“Customers do all kinds of crazy things,” Amy said. “I remember this giant fat dude who came in one day near closing, took off his shoes, folded up his pants, and crawled into a Müskk and fell asleep. No one even noticed him for an hour. And Pat told me that once he found some woman and her kid hiding in a Lingam after hours. He was walking through Bedrooms and the door of the wardrobe opened and the two of them came creeping out. He almost died.”

They reached the top of the escalator. Before Amy turned onto the Bright and Shining Path, she paused at the line of framed photos showcasing store management.

“You know,” she said, “I like Basil a lot better when his mouth isn’t moving.”

Ruth Anne looked like she wanted to say something sharp. Then she stopped herself.

“He’s a nice young man.”

“He’s a tool bag,” Amy said.

“Not everyone you disagree with is a bad person,” Ruth Anne said.

“Basil is.”

“He has a lot of responsibilities,” Ruth Anne said.

“Like what?” Amy asked. “Making sure that every unit goes out minus one screw? Making the schedule suck for as many partners as possible?”

“He’s raising his little sister,” Ruth Anne said. “She’s nine years old, and Basil’s practically her daddy. He pays for everything, from her socks to her school fees.”

Amy shuffled through her playlist of possible comebacks and came up short.

“Okay, I didn’t know that,” she said. “But he still sounds like a company training video. ‘Orsk this, Orsk that, worship Orsk, hail Orsk.’ ”

“Orsk has been real good to him,” Ruth Anne said. “He’s from East Cleveland. Have you seen what that place looks like?”

Only on the ten o’clock news, Amy thought.

“When he started here, he was on the verge of giving up. Orsk gave him a job and turned his life around. Some people get church, some people get A.A., others get gangs. Basil got Orsk.”

Conversations like this were frustrating because what could Amy say? Either she could agree that St. Basil needed a church named after him, or she could reply with some sarcastic remark that would make her seem petty. She’d had a lousy life, too, growing up in a crappy trailer with a mom whose idea of family time was playing Hide the Vodka. But if she brought that up now it would look like she was trying to compete with Basil, and there was no way she could win a Who’s Got It Worse? contest. Not with someone who grew up black in East Cleveland.

“Let’s just do our stupid patrol,” Amy said.

Then she turned away from the escalator and followed the arrows past a giant stack of Orsk catalogs, at the entrance of Living Rooms and Sofas.