CHAPTER FIVE: LAND OF CONFUSION. OR, IN WHICH JOANNE CARLSON, DISTRICT MANAGER OF 4192 HAS A LUNCH DATE WITH KEVIN AND THEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE
“New York is where I'd rather stay/I get allergic smelling hay/I just adore a penthouse view/Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue” - Theme from Green Acres
“Ooh Superman where are you now?/When everything's gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power/Are losing control by the hour./This is the time/this is the place/so we look for the future/but there’s not much love to go round/Tell me why, this is a land of confusion." - Genesis, “Land of Confusion”
The men of steel, the men of power/Are losing control by the hour./This is the time/this is the place/so we look for the future/but there’s not much love to go round/Tell me why, this is a land of confusion." - Genesis, “Land of Confusion”
Wednesday morning was always quiet at the video store. Dean had originally had the day off but had switched with Ryan. However, he did not see coming that Joanne Carlson, district manager for District 4192, was going to be doing a store visit that day. While Dean was fearful to be raked over the coals and critiqued to death by his superior, he was relieved that it was on a dead Wednesday she had chosen to visit. So while his customer service skills were not going to be put under the microscope today, his other assistant manager skills would be. The company’s stance on assistant managers is they are groomed to become full manager elsewhere. And while Dean looked forward to becoming a manager, he is not sure if he is ready to make such a move. While he really has nothing to more here to achieve – his family which lived near Willingdon hasn’t had anything to do with him in nearly three years (Although he kept in touch with his mother via telephone and she had met Karen once, only to comment that “She seems nice”), he has peaked here with his job unless Donnie decided to up and leave – he really didn’t feel like now was the time to move away. Part of the reason he did not want to leave was a fear of failing when given full control of his own store. The other reason was Karen. She had uprooted her life once to make the two of them happy. Dean thought it would be unfair to make her do it once again in such a short time span.
“You know rentals per transaction need to increase, right?” Joanne asked Dean, who for a while seemed like he was thinking about something else. Here the world could be turned into an atomic wasteland and here he was talking about business models and increasing RPTs, SPTs, and other numbers that will be pretty damn insignificant once everyone is dead.
“I know.” Dean said, and then looked at the time. It was almost noon, and he knew Joanne was soon off for lunch - with Kevin of all people. Donnie and Dean jokingly once suggested that Kevin should date Joanne, who had finally put the end of a bitter divorce and thought that her recent hardass-like stance on their stores and other stores in district 4192 was a call for some bedroom action. After last night’s incident with Kevin and the sledgehammer, Dean and Karen – along with Donnie, did a conference call and decided this could kill two birds with one stone. Dean and Karen thought a new sexual conquest could not only get Kevin’s mind off Gloria, but also off all of this panicky Chicken Little-like “The nukes are coming” attitude he has been carrying since Lindsay Lohan got into that rough with the Iron Sheik. And Donnie thought that if Joanne got laid, she may not carry herself around as a bitch – for a while at least.
“There is only so much we can do, especially during the day here when it is very quiet in here, Joanne.” Dean came back with.
By this time, Joanne had noticed the time. “Oh shoot! Gotta meet your friend there for lunch”, she said in a bit of a panicked rush. “I can’t believe he asked me out.”
Dean smirked to himself. If only she had known the behind the scenes machinations of one of her store managers, his assistant manager, and his girlfriend to get two supposed crazy people to get together to make their lives easier. Though to be honest, Kevin had a brief infatuation over Joanne going back to that fateful curling game that brought Dean and Karen together. For whatever reasons, Kevin thought female curlers were sexy. Dean remembered one of the old Rose Bowl conversations back in 2000.
“You’re nuts!” Dean said back then.
“Well, for one thing, you know they’re definite screamers. “ Kevin said.
“But some of them have that schoolmarm look on them!”
“Pshaw! Like everything in life that I have told you, sometimes you got to go spelunking in unwanted caves before you find that one gem.”
That was all Dean could remember. “Have fun”, he told Joanne as she left. He then took a brief sigh, hoping that Kevin did not totally weird her out and this whole thing backfires on them all.
It’s quiet. Too quiet. Karen thought to herself as she and her partner were driving back from taking some old babushka to the hospital. It was nothing serious. The old lady just fell and could not get up after breaking her hip. This was not Edmonton. Karen had always been a city girl. Initially she grew up in Calgary, but her family moved to Edmonton when she was 9. Getting used to a small town was different for her, but she almost had to. Partly because she was madly in love with Dean, which she herself did not fully understand why. But she was grateful for Dean being in her life, especially after her sister’s death.
