Counter Culture : Don’t you know, he’s famous
I was at work early. I always am. I’m just punctual like that.
My shift had not started yet, so I stood on the sales floor and talked to Carl, my coworker for the night.
Carl had mastered the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I was trying to trump him after Rowdy Roddy Piper failed.
“What about Andy Richter?” I said.
“Has he done movies or just TV?” Carl said.
I didn’t get a chance to answer because a woman wanted to return a beerbong. Carl tended to the woman and I walked the tiled and narrow aisles to a door at the back of the small, novelty store. I plucked my nametag from its hook and opened a lockbox mounted to the wall. I placed my keys in the box and took a set of store keys. Now I could open cash registers, drawers, jewelry cases and the doorway gate. Even if I could not start my car or unlock my front door. Then I walked right back out, the way I always do, and punched in.
A high school couple stood in front of the jewelry case and I grabbed my keys. The teens were dressed in scuffed, black boots and long, dark jackets. They were looking at rings and making smudges on the tall glass case.
“I think I like the skull one,” the girl said. She giggled after she said it, like she wasn’t sure if she meant it.
“Yeah,” her boyfriend said. “That snake one looks a little big anyway. The tail is so long, it would probably rub up on my knuckles.”
“Yeah,” the girl said and giggled.
“We’ll take the skull then,” he said to me and pointed to a sterling silver ring with a toothless skeleton head. The girl unzipped her purse and removed a couple crumpled bills. The purse was pink and black plaid. It was nice and we sold them for $20 on the wall opposite the jewelry case.
I turned around and Carl had a gift box and bag waiting for me. Carl was good at that kind of thing. There had been times when Carl was ringing and bagging on his own register and he’d still have open bags waiting for me.
Sometimes I would try and repay the favor, bagging for Carl when he was on register, but it wasn’t the same. We both knew he would have it done faster without me.
Carl began to vocalize Andy Richter’s acting career:
“I know he was in ‘Big Trouble’ with Tim Allen. Who was in ‘Galaxy Quest’ with Sigourney Weaver.”
“Do you guys like Quentin Tarantino?” the boyfriend said as he smoothed out his girlfriend’s money on the counter.
Carl and I nodded and said we did. It seemed random and weird to interrupt a conversation to ask a question like that.
“Because he’s in the mall right now,” he said. His girlfriend violently shook her head up and down to confirm this.
I immediately didn’t believe them. Tarantino? In Monroeville Mall? It didn’t make sense. Then again, ‘Dawn of the Dead’ was filmed here. A movie that has terrified and inspired thousands. Horror movie legend George Romero’s follow-up to his classic work ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ Tarantino must have appreciated that. Walking around, seeing the bank where all the zombies pressed up against the glass, yearning for brains. Now, three decades later, you can walk by and see people mindlessly waiting in line, stroking the velvet red rope.
“I didn’t think it was him at first,” the boyfriend said, pulling the sales tag off of the ring. “But then I heard him talk and I was like, ‘Yep, that’s Quentin.’”
“What’s he doing here?” I said, hearing Tarantino’s speedy and collected voice in my head.
“I have no idea,” he said, sliding the ring on his index finger. The skull settled between his knuckles. “But he was downstairs five minutes ago.”
“Well, the ‘Land of the Dead’ premiere is this weekend,” Carl said. “He could be in town for that.”
“I don’t need this,” the boyfriend said, handing me the plastic bag and gift box. Then he made a quick, striking movement towards his girlfriend, pulling up short of backhanding her in the face by approximately two inches.
“Check it out, babe,” he said, holding his pose.
I took the discarded sales tag from the counter and threw it away and replaced the gift box and bag Carl had set out for me. I was creating my own six-degree connections: I work at the Monroeville Mall, Quentin Tarantino may be in the Monroeville Mall, Quentin Tarantino makes movies, making movies allows for creative expression and financial security, I want that. It seemed sound, what logicians would dub a full-proof premise.
Carl was looking through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at the front of the store. He was staring out into the mall’s hallway. He was looking for Quentin Tarantino.
“I’m gonna go have a smoke,” Carl said. “I’ll see if I can find anything out.”
