11.6 staples and homeless woman
Celeste gave him her home phone and cell phone numbers, and asked him to be sure to call her if they needed anything.
“Sure thing,” Matt said, “we shouldn’t need anything though – we’ve got enough fully indexed research materials to last us a while, while you get into the swing of things. The only thing I might need is for you to send the index in parts after you start recording it on the computer.”
Celeste nodded, “No problem,” she agreed, “just let me know.”
She showed herself out of the library and took the T to the nearest Staples, in Government Center. It was only about seven thirty at night, but the pan handlers at the homeless shelter right next door to Staples were out in force.
Celeste passed them by, and entered the store. She waited a few minutes at the copiers for one to free up, then she proceeded to start copying the book. She had only gotten about twenty pages in before an overzealous teenage Staples employee came over and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but it’s against Staples policy to copy books on our photocopier.”
Celeste looked up from her copying at the girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. “The book was published in 1761 – that means the copyright expired more than a hundred years ago.” She flipped to the next page and placed it on the plate glass, and presed ‘Copy.’
“All I can tell you,” the girl said, “is that Staples policy is that books may not be copied on our photocopies. I’m going to have to ask you to stop copying now, or I’ll have to call my manager.”
“Ok, call your manager. I’m telling you that the copyright expired on this book a long, long, time ago. Currently, it’s in public domain. But I’ll tell you what – you go ahead and get your manager and I’ll discuss it with him, but in the mean time, I’m going to keep copying because I really don’t have all night to spend here, and I have –“ she flipped to the back of the book to see how many pages there were in total, “three hundred and –,” she did some quick mental math, “um, eighteen pages left to go. I have a feeling I’ll still be copying by the time you get back with your manager.”
The girl walked off briskly, purposefully. Everything about her yelled, “I’m telling!”
Celeste continued making her copies, and she had gotten to page eighty three in the book before the Staples girl returned with her manager. Entertainingly enough, the manager was a guy that she knew from Boston University, a former team-member of Jeanne’s in the business school.
She smiled as he and the girl approached, and before he had a chance to say anything, she said, “Evan, isn’t it? You went to BU and you were on a team with Jeanne Witherspoon for accounting or something like that?”
He nodded, and she could see that look in his eyes, like he was trying to place her but had no idea who she was.
“I was Jeanne’s roommate all through school – I still am, in fact. I went to BU, too, but I was in the College of Arts and Sciences.”
“Ah, ok,” he said, “how’s Jeanne doing, anyway? Did she wind up concentrating in Accounting like she was thinking of doing?”
“Of course,” Celeste giggled slightly, “not even Jeanne herself could picture her doing anything else. She’s actually working for an insurance company downtown, doing accounting.”
“Well, at least someone I know got a good job,” he sighed. “The BU career center certainly wasn’t too much help. I’m working here at night, going to grad school for Organizational Behavior during the day, at BU still. What are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m just a research assistant for a professor at Northeastern. That’s actually who I’m copying this for,” she gestured at the book. “I know she was a little concerned about store policy,” Celeste nodded at the girl, who was looking disappointed, like her plan for calling the manager had backfired. “But I promise, the book was published in the eighteenth century, so the copyright expired quite some time ago.”
Evan laughed. “No problem, I believe you. Jennifer here was concerned because we’ve had a recent surge of college students buying textbooks from the school bookstore, photocopying them in their entirety, and then returning the textbooks to the bookstore for a fully refund. She works both here and for BU’s Barnes and Noble, so it hits a little close to home for her, doesn’t it, Jennifer?”
Jennifer nodded, and walked away, annoyance in her eyes.
“Sorry about that, um – what was your name again?” he asked, obviously embarrassed not to remember it.
“Celeste,” she filled in. “It’s no problem, Jennifer was just doing her job. It’s hard to remember being that earnest about anything, though. And that was only four years ago.”
“Well, it was nice to see you again, Celeste. Please tell Jeanne I said hello,” Evan said as he turned and walked back to the counter where it seemed Jennifer was harrassing another hapless customer.
Celeste continued photocopying until she had finished the book, and then she sorted the pages into the correct order to make sure she had all of them. She made a quick stop down the pens and pencils aisle, and picked up a couple nice highlighters, in yellow and turquoise, because as long as someone else was paying for them, she might as well get some new ones rather than using the thick Hi-Liter brand ones she’d had around and used occassionally since freshman year.
