Chapter 3 - The Fragile Architecture of Chase
By Wednesday, the shockwave had reached the electronics department of Walmart Supercenter #1142.
I was in the middle of helping an elderly gentleman understand that his television didn't need to be “rewound” when I caught sight of a familiar beige polo shirt hovering near the end-cap display of Bluetooth speakers.
It was Chase.
He didn't look quite as elevated as he had on Saturday. His hair, usually sculpted into a gravity-defying pompadour using products that cost more than my weekly grocery bill, was slightly limp. The beige linen shirt had been replaced by a tight gym company polo with a small grease stain near the hem. He was tapping his foot against a display of discounted soundbars with an agitation that suggested his morning pre-workout drink had contained more taurine than common sense.
“Mr. Henderson,” I told the customer, handing him a receipt, “the HDMI cable goes into the blue port. Just remember: blue to blue, and you’ll be watching your westerns in no time.”
“God bless you, young lady,” the old man said, shuffling away.
I turned my attention to Chase. I didn't step out from behind the service counter. The counter was four feet high, made of reinforced composite plastic, and held the cash registers—my domain. In retail, you never leave the high ground.
“Can I help you find something, Chase? We have a special on HDMI cords, though I suspect you don't have a television to plug them into.”
Chase walked up to the counter, planted both palms on the laminate surface, and leaned in. He attempted a smoldering, intense look that he probably used when closing five-year gym contracts on unsuspecting housewives, but his left eye had a faint, twitchy flutter.
“We need to talk, Sylvia. Man to woman.”
I laughed. It wasn't a polite laugh. It was the sharp, barking laugh of someone who had worked three Black Fridays in the television aisle without a bathroom break.
“First of all, Chase, nobody has ever had a productive conversation that started with the phrase ‘man to woman.’ Second of all, I am on the clock. So unless you are here to buy an extended warranty on an air fryer, you are loitering.”
“You ruined her,” Chase said, his voice dropping to a theatrical hiss. “Do you have any idea what you did to Briana’s mental health? She hasn't posted in four days. Her engagement numbers are down forty-two percent. She was supposed to do a live unboxing of a luxury matcha kit on Sunday, and she had to cancel because she didn't have an aesthetically neutral background!”
I blinked at him. For a moment, I wondered if I was experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning.
“Aesthetically neutral background?” I repeated.
“The living room wall is scuffed!” Chase said, his hands flying up in exasperation. “The delivery guys left black rubber marks on the baseboards! The matcha company requires an elevated Japandi minimalism! You can't shoot Japandi minimalism when you're sitting on an air mattress with a leak!”
“Chase,” I said, resting my elbows on the counter and looking at him with genuine curiosity, “how old are you?”
He scowled. “I’m twenty-eight.”
“You are twenty-eight years old. You work at a fitness center. You are currently living in an apartment that costs twenty-six hundred dollars a month. What is your plan for the first of the month?”
He blinked, thrown off by the sudden injection of reality. “What do you mean, what's my plan? We have savings.”
“No, you don't,” I said plainly. “Briana told Mom you had five thousand. Mom took two thousand from my father to cover your security deposit. You tried to charge four hundred dollars of Target essentials to my canceled card. You don't have first month's rent, do you?”
The color drained from his face, leaving his bronzer looking like an unnatural mask applied to a corpse.
“Briana said you were going to help,” he stammered, his bravado cracking down the center like cheap plastic. “She said... she told me her family was set up. She told me her parents had land in Ohio and that you managed an entire tech distribution center!”
I nearly choked on my own tongue. “A tech distribution center? Chase, I run the electronics department at a Walmart in a strip mall between an Arby’s and a dry cleaner! My parents live in a three-bedroom split-level with a mortgage they won't pay off until Dad is seventy-one!”
Chase stood there, his jaw slung low, processing the catastrophic collapse of his own gold-digging expedition. He hadn't just hitched his wagon to a star; he had hitched it to an inflatable lawn ornament that had just been unplugged.
“She... she told me you made six figures,” he whispered.
“I make twenty-two dollars an hour, plus quarterly bonuses if the inventory shrinkage stays low,” I told him with immense satisfaction. “Which means I am currently making more money than both of you combined, and every single penny of it is protected by two-factor authentication.”
He stared at me, then looked down at his own sneakers. They were designer knockoffs, the white leather peeling slightly at the toe box.
“I signed the lease,” Chase said, his voice now devoid of any influencer cadence. It sounded thin, small, and terrified. “The leasing office... they ran my credit. My name is first on the lease. If we break it, it’s an automatic two-month penalty. Five thousand three hundred dollars.”
“Sounds like you’d better start selling a lot of sauna memberships, Chase.”
“She told me her sister was generous,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “She said her sister was the practical one who took care of things.”
“I am practical,” I said. “Which is why I’m telling you that you have approximately eighteen days until the leasing office sends a cure-or-quit notice. If I were you, I’d start looking for a roommate who doesn't require an aesthetically neutral background to survive.”
Chase backed away from the counter slowly, as if he had just realized the floor was made of thin ice. He didn't say goodbye. He didn't threaten me. He simply turned and hurried toward the sliding glass exit doors, his tight polo bunching awkwardly around his shoulders.
I watched him go, feeling a strange mix of pity and cold vindication.
Briana hadn't just lied to me; she had lied to him. She had constructed an entire mythology around the Vance family—a mythology where she was the delicate, artistic princess whose aristocratic family provided a continuous, silent stream of funding, while I was the industrious family banker who handled the boring paperwork.
She had sold him an illusion, and she had used my credit line as the down payment.
My department associate, a nineteen-year-old college kid named Kevin who spent most of his shifts trying to hide behind the printer paper displays, wandered over.
“Hey, Sylvia?”
“Yes, Kevin?”
“Was that guy trying to return a stolen speaker? He looked really stressed.”
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“No, Kevin,” I said, picking up my inventory scanner. “He was just realizing that there's no such thing as free shipping on a fake life. Go check the top-stock in aisle four.”
***
