Feel Good, Then Move On
From “Fuckface,” by Leah Hampton:
In the back, I didn’t know where to hide that she wouldn’t come looking for me. All I could think was to go in Fuckface’s office. Nobody ever went in there. I bolted straight for the door that said “MANAGER,” squeaked inside, saw an old green filing cabinet, and ducked behind it. I crouched low with my head down in my hands and sat there a long time.
After a few minutes, I heard Carter’s voice say, “Uh, sir? Have you seen that girl Pretty, the one with the buzz cut?”
I looked up. Fuckface was at his big metal manager’s desk, looking right at me. Carter was on the other side of the cabinet and couldn’t see me. Fuckface just stared. His eyes always looked kind of bugged, so it probably didn’t seem strange to Carter, but I thought he was going to shoot lasers at me out of those eyes. They were bright blue. It freaked me out.
Fuckface turned his head toward Carter, but he kept looking at me. Then he said, real soft, “Check the walk-in fridges. I don’t want her smoking that contraption of hers in there.”
At this point in the action, it’s clear even from this snippet that the bulk of this story’s paths have developed.
You know that Pretty is on the run from someone.
You know Fuckface — the manager of Food Country — is alone, as usual, away from the machinations of the rest of the grocery store.
You know Pretty is a little afraid of the office (“Nobody ever went in there”) and of her manager (“I thought he was going to shoot lasers at me”).
You know the managers and staff tend to respect the employee hierarchy.
What’s missing at this point is the bulk of Fuckface’s character. The author hasn’t revealed it yet. You only know him on a previous page as a loner — “he just kept to himself” — and have to wait until this moment to confirm that he’s exactly where you and Pretty should expect.
So what happens when you run into a sort-of-scary manager’s office and hide behind their filing cabinet? If the manager’s office is in a Leah Hampton story, this action solidifies the relationship between two (or more) characters and references an entire genre for multiple gains of self.
Heavy.
Fuckface doesn’t know what Pretty is running from. Even if he did, this would be odd behavior. You’d think that any reasonable manager would say “That’s enough” or some phrase adults like to use when they’re in charge.
He doesn’t, though. And as a result, it’s funny and enlightening and, because of Hampton’s positioning of it later in the story, puts an enjoyable twist on the classic storyline of Outwardly Mean Person With A Heart Of Gold.
Hampton gives you nearly everything at once. She subverts the overused Heart Of Gold pacing where you see a character generally be a grump throughout the story until the last possible moment. Instead, she does the opposite by encapsulating the whole of Fuckface into this ridiculous scene that’s built on the rickety scaffold of “he just kept to himself.”
It’s like Hampton inserted the whole Heart of Gold trope, and all the books it has consumed, into a couple paragraphs for a laugh and a jab at the genre where everything works out in the end. Moreover, we get to move past the tiredness of the trite.
Don’t forget: there’s still more story to read.
Pretty might stop hiding. Fuckface might leave for the day. Despite their bonding here, this isn’t a Feel Good ending. Hampton has deeper issues to resolve.