Mallory's Camera

Friday night the news director of the local NBC television affiliate came into the store. It was the night of the annual Cannery Row Christmas tree lighting, crowd a lot smaller than the one last year, but still – a crowd. Sales had been up earlier in the day – of course, sales have been so horrible recently that selling one bottle of hot sauce often constitutes "sales are up," but this proclamation was legit: we'd reached two zeroes by late morning.

"I'm so glad you're still here!" the news director exclaimed. "Somebody told me you had closed. I came down here in hopes they were wrong."

I essayed a weak smile. Rumors of Our Demise: Not So Very Exaggerated. "Nice night, isn't it? Did you bring your family down for the tree lighting?"

"Actually my wife is sick. Ferocious cold! So I decided to get out of the house for a while."

While we chatted, his eyes roamed discreetly over the (mostly empty) shelves. Two years ago he'd come in to buy extreme sauce as a Christmas present for his brother-in-law and we'd talked a bit about the effect the hotel construction was having on Cannery Row businesses. That was back when however murky the short term looked, the long-term prognosis was rosy.

It isn't anymore.

After he'd left the store two years ago, he'd evidently pitched the shopping expedition as a story. At any rate, the very next day a news team came down to Cannery Row, interviewed a bunch of shop owners and managers. If I'd known I was gonna be tapped for a TV appearance, I might have avoided the black and fuschia ensemble.

"Look at me," I said to Ben dolefully later that night when we watched the news. "You could tally up my age from the crepe on my neck. It's like rings in a tree trunk."

I was the only one to go on record saying things sucked. None of the other storeowners would admit to anything but ringing cash registers and smiling customers. The manager of the Sunglass Hut went so far as to say they were doing record sales. Record sales! Shoppers must have been entering and exiting through some kind of underground tunnel because every time I peeked across the plaza, the Sunglass Hut was empty.

"You're not alone," the news director said to me now. "Tough times all over. The façade of normalcy is very, very thin." His eyes were kind. I knew that when he looked at me, he actually saw me; that he was a companion soul, someone who saw beyond the slides of a sagitally sliced present tense, someone who looked at the narrative context. But he was on terra firma, and clearly I was not.

He did what he could for me, buying not one but two gifts for the brother-in-law, buying stuff for himself, buying stuff for his wife (who didn't even like hot sauce.) "I'm trying to show my support for you," he said with an engaging grin.

"I know you are," I said. In truth, I was moved. I'm not really sure why except that when you're in the business of loaning your own voice to people who can't speak for themselves, it's always a little amazing when somebody wants to loan his voice to you.

Lawton Dodd, you are a very nice man.

After he left, a couple wandered into the store. They ignored me for ten minutes or so until the woman noticed the masks. "My God!" she said. "These are amazing! Where did they come from?"

"Venice," I told her. "Would you like to try one on?"

"Oh, well, sure. But –" She glanced nervously at the sign: Please do not touch.

"Oh, I just put that there to deter 14 year old girls with sticky fingers."

The woman laughed. "Does it work?"

"Not really. Nothing deters 14-year-old girls. I was 14 once and I remember."

She laughed again. "So was I, and you're right. Sure are a lot of things that deter me now though."

Eventually she began to tell me her story. The couple had just moved from Phoenix where they had both lost their jobs. "Then he got a wonderful new job in San Francisco," the woman said pointing to her still silent husband. "So we moved."

"Do you like it?"

"I do. But it's so much colder than what I'm used to." She mimed shivering. "I taught college. I was a wonderful teacher and I loved it."

"I'll bet you were," I said. "The publicly funded schools are all cutting back on admissions next year. So I guess they're cutting back on teachers too."

"I know," she said. "I know."

"It wasn't just a job, it was a calling," she added. For a moment I thought her eyes had filled with tears. But that was just a trick of the lighting.



Who woulda thunk it? Not only are we in a recession, we've been in a recession for a whole year. Though that's not the reason the stock market plummeted 700 points today. No, the reason the stock market plummeted 700 points today is because the whole world is having a collective anxiety attack of epic proportions. John Maynard Keynes is the relevant economist here. And I quote: "When the capital development of a country becomes a byproduct of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done."

No doubt, Gentle Reader, you thought Professor Keynes had been thoroughly debunked by Newt Gingrich and his Neocon roughriders. That didn't stop Henry Paulson from holding nightly séances. If only he'd bought that ouija board before Lehman Brothers bellied up, it's entirely possible that none of this would have happened. If the dominoes are all standing, does it matter that the system is unstable? Reluctantly, I've come to agree with those people who think it was the Feds' decision not to bail out Lehman Brothers that precipitated Depression 2.0.

As without, so within – for the past 18 hours, I have been suffering from an anxiety attack of epic proportions.

Friday we only made 60% of what we made at the tree lighting last year, but it was still a respectable amount of money, more than we've made in some time. I started fantasizing about the bills I would pay.

Saturday: again nowhere comparable to a "normal" – ha, ha! – Saturday last year but still real money. Plus there was the Christmas pet parade. Naturally one wouldn't dream of torturing one's own dogs. But it's always amusing to see other people's Rottweilers dressed up like Will Farrell in Elf.

Sunday though.

Sunday was dead.

By two o'clock in the afternoon, I had sold exactly one $8.50 bottle of hot sauce. I was playing Twirl on Facebook obsessively but that's only because I didn't have any open wounds to pour salt on. Forget about paying vendors – I'd be lucky to renew my auto insurance. I was a failure, pure and simple. No need to get emotional about it. I had a trove of Xanax at home and I wondered if I had enough to kill myself – not an emotional decision, I reminded myself because at this point I began to go a little bit teary. A pragmatic decision. Really. I'd reproduced, I'd handed on the DNA. What other reason did I have to exist? What good did I do by sticking around?

