Whatever the year, we showed up with a chocolate-marshmallow pie in our hands and a bunch of index cards in our back pockets.
“I think you already know at least half the folks here,” Bette said.
She was right. Many of the twenty-odd people at the barbecue had helped us on moving day. One of them was suddenly standing right next to me.
I’m embarrassed to say that I remembered Mark Stanton because Mark and his wife, Cookie, were the only African Americans in that collection of white New Burg faces.
“My man Jacob,” said Mark Stanton.
We bumped fists, and I said, “Where’s Cookie?”
Mark shrugged, a vague nonanswer.
Meanwhile Megan was talking to Marie DiManno, the widow who seemed to have been the chief organizer of the help on our moving day.
A pretty woman distributed rum-laced drinks in plastic cups. Two handsome guys I didn’t know played a lazy man’s game of badminton.
For a moment I considered this: there were worse things than standing and sipping a cool drink on a warm Nebraska Sunday afternoon.
But that happy moment passed quickly. I also knew that there was a video camera beneath the picnic table and at least three other cameras attached to the gutters of the house. I recognized one of the men tending the charcoal grill as one of the two guys who had hustled Dr. Werner offstage. I watched audio-video drones swooping in and around small groupings of party guests. And I couldn’t help but wonder why Mark Stanton had not given me a simple straight answer when I’d asked about his wife.
It took us about an hour to devour all the steak (excellent) and ribs (extraordinary) that Bette and Bud had served up. By 7:00 p.m. we had polished off the last remnants of chocolate-marshmallow pie and coconut cream cake. Two blackberry pies had also disappeared. The video cameras were recording lots of people groaning in satisfaction.
Who knew that the evening was just beginning?
One of the guests, a nice-looking mom type who worked at the fulfillment center, tapped a spoon against a coffee cup and spoke.
“You all know me. I’m Lynn Harris. And you all know what time it is, right?” she said.
Everyone except Megan and I seemed to know. Everyone else began applauding and letting out whoops and cheers.
“That’s right. It’s the perfect moment for Store Talk,” she said. Then she looked directly at Megan and me.
“I think our new neighbors need to be told about Store Talk. Don’t be scared, you two. We pick a bunch of topics that are sort of meaningful to New Burg and the Store. Then we put the topics in a little bag, pull one topic out, and have a discussion. We keep doing that until we all get tired or somebody gets nasty.”
Lynn laughed. Then she added, “I wrote out the topics this time.”
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, of course. “You thought up the topics and put them in the bag or you were given the topics and put them in the bag?”
One of the guys who had been playing badminton said, “Little bit of each. It doesn’t really make any difference where the topics come from.”
“It sounds like a lot of fun,” Megan said.
I was both proud and nervous to be married to a wife who could lie so convincingly.
“Megan, you draw the first topic,” Lynn said. Then she added, “And Jacob, you can read it to us.”
The crowd applauded, and Bud yelled, “Go on, Megan. Pick a good one.”
In a few seconds, Megan handed me a piece of paper.
Then I read the first Store Talk subject to the crowd.
“Pawnee Preservation,” I read. Then I added, “Maybe it’s supposed to say ‘reservation,’ not ‘preservation.’”
“No. It’s right,” said a chubby middle-aged guy. “There’s a big to-do about this Indian burial ground they found when they started digging for the new water fluoridation and vitamin-enhancement plant. Some folks think it should be left alone, and some folks think, oh, what the hell. The Indians—”
“Native Americans,” Mark Stanton said, correcting him.
“Yeah, Native Americans…are all gone.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s rightly our decision,” said Marie DiManno. “The Store people should decide stuff like that.”
Now Bette spoke. She was cheerful, but her voice was firm: “Right. Why should we have a part in any decision?” Sure, Megan and I realized Bette was being sarcastic, but I wondered how many others did.
I watched as Bud gently tapped his wife’s hand, a kind of “Calm down, honey” gesture.
“Give us another topic, Megan. Try to make it a bit less controversial,” Bud said.
“I’ll try my best,” said Megan. Soon I had another phrase to read.
“Cornhusker football!”
Where I come from, a sports “discussion” could lead to screams, threats, and pistols at dawn. I soon found out it wasn’t much different in New Burg.
“They’re a bunch of freakin’ losers this year,” said one slightly paunchy guy who, ironically, was wearing a Nebraska T-shirt.
“They’re looking like winners to me,” said the security guard from the Werner lecture.
Then Bud spoke up. His voice was a little too loud for comfort.
“Yeah, they’re winners. As long as they don’t play Ohio State, Michigan State, Penn State, or Wisconsin.” Laughter from most of the group.
But one young guy disagreed enough to stand up and say angrily, “Who the hell are you? Joe Buck?”
Another young guy shot up and said, “Watch your language, Carl. There are women here.”
“Let’s all stay calm and friendly,” Lynn said. “It’s only football.”
A new voice yelled, “Only? Only football?”
I watched as one couple headed toward the driveway.
Lynn spoke. She was clearly nervous. “I’m going to have Megan keep picking until we get something that we can have a civil discussion about.”