“I thought I did all that I could and I wasn’t able to save her.” Karen thought back to the counseling sessions she was required to attend by her supervisor. Then she thought about the little pep talk her supervisor at the time gave her while she sat in the waiting room of the emergency room at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.
“I remember two rules my instructor told me during my training” he said, consoling the grief-stricken Karen. “Rule one is sometimes patients die. Second rule is paramedics can’t change rule one no matter what they do.”
“Those words still haunt me today” she recalled again during the counseling session. “Maybe more as I came to the realization that the body we pulled from that accident was my sister.”
Thankfully at that time, she had begun dating Dean. And he was nothing more than sympathetic and there for her at all times. He was there the whole time from the memorial service to being at her apartment when she took a month’s long leave of absence to the occasional nightmare while she slept. Dean was a rock the whole time. That was what made Karen realize that Dean was someone to hold onto despite some of his own-perceived flaws. He was great at making her feel better, maybe Karen could repay the same back to Dean by making him feel like the wonderful man he was. Many times she had told him that he cannot simply keep living in the past.
Then she thinks about that fateful night. Getting the emergency call, responding to it. Maybe I should take my own advice that I give Dean. Karen thought as she stared out into the blandish looking Alberta prairie. Maybe if she nagged Dean enough, he would take a manager’s job in Edmonton. She would be home again. Maybe enough time has passed since her sister’s death. Karen may enjoy the less stressful and more laid back life that rural Alberta can provide at times and the most serious injuries she has attended to were a couple of foolish farmhands who got their legs nearly torn off in a bailer, but she missed the city life. Then she felt a small vibration coming from her left breast pocket. She opened the pocket and removed her cell phone. She noticed there was a recently sent text message.
“Oh shit!” Karen exclaimed. “How close are we to Veg?” she asked her partner, a brown-haired male in his early 20s.
“About five minutes, why do you ask?” He replied.
“It’s a long story.” She said. She knew what exactly what was most likely going down, and for all that she knew, this would be the last time she was working here period.
It was well after 1:30 in the afternoon. Dean stood around the store, after putting away some returns. He figured that Joanne would have been back by now. But that may be a good sign. Maybe they went back to her place or Kevin’s for a little afternoon delight. Hopefully everyone’s lives can get back to normal: Kevin will just be slightly obsessed with wolves, wheat and pro wrestling; Joanne will be less of a dragon lady; and there would be the end of all discussions involving the end of the world.
That turned out to be all wishful thinking on Dean’s part as he then saw Joanne’s car pull up to the store’s parking lock. She walked in, grabbed her laptop computer was muttering something that Dean could not make out completely. Foolishly and possibly bravely he asked Joanne “Something wrong?”
Joanne looked up briefly. “That guy…. Jesus crap on a stick… that guy is one messed up piece of … gah!” was all Dean could make out as she quickly exited as fast as she came in.
“Oh for fuck sakes, why’d you have to fuck this one up?!” Dean exclaimed while making sure he was the only one in the store at the time. Then the telephone rang:
“Thanks for choosing Movie Gallery Vegreville, this is Dean speaking…” Dean said with the usual enthusiastic greeting. He recognized it was Karen on the line:
“Do you have your cell phone with you?” She asked.
“Yeah. It’s in my coat pocket. Why?” Dean replied back.
“You better check it. I’m gonna be in the store in a few minutes. I’ll bring in a portable radio too, okay?”
“Uhh, okay. What the hell is going on?”
“Just read your text, okay?”
“Okay, see you in a few. Bye.” Dean said as he hung up. Afterwards, he ran to the back office and pulled out his phone. As soon as he saw there was a message from Kevin, it was pretty inevitable what the message was. It was simply one word: “RUN!”
Dean was now pacing back and forth, waiting for Karen to show up. His nerves totally shot up as soon as he saw her ambulance pull up. She quickly rushed in, portable radio in hand.
“You better listen to what is going on” Karen said as she put the radio on the counter and began to search for a radio station. She found one that was in mid-sentence.
The broadcast went as followed: “… heavy fighting has begun between American and Iranian forces along the Iran-Iraq border in response to several missile attacks on Israel. Meanwhile Canadian troops in Afghanistan have reported several suicide-type attacks on various stations in the Kandahar province. Also in a shocking turn of events, there are rumors of nuclear warheads pointed at Washington, New York, Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver…”
Karen looked confused. “Why Edmonton?”