The cashier who’s line she entered was an older balding man, who seemed efficient in what he was doing. Jennifer was the cashier at the customer service counter, and while Celeste stood in line, she kept yelling “Can I help who’s next, please?”
Celeste ignored her, and continued to stand in line. Finally, another customer came to stand in line, and went over to Jennifer’s counter rather than waiting for the older man to finish cashiering.
Once her copies and highlighters were rung up, she paid with her new Staples card, and the cashier bagged all of her items. Once again, she made her way through the knot of homeless pan handlers standing in front of the store door, and walked back to the T station. On her way, she called Jeanne.
“Hey, how’d your first day go?” Jeanne asked.
“Really well,” Celeste said, “It looks like I’m going to be able to do almost all of the work from home or Starbucks or whatever. It seems like I’m going actually going to have to go in once every three weeks or so.”
“And what exactly are you going to be doing?”
“Indexing history books. The one they gave me to start with is a book by a French guy from the eighteenth century – it’s called Studies in Government.”
“Oh. And you’re getting paid to stay at home and index obscure books.”
Celeste could imagine Jeanne sitting there with her phone to her ear, shaking her head in amazement. She almost started laughing out loud at the mental picture.
“Yup, it’s not a whole lot, but it comes with full benefits effective today, and the employee discount on classes and stuff at NU.”
“That’s really great, Celeste,” Jeanne said. “You can officially call me a moron for bugging you about the temp agencies.”
Celeste ignored that, and said instead, “Oh, you’ll never guess who I saw today! Remember Evan from one of your teams… a tall guy, not bad looking, but a little balding?”
“Mmhmm,” Jeanne answered, “he was on my Accounting II team.”
“He’s one of the managers at Staples in Government Center. One of the employees called the manager on me for photocopying a book who’s copyright has expired, and it was Evan. It’s sort of funny who you meet around here. You know, it’s a big city but at the same time it’s not.”
“Uh huh,” Jeanne said absently, “I’m getting a beep here, Celeste, are you coming home?”
“I’m on my way,” Celeste answered, “I’ll see you in forty-five minutes or so.”
Taking public transportation” in Boston was always an adventure. Celeste’s apartment was in the middle of nowhere in Somerville, just a little north of the city. Her commute into the city meant taking the bus about three miles, and then switching to the subway, better know as the “T”.
She had her strategies for both bus and T. On the bus, her favorite spot was the very back of the bus in the block of six seats, more specifically in either the far right or far left seats. That way, her knees rested against the seat in front of her, and only one person could sit next to her, rather than many of the other seats where you’d not only have someone sitting next to you, but you’d also get jostled and pushed and shoved every which way.
On the T, she stuck with a more traditional strategy – avoid anyone who looked the least bit strange. On the subway home, chose a seat next to a thirty-something woman in a well-tailored business suit, who was reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The seat on the other side was empty. Celeste pulled out the Studies in Government hardcover, and started to read, paying to real attention to what was going on around her besides to which stop the train was at.
Suddenly, a toothless middle-aged woman with frizzy black hair, dressed in stirrup-styled stretch pants and a yellow waterproof pullover lurched over, and stood in front of the business-woman next to Celeste.
“Whatcha readin?” she asked, loudly.
The businesswoman silently held her book up for inspection.
“Ooh, black power, sista’. I jes’ finished readin’ ‘dat Oprah’s new book – Da Bluest Eye. ‘Dat wommin’s a damm good writer. I dunno how she writes so many books, eitha’.”
“Mmm,” the business-woman responded.
As the train stopped and started, the frizzy-haired woman lurched agaist Celeste’s legs. Celeste hadn’t been paying a whole lot of attention up until that point, but when she looked up from her book and the frizzy-haired woman’s bag was about two inches from her head, she decided it was time to act.
“Here, ma’am,” she said. “You can have my seat.” Celeste stood and moved across the car to an empty seat.
“Na-na-no,” the frizzy haired woman responded. “’Dis is ma stop. Lemmee just git out ma umbreller.” She plopped her overflowing tote-bag down on the seat that Celeste had just vacated, and proceeded to pull out a half-eaten bag of grapes, an empty yogurt container, a pair of socks, and a couple wrinkled newspapers, before she finally found her “umbreller” at the bottom of her bag. She turned around and heaved her bag over her shoulder, knocking into the businesswoman as she did so. Then she lurched off the train.
