Looking for Jake by China Miéville Read Free Book Online Page B

just
ride
it out, then before you know it you’ve got two. And so on.
    â€œYou’ve been here a while, right John? You saw this place before it closed. These crazy little rooms are a fantastic hit with kids. We have them in all our stores now. You’d think it would be an extra, right? A nice-to-have. But I tell you, John, kids love these places, and kids . . . well, kids are really, really important to this company.”
    The doors were propped open by now and he had me help him carry a portable desk from the show floor into the ball room.
    â€œKids
make
us, John. Nearly forty percent of our customers have young children, and most of those cite the kid-friendliness of our stores as one of the top two or three reasons they come here. Above quality of product. Above
price.
You drive here, you eat, it’s a day out for the family.
    â€œOkay, so that’s one thing. Plus, it turns out that people who are shopping for their kids are much more aware of issues like safety and quality. They spend way more per item, on average, than singles and childless couples, because they want to know they’ve done the best for their kids. And our margins on the big-ticket items are way healthier than on entry-level product. Even low-income couples, John, the proportion of their income that goes on furniture and household goods just rockets up at pregnancy.”
    He was looking around him at the balls, bright in the ceiling lights that hadn’t been on for months, at the ruined skeleton of the Wendy house.
    â€œSo what’s the first thing we look at when a store begins to go wrong? The facilities. The crèche, the childcare. Okay, tick. But the results here have been badly off-kilter recently. All the stores have shown a dip, of course, but this one, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, it’s not just revenues are down, but traffic has sunk in a way that’s completely out of line. Usually, traffic is actually surprisingly resilient in a downturn. People buy less, but they keep coming. Sometimes, John, we even see numbers go
up.
    â€œBut here? Visits are down overall. Proportionally, traffic from couples with children is down even more. And
repeat
traffic from couples with children has dropped through the floor. That’s what’s unusual with this store.
    â€œSo why aren’t they coming back as often? What’s different here? What’s changed?” He gave a little smile and looked ostentatiously around, then back at me. “Okay? Parents can still leave their kids in the crèche, but the kids aren’t asking their parents for repeat visits like they used to. Something’s missing. Ergo. Therefore. We need it back.”
    He laid his briefcase on the desk and gave me a wry smile.
    â€œYou know how it is. You tell them and tell them to fix things as they happen, but do they listen? Because it isn’t them who have to patch it up, right? So then you end up with not one problem but two. Twice as much trouble to bring under control.” He shook his head ruefully. He was looking around the room, into all the corners, narrowing his eyes. He took a couple of deep breaths.
    â€œOkay, John, listen, thanks for all your help. I’m going to need a few minutes here. Why don’t you go watch some TV, get yourself a coffee or something? I’ll come find you in a while.”
    I told him I’d be in the staff room. I turned away and heard him open his case. As I left I peered through the glass wall and tried to see what he was laying out on the desk. A candle, a flask, a dark book. A little bell.
    Visitor numbers are back up. We’re weathering the recession remarkably well. We’ve dropped some of the deluxe product and introduced a back-to-basic raw pine range. The store has actually taken on more staff recently than it’s let go.
    The kids are happy again. Their obsession with the ball room refuses to die. There’s a little arrow outside it, a