But he realized now that the Night Managers could do it.
It was a legitimate solution to a legitimate problem, and it also enabled him to ease into using the Night Managers, feel out the situation.
He closed the _Concordance_, leaned back in his chair, and stared up at the ceiling. Part of him wanted to bring along someone else, a subordinate, but he realized that he was being weak, and he knew that this was something he had to do on his own. He took a deep breath and forced himself to get out of the chair and pick up the _Concordance_.
He took the elevator down to their room.
The air seemed colder, the lunchroom light dimmer than before. He was not scared, exactly, but he felt uneasy, and he stood close to the open elevator door as he stared across the long room toward the tables where the back-clad figures sat.
As before, there were coffee cups before them, although once again the figures remained unmoving, staring straight ahead, not drinking, not even touching the cups.
He wished Newman King was here with him.
Licking his suddenly dry lips, Bill opened the _Concordance_ to the page he had marked. He cleared his throat, yelled out, "One! Two! Three!"
The three Night Managers nearest him stood.
He walked forward slowly, stopping when he reached the edge of the tables.
He looked down at the book again, stomped his foot three times.
The closest Night Manager turned to face him.
It was Ben.
Bill sucked in his breath, a wave of nausea passing over him. He suddenly felt weak. He stared at his friend. All color had been drained from the editor's face, all emotion, all expression, all trace of humanity. There was only a blank look of dull mindlessness on the features that had once belonged to Ben and an automatonic demeanor identical to that of all the other Night Managers.
Bill peered into his friend's vacant eyes, saw nothing there. He felt hollow himself, empty, lost. A profound grief was threatening to settle over him, a bitter despair that he knew would be overwhelming, so he gave in to the other emotions within him: hatred and anger. Blind hatred and searing anger directed not only at Newman King but at himself.
What had he been doing? Who had he been kidding? Ginny was right. He had been suckered, he had been co-opted, he had been corrupted. The Store had not changed. The Store could not change. _He_ had changed. He had bought into King's bullshit and had allowed himself to believe that The Store was different than he'd thought, than he'd known. He had put blinders on and had rationalized his involvement. He had been seduced by the power, by the luxury -- _the best sex he'd ever had_ -- by the promises and assurances of Newman King, and while his initial motives had been pure, he had embraced his new job unthinkingly, without considering the moral consequences. He had even begun believing the lies that had been perpetrated in order to continue The Store's reign.
But no more.
He saw The Store now for what it was, for what it always had been, and he hated himself for swerving from the path, for going against what he knew was right. He had betrayed not only Ginny, but Ben, Street, the town.
Himself.
He wasn't going to resign, though. He wasn't going to quit. He was going back to his original plan. King had given him complete autonomy over the Juniper Store and he was going to use it to return things to the way they were. He was going to strip The Store of its power and reverse the changes it had made to the town. He was going to downsize The Store until it was what it should have been in the first place -- a discount retail outlet. No more, no less.
It was Ben who had brought him to this point, who had made him realize what he was doing, and he stared at his friend, feeling again the emptiness, the sadness.
He moved forward, put a hand on Ben's shoulder, felt the cold even through the layers of black material.
"Thank you," he said softly.
The Night Manager did not respond.
He called a meeting that afternoon of every Store employee. Every department manager, director, stock boy, secretary, clerk, custodian, cook, waitress, security monitor. The first thing he told them was that there would be no more uniforms. Everyone was expected to wear nice clothes -- skirts for the females, shirt and tie for the males -- but uniforms were out. Instead, everyone would be issued a simple name tag.
There were murmurs and whispers, expressions of surprise and disbelief. He caught Holly's eye, saw her smile and give him a thumbs-up sign.
There would be no more directors, he told them. There were cries of protest against this, but he explained that there would be no layoffs, either.
Not for those employees who wanted to work for the new Store. The directors would be reassigned to other positions. Jobs would be found for them.
The meeting lasted most of the afternoon. It was not merely a speech to the troops, but a true dialogue, and though there was some reluctance at first, he got almost all of them involved in the discussion, making them believe that he really was going to change the way The Store operated and letting them know that their input was valuable, necessary, that he did not know the details of how everything worked and would appreciate their comments, suggestions, and help in modifying the workplace.
That night, tired but happy, he returned home and told Ginny what had happened. She was horrified by the story of Ben but was thrilled that he was finally going to start loosening The Store's grip on the town and dismantling its fiefdom.
"Do you think you can do it?" she asked.
"Watch me."
It would take some time to sort through all of the tangled webs woven by The Store, discover all of the city services that it had taken over, all of the work that had been contracted out to it, all of the other businesses that were being bankrolled and overseen by the corporation, but Bill vowed to track everything down and put it right.
He closed The Store for a week while they took inventory. The employees, in teams of two, cataloged every item on every shelf, entering the data into hand-held computers, and he himself sorted the information on his own PC. He wiped whole sections off The Store map, returning items to The Store's corporate warehouse, replaced them with more appropriate stock from traditional distributors until The Store's inventory more closely approximated that of ordinary discount retailers.
"You don't think King's going to put a stop to this?" Ginny asked him one night. "You don't think he's going to find out and come after you?"
"He'll try."
She hugged him close. "You can't hope to fight someone like that.
_Something_ like that. He's way out of your league."
"Don't worry," he told her.
"I just don't want anything to happen to you." She paused. "Or to Sam."
He looked at her.
"She's working at his corporate offices. God knows what he'll do to her when he finds out."
"He told me I could do this," Bill said. "It's how he suckered me into working for him. He said the store was mine to do anything I want with."
"What if he changes his mind?"
"I'll deal with that when I come to it."
He fired twenty-six people over the next three days, fully a third of lite Store's workforce. He did not trust them, did not feel they could adapt, was sure they preferred King's ways, and he did not want them working for him. That was one advantage of having absolute power over his Store. He did not have to give legitimate reasons for firing someone, did not have to have valid cause. He could simply kick someone out and banish them from the premises. He felt a small thrill of satisfaction, a return of the old sense of power, as he told some of the more belligerent employees to get out, they were through, but he refused to allow himself to enjoy it, forced himself to remain impartial and above it all, to think only about the good of the town and not his own petty emotional gratification.