“He wants us to give up the store entirely.”
“Easy for, him to say when he has a wonderful job and sun all year and a gorgeous home which he got from his good education that we paid for out of money that only came from the store.”
“You’re going to fault him for that?” he said. “Our only child? He didn’t deserve to get the best we could afford and more?”
“Yes he did. I wasn’t saying that. Anyway, starting tomorrow—even starting today if you want to sleep late, we open the store at ten and close at seven. So we make a little less money, but it’ll be nice having a normal dinner for a change that isn’t on Sunday. Now what about taking down the glass too?”
“And putting up what in its place?”
“Nothing. Air. Listen, both of us are miserable behind the glass, so why keep it up?”
“Because we have to. The thieves see us taking it down, they’ll think we’ve lost our senses or are just feeling cocky and in one day they’ll cure us of that. Next time they hit us we might not be so lucky.”
“Don’t talk like that. We’ll always be lucky. We were lucky when we got together and even luckier when we had such a nice boy. A little bad luck but mostly it was good. And neither of us has been very sick since we got married, thank God,” and she tapped the headboard, “and Donald almost never sick too. And we have a little money put away and a paid-up house and neighbors who like us, and better family relations nobody could have more. So we’ll be lucky and we’ll be happy with the partitions down too. We’ll bring out the wine again and show customers around. We’ll breathe better if maybe not as lightly for a while. Besides, the neighborhood’s improving.”
“It’s the same it was a year ago and maybe worse. And our insurance rates will go up again.”
“So they’ll go up. So we’ll take that in stride and make up for what we lose with the new insurance rates by gaining in the sale of more wine and beer. And milk. What person in his right mind wants to buy milk through a glass partition?”
“Lots have.”
“But more will with the partitions down. And those college kids and their professors. I want them back. I miss talking and being educated by them. Please, Larry. I haven’t asked for much. I didn’t want those partitions, but I gave in.”
“It was a compromise.”
“Please, Larry. Nothing bad will happen again in the store—I know it.”
“Something will happen. A robbery.”
“Then let’s sell the store and buy another in a better neighborhood.”
“We’d get almost nothing for it except for the stock and I couldn’t start over some place else.”
“Then the partitions have to come down and we hope for the best. Really, it’s that or my not working there anymore. It’s driving me crazy as you can see, and I know it’s driving you crazy too.”
“It’s driving me, all right. But let me think.” He lay his head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. A few minutes later he said “Rose, you up?”
“Sure, I’ve been waiting.”
“Okay, the glass comes down. But we still open the store an hour later once we get all set up, okay?”
“I thought closing an hour earlier too.”
“No, one thing at a time. We want to see how things work out.”
The partitions were taken down that week, the entire store was painted and brighter lights were put in. They hired a security guard to be in the store all day. They were a little frightened when they opened the store again, but both began feeling much easier when they learned from several new customers that some of the more dilapidated buildings in the neighborhood had been bought by young people in the last few months and that nobody had heard of a store being robbed by someone with a knife or gun in almost half a year.
The students and professors became their customers again and Larry and Rose acted as they always had with them: learning their names, asking where they came from, talking about their own son and how well he had done at that same university, escorting them around the store and pointing out two or three wines that were particularly good for the price and which that person might be interested in by the bottle or the case. Then a month later two men came in, showed their pistols, one on the guard and the other back and forth on Larry and Rose, and demanded all the money in the cash register and safe.
Larry, taking the money out of the safe, said “I thought you guys were gone for good.” The man said “shut up—not another word—or get a bullet through your nose.”
The men got all the money from the store and from Larry’s and the guard’s wallets and Rose’s pocketbook, and left. Larry phoned the police, locked the door and put the “Closed” sign up and said “I think for maybe the first time in my life, or maybe since that first or second robbery here, I’m going to break the law in our store and open a bottle of scotch and have a shot. Rose?” She shook her head. He opened a bottle, the best scotch they had. The guard was still shaking. Larry said “Excuse me, I was just thinking of myself, but I think you need one too.”
“No, I never drink,” the guard said. “Just like I told you when I got the job. A glass of milk will do me if you want someone to drink with, and I think my stomach can use it.”
Larry drank several shots, the guard drank from a milk carton, Rose said she was still so nervous that maybe she’d have a little scotch from Larry’s glass. The police came, reports were filled out, the police said they’d do their best in trying to find the robbers but for Larry and Rose not to get their hopes up, and left. The guard helped Larry put the gates up on the front of the store, then said “So what time you want me in tomorrow—same as usual?”