The group had quieted down, but almost no one was smiling.
Lynn put the bag in front of Megan once again.
Megan pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to me.
I read aloud, “Dr. David Werner.”
A few “Who?” and “Who’s that?” murmurs came from the crowd.
I answered. “He’s the guy who spoke at the arts gathering the other day. He’s the guy who was dissing the Store.”
“I heard about him. He’s a lunatic,” one woman said.
“My wife was helping out at the place. She said that the guy was a maniac. They even had to pull him off the stage.”
The crowd was stirring now. Mumblings of people exchanging ideas. Some of them pretty loud.
“He sounds like a real asshole.”
“Yeah. If you live here, then you know what the deal is. You go with the Store. It’s their town.”
“Well, I can’t say I agree with this Werner’s point of view, but he does have the right to—” said one foolishly courageous woman.
Some other woman shot back immediately: “He sure as hell doesn’t have the right to come in here and shoot off his mouth. He’s probably one of these egghead types who’s jealous of our lives here.”
Then Bette stood up. Her voice was calm but strong.
She said, “I think Werner made a lot of good points.”
A sudden silence came over everyone. Bette surveyed the crowd quickly, her face a mix of confusion and anger.
“What’s wrong with all of you? Are you so afraid of the Store that you can’t even express an opinion at a backyard barbecue?”
“We’re not afraid. We’re happy,” yelled Mark Stanton. “Is that so awful?”
Bette responded immediately. “Lemme ask you this. Is your wife, Cookie, happy, too? Is she so happy that we never see her anymore?”
“Bud, get your wife to shut up,” an older man shouted.
Lynn Harris then joined the noise. “There’s no place in all of America that’s as good as this. Forgive me if I just take my shopping bag and leav
e.”
Lynn Harris and her husband and another two couples walked toward the driveway.
“Don’t you get it, Bette? We like living here. We think it’s pretty damn perfect,” said one of the badminton guys.
And then it happened.
Bette looked directly at Megan and me and said, “You guys know what I’m talking about. Right? We’ve got to get some limitations put on the Store. Our lives are our lives. You agree with me? Right?”
We didn’t answer.
Bud joined her. “Come on. You know she’s right. You know that. Don’t you? Jacob, Megan. Say something.”
But we didn’t.
We had a horrible choice. Megan and I could say what we thought and blow our cover, or we could simply lie and move ahead with our book.
Then Mark Stanton lost his very smooth coolness and shouted. “This is all bullshit, Bette. We’d have nothing if we didn’t have the Store.”
People were agreeing loudly, and more people began leaving. Some left quietly with a few polite farewells. Others left curtly, without so much as a good-bye.
“What should we do?” Megan said quietly to me.
“We should try to remember everything that’s happening here right now. Then go home and write it all down.”
Chapter 26
CARS WERE leaving the driveway quickly, as if they were fleeing a disaster. Only Marie remained. She was talking to Bette and Bud.
We heard Marie say, “Thanks for the party. But you guys’ll have to learn when to keep your mouths closed. I’ll come get my bowls tomorrow.”
And then there were four. Bette and Bud. Megan and I.
“Well, thanks,” I said. “It was really interesting. Fun and interesting.”
Bette looked at Megan sadly.
“Did you really think so? The problem is—” but she was interrupted by a man’s voice coming from the other end of the backyard.
“Excuse me, folks,” the man said. Now we saw two police officers—one male, one female. They were walking toward us.
“We got some complaints about noise coming from a party here,” the man said.
Bud—gruff and unhappy—spoke up. “It’s only a barbecue. How noisy could it be?”
“Are you the owner of this residence?” the male officer said.
“Yeah, we both are,” said Bette.
“Well, it might be time to send the guests home and start the cleanup,” the officer said.
“We’re the only guests left,” I said.
“And we were just leaving,” Megan added.
Both of us gave dumb little smiles to Bette and Bud. The police began heading back toward one end of the yard.
“Wait. Wait. Wait,” Bud shouted. “Megan, Jacob. I just want to say one thing to you guys.”
There was a pause. Bette was looking at the ground. Bud’s eyes were wet.
“Promise me,” Bud said. “Promise me you won’t become like the rest of them.”
Before I could say anything, Bette spoke.
“Bud, honey, don’t ask them to make promises they can’t keep.”
Chapter 27
MEGAN AND I had plenty of juicy material to transcribe when we got home that night. We stayed up until well past 2:00 a.m., which may not have been the smartest idea. The next day was Monday, our early day. On Mondays we had to check in at the fulfillment center at 7:00 a.m.
“We’ve got a few minutes,” I said to Megan as we turned in to our designated entry gate. “I’m going to see if we can stop by and see Bud at the chemical warehouse.”
“They’ll never let you visit a site that’s not approved for you,” Megan said.
She was probably right, but I wanted to give it a try. Plus I have enormous faith in my own powers of bullshit. So we gave the hundreds of surveillance cameras quite the workout. With the help of the Store Driving Assist app we pulled up in front of a security gate at the chemical warehouse around fifteen minutes later.
