One late summer afternoon, he found the back door stuck. He was just going to put in a couple of hours and then head home; his family had been taking great pains to treat him like an adult now that he was almost eighteen. As long as he didn’t make trouble they let him do as he liked, more or less; he had always studiously avoided trouble. It was strange, this feeling of no longer needing permission; you want to grow up until it starts really happening, and then it happens. He’d been reflecting on this a little when he found that his key wasn’t turning in the lock.
“Change the locks on the back?” he asked Anthony Hawley from the customer side of the front counter as he entered.
“Yeah,” said Hawley, trying to appear busy with the cash register: he wasn’t a good actor. Derrick could tell there was something he wasn’t ready to say yet. After a minute of deep concentration, he drew his hand out of the till; there was a molded plastic Monster Adult X key ring looped around his index finger. Derrick knew there were boxes containing hundreds of these key rings on a shelf in the supply closet, but the keys on this one looked shiny and new. “Here. Put the extra someplace safe.”
“Done,” Derrick said, nodding his head as he stuck the pair of new keys into his pocket. “Anybody in the back?” He meant the arcade.
“Not just now,” said Anthony, but Derrick was already retrieving his mop and bucket. It was true, the daily routine at Monster Adult X was gross. But it gave him pocket money, and a chance to prove to himself that he knew how to be a good employee, the kind who was loyal enough to stick around even when things changed. The kind of person who shows up on time and goes right to work, and the kind who knows better than to ask the boss annoying questions about things he doesn’t need to know.
He headed back to the arcade. Mop-up was the worst part, and it had to be done several times a shift. It was best to get the first one out of the way early.
MINOANS I
Hot and Ready. Hot, Young and Ready. Hot and Young. Hot Young Punks. New Wave Hookers. Backstage Pass. The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning. Café Flesh. Night Hunger. On Golden Blonde. Rush. Bolt. Crypt Tonite. Pig Poppers. Secrets of the Orient. Deep Chill. Anal Assassins 5. Motion Lotion. Emotion Lotion. Mr. Prolong. Lady-hunger. Sex Fiend Firemen. Sex Fantasy. Sex Orgy. The Training of Rose-Marie. Curious Co-eds. Co-ed Surprise. Topless Co-eds. Sex Hideaway. Sex Dungeon. Private Orgies. Secret Dreams. Night Visions. Night Shivers. Dungeon Slaves. Deep Chill. For the Love of Blondes. Young and Blonde. Blonde Agony. Whipped and Restrained. Captives of Lust. Apartment Babes. Tijuana Tingler. Swedish Fly. Parisian Nights. Ball Gaggers. Hogtied. Swedish Erotica. European Special #5. Secrets of Japanese Bondage. Just Over 40. From Sex to Sexty. Never Too Old.
These, such as they were, were the assets of Monster Adult X: VHS tapes, their housings on display in the store and the tapes in translucent clamshells behind the counter; sex toys packaged in brittle, yellowing plastic; inhalants marketed as fuel additives or liquid incense; magazines of unknown vintage, probably trading hands multiple times en route to the rack, where they gathered dust. Most suppliers had a very strict no-returns policy, although one or two offered limited and very modest discounts if you sent back exhausted stock with your new order—what use they might have found for all that dead weight was hard to imagine, but the policy was there if you had the pluck to try them on it. Send back five old tapes nobody rents, see if a new one doesn’t have better luck. Ten dust-gathering toys sealed in their original packaging invoice, five dollars off any order. The stuff in the bottles and capsules under the counter wasn’t returnable but somebody had to want it. It would be possible, if he sold the store, to turn all or some of this into cash somehow, Anthony thought, but the math on it felt like more work than it was worth. He spent half an afternoon working out a few possibilities for it on paper after he learned he’d have to vacate the building, and then he decided to cut his losses.
“Probably closing early tonight unless something happens,” he said to Derrick out of the silence that had gathered between them as they sat on their stools behind the counter after the arcade was clean. Derrick’s nose was in a copy of Epic, one of the old science fiction magazines from the Monster Comics days.
“Yeah?” he said, sensing that something was different but not wanting to seem nosy.
Hawley looked up from his ledger. “Yeah,” he said, turning to Derrick and looking him in the eyes. “And I think I’m kind of short here generally.”