Larry Jenkins started working at the Newbury Linoleum factory in the summer of '61. He was eighteen and the drummer in a rock-n-roll band that was going to be big one day. In the meantime, though, he needed a day job and linoleum was it, daddy-o.

Mr. Kincaid, the senior floor manager, a middle-aged man with thick-framed glasses and a pot belly that strained the buttons on his shirt, showed him around the grounds.

The loud factory floor where giant machines mixed the flax and oil solutions -- compressing and dyeing until it rolled out the other end as flat sheets wrapped around long spindles -- couldn't have interested Larry less.

The glassed-in offices that overlooked the final production hall were nominally more interesting, but still pretty yawningly square. The identical desks and primly-smiling secretaries all reminded him uncomfortably of his mother.

The canteen was roomy, but had an odd smell to it. "Cabbage?" Larry asked.

"Cabbage," Mr. Kincaid confirmed, with a knowing tilt of the head.

Larry nodded and followed the manager through the back loading docks and out into the front showroom.

This would be where Larry was going to spend his days.

The large, plate-glass window revealed an expansive view of the customer parking lot, a highway exit on a grassy slope rising behind it. "So you can see the customers coming," Mr. Kincaid explained.

Two crystal chandeliers hung from a low ceiling, lighting the thick, burgundy carpet and yellowish floor tiles. Display stands and racks of samples dotted the room that customers could flip through like thick, glossy magazines. A spiral staircase twisted up to a gallery where the new-fangled vinyl samples could be found. Should anybody be interested.

Vinyl.

The mere mention of the word made Larry's eyes glaze over in a way that Mr. Kincaid took for interest, and he lumbered up the stairs to show Larry the new patterns and explain the chemical compounds at length. Larry smiled and nodded the whole time, little 45s of his band's songs dancing in his head.

Coming back down the stairs, Larry noticed a neon sign bolted into the wall on the far end. This Must Be The Place it said in illuminated, mint-green letters that didn't match anything in the room – and yet somehow did.

"Oh, that." The manager waved a dismissive hand. "That's been here since the 40s. It's to make people think "this must be the place where you can get pretty flooring" or something like that."

Larry readjusted the unaccustomed tie around his neck and nodded.

At the end of the first month when he was offered a permanent job based on Mr. Kincaid's recommendation, Larry whispered to the faintly buzzing neon sign as he left to go home: "This must be the place where I'm gonna work until I get famous. Just you wait and see."

1963 found Larry standing at the front of the empty showroom staring out the windows at the cars passing by on the highway, but not really seeing them. His band had just broken up after three years of trying and failing to get more than local gigs.

"Sorry, man," Eddie, the bassist had said as he clapped a hand on Larry's shoulder. "Helen wants me to quit. We need to save for a house of our own which means I have to get serious about a steady job. You're coming to the wedding, aren't you?"

Sure he was, and he had. But bitterness had risen in his throat and soured his expression so badly during the ceremony, he knew the other guests assumed he was secretly in love with Helen.

After that, the rest of the guys had jumped ship one by one, abandoning their dreams for a one-way ticket to Squaresville. They called it "growing up," but it lacked a backbeat and that electrifying feeling of being a part of something big. And now? Would he have to give it up, too?

Larry shoved his hands in his pockets.

He didn't hear the door to the showroom open or the clacking of quickly approaching heels. It was the sob that made him turn. One of the secretaries was standing there, black streaks of mascara running down her cheeks.

"The President's been shot. They just said on the news." Another sob made her raise a hand to cover her mouth and a fresh torrent of tears welled up in her eyes. She started to say something more, but then shook her head and turned, running back the way she'd come.

Larry looked around the showroom as if seeing it for the first time, small details he'd never really noticed jumping out at him in blinding sharpness. Kennedy was dead? How. . . how was that possible?

His eyes roamed aimlessly around the room until they finally came to rest on the neon sign glowing calmly on the far wall.

This must be the place where I was when the whole world fell apart, he thought, and turned back around to stare out the window.

1967 presented Larry with a promotion to junior floor manager and his first citation for unseemly conduct.

Doris was her name and he'd met her at music club two cities away. He'd told her he was a musician with a signed record deal. She'd looked him up and down, one eye closed against the smoke of her cigarette, and then said, "Cool, 'cause I'm a groupie," and cackled so hard she'd nearly tumbled off the bar stool.

Doris was about the most opposite thing from square Larry could imagine and he'd ended up under her tie-dyed sheets that very night, thinking he'd found the woman of his dreams.

Her drugs were also pretty righteous.

He told himself – and her – that he loved her, because whenever he was with Doris, it was like his band was still together and anything was possible. For months, Larry coasted on a cloud of sex, music, Mary Jane and Doris.