My electronically embedded entrance pass did not budge the steel gate. But it did, apparently, notify three security guards that people who had not been properly cleared were trying to get in.
“You folks lost?” said the small nervous-looking woman, accompanied by two male guards, who came out front to meet us.
“No. We know we’re at the chemical warehouse. I wanted to drop by for a second before work and deliver a message to our friend Bud.”
Megan spoke up. “We work at the fulfillment center.”
“What’s Bud’s last name?” the woman asked.
“Robinson. Bud may not be his real first name. It could be a nickname.”
The woman was pressing keys on her tablet.
“Nobody named Robinson here. Bud or otherwise,” she said.
The two men were also pressing keys on their tablets. One of them said, “Wait a sec. Was this guy a security guard?”
“Where’d you see that?” the woman asked.
“He’s on the T list,” he said.
“Yes, he’s a security guard,” I said.
“Yeah, the T list,” the woman said. “He and his wife are being transferred.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I said way too loudly. I was feeling the same angry confusion I had felt when the librarian told us that her husband had been transferred, with no explanation.
“It means that the husband and wife have been transferred. Sometimes they send transfer candidates to the main office, in San Francisco, for debriefing before reassignment,” one of the men said. Then the woman spoke.
“If I were you two, I’d get over to your jobs at the fulfillment center. You don’t want to be late, Megan. You don’t either, Jacob. Put in a good day’s work. Then get on home to make a nice dinner for Alex and Lindsay.”
We were becoming so used to everyone knowing everything about us that we weren’t surprised that she knew our names.
All Megan and I knew was this: less than twelve hours after their barbecue, Bette and Bud were being transferred or had been transferred or were being debriefed before they were transferred.
Megan and I decided that we would be late for work.
Chapter 28
WE PULLED into Bette and Bud’s driveway like two highway patrolmen on a chase. Even the brakes screeched as we made a fast stop and then walked quickly to the front door.
Doorbell. Short wait. A thirtyish woman, pretty enough, in jeans and a turquoise T-shirt, a headband holding her blond hair back. Since so many of the residents of New Burg looked like they could be related, I thought that possibly this woman was related to Bette. A cousin, maybe?
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry to bother you so early in the day, but is Bud or Bette around?”
“Who?”
“Oh, we’re the Brandeises. I’m Megan. He’s my husband, Jacob.”
“Hi,” she said sweetly. “But what I meant is, who is it you’re looking for?”
I was becoming as confused as the woman. “Bette and Bud Robinson. They live here.”
“You must have the wrong house. I’m Tess Morris. My husband, Peter, and I just moved in here with our kids.”
“When?” Megan asked. “When did you move in?”
“We flew in last night. We slept on some air mattresses, and the moving truck is out back, unloading our furniture. A few new neighbors even came by to help. I thought you might be part of that group.”
There was a pause. All three of us were feeling awkward.
A man—quite tall, dark curly hair—walked in behind the woman at the door.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Pete Morris. We just moved in. What can I do for you?”
Tess Morris explained what our visit was about, that we were “mistakenly looking for a couple who don’t live here.”
“They were living here yesterday,” Megan said. “We went to a barbecue…right here, early last night.”
“I doubt it,” said Pete. He was developing that “Are you crazy or what?” attitude. “There’s not even a barbecue grill out back. I l
ooked. And the rooms are all freshly painted. Come on in. You can get a whiff of the fresh paint.”
We stepped inside. We’d been in this front hallway before. When Bette and Bud lived here it was painted a pale mint-green color. Now it was beige. I looked through the narrow passage that led to the kitchen. I saw Marie DiManno carrying a large cardboard moving carton. A moment later I watched Mark Stanton carrying a big crystal lamp.
“Yeah,” I said. “The paint does smell fresh. The place looks great. But I’ve got to ask just one more time. You two never heard of Bette and Bud Robinson?”
“No. Never heard of them,” Pete said.
Megan to the rescue.
“Well, whatever. Welcome to the neighborhood. We’ll be by with a pie or a casserole or something. Really. Welcome,” she said.
“Thanks,” Tess Morris said. “I think this town is going to be perfect for us.”
Just before we turned toward the open door, I said, “Yes. I think this place will be absolutely perfect for you.”
Chapter 29
WE STIFLED any ideas we might have had about looking into Bette and Bud’s disappearance. We had heard at the fulfillment center that there were two debriefing centers, one in San Francisco and one in Atlanta. But we didn’t know how to begin, let alone where to begin. And with our day jobs at the Store and our night jobs on our book project, we were already running on only four or five hours of sleep a night.
The day job was stupid. Megan and I never got tired of complaining to each other about it. The work was hard. It was uninteresting. It was boring. Driving our Stormers around the vast fulfillment center was also surprisingly exhausting.
But the job had important advantages. We could fade anonymously into the routine of the thousands of people who worked at the Store and move easily among our fellow workers. Megan’s sweet personality made her especially adept at getting people to relax and open up, sometimes with some juicy inside information about the goings-on at the Store. But even that was scary. Were our informants telling us the truth? Were they reporting back to some higher-ups that we were digging around for information? Who the hell ever knew what the real deal was at the Store?