As soon as she did, the business-woman got to her feet and came over to stand in front of Celeste. She cleared her throat, and Celeste looked up from her book.
“Thanks a lot, lady. Next time, I hope the person sitting next to you offers their seat to the homeless person who’s bothering you.”
“Uh, sorry,” Celeste responded, “I wasn’t paying much attention – I thought she was a friend of yours.”
“Bitch,” the business-woman muttered, and then turned and exited the train.
‘Ugh, what a night,’ Celeste thought, ‘first Jennifer at Staples, and then the business-woman from Hell.'
As Celeste exited the T, she literally collided with Jeanne. “God,” Jeanne said, “I’ve been trying to call you for the last half-hour – is your phone off or something?”
“No, the T’s slow tonight – I’ve been underground for the last forty or so minutes.”
“That’d do it,” Jeanne responded. “I’m meeting up with Scott and Jessica at The Burren in Cambridge for a couple drinks – do you want to come out? We can celebrate your new job?”
“Great,” Celeste answered, “and you know what? I don’t even have to be at work by nine tomorrow!”
Jeanne mimed slapping her, and laughed. “No fair rubbing it in. Maybe I should have studied something interested in college instead of something useful.”
“Uh, huh, Jeanne. The scary part is that account is what you’re interested in.”
“Well, there’s that.” The two of them plopped down on adjacent seats on the subway for the ride into Cambridge.
Jeanne, Jessica, and Celeste met during their freshman year. Jeanne and Celeste were roommates in Warren Towers at BU. Jeanne was from the Chicago area, and Celeste was from Albany, New York. They originally were jealous of Jessica, because she was living in a triple with only one roommate, which gave them both a whole lot of extra space. That was, until Jessica complained to the floor RA that her roommate was bringing guys into the room at all hours of the day and night, and doing all sorts of kinky things with Jessica sleeping in the bed only a few feet away. Her roommate found out, had a screaming fit, and started tossing all of Jessica’s stuff into the hall about a week after classes had started.
Jeanne and Celeste felt bad for Jessica, so they agreed to move into the triple with Jessica, and Jessica’s roommate would get a double to herself and her male friends.
“Sure thing,” Matt said, “we shouldn’t need anything though – we’ve got enough fully indexed research materials to last us a while, while you get into the swing of things. The only thing I might need is for you to send the index in parts after you start recording it on the computer.”
Celeste nodded, “No problem,” she agreed, “just let me know.”
She showed herself out of the library and took the T to the nearest Staples, in Government Center. It was only about seven thirty at night, but the pan handlers at the homeless shelter right next door to Staples were out in force.
Celeste passed them by, and entered the store. She waited a few minutes at the copiers for one to free up, then she proceeded to start copying the book. She had only gotten about twenty pages in before an overzealous teenage Staples employee came over and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but it’s against Staples policy to copy books on our photocopier.”
Celeste looked up from her copying at the girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. “The book was published in 1761 – that means the copyright expired more than a hundred years ago.” She flipped to the next page and placed it on the plate glass, and presed ‘Copy.’
“All I can tell you,” the girl said, “is that Staples policy is that books may not be copied on our photocopies. I’m going to have to ask you to stop copying now, or I’ll have to call my manager.”
“Ok, call your manager. I’m telling you that the copyright expired on this book a long, long, time ago. Currently, it’s in public domain. But I’ll tell you what – you go ahead and get your manager and I’ll discuss it with him, but in the mean time, I’m going to keep copying because I really don’t have all night to spend here, and I have –“ she flipped to the back of the book to see how many pages there were in total, “three hundred and –,” she did some quick mental math, “um, eighteen pages left to go. I have a feeling I’ll still be copying by the time you get back with your manager.”
The girl walked off briskly, purposefully. Everything about her yelled, “I’m telling!”
Celeste continued making her copies, and she had gotten to page eighty three in the book before the Staples girl returned with her manager. Entertainingly enough, the manager was a guy that she knew from Boston University, a former team-member of Jeanne’s in the business school.
She smiled as he and the girl approached, and before he had a chance to say anything, she said, “Evan, isn’t it? You went to BU and you were on a team with Jeanne Witherspoon for accounting or something like that?”
He nodded, and she could see that look in his eyes, like he was trying to place her but had no idea who she was.