Dean looked shook up but did his best to answer her question: “Because of the oil. It was something I remember back when we talked about the Cold War in high school social studies. Never thought it would come to this. Shit, Kevin was right.”
“We can debate Nostra-dumb-ass’s prognostications later! Right now, we’ve got to get out of here!” Karen said, trying her best to hide the fact she is scared at the moment.
“I know, I know.” Dean said, trying his best to calm her fears while hiding the fact he is just as scared as she is right now. “But I need to get Donnie and Joanne’s permission to close the store…”
“Oh fuck that! What?! A bunch of nuclear missiles pointed at a city that is like an hour away from us isn’t a fucking emergency!?” Karen snapped back.
Dean pulled Karen into him and hugged her tightly. “Look, just relax, Kevin is looking after us, remember?”
“Well I sure hope this time he knows what he is doing.”
“You know rentals per transaction need to increase, right?” Joanne asked Dean, who for a while seemed like he was thinking about something else. Here the world could be turned into an atomic wasteland and here he was talking about business models and increasing RPTs, SPTs, and other numbers that will be pretty damn insignificant once everyone is dead.
“I know.” Dean said, and then looked at the time. It was almost noon, and he knew Joanne was soon off for lunch - with Kevin of all people. Donnie and Dean jokingly once suggested that Kevin should date Joanne, who had finally put the end of a bitter divorce and thought that her recent hardass-like stance on their stores and other stores in district 4192 was a call for some bedroom action. After last night’s incident with Kevin and the sledgehammer, Dean and Karen – along with Donnie, did a conference call and decided this could kill two birds with one stone. Dean and Karen thought a new sexual conquest could not only get Kevin’s mind off Gloria, but also off all of this panicky Chicken Little-like “The nukes are coming” attitude he has been carrying since Lindsay Lohan got into that rough with the Iron Sheik. And Donnie thought that if Joanne got laid, she may not carry herself around as a bitch – for a while at least.
“There is only so much we can do, especially during the day here when it is very quiet in here, Joanne.” Dean came back with.
By this time, Joanne had noticed the time. “Oh shoot! Gotta meet your friend there for lunch”, she said in a bit of a panicked rush. “I can’t believe he asked me out.”
Dean smirked to himself. If only she had known the behind the scenes machinations of one of her store managers, his assistant manager, and his girlfriend to get two supposed crazy people to get together to make their lives easier. Though to be honest, Kevin had a brief infatuation over Joanne going back to that fateful curling game that brought Dean and Karen together. For whatever reasons, Kevin thought female curlers were sexy. Dean remembered one of the old Rose Bowl conversations back in 2000.
“You’re nuts!” Dean said back then.
“Well, for one thing, you know they’re definite screamers. “ Kevin said.
“But some of them have that schoolmarm look on them!”
“Pshaw! Like everything in life that I have told you, sometimes you got to go spelunking in unwanted caves before you find that one gem.”
That was all Dean could remember. “Have fun”, he told Joanne as she left. He then took a brief sigh, hoping that Kevin did not totally weird her out and this whole thing backfires on them all.
It’s quiet. Too quiet. Karen thought to herself as she and her partner were driving back from taking some old babushka to the hospital. It was nothing serious. The old lady just fell and could not get up after breaking her hip. This was not Edmonton. Karen had always been a city girl. Initially she grew up in Calgary, but her family moved to Edmonton when she was 9. Getting used to a small town was different for her, but she almost had to. Partly because she was madly in love with Dean, which she herself did not fully understand why. But she was grateful for Dean being in her life, especially after her sister’s death.
“I thought I did all that I could and I wasn’t able to save her.” Karen thought back to the counseling sessions she was required to attend by her supervisor. Then she thought about the little pep talk her supervisor at the time gave her while she sat in the waiting room of the emergency room at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.
“I remember two rules my instructor told me during my training” he said, consoling the grief-stricken Karen. “Rule one is sometimes patients die. Second rule is paramedics can’t change rule one no matter what they do.”
“Those words still haunt me today” she recalled again during the counseling session. “Maybe more as I came to the realization that the body we pulled from that accident was my sister.”
