click, click.
She enjoyed the confusion this caused.

“Well, in all honesty, I’ve been in a lot of bookstores where the employees couldn’t tell you one word about a book. Any book. In fact, I came to this very store some time ago, and the employee helping me was unable to find me a copy of
Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri. He had never even heard of it! I mean, it only won the Pulitzer a few years ago!”

Nothing.
Click, click.
Keep going.

“Not only do I read voraciously,”
Good word!
“but I also study book reviews in major newspapers, and try to keep abreast of new publications.”
Click, click.
“In this way, I hope that my knowledge of books will not only help a person find the book they’re looking for, but perhaps help them discover something new.”

Page arched her eyebrow; she only had the one, an elongated tract of hair in desperate need of harvest. Raising one side in what I supposed was meant as a look of wry scepticism resulted in the effect of a bushy brown caterpillar raising its head for a look-see. “And why would that be an asset at
REED
?”

“Because . . .” It’s a trap, be careful. Don’t mention the store’s name. “. . . it will increase sales?”

What passed for a grin flitted across her face as she made a checkmark on her clipboard. The smile didn’t help soften her features. The image of Roy Scheider shovelling chum into the mouth of a mechanical shark swam through my mind.

She looked me in the eyes. I bit back a scream. “Why did you quit your last job?”
Click, click.

“It just wasn’t for me.” Be honest, but not too honest. “I was very aware of how unhappy it made me, and I feel that a miserable” miserable? Hah! Fingers blubbering the lips crazy, more like . . . “lawyer is not an effective lawyer. There are enough poor lawyers out there without me muddying up the pool.” Good. Solid answer.

No crying or anything.