“I was Jeanne’s roommate all through school – I still am, in fact. I went to BU, too, but I was in the College of Arts and Sciences.”
“Ah, ok,” he said, “how’s Jeanne doing, anyway? Did she wind up concentrating in Accounting like she was thinking of doing?”
“Of course,” Celeste giggled slightly, “not even Jeanne herself could picture her doing anything else. She’s actually working for an insurance company downtown, doing accounting.”
“Well, at least someone I know got a good job,” he sighed. “The BU career center certainly wasn’t too much help. I’m working here at night, going to grad school for Organizational Behavior during the day, at BU still. What are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m just a research assistant for a professor at Northeastern. That’s actually who I’m copying this for,” she gestured at the book. “I know she was a little concerned about store policy,” Celeste nodded at the girl, who was looking disappointed, like her plan for calling the manager had backfired. “But I promise, the book was published in the eighteenth century, so the copyright expired quite some time ago.”
Evan laughed. “No problem, I believe you. Jennifer here was concerned because we’ve had a recent surge of college students buying textbooks from the school bookstore, photocopying them in their entirety, and then returning the textbooks to the bookstore for a fully refund. She works both here and for BU’s Barnes and Noble, so it hits a little close to home for her, doesn’t it, Jennifer?”
Jennifer nodded, and walked away, annoyance in her eyes.
“Sorry about that, um – what was your name again?” he asked, obviously embarrassed not to remember it.
“Celeste,” she filled in. “It’s no problem, Jennifer was just doing her job. It’s hard to remember being that earnest about anything, though. And that was only four years ago.”
“Well, it was nice to see you again, Celeste. Please tell Jeanne I said hello,” Evan said as he turned and walked back to the counter where it seemed Jennifer was harrassing another hapless customer.
Celeste continued photocopying until she had finished the book, and then she sorted the pages into the correct order to make sure she had all of them. She made a quick stop down the pens and pencils aisle, and picked up a couple nice highlighters, in yellow and turquoise, because as long as someone else was paying for them, she might as well get some new ones rather than using the thick Hi-Liter brand ones she’d had around and used occassionally since freshman year.
The cashier who’s line she entered was an older balding man, who seemed efficient in what he was doing. Jennifer was the cashier at the customer service counter, and while Celeste stood in line, she kept yelling “Can I help who’s next, please?”
Celeste ignored her, and continued to stand in line. Finally, another customer came to stand in line, and went over to Jennifer’s counter rather than waiting for the older man to finish cashiering.
Once her copies and highlighters were rung up, she paid with her new Staples card, and the cashier bagged all of her items. Once again, she made her way through the knot of homeless pan handlers standing in front of the store door, and walked back to the T station. On her way, she called Jeanne.
“Hey, how’d your first day go?” Jeanne asked.
“Really well,” Celeste said, “It looks like I’m going to be able to do almost all of the work from home or Starbucks or whatever. It seems like I’m going actually going to have to go in once every three weeks or so.”
“And what exactly are you going to be doing?”
“Indexing history books. The one they gave me to start with is a book by a French guy from the eighteenth century – it’s called Studies in Government.”
“Oh. And you’re getting paid to stay at home and index obscure books.”
Celeste could imagine Jeanne sitting there with her phone to her ear, shaking her head in amazement. She almost started laughing out loud at the mental picture.
“Yup, it’s not a whole lot, but it comes with full benefits effective today, and the employee discount on classes and stuff at NU.”
“That’s really great, Celeste,” Jeanne said. “You can officially call me a moron for bugging you about the temp agencies.”
Celeste ignored that, and said instead, “Oh, you’ll never guess who I saw today! Remember Evan from one of your teams… a tall guy, not bad looking, but a little balding?”
“Mmhmm,” Jeanne answered, “he was on my Accounting II team.”
“He’s one of the managers at Staples in Government Center. One of the employees called the manager on me for photocopying a book who’s copyright has expired, and it was Evan. It’s sort of funny who you meet around here. You know, it’s a big city but at the same time it’s not.”
“Uh huh,” Jeanne said absently, “I’m getting a beep here, Celeste, are you coming home?”
“I’m on my way,” Celeste answered, “I’ll see you in forty-five minutes or so.”
