never stay at a hotel. Their chosen vacation locations were invariably in close proximity to a campsite, where the nearest thing to room service was Derek’s mother poking her head inside the tent to tell him something charred over a campfire was done cooking.
Deprived of entertainment, Derek was forced to devise his own. His growing up was measured by the nature of his fantasies. To the young Derek, a muscular man at an adjoining campsite was a superhero in disguise. Derek would envision Muscular Man saving the world—or at least one very bored eight-year-old. A few years later, Muscular Man was all human, more Indiana Jones than Superman. Derek would imagine going on adventures with him as they searched for magical artifacts buried in a Civil War battlefield or hidden within a dead hero’s tomb.
Then Derek hit adolescence and his mental scenarios didn’t require props, costumes, locations, or complicated plots. Nor could he focus on only one man when there were so many men everywhere. Shirts off and sweating as they set up tents. Stripped to cutoffs, trunks, or Speedos as they dove into lakes. Tanned muscles on display as they stood in tourist lines wearing shorts and tank tops. Wherever he looked, Derek saw a tantalizing feast that he wasn’t allowed to taste. He was trapped in a world of scorched eggs and incinerated hot dogs.
Reuben, his best friend, took him away from all that. Reuben’s parents won a trip for four to New York City, and since Reuben was an only child, they asked Derek to go along. After much begging and pleading, the Andersons relented, and Derek got to stay in a real hotel. Reuben and Derek shared their own room. On their first morning, Reuben dialed room service and ordered Belgian waffles topped with strawberries and whipped cream. After Derek took his first bite, while sitting in bed and watching television, he swore he’d never spend another summer roughing it in the wilderness like a male version of pioneer girl Caddie Woodlawn.
After that, Belgian waffles became Derek’s comfort food. On his first day of employee orientation for Drayden’s department store, he sat at a table in the back of a conference room and promised himself a heaping plate of waffles if he didn’t run out the door before it was all over. A tall woman dressed in an eggplant-colored suit and brown high heels stood at the front of the room, droning on about the history of Drayden’s.
“Bjorn Henry Lvandsson founded Drayden’s in 1951. When Mr. Lvandsson’s farm was wiped out by a tornado, his wife, Greta, pawned her loom so the young couple could try their hand at retail. The original Drayden’s, which was named after Mr. Lvandsson’s first-born son, was a tiny shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, and sold denim clothing and boots to area farmers. Offering sturdy, no-frills work clothes at low prices paid off. Mr. Lvandsson was able to get his wife’s treasured loom out of hock and expand the business to include a line of hunting wear in 1954.”
It was the hokiest story Derek had ever heard. His eyes glazed over as boredom became exhaustion. He stared at the Human Resources associate, studying her tight-lipped, hatchet face and wondering if she ever smiled. To keep himself from giving in to monotony, he made up a second job for her. In his daydream, she led a secret life as a stripper by night. Her routine as Lydia the Librarian was a favorite among the blue-collar patrons, earning her hundreds of dollars, which she earnestly socked away so she could get out of Indiana in style.
Derek smiled, but his glee vanished when he opened his eyes and the bright lights, dollar bills, and stripper poles faded from his imagination. He was back in the windowless conference room with a dozen other new hires. Derek sighed resolutely and tried to concentrate as the HR associate continued.
“People from all over Minnesota flocked to Drayden’s in the late fifties, when the Lvandssons introduced a line of livestock blankets. Woven by Greta Lvandsson on the loom that started it all, they christened the livestock line Fruit of the Loom. Unfortunately, the underwear empire caught wind of the copyright-infringing horse blankets and threatened to sue Drayden’s. ‘We never hear of underwear from a loom,’ Mr. Lvandsson insisted. ‘We only wear Hanes,’ his wife declared. The publicity from the case brought more customers into the ‘Little Store That Could,’ and people everywhere snatched up the newly christened Cattle Cozy line to keep their livestock warm on those harsh winter nights.”
Derek didn’t know which was worse, the story or the bad Scandinavian accent the HR associate used while speaking as the idiotic Lvandssons. He thought about excusing himself to go to the bathroom and not returning, or faking a seizure. Instead, he reminded himself that he needed the job, the money it would provide, and the sense of independence it could give him.
A black woman with big, curly hair chose that moment to stride into the conference room and say, “Sorry I’m late. Is this orientation?”
“Yes, it is. We were going over the history of Drayden’s. If you’ll find a seat, we can continue.”
As the HR storyteller continued describing Bjorn Henry’s foray into hunting and camping gear, Derek watched as the hair that ate Terre Haute sat next to him at his table.
“My curling iron made me late. It wouldn’t heat up,” his seatmate whispered.
“Sounds like my boyfriend,” Derek said. When her eyes lit up, he added, “Sometimes it helps to plug it in.”
“Oh, I like you,” she said. “We’ll get along fine. I’m Vienna.”
“Derek,” he whispered, pointing at himself.
They stopped talking and listened to their Drayden’s history lesson, which became more palatable now that Derek had Vienna to alleviate his boredom. As Drayden’s expanded into new markets, Mr. Lvandsson tried to engage his children in the business. His eldest son, Drayden, ran off to Hollywood. Sven, the next in line, headed for New York City and went to work on Wall Street after he received his MBA. Lastly, Henrietta, the only daughter, not to mention the family’s bad seed, grabbed her automotive engineering certificate and raced off to join a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500. Other than Greta, who would greet Drayden’s visitors from her loom, which was positioned in front of the main doors of the original store, the only family member to actively join in the business was Gertrude, the family cow. When Greta accidentally mixed up her Christmas card list with the customer database, Drayden’s catalog business was born. The store was inundated with calls from people who had to have the festive sweater a perky Gertrude sported on the front of the Lvandsson family Christmas cards.
“Is this shit for real?” Vienna whispered.
Derek could empathize with the Lvandsson children. A career in the retail industry was not his ultimate goal in life, and he understood why they wanted to get as far away as possible from their parents’ dreams. Derek’s dream had been to be pampered and privileged. To eat Belgian waffles in bed. Maybe be famous for being famous. However, that sort of lifestyle was usually reserved for people with money. Or at the very least, for their children. Derek’s parents were not rich. They were comfortable and happy. But they assumed their son would want the life they lived and never bothered to show him that his life had possibilities. Instead of preparing him for a future, they immersed him in a past of on-this-spot battlefields and crumbling buildings.
Derek explained that to Vienna when they were allowed to leave for lunch.
“I hear you, Derek,” she said as they left Drayden’s and wandered into Mall of the Universe. “My parents were very old-fashioned. Even though I did well in school, they never dreamed that I’d want to go to college. They thought I’d turn out just like my mama, living and breathing for my man. I worked hard to go to college, and I got my education. On my own, thank you.”
“What’s your degree?”
Vienna mumbled something that Derek couldn’t understand. There were a lot of people in the mall, voices and footsteps echoing off the tile and glass interior of the corridors, so he asked her to repeat herself.
“Psychology. I got my B.S. at Indiana University,” she said.
“I get mine from my boyfriend,” Derek quipped. “I don’t get it. Why are you here with me, working at a mall, when you could rake in the dough from an office somewhere in the real world?”
“My license to practice was suspended,” she said.