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12 the minnesota review Lynne Barrett Inventory "What do you think?" said the Appliances manager. "Cotton?" "Nylon," said the other man. "The skinny ones wear little nylon bikinis. Maybe with 'Tuesday' embroidered on them." They stood right below me looking up through the iron mesh deck of the Appliances stockroom. I had my thighs clenched. I relaxed; I kept counting transistor radios. "This one's a kid though. What are you honey, seventeen? A baby. White cotton spankies." I mouthed, "twennytwotwennythreetwennyfour," and marked 24 on the line for SKU 37079 in the book. They really couldn't see much looking up through the grid. And I decided long ago that looking doesn't count. I closed my big notebook and backed down the steps, my sandals going clink clonk clink, while the men watched. "What are you, Patty?" the Appliances manager said, "seventeen?" "Eighteen in September." I reached the floor. I glanced over at the other man, a delivery guy, a greaser. "And anyway," I said, walking away, "anyway they're pink cotton stretch lace. You can see all of them you want over in Lingerie, you know?" The Appliances manager laughed his laugh like a snore. That's what they like, when you talk back. If I told them at home, my father would holler, my mother would cry. But you just can't bother to get upset; I learned that the first week when Mrs. Grissing taught me the job. "The store makes you wear skirts and climb all over God's little acres to count the crap they haven't sold," Mrs. Grissing said. "And when you've got your fanny up in the air crawling into those bins, of course they'll peek. Big deal." Mrs. Grissing had worked for S. Kotch nineteen years. Every day her bra cut a deeper crevice into the fat of her back. As I walked out through Appliances, all the color t.v.'s announced "Jeopardy. Jeopardy. Jeopardy." The clock radios agreed on 10:30. I'd quit Appliances early. I crossed the main aisle into Paints, but Eddie wasn't there. No one in Paints or Hardware. In Automotive I found Eddie cutting a key for a barrert 13 customer. The manager of Hardware and Automotive drank, so Eddie pretty much had to cover. Eddie was supposed to be his assistant in charge of Paints, but, as Eddie said, no one bought paint at S. Kotch. People just aren't cheap about paint. Eddie was sixteen, still in high school in Singac, a tall kid with bad skin, but he was the only halfway cool person in the store as far as I was concerned. Another customer lined up holding spark plugs. Eddie shrugged. So I decided to take off and tour the store. Over on the Softgoods side I could look at the Fall clothes just in, though I really didn't want to go off to college in clothes from S. Kotch. As I passed Giftware, I said hello to Mrs. Sabatez, who was dusting. Mrs. Sabatez, a thin Cuban woman, dusted all day. "I think somebody looked for you," she said. "Oh? Who?" "A pretty girl," said Mrs. Sabatez. "The girl was pretty." She nodded at her lambswool duster. Maybe Eddie was right. He said that Mrs. Sabatez did downers. I smiled at her and moved on. The hardest part of the job was killing time. Mrs. Grissing and her sidekick Mrs. Main were union reps and they landed themselves the easiest job in the store. Every three weeks we were supposed to count all the Hardgoods, floor and stockroom. At the start of the summer I counted as fast as I could until Mrs. Grissing took me aside: "Babes, you'll hurt yourself, climbing those shelves like an orangoutang. Throe weeks is what it takes so take three weeks." Not that Mrs. Grissing climbed anything. She and Mrs. Main might estimate, might guess, might never look at all. If the count last time in the book was 12 they just put 6 and three weeks later O. Once it was 0 it was always 0. They never seemed to grasp that our boss, Cherrybcth, and...

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