Taking public transportation” in Boston was always an adventure. Celeste’s apartment was in the middle of nowhere in Somerville, just a little north of the city. Her commute into the city meant taking the bus about three miles, and then switching to the subway, better know as the “T”.
She had her strategies for both bus and T. On the bus, her favorite spot was the very back of the bus in the block of six seats, more specifically in either the far right or far left seats. That way, her knees rested against the seat in front of her, and only one person could sit next to her, rather than many of the other seats where you’d not only have someone sitting next to you, but you’d also get jostled and pushed and shoved every which way.
On the T, she stuck with a more traditional strategy – avoid anyone who looked the least bit strange. On the subway home, chose a seat next to a thirty-something woman in a well-tailored business suit, who was reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The seat on the other side was empty. Celeste pulled out the Studies in Government hardcover, and started to read, paying to real attention to what was going on around her besides to which stop the train was at.
Suddenly, a toothless middle-aged woman with frizzy black hair, dressed in stirrup-styled stretch pants and a yellow waterproof pullover lurched over, and stood in front of the business-woman next to Celeste.
“Whatcha readin?” she asked, loudly.
The businesswoman silently held her book up for inspection.
“Ooh, black power, sista’. I jes’ finished readin’ ‘dat Oprah’s new book – Da Bluest Eye. ‘Dat wommin’s a damm good writer. I dunno how she writes so many books, eitha’.”
“Mmm,” the business-woman responded.
As the train stopped and started, the frizzy-haired woman lurched agaist Celeste’s legs. Celeste hadn’t been paying a whole lot of attention up until that point, but when she looked up from her book and the frizzy-haired woman’s bag was about two inches from her head, she decided it was time to act.
“Here, ma’am,” she said. “You can have my seat.” Celeste stood and moved across the car to an empty seat.
“Na-na-no,” the frizzy haired woman responded. “’Dis is ma stop. Lemmee just git out ma umbreller.” She plopped her overflowing tote-bag down on the seat that Celeste had just vacated, and proceeded to pull out a half-eaten bag of grapes, an empty yogurt container, a pair of socks, and a couple wrinkled newspapers, before she finally found her “umbreller” at the bottom of her bag. She turned around and heaved her bag over her shoulder, knocking into the businesswoman as she did so. Then she lurched off the train.
As soon as she did, the business-woman got to her feet and came over to stand in front of Celeste. She cleared her throat, and Celeste looked up from her book.
“Thanks a lot, lady. Next time, I hope the person sitting next to you offers their seat to the homeless person who’s bothering you.”
“Uh, sorry,” Celeste responded, “I wasn’t paying much attention – I thought she was a friend of yours.”
“Bitch,” the business-woman muttered, and then turned and exited the train.
‘Ugh, what a night,’ Celeste thought, ‘first Jennifer at Staples, and then the business-woman from Hell.'
As Celeste exited the T, she literally collided with Jeanne. “God,” Jeanne said, “I’ve been trying to call you for the last half-hour – is your phone off or something?”
“No, the T’s slow tonight – I’ve been underground for the last forty or so minutes.”
“That’d do it,” Jeanne responded. “I’m meeting up with Scott and Jessica at The Burren in Cambridge for a couple drinks – do you want to come out? We can celebrate your new job?”
“Great,” Celeste answered, “and you know what? I don’t even have to be at work by nine tomorrow!”
Jeanne mimed slapping her, and laughed. “No fair rubbing it in. Maybe I should have studied something interested in college instead of something useful.”
“Uh, huh, Jeanne. The scary part is that account is what you’re interested in.”
“Well, there’s that.” The two of them plopped down on adjacent seats on the subway for the ride into Cambridge.
Jeanne, Jessica, and Celeste met during their freshman year. Jeanne and Celeste were roommates in Warren Towers at BU. Jeanne was from the Chicago area, and Celeste was from Albany, New York. They originally were jealous of Jessica, because she was living in a triple with only one roommate, which gave them both a whole lot of extra space. That was, until Jessica complained to the floor RA that her roommate was bringing guys into the room at all hours of the day and night, and doing all sorts of kinky things with Jessica sleeping in the bed only a few feet away. Her roommate found out, had a screaming fit, and started tossing all of Jessica’s stuff into the hall about a week after classes had started.
Jeanne and Celeste felt bad for Jessica, so they agreed to move into the triple with Jessica, and Jessica’s roommate would get a double to herself and her male friends.
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