Chapter 1: A Man of No Mean Bones 1 A man of no mean bones
Joe-Nathan’s mum, Janet, always told him he didn’t have a mean bone in his body, and he was thinking this as he wheeled a trolley of go-backs round the store: returning items that had been picked up by customers in one aisle and put down in another. He was certain that candles—for example—felt lost and lonely when they were abandoned among jars of peanut butter or the towels, certain that they were relieved to be reunited with their own candle-kind. Joe liked to think that if he were displaced, someone would do the same for him.

Joe worked hard to prove his mother right and to try to make other people feel the same way about him. To be considered a man of no mean bones was his raison d’être.

“There’s a spill on aisle five,” said Hugo, putting one hand on Joe’s trolley and tilting his head as though he felt bad asking him to clean it up. “You okay to do it?”

Joe saluted. “Yes, sir, what color is it? Is it red?”

“It’s just milk, and please don’t call me sir. I may be old enough to be your father, but only just! If you call me ‘sir,’ you’ll make me feel really old.” He whispered the next sentence as though it were a secret. “I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable being the boss. Just call me Hugo.”

“Hugo Boss,” said Joe without humor (because none was intended) and saluted again. He tried not to look at Hugo’s short fuzz of closely shaved hair, which covered his head from the apex to the nape of his neck. He always felt the urge to polish it clean so it was nice and shiny like his dad’s head used to be.

Hugo smiled. “Okay, Joe. So, aisle five?”

“Sir!”

“No, don’t call me ‘sir,’?” Hugo said again. “Remember, I’m old but not that old.” And suddenly he was a whole aisle away, shaking his head and looking at his clipboard.

As soon as the milk had been mopped, Joe returned to his go-backs. He was a good mopper and cleaned the mop meticulously when he was finished. Hugo Boss was nice, and Joe knew he would never have asked him to clean up on aisle five if the spillage had been red.

Joe had worked at The Compass Store for five years. When he came for his interview (accompanied by his mum) he was overwhelmed by the variety of things for sale. The apparent chaos of the place made him sweat and he couldn’t wait to get home. Hugo had said he was keen to have someone like Joe on board, and “not just because it looked good on the stats,” but because he felt that Joe would be a positive influence and set a good example. He was offered the job, but wanted to turn it down, because—he told his mum—the place just doesn’t make sense.

“He has OCD,” Janet had said, when she explained on the phone why Joe wouldn’t be taking the job.

“I understand,” Hugo had said. “I really do. Would you come back in again and let me explain to Joe-Nathan how the store works? When he understands, it might just appeal to him.”

“This place is called The Compass Store because the layout is designed around areas designated to north, south, east, and west, as well as northeast and east-northeast and so on,” Hugo explained. He led Joe to the very center of the shop where a large mosaic of a compass was embedded in the floor and handed him a real compass (for sale on aisle three) and told him to go ahead and check: the mosaic was accurate.

“If you ever get lost, make your way to the mosaic, stand on the arrow pointing west, and walk straight ahead, you’ll come to my office and I’ll help you find your way. There’s a lot of things in this store, Joe, and to the untrained eye they may not appear to make sense, but for most things, there is a link, a reason, and most certainly a place.”

At that moment, a girl with bobbed black hair, red lips, and chewing gum walked by with a trolley that said “go-backs” on it. She winked at Joe and snapped her gum; the smell of smoke and Juicy Fruit was in her wake. Joe tried to wink back but did a long blink instead. She smiled at him with a perfect gap between her two front teeth. The manager explained what the go-backs were, and Joe suddenly found himself interested.

“Do you like puzzles?” Hugo asked.

Joe nodded. “Jigsaws.”

“He can make his own jigsaws,” said Janet. “His dad taught him how.”

“Can he really?” Hugo had paused, put his hands on his hips, and looked at Joe with respect.

“Well, think of this place like a big jigsaw: every day, people move a few pieces around and we put them back where they belong. And we sell things too! Let’s not forget that!”

“And you clean?” said Joe, watching an overweight, bespectacled man with a hearing aid push an enormous two-pronged broom casually down the center of the store.

“You like things clean and tidy?” said the manager. “Then this really is the place for you. We need you.”

Joe turned slowly in the middle of the mosaic; his soft brown eyes scanned his surroundings. He liked the bright white background and the shiny white floors. He liked that customers moved around like slow-moving traffic, never bumping into each other. Where he could see that the bottles and cans and clothes and books were neatly stacked, he felt comfortable, but when he saw something out of place, on its side, or out of alignment, it snagged his senses like a rough fingernail.

There was the girl again: at southeast. He watched as she moved to east-southeast and put something on a shelf. Her black bobbed hair was a sharp contrast to the white store, and nothing about her looked out of place; she looked like she completely belonged. She was cool; Joe recognized that. She saw him watching and gave a little wave and another one of her gappy smiles.

Print Reading Group Guide