Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck Page A

aisle.
    Standing against the far shelving was the Boss, which was weird, like seeing a shark fin cut through the surface of an urban pond. The Boss never came out onto the floor unless it was to work off his anxiety on some poor employee, or when there was a problem, such as a major spill or inventory loss, and procedure demanded it. Seeing the man here alone and without spittle flying from his furious mouth onto an underling’s unprotected face was highly unusual. He had his back to the merchandise and was looking furtively around him. Intrigued, Ellen sat back on her butt and watched, keeping a clean rag against her nose to filter the evil vapors, which, even from a few feet away, made her eyes water.
    The Boss was a bully, and bullies, Ellen had noted again and again, were not brave. He was transparent and he was up to something. Ellen had studied his habits well enough to see that. As she watched, he fidgeted nervously and licked his lips. His eyes darted constantly, glancing repeatedly around him, as he reached into hispocket and pulled out what looked like a store receipt. He read it, checked to see that he was alone again, and then studied the locked Plexiglas case of high-end cell phones until he located what he was looking for. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the case, removed a package, slipped it into a shopping bag he took from his pocket, relocked the case, and slunk away.
    Ellen looked down at the boiling mess on the floor; it could wait. Leaving her cart, she stayed level with the Boss until he came to the end of the parallel aisle, then she stopped, watching while he crossed to the registers. The general manager was there, a balding man with a horseshoe of thin red hair reaching from one ear to the other, checking the day’s receipts against the register totals and pulling the cash for deposit in the safe. Two checkers were not yet counted out. One was a middle-aged man and the other, a young woman, recently hired. The Boss honed in on the newbie. He approached her and produced both the receipt and the box. The words “. . . wife didn’t like it . . .” floated across to Ellen’s position just at the corner of the aisles. The woman checked the receipt against the product and then counted out several hundred dollars in cash, handed the bills to the Boss and tossed the cell phone into a bin marked RETURNS . The Boss folded the money and slipped it into the inside pocket of his shiny jacket with a smarmy smile.
    Interesting,
Ellen thought. She pulled out her notebook and recorded the incident, then returned to her station and scrubbed up the stain. The harshness of the chemicals that had attacked it left a bleached spot on the flooring, a small island of lighter but still dull gray in a sea of grime-marinated, sealed cement.
    Her break came at one a.m. Caffeine and sugar being mandatory, Ellen went to the break room a few minutes early and poured a cup of coffee, filling a third of her oversized thermal mug with artificialvanilla coffee creamer. She took it into the restroom and sat in a stall to drink it, washing down a packet of Twinkies and a chocolate PowerBar with the lukewarm beverage. The safety of the small, contained area and the stimulants revived her so that, at the end of her “lunch,” she was fortified enough to return to work.
    Still intrigued by the Boss’s dubious return policy, she chose a route back to the floor that passed the lower-management offices. This took her down a long hallway, lined on her right side by a wall of glass, behind which were a series of small, fully visible cubicles allotted to the lesser administration. The general manager and the supervising floor manager used a more spacious office in the front of the store. Most of the lights were off at this hour, the occupants of these hamster cages being supervisors of the diurnal variety, and the dark glass reflected the blank wall on Ellen’s left. But in the lone