It is doubtful that Emile had ever loved Melissa, had ever experienced a genuine impulse of love for anyone but himself and the ghost of his father. He thought now and then of Melissa, always concluding that he was blameless; that whatever suffering she endured was no responsibility of his. He killed some time after he was fired from Narobi’s and presently went to work at the new supermarket on the hill—the one with a steeple. He was employed nominally as a stock boy but when Mr. Freeley, the manager, took him on, he explained that he would have another mission. The market had then been open two months but business was poor and the housewives of the village, like indulged children, were capricious and sometimes ill-tempered from the lack in their lives of the tonic forces of longing and need. Mr. Freeley had seen them storm his doors on opening day and take away the fresh orchid corsage that was given to each customer, but when the flowers were all gone he had seen them return with something like heartlessness to their old friends, the Grand Union and the A & P. They swarmed like locusts, exhausting his below-cost specials and buying the rest of their groceries somewhere else. His market, he thought, was a thing of splendor. The broad glass doors opened at a beam of light onto a museum of victuals—galleries and galleries of canned goods, heaps of frozen poultry and, over by the fish department, a little lighthouse above a tank of sea water in which lobsters swam. The air was full of music and soft lights. There were diversions for the children and delicacies for the gourmet but nobody—almost nobody—ever came his way.
The store was one of a chain and the capriciousness of the spoiled housewives had been calculated by the statisticians in the central office. The ladies were incapable of fidelity and could be counted upon, sooner or later, to find their idle way into Mr. Freeley’s museum. One only had to wait and keep the place resplendent. But the ladies delayed longer than the statisticians had expected and Mr. Freeley was finally given an exploitation package. On Easter Eve a thousand plastic eggs were to be hidden in the grass of the village. All of them contained certificates redeemable at the store for a dozen country-fresh eggs. Twenty of them contained certificates redeemable for a two-ounce bottle of costly French perfume. Ten of them contained certificates redeemable for an outboard motor and five of them—golden ones—were good for a three-week, all-expense vacation for two at a luxury hotel in Madrid, Paris, London, Venice or Rome. The response was terrific and the store filled up with customers. They reasoned that the eggs would be hidden by someone who worked at the store and they intended to find out which clerk it was. “It has been our experience,” Mr. Freeley read in the explanatory literature, “that there is among the housewives in any community a large number who will stop at nothing to ascertain the identity of the egg-hiders and the probable position of the eggs. This has led in some instances to an astonishing display of immorality.” It was Emile that Mr. Freeley hired to hide the eggs. Had he checked with Narobi’s he wouldn’t have hired Emile at all but he thought the boy’s face clear and even virtuous. He told Emile the details in his office. He had been given a chart explaining where the eggs were to be hidden. They were to be hidden between two and three on the morning of Easter. Emile would be paid above his salary a stipend of twenty-five dollars and in order to insure secrecy Mr. Freeley would not speak to him again until Easter Eve. In the meantime Emile would stamp cans.
