At the Mercy of Madness, Or "You Not My Friend"
"Stop playing stupid with me, Patti!" Mercy Simmons screamed at Patti Perkins.
"You tell me right now if you paid for that pudding cup! Yes or No?"
Mercy was clad in a checkered flannel sports-coat with broad shoulder pads. She towered over Patti with her arms arched and her hands on her hips.
Patti was sitting complacently at a table in the Mammon Mart cafeteria. There was an empty plastic pudding container sitting in front of her. Patti had chocolate smeared on her cheeks.
The veins in Mercy's forehead were bulging. The flood-gates of perspiration had broken.
"Tell me when and where you paid for that pudding cup, Patti!"
Mercy shook the table violently. "Stop playing! I mean it, young lady!"
Patti was nearly thirty years old. She had almond shaped eyes. She stuck her tongue out of her mouth. She stayed silent. Her dad always told her to stay silent if somebody ever accused her of wrongdoing.
"Fine then, Patti." Mercy crossed her arms. "We'll just play it your way."
Mercy whipped around in a fury and marched towards the front of the store. She shouted like a siren: "Jonas! Jonas!"
Jonas Grimm accidentally walked right into the doppler effect of screaming Mercy Simmons. Jonas had just been about to take his first real break of the day. He had been at Mammon Mart since eight thirty that morning and it was now nearly one thirty in the afternoon. He was irritated and starving.
"Yes, Mercy." Jonas replied. He was holding his potential lunch.
"Jonas, I need you to find out if Patti paid for the snack that she just ate on her break."
Jonas was perplexed. "What did she eat?"
Mercy was non-responsive because she was too preoccupied with glaring at the line up of cashiers. She knew none of the cashiers in particular. In fact, she spent absolutely no time at all cultivating any comraderie between herself and those who made less money than her. Mercy ascribed to a school of management that stressed the need to maintain a fundamental and irreconcilable distinction between the operators of a business and the wage-workers. "It's really the difference between the mind and the body or mind over matter." Mercy would clarify on occassion. "Managers represent the mind: they're the thinking that tells the body of workers how to act."
"Ask all of your people and find out who let her get away with this." Mercy told Jonas. "This is a serious offense."
"What happened?"
Mercy didn't answer. She just began to charge off back to the cafeteria. She dictated as she disappeared: "Don't dawdle, Jonas! Time is of the essence!"
Jonas had no clue what Mercy was raving about. She was always fanatically nonsensical. However, it was better to appease her quickly rather than suffer the repercussions of having her madness mire the whole day. So Jonas followed her obscure orders and asked each of his cashiers if any of them had checked out Patti on her break but nobody had reportedly seen her.
Then Prudence Shepherd craned her neck from the Courtesy Counter and shouted at Jonas: "Are you looking for Patti?"
Jonas turned around and saw Prudence holding her head in her hands, leaning on the counter-top.
"I only asked if you were looking for Patti 'cause that crazy Mommy Dearest Mercy Simmons came up here looking for her a little while ago."
Prudence spoke to Jonas right through a line of angry customers waiting at the Courtesy Counter. "That Patti has been on her break for over an hour now, you know. You just need to tell her that she better act right or else we're gonna tell her daddy. You got to talk to her like she's a grown-up. I hate baby-talk anyway."
Jonas ignored Prudence and headed towards the cafeteria.
Jonas hoped that Mercy had solved the mystery by the time he reached her.
Suddenly, Jonas saw a hand waving at him in the distance.
It was Della Kurtz. Della was a short girl with dirty, stringy hair. She always wore her shirt untucked and hanging down to her knees like a dress. She used a fanny back as a belt. She claimed to have inherited Cherokee Indian heritage. However, the only thing she seemed to have inherited was terrible posture from her mother Agnes, the petrified parking lot attendant.
"What's wrong, Della?"
"I seen Patti." Della said.
Della was monitoring the Self-scan check-outs.
Della was always at Mammon Mart even on her days off. She'd always push her daughter around in a shopping cart and scream at her just like her own mother used to do with her. She referred to her daughter as her "baby" although her daughter was twelve years old.
"Ma'am, I need help over here!" a woman shouted from the check-out lanes.
"Miss, Miss, Miss!" an old man also shouted trying to get Della's attention.
Jonas watched Della rudely ignore the customers asking her for help.
"I seen Patti come through the self-scan and pay for her pudding cup." She exclaimed.
"You did?" Jonas asked.
"Excuse me, miss!" The old man shouted again. "May I borrow a pen! I need to write a check!"
Della started to search through her fanny pack for a pen.
Jonas started off again in the direction of the cafeteria.
Mercy began to shout his name over the public address speakers as Jonas approached her. Patti was still sitting at the interrogation table. Mercy spun around when she saw Jonas. "Oh, there you are. About time!"
She walked away from Patti. " We need to speak in private."
Mercy clutched Jonas' arm and dragged him away from Patti.
"We need to be extremely delicate about this matter..." She cast a glance at Patti. "Considering her situation. But Patti has to learn that she isn't above the rules. Well, what did you find out?" Mercy reeked of cheap cigarettes and bad body odor.
Jonas noticed out of the corner of his eye the Deli counter women staring at him. One of them was flappy like a gelatin mold because of a bad gastric-bypass. The other woman was a health hazard due to her poor hygiene.
"Patti paid for her pudding." Jonas asserted.
"What?" Mercy squeezed Jonas' arm. "Then where is the receipt?"
"She paid for it at the Self-scan." Jonas explained.
Mercy dragged Jonas back to the Self-scan.
"Get me that receipt!" She shrieked.
Jonas pushed past Della Kurtz.
Della snuck her nose in and asked: "What's goin' on?"
"None of your business!" Mercy barked. Della bowed her head.
Jonas searched the database and recovered the proof of purchase.
Mercy snatched the receipt from Jonas' fingers and dragged Jonas back to the cafeteria.
Mercy slammed the receipt down on the table in front of Patti.
"Here's your receipt, Patti! You need to keep your receipts, Patti! Do you understand me? Do you understand me"
Patti got up from the table and said: "I tell you, Mercy. Frank bought me pudding."
Mercy was bewildered. "Stop playing stupid, Patti! You don't make any sense!"
Jonas explained: "Frank's her dad." Mercy let go of Jonas' arm.
Patti smiled: "My dad Frank gave me money to get puddin'. He won money at boat."
The boat was a river-boat casino that Patti's politician father, Frank, frequented quite often.
Patti moved closer to Jonas and whispered: "You my friend. She not my friend."
Then Patti trotted back to the front of the store.
"You need to have a serious chat with that little girl." Mercy advised. "Tell her she cannot consume food without a receipt."
Mercy stomped off towards the smoking area but before vanishing she turned back around and shouted:
"Oh, and make sure that Patti stays in her spot at the door and greets the customers like she's paid to do."
Danny Serpentine, Mammon Mart Commander-in-Chief, had hired Patti as a door greeter because she had Down's Syndrome. Despite being a tax break, Patti was the poster-child for diversity and anti-discrimination at Mammon Mart.