At this point a two year old came toddling up and began kicking Homer Simpson.

"No touching!" I said with my best imitation of pleasant grown up lady's smile.

The kid raised its eyebrows at me – a very adult gesture now that I think of it – and kicked Homer Simpson again. It stared at me defiantly. A rivulet of green snot leaked from one of its nostrils.

"Don't touch," I said again, all pretense of pleasure gone.

The kid opened its mouth and began to screech.

Instantly a guy materialized next to him. Delinquent Dad. "What's wrong, Heath?" he asked. He was the kind of guy who'd listened to the Foo Fighters in college. He glared at me. Hostilely.

Reassured by Daddy's, the kid kicked Homer again.

"Don't touch," I said. I wished I could learn some new words. I wished a shark would jump over the sea wall and eat the kid.

"He's not doing anything," said the father.


"He's kicking the Homer."

"So what? He's a little kid."

Interesting concept – because he was a little kid he was allowed to vandalize other people's property.

"Come on, Heath," said the guy grabbing the kid's hand. "We're not going in that store. That's why your store is empty by the way. In case you were wondering. Because you are a bitch."

You're not alone, Lawton Dodd had said to me. I imagined being interviewed by Mica Brezinski on Morning Joe –

"How does it make you feel to be one of the 352,000 small businesses that will fail in the next three months, Ms. – is it 'Di-LOOCH-ey?"

"Di-LUKE-ee-o, actually, Mica. CCH is a hard C in Italian. Like Pinocchio!"

We laugh together.

"But seriously, Mica – it makes me feel great. We're all in Depression 2.0 together, and I think every patriotic American should support it. I'm proud of being a nameless, faceless cog in the machine. You know, each of us failures is doing his – or her! – part. Individually, our failures don't matter, but collectively we are the failure of America!"

Mica and I beam at each other.

Twenty-seven Xanax. That's how many I have. More than enough, actually.

We've become obsessed with the Bravo reality program Being Bobby Brown. Now, since I used to work for People Magazine and have been reading sleazy tabloids for centuries, I thought I was au courante on the complicated marriage of a once-promising and notoriously heterosexual R&B star to an angel-voiced diva who would have preferred to lick clits but who, when barred for promotional reasons from her gender preference of choice, turned to the crack pipe. But no, no, no! I was wrong.

The best thing about the show? Bobby is a one-man stud service. And he only asks one thing in return. All the kids have to be named… Bobby! Kind of like George Foreman except all George Foreman's kids are named "George." Still. You can see the trend.

Now I know where my life went wrong.

"Bobby Patrizia," says my husband, "I'm going out to get some milk. And after that I'm going to swing by the warehouse to restock. I'll take the stuff to the store –"

"Bobby Ben," I say. "Don't you think you should come back to the house first? Bobby Robin and Bobby Halen –"

"Halen's not a Bobby," my husband says firmly. "He's just on overnight loan."

"Well, anyway, they'll want their cereal –"

"Honey, in a situation like this you have to ask yourself: what would Bobby Brown do?"

I consider this question gravely. "Well, he'd probably say, 'Fuck this shit,' and head off to the barbeque shack with his bodyguards for some ribs and Budweiser."

"Exactly. Exactly. And what do we learn from that?"

"That it's better to be rich and drunk than poor and without milk."

Jeanna sent some money to Jimmy to cover Rocco's cremations costs and two weeks later Jimmy sent her a serape. A really hideous serape.

"Should I be insulted?" she asked.

"It's the thought that counts," I said.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about. Jimmy obviously thinks I'm this bag lady wannabe who wears hairy sheep."

"Well, in Jimmy's defense, he probably didn't know he insulted you. He probably thought he was being generous."

"And that's supposed to make it better?"

We gabbed on the phone for an hour this morning. We'd actually been avoiding each other these two months past. On my part, that was entirely due to the fact that I'd fictionalized her into a gob-sucking nymphomaniac in the parking lot of the Sandia casino.

"Do not send Jeanna that story," said Ben when I got off the phone.

"But – she says she wants to read it!"

"She may think she wants to read it. But I can assure you that if she did read it, she would never, ever speak to you again and you'd lose out on inheriting your grandmother's diamond ring when Jeanna disburses her earthly possessions and goes off to live in an ashram in India."

"Maybe," I said, "but I think I'd have the inside track on a very handsome serape."

In other news, yesterday I had one of those too-much-information moments with a cashier at Cost Plus where I'd gone to fetch the Thanksgiving wine. She asked me for my zip code; I gave it to her.

"I always feel a little bit funny when I ask people for their zip codes," she said. "It's none of my business what your zip code is. But all the companies do it. Pretty soon they're going to have little tracking devices on everything you buy. Whatever happened to privacy?"

"Follow the money trail," I said and launched into the corporate history of Wal-Mart, the dangers of unregulated trade and globalism. I think I may have thrown in a Barbara Ehrenreich reference or two. Unfortunately for her, Cost Plus was having a slow day; there was no one on line in back of me, I could rant to my heart's content.

"Well," she said, stepping backwards when I paused for breath, "at least the weather is nice! I hear they're having a lot of bad weather in the midland part of the country."

"And I hope they continue to," I said. "I hope tornados wipe out both the Dakotas. I hope a giant ice storm ravages the entire state of Ohio. I hope a Class 5 hurricane wipes out Florida. Maybe the Kerry voters can put a secret mark on their rafters so God will spare them. But the rest of them – good bye, good riddance."

When I left, I wondered whether they'd caught me on videotape so my pixilated photo could be circulated among the proper government authorities.