And, of course, he did everything to cover up the fact that he sold linoleum. She found out anyway.

"Larry!"

He hadn't seen her rusted out Beetle careen into the parking lot, but there she was, standing in the middle of the showroom door.

"Excuse me," he'd said to the couple he'd been helping and rushed over the carpet towards her, but she was faster and they met in the middle of the showroom. "Doris! What are you doing here?" he whispered as he tried to catch hold of her arm. She jerked it away.

"So you DO sell lino . . .lino. . .this freaking garbage!" she roared, waving her hands wildly around in circles. "I didn't believe 'em before, but I'm believin' 'em NOW. Musician MY ASS."

"A friend of yours?" It was Mr. Kincaid, his eyebrows raised to the level of his hairline. Larry looked helplessly from his manager to his girlfriend.

Doris swayed as she attempted to focus on the gate-crasher. "A friend of his? A girlfriend of his, Fatso! But not any longer. I'm here to DUMP HIM."

She turned to Larry. "I'm here to DUMP YOU."

"Doris, please. Let's talk about this outside."

"A very good idea," agreed Mr. Kincaid, glancing over at the couple who was following the whole show with unabashed interest.

Doris fixed him with an evil look. "I don't want to talk outside. In fact, I don't want to talk to THIS JACK ASS ever again, you, you. . ." she couldn't find the word and so she turned and wobbled her way back towards the door.

Half way there, she stopped abruptly, reeling backwards a few paces before catching herself.

"THIS MUST BE THE PLACE," she screamed, pointing at the neon sign, "the place where lino-lee-o sales robots who claaaaaaim they're musicians work! Lying bastards! Fuck 'em!" She flipped the bird to the sign and then disappeared out the door and out of Larry's life.

"This is going to have consequences," said Mr. Kincaid, softly.

"Of course," Larry answered.

1970 gave Larry the scare of a lifetime, and promoted him to senior floor manager in the space of one afternoon.

It was a Tuesday, just a normal Tuesday. There were no customers in the showroom and Larry was dusting the sample racks, humming a song that was on heavy rotation on the radio. Mr. Kincaid was just coming down the stairs from the upper gallery where he'd been slotting in new samples when he fell, sliding down the last nine or ten steps face first.

Turning his head just in time to seeing his manager's body crumple oddly as it fell from the bottom step, Larry dropped the duster and ran to him as fast as he could, his heart beating wildly.

Larry pulled at Mr. Kincaid until he was lying flat on the ground. Wrenching off his manager's tie, Larry kept screaming at him to breathe, but all the man could do was make gasping sounds like a fish out of water, his face turning a deep, dangerous red.

"I'm going to get help. Can you hear me? I'm going to get help."

Larry raced to the offices, yelling for someone to call an ambulance, Mr. Kincaid had fallen badly. One of the secretaries reacted immediately, picking up the phone on her desk and starting to dial as Larry ran back to the showroom, two secretaries with the first aid kit right on his heels.

"He's having a stroke," one of them, an older woman with pinched features, pronounced after taking one look at the man prone on the floor. "Gloria, run back to the office and tell the ambulance people to step on it," she said, sitting down on the last step and grasping Mr. Kincaid's hand in her own.

Larry stood there, shifting from one foot to the other, not knowing what to do as the minutes ticked by. He felt cold and the yawning pit of the unknown opened up before him, threatening to suck him in. Finally, the wail of a siren sounded in the distance, and everything blurred in front of his eyes.

Far too frightened to stay in the showroom – he couldn't bear to see what was coming – Larry fled out the back door and onto the loading docks. As he passed the gently humming, warm neon sign, he thought, this must be the place where Mr. Kincaid died and prayed he was wrong.

He was, but the stroke left his manager partially paralyzed. After two weeks, Larry was called into the big boss' office. "Looks like you're our new senior floor manager, Mr. Jenkins," he said. "Comes with a pay raise and a week extra vacation. How do you like the sound of that?"

"Wonderful, sir" Larry said, but couldn't bring himself to be happy about it in the least.

1974 saw Larry finally walking down the aisle and buying his own one-way ticket to Squaresville.

Her name was Shawna and she was delighted he had such a good job. He wasn't madly in love with her, but they fit together well. That was something Larry was coming to value more than wild nights or pilgriming to music festivals all summer.

He still played drums on occasion, and a badly-cut album still could make him fuss that he could do it better, but by and large, he had no more desire to be a famous musician.

The night he locked up before leaving to go on his honeymoon, Larry stood in front of the mint-green neon sign for a few minutes, letting the soft glow of it light up his face and hands.

This must be the place where I'm going to stay, he whispered to it, and had the feeling it had known that all along.