Free Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth by Stephen Graham Jones Page B

like the whole store has suddenly taken on the whimsical consistency of a watercolor, and the visitor is wading through it, stepping down deeper into the floor than any of us can, leaving swirls and eddies and ripples down whatever aisle he chooses.
    When Paula walks past my counter, her smile is so mechanical, has so little to do with her eyes, that I smile almost to the point of laughing, have to clamp my hands over my mouth. Then, standing like that, I see what Paula’s doing: walking in advance of the visitor for us, telling us with her presence to be on our best behavior, that the moment is here. That he’s coming. That we should be casual, like her. Natural. Ourselves.
    For a long moment I have to close my eyes to compose myself.
    When I look back to the store, the only place I can even remember anymore—did I ever have a mom, even, or did Paula just raise me in the stockroom?—I see the visitor for the first time. Like we’ve been told, he’s not wearing a suit. Nothing that obvious. Like we’ve been warned about, though, he does have an otherworldly carriage, his head turning from Casuals to Intimates as if they’re wholly new, each rack and rounder a complete and total surprise, a wonderful new artifact to catalogue.
    From last Saturday’s sales meeting, and from the handwritten notes Paula’s been leafing into our reshelves, we know to smile and grin no matter what this visitor does. Because he’s from the rarified atmosphere of Corporate, yes—we can’t forget that—but, too, because there may be some new protocols in place this visit: perhaps he’s been told that it’s not enough to observe us in our routine. Maybe this time, he wants to see how we react under stress, in sales situations we haven’t been specifically trained for.
    The way Paula put it in the breakroom while I was eating my pimento cheese sandwich was that, if I’m asked to give the visitor, say, a chimpanzee, my response should be along the lines of ‘With or without sign language training, sir?’
    What this means is that, as the visitor approaches, my mouth is so full of answers and smiles and possibility that I’m afraid to do anything, really, am more than thankful when, for reasons only he knows, he stops with his hand on the shoulder of a clearanced pullover, a look on his face of total and absolute detachment. As if he’s communing with Corporate, possibly, or channeling the board of directors somehow, through the lines and ridges in the palm of his hand.
    But it’s deeper, too. The way his lip trembles.
    What—what’s he thinking, remembering, reliving?
    Have we marked that pullover down too much?
    After checking to make sure I haven’t put the same one on at some point in the day—it’s happened, and more than once—I arrange the hangers under my register and stack all my receipts by length, and don’t say anything.
    Whoever acts the most ‘retail normal’—Paula’s term, grafted over, we presume, from ‘business casual’—whoever pulls it off the best for the visit is supposed to get a twenty-five dollar gift certificate to the store.
    Not that there’s anything here I want anymore—have I really been here that long already?—but still, hidden under that brass ring is a spike: if whoever does the best job is rewarded, then what of that person who messes the whole visit up?
    Paula is capable of anything, we suspect.
    So what I do is smile, just not too wide, like I’m guilty. And keep my hands always touching something, so they won’t visibly tremble. And, because of all that, maybe, because I’m projecting such a vision of control, of ‘retail normal’—or because I’m an obvious weak, shrieking link—the visitor sidles up to my counter, looking up at me with just his eyes, as if already suspicious here. His fingertips hover over the glass just above my five rows of sunglasses, arranged first by brand and then by price.
    He’s just a customer.
    “Something you remember from the island,