House of Cuts: A Hillary Broome Novel, Chapter One

I sucked at my thumbnail, sore from ripping off duct tape fast in practice last week. Brookfield would be working late as usual this Sunday, alone in his backstore office. I couldn’t take the chance someone near the loading docks would hear him, so duct tape was essential. Brushing my fingers across the bristles of my crew cut, I massaged my scalp, counting out fifteen strokes, near the number I’d estimated it would take to sever his arms from his shoulders.

It wasn’t as if the superstore hadn’t had warnings during construction last year. Those picket lines weren’t enough, though. The PriceCuts’ protestors should have caused more uproar, thrown themselves in front of the bulldozers, shown it was a matter of life and death.

PriceCuts. Chopping up Mom-and-Pop markets. Like a cancer, choking off a few parts at a time. Turn around one day, and every last independent business will be good as dead. Got to stop it.

Every cell in my body flared with rage, burning hotter now than back on the day we had to close up shop. I walked toward the workbench cupboard to pour me some plum brandy to calm me down, but stopped before I reached the workbench. Had to keep a clear head tonight.

I looked over at the bulletin board, studied the pattern I’d sketched, soothed by its black and white presence. The design itself cooled me down, reassured me of success, with its parallel rows of three parts each: an upper arm, a lower arm, and a twenty-dollar bill. Once it hit the news, this picture would bring our town’s small businesses back to life.

I shifted my gaze to the chair in the corner, made of branches cut from the gnarly old plum tree out back. A shadowy figure hovered in that dim space. I blinked to clear my eyes. Ever so slightly, Mother nodded approval before her image vanished into the dim air. I carried her strength, after all.

It was now time to place manager Brookfield into a showcase: display the real man—monstrous at work and monstrous at home. Human Resources Manager. Ha! Thinks he knows what it means to be human. Decent people will be even more put off when they learn of his home life. It was good luck when I got invited to that bash of his. Setting him out in pieces will get reporters’ attention, explode his hush-hush parties into the news.

Inviting us staffers to that masquerade night last summer showed his arrogance. A combination of July Fourth and a preview of Halloween he called it. Shameless. His wife tramped out in a belly dance costume jingling with coins, blond hair straggling out from under a black wig, directing that guy with the camcorder to tape it when she shook her breasts in the face of the snake handler. Outrageous, both him and that wife, just an aging second-rate actress.

The boa constrictor didn’t sway one way or another that night, face-to-face with Belinda while she flaunted her vulgar celebrity, silk pants billowing. Couldn’t believe it. She lifted the brown snake and set it around her shoulders, letting the ends trail over her arms like a feather boa I’d seen in pictures of old-time strippers. Like she was daring the snake to put the squeeze on her.

And Steven Brookfield himself—his bright eyes beaming through the eye cutouts in his black sequined half-mask—touching and feeling his way around the guests. It was criminal the way he maneuvered Dr. Zasimo’s wife away from the crowd. Evil was his middle name—Steven Evil. At home and at work. Time now to expose him and what he represents. I would play into his perversion, use it for good.

Tonight he should be over at the store making up for lost time. Guy didn’t actually need to work, just wanted in on the superstore power trip. With their friends from San Francisco and LA, the couple partied most Friday and Saturday nights out at their estate and slept in on Sundays.

It was common knowledge he worked late at PriceCuts Sunday nights to catch up and get ready for Monday morning. Time to interview the needy masses for jobs they were desperate enough to crave. My face still burned with shame thinking about the hoops he put me through, just to get this damn trainee job. After decades of running my own shop. Curse them all!

Spanking clean tools and supplies sat on the workbench, next to my black Nike gym bag: duct tape, razor-edged knives, a sharpener in case the work dulled the steel, large and small plastic bags. I added bungee cords in several lengths and thicknesses and pulled the worn twenty-dollar bills out of my wallet—using rumpled cash would signify money changing hands.

Walking to the bulletin board, I surveyed the collection of advertising flyers stuck there over the years. Mother had had a hand in making the ones for our shop, but it was dead now. Damn PriceCuts. I pulled off a couple of the ads I was most proud of. Should leave one or two in his office. Part of my message. Might be a mistake. Couldn’t let my ego trip me up.

Security could be a problem. Management was still uptight over last year’s demonstrators and the protests against the construction of this first superstore in northern California. And there were other problems, too. Down in Lodi this past summer, that old ice cream vendor and his son Hamid had been arrested as terrorists. Even the far-off subway bombers in London had added to the tension. I knew PriceCuts was running security cameras out in the front store but looked like they were too cheap to put them everywhere.

Much as I hated it, applying to work at PriceCuts after Mother died last spring had been a good strategy. Being hired gave me an ID badge, and I knew my way around the backstore offices, loading docks, warehouse spaces and all. I looked over at the old chair in the corner, but it still stood empty except for Mother's curly salt and pepper wig, the wig she used going through that damned chemo. Before we lost the shop and our health insurance.

With her wig on, topping my full-length black raincoat, even if the security cameras picked me up, I wouldn’t be recognizable.

Waggling my fingertips from temples to crown, I gave my scalp another fifteen strokes and stared up through the basement windows at clouds moving in on the moonlit night. Brookfield was in for a midnight special. Got to finish him no later than then and tie his arms up over his head, so the blood would settle down by three o’clock or so. His head and maybe a couple fingers would be enough to take. Get done by seven Monday morning, slip out the back door of his office through the conference room and leave by way of the busy loading docks.

My plan was sure to kill PriceCuts business—like they’d killed mine.