The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [33]
“But aren’t there people out there who Muzak makes so anxious that they end up shopping less?”
“Statistically insignificant. Besides, nowadays we’ve got medications for people like that.” He smiles grimly. She’s not sure, but she thinks he’s just made a joke. The smile vanishes instantly, his face newly impenetrable, jaw bulging, molars gnashing as before.
“Chas, all this stuff about products and marketing—how exactly does it help you spot trends?”
“Same principle. A trend is like a big product. A metaproduct. You wanna understand War and Peace, you learn the alphabet first.” He waves his hand in a tight arc. “This is your alphabet, Ursula. Consumer-motivation research. Spend a month here in the supermarket and you can pick up a lot, if you can keep from slitting your wrists in the process. Think you could make it?” He looks around, exhaling heavily through his nostrils. “I did. Spent a whole goddamned month of my life in a Key Food just like this one, back when I was a lowly market-research assistant. Every day, open to close. Wore a stockboy jacket. Followed people around. Charted their paths. Watched their eye motions. Mounted hidden cameras in the freezers. Put NOW FAT-FREE stickers on boxes of laundry detergent and watched the fat ladies pick them up and toss them in their carts. The whole bit. I vowed never to set foot in a supermarket again, have my food delivered, etcetera. But no, I came back. Too much at stake not to. Besides, I had to train Javier. Trained him in these very aisles. I remember the day I told him that surfaces were all people had.” He shakes his heavy head. “You should have seen the poor kid. He was in tears.”
She stares at him, trying to process everything he’s saying.
“ ‘Surfaces . . . ,’ ” she repeats. “What do you mean?”
“Look around you. How many of these people do you think ever get to experience a great passion, a great love, a great cause? A product can stand in for those experiences. A surface can stand in for the depths most people will never know. That’s what it all comes down to: surfaces.”
The word is sibilant on Chas’s tongue, accompanied by an asymmetrical hitch of his upper lip. Ursula pictures Javier standing where she is now, pictures Chas telling him this, pictures the tears forming in his eyes. The pair of them must have been a sight: two immaculately groomed stockboys with delusions of grandeur, one young and the other not so young, father-and-son perverts lurking in the feminine-hygiene aisle, watching women choose their douches from behind their Key Food jackets and clipboards, a leering, sneering Mephistopheles and his young, frightened, but determined protégé, bent on mastering the arcane signs and symbols in which everyday reality is written.
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “Javier’s got some romantic notions. I’m sure you’ve found that out for yourself by now.”
“What’s wrong with him, Chas?” she asks.
“ ‘Wrong’?”
“He takes pills. His hands shake. He’s always got a runny nose. He’s so skinny.”
Chas shrugs. “Nothing life-threatening. A mood disorder. He’s a little . . . volatile . . . emotionally.”
“ ‘Volatile’? What kind of mood disorder? Is he getting help?”
“ ‘Help’?” Chas’s eyes widen, his nostrils flare. “You don’t fuck with genius, Ursula. The man’s a magician when it comes to trendspotting. He looks at a fashion and immediately grasps the underlying desire. His ideas about postirony and the Light Age have put my own investigations years ahead of where they might have been.”
“Those were his ideas?”
“He lives and breathes trends. He’s a cultural divining rod. Have you seen his apartment?”
She shakes her head.
He smirks. “Never mind. Anyway, I can’t really blame him for getting a little weepy that time. I made him serve two straight weeks here; that’s enough to unhinge even the not-so-sensitive souls. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna make you do that.”
He drops a hand onto her shoulder and gives her a shake, the first time he’s ever touched her, and she feels her legs go slack. She is suddenly confused, unsure what this