“I understand,” Elsa said.
The clerk picked up the phone, pushed a button, and then spoke into it. “Manager approval, check stand two, please,” she said, her words issuing out over the store’s intercom.
From the little kiosk where cigarettes were sold and the photo developing was done, a slightly chubby woman with dark, curly black hair came walking over. She appeared to be in her mid to late thirties. A pair of thick glasses were perched on her nose. As she approached check stand two and got a good look at Elsa standing there, her pace slowed up a bit and her expression hardened. She sidled up next to the clerk, took one more glance at Elsa, and then asked: “What do you have, Maria?”
“An out-of-town check from Los Angeles,” she told her manager. “One hundred and twenty-six forty-three.”
“Los Angeles, huh?” she said, saying that as if were a vile expression; something not uttered in polite company. She picked up the check and Elsa’s driver’s license, examining both for the better part of thirty seconds, her eyes flitting from one to the other. She then looked back at Elsa, her eyes looking magnified under her glasses. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to approve this check, Ms. Tyler. Do you have an alternate means of payment?”
“Is there a problem with the check?” Elsa said quietly, her eyes boring into the manager.
“I’m sure there is not,” she said. “But I simply cannot approve an out-of-town check from Los Angeles in this amount.”
“Really?” Elsa said. She pointed to the laminated rules of paying with a check that were printed directly on the check writing platform. “According to this, out of town checks may be accepted here for the amount of purchase up to two hundred dollars with manager approval.”
“That is correct,” the manager said. “And that approval is discretionary on my part. I am electing not to give it in this circumstance.”
Elsa looked back up at her. “I see,” she said, nodding her head a little. “Do you mind if I ask your name and position?”
She seemed like she wasn’t going to answer for a moment, but finally said: “I’m Darlene Sams. I’m the manager of this store.”
“I would like to say I’m pleased to meet you, Ms. Sams, but truthfully, I am not. Will you please enlighten me as to why you decided to reject my check out of hand without even bothering to run it through that little machine you have first? You are a corporate grocery store, are you not? And that little machine would give you a good indication whether or not I was a habitual passer of bad checks, would it not?”
“The machine is imperfect,” Darlene said.
“That is true,” Elsa allowed. “After all, I could be a first-time bad check passer who decided out of the blue to just drop into your little town here at the age of fifty-eight and start my life of fraudulent malfeasance, right?”
“Uh ... well ... anything is possible,” Darlene said. “It could be that you are presenting me with a fake ID and counterfeit checks. If that were the case, you would not be flagged as a risk.”
“That is true,” Elsa granted her.
“Not that I’m suggesting you are attempting such a thing,” Darlene told her.
“Really?” Elsa asked. “It sounds like that is exactly what you are suggesting.”
“Not at all,” Darlene said. “It’s just that when we’re dealing with an out-of-town check from Los Angeles in that amount, we can’t be too careful.”
“I can understand that,” Elsa told her. “However, it is my understanding that that same machine we were just discussing is capable of accessing a database that can confirm that I have written checks on this account many times in the past—dating all the way back to 1987 as a matter of fact—and that not a single one of those checks has ever been returned for insufficient funds. Or am I mistaken about the machine’s capability?”
“You are not mistaken,” Darlene said slowly. “It’s just that ... uh...”
“It’s just that what?” Elsa enquired.
Darlene shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “I made a decision based on experience and judgement, that’s all.”
“Really?” Elsa said. “It wasn’t based on anything in particular? Perhaps the way my eyes are set? Perhaps my British accent? Oh ... wait, it could not be my accent because you rejected me before you even heard it.”
“No ... nothing like that,” Darlene said, starting to backpedal a little. “It’s just that I have to be very careful. Rejected checks are a big deal, as you can imagine, and they cost us thousands of dollars every year.”
“I’m sure they do,” Elsa said. “How about you run my check and my license through your little machine there? See what it has to say before you reject me based on whatever mysterious suspicious looking quality I possess.”
“I’m afraid that I simply cannot...”
“Because if you don’t,” Elsa interrupted, “two things are going to happen. First, your boss is going to hear from me. And if that does not get me anywhere, your boss’s boss is going to hear from me, and so on and so forth until someone in the Alpha Beta hierarchy decides to address this situation. Believe me, I can be quite tenacious on matters such as this.”
Darlene’s look of doubt increased considerably at these words. “Well ... I don’t think that we need to...”
“The second thing that is going to happen,” Elsa went on, interrupting her again, “is that this grocery store will be missing out on a considerable amount of future business. Considerable. Have you ever heard of a man named Jake Kingsley?”
“Yes, of course,” Darlene said. “I heard he just moved to town.”
“You heard correctly,” Elsa told her. “I am the housekeeper for Mr. Kingsley and his wife Laura. It is I who do all of the grocery shopping and meal preparation for the two of them. Do you want to know what my monthly budget for groceries is?”
“Uh ... how much?” she asked slowly.
“One thousand, six hundred dollars,” she said. “And that is just groceries and dinner wine. You see, Jake likes to live well and eat well. And that is just the day-to-day things. When he entertains—and he does so often—it is not the least bit unusual for me to make a separate trip to the store and spend six to seven hundred dollars at a shot. Now, your store is the most convenient non-tourist oriented one to where Mr. Kingsley’s new house is, but I’ll certainly be happy to travel a little further inland to spend Mr. Kingsley’s money if there is something about me that offends your sensibilities.”
“Oh no, not at all, Ms. Tyler,” Darlene said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot here. I will absolutely run your check and your license through the machine.”
“Thank you,” Elsa said stiffly. “Please proceed.”
She proceeded. While waiting for the machine to contact its database over the modem, Darlene asked, “How long have you worked for Jake?”
“Since 1987,” she said. “I thought I mentioned that.”
“Wow,” she said. “What’s he like?”
“He is a fine employer,” she said. “If he wasn’t, I would not have stayed with him all these years, would not have moved to this place with him.”
“But what about all the stories about...”
“I will relay no gossip about my employer, his wife, or any of their acquaintances,” Elsa said firmly. “Please refrain from asking me and instruct your employees to do the same.”
“Oh ... of course ... but...”
“Your machine beeped,” Elsa said, pointing at it. “Has it deemed me acceptable?”
“Oh ... yes,” she said. She looked at the printout and then nodding. “It says you’re a trusted check passer with greater than five hundred checks in the system and no rejections.”
“Imagine that,” Elsa said dryly. “Wouldn’t this have all gone much more smoothly had you just done that in the first place, Ms. Sams?”