Thankfully at that time, she had begun dating Dean. And he was nothing more than sympathetic and there for her at all times. He was there the whole time from the memorial service to being at her apartment when she took a month’s long leave of absence to the occasional nightmare while she slept. Dean was a rock the whole time. That was what made Karen realize that Dean was someone to hold onto despite some of his own-perceived flaws. He was great at making her feel better, maybe Karen could repay the same back to Dean by making him feel like the wonderful man he was. Many times she had told him that he cannot simply keep living in the past.
Then she thinks about that fateful night. Getting the emergency call, responding to it. Maybe I should take my own advice that I give Dean. Karen thought as she stared out into the blandish looking Alberta prairie. Maybe if she nagged Dean enough, he would take a manager’s job in Edmonton. She would be home again. Maybe enough time has passed since her sister’s death. Karen may enjoy the less stressful and more laid back life that rural Alberta can provide at times and the most serious injuries she has attended to were a couple of foolish farmhands who got their legs nearly torn off in a bailer, but she missed the city life. Then she felt a small vibration coming from her left breast pocket. She opened the pocket and removed her cell phone. She noticed there was a recently sent text message.
“Oh shit!” Karen exclaimed. “How close are we to Veg?” she asked her partner, a brown-haired male in his early 20s.
“About five minutes, why do you ask?” He replied.
“It’s a long story.” She said. She knew what exactly what was most likely going down, and for all that she knew, this would be the last time she was working here period.
It was well after 1:30 in the afternoon. Dean stood around the store, after putting away some returns. He figured that Joanne would have been back by now. But that may be a good sign. Maybe they went back to her place or Kevin’s for a little afternoon delight. Hopefully everyone’s lives can get back to normal: Kevin will just be slightly obsessed with wolves, wheat and pro wrestling; Joanne will be less of a dragon lady; and there would be the end of all discussions involving the end of the world.
That turned out to be all wishful thinking on Dean’s part as he then saw Joanne’s car pull up to the store’s parking lock. She walked in, grabbed her laptop computer was muttering something that Dean could not make out completely. Foolishly and possibly bravely he asked Joanne “Something wrong?”
Joanne looked up briefly. “That guy…. Jesus crap on a stick… that guy is one messed up piece of … gah!” was all Dean could make out as she quickly exited as fast as she came in.
“Oh for fuck sakes, why’d you have to fuck this one up?!” Dean exclaimed while making sure he was the only one in the store at the time. Then the telephone rang:
“Thanks for choosing Movie Gallery Vegreville, this is Dean speaking…” Dean said with the usual enthusiastic greeting. He recognized it was Karen on the line:
“Do you have your cell phone with you?” She asked.
“Yeah. It’s in my coat pocket. Why?” Dean replied back.
“You better check it. I’m gonna be in the store in a few minutes. I’ll bring in a portable radio too, okay?”
“Uhh, okay. What the hell is going on?”
“Just read your text, okay?”
“Okay, see you in a few. Bye.” Dean said as he hung up. Afterwards, he ran to the back office and pulled out his phone. As soon as he saw there was a message from Kevin, it was pretty inevitable what the message was. It was simply one word: “RUN!”
Dean was now pacing back and forth, waiting for Karen to show up. His nerves totally shot up as soon as he saw her ambulance pull up. She quickly rushed in, portable radio in hand.
“You better listen to what is going on” Karen said as she put the radio on the counter and began to search for a radio station. She found one that was in mid-sentence.
The broadcast went as followed: “… heavy fighting has begun between American and Iranian forces along the Iran-Iraq border in response to several missile attacks on Israel. Meanwhile Canadian troops in Afghanistan have reported several suicide-type attacks on various stations in the Kandahar province. Also in a shocking turn of events, there are rumors of nuclear warheads pointed at Washington, New York, Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver…”
Karen looked confused. “Why Edmonton?”
Dean looked shook up but did his best to answer her question: “Because of the oil. It was something I remember back when we talked about the Cold War in high school social studies. Never thought it would come to this. Shit, Kevin was right.”
“We can debate Nostra-dumb-ass’s prognostications later! Right now, we’ve got to get out of here!” Karen said, trying her best to hide the fact she is scared at the moment.
“I know, I know.” Dean said, trying his best to calm her fears while hiding the fact he is just as scared as she is right now. “But I need to get Donnie and Joanne’s permission to close the store…”
“Oh fuck that! What?! A bunch of nuclear missiles pointed at a city that is like an hour away from us isn’t a fucking emergency!?” Karen snapped back.
Dean pulled Karen into him and hugged her tightly. “Look, just relax, Kevin is looking after us, remember?”
“Well I sure hope this time he knows what he is doing.”
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