The names didn't matter. No one thought they did; no one thought about them at all. They were just placeholders, numbers expressed as proper nouns. Even the stores' names didn't matter. No one was bothered by the fact that Best Buy was as ridiculously hackneyed a name as Downy fabric softener or Ivory soap. It didn't matter. 1995 was long past the point where people took postmodern pleasure in mocking mid-century advertising literalism. It was the lifestyle associations that mattered, and the name that they were associated with was nothing but a handle, an icon, an empty plastic bucket. Coke could just as easily have been -- was, in fact -- Pepsi, Snickers Baby Ruth, McDonald's Burger King, Popeyes Church's KFC. Even Dennis' own employer's name was merely an unfortunate historical accident that no one paid attention to. It didn't matter if the founder's name was or wasn't Walton any more than it mattered that that long-dead man's long-dead company had once proudly wrapped its stores in banners that read "100% Made In America." Buying American was a lifestyle myth once profitable to market to; no longer. Buying at Chinese Prices Always took its place. One day it too would die. It wouldn't matter if the sign out front said Walton's Five-and-Ten or Shanghai Mart or Accenture Global Tradeplace LLC; the candy bins would always be up front. Across the parking lot, the Fernglen or Glenlake or Lakewood 12 would keep shoveling out ever-larger grocery bags of popcorn and hogsheads of fountain soda and keep tearing out seats to accommodate the wheelchairs of those whose ankles couldn't bear their body weight; on every corner, the McTaco Burger Churches would keep slinging ever-larger quantities of ever-cheaper salt-and-sugar delivery devices and keep adding additional drive-through windows for its ever-growing base of customers who were too ashamed to, or physically incapable of, getting out of their cars.
Excerpt from American Inferno, Circle 3: Gluttony. Work in progress.