“No, better you not come in at all,” Larry said. “Nothing personal, but I’ve some thinking to do. No partition glass, too many robberies, our lives in danger and same with yours—what’s a store owner to do? If I need you and you’re not working in some other store by the time I call, I’ll try to get you back.”
During the car ride home Rose said to Larry “So what are we going to do?”
“I was about to ask you.”
“Risk our lives again with no glass of course. What do you say?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I was only kidding. One of us has to have a sense of humor about this. But no partitions again, Larry. I couldn’t live with them a week.”
“Same here. But what else—an armed guard? One with a gun who’ll try to stop them?”
“First, can we afford one? No. They make almost twice as much as the club guards, plus carry more insurance, and you can’t get one to stay for more than seven working hours a day and only five days a week. And a robber comes in and one not afraid of a guard with a gun, and there are some, then we got fireworks and maybe with us and a customer in between.”
“Then we have to sell the store. You know we’ll practically have to give it away.”
“The stock’s worth a lot.”
“It’s worth more than a lot. But what kind of package store will we have without stock?”
“We’ll open something else.”
“I don’t want to open anything else. At this point in my life I only want to open what I know.”
“Well, open a package store almost anywhere else in the city, and if we don’t have those partitions again they’ll come in and get us once a month. I say we give up the whole thing, invest the money from the sale of the store and stock, and both of us go work for someone else.”
“What about just my working for someone else and you can stay home and sleep late and do what you want and everything you ever deserved. Cooking more. Meetings. Being with your sister and developing some close friends. Going to school and getting as smart as you could have got if you didn’t thirty years ago feel you had to go waste your life by working in the store with me.”
“I worked in it because you wanted to work with someone honest and you wanted my company.”
“That’s true,” he said. “And it wasn�
��t a waste. But what do you say? You always wanted more time for yourself and to visit Donald where he is and to go to school. We’ll live maybe not as well as we have, but I’ll get a job only in the safest of stores, so we’ll at least live knowing we’ll be alive the next day. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do, unless you insist on getting a job too.”
“Actually, the way you present it makes it sound very nice. Maybe I’ll even be taught by some of the professors who come into the store.”
“I don’t think so. They only teach students for credit.”
“Some of them said they also teach in the adult division for extra cash.”
“If that’s the case, then you will. And they’ll know you and give you good marks.”
“They don’t give marks in adult education.”
“Why not? For all the tuition and work you put in, you ‘ll be cheated if you don’t get them. But that’s what we’ll settle on, okay? Unless you can come up with something better.”
“A dinner tonight in a restaurant would be nice,” she said.
“I’m still so shaken inside from the robbery, I think it’d be wasted on me. I just want to have a small quiet dinner, a little television and then go to bed.”
“After dinner all I want is to read and read, because tomorrow I can sleep as late as I want.”
“We have a lot to do though.”
“We can give ourselves a day.”
“We’re still paying rent on the store, and the utilities. And soon as we sell everything, I have to get a good job.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. They pulled into their street.
“You know what else I think I’ll start doing with all my free time if I also don’t get a job? Inviting some of those students and professors from the store for dinner at our house. Some of them are very lonely. I’m sure they’ll like it.”
“If you do, those nights I’d be sure to get home for dinner on time.”
He parked the car, squeezed her hand, they went into the house.
II
Will’s Book
There’s a young woman in my building’s vestibule. She’s smiling at me as I walk down the outside steps and open the door. I’ve my keys out and am holding a box of books. Do I know her? Someone I’ve only been corresponding with and never seen and who was suddenly in town or around the neighborhood and decided to drop in? There are those. Happened before at least twice. She says “Hi, I’m Denise,” and unfolds what looks like a power of attorney of several pages and with a back and front cover and bound at top.
“Hello. Anything I can do for you?” I say.
“Yes you can, a lot. Which one are you?”
“Which one what?”
“I bet you’re Taub. You have to be, for yours is the only mailbox with no matchbook in the slit, which is why I’ve been ringing your bell the most. I thought the rest were out.”
“I’ve been out all day too.”
“Well I thought you picked up your matchbook on your way in before, went out again for a brief errand we’ll say and were only now coming back.”
“No.” I look at the mailbox. All of them have matchbooks in the slits but mine. I take one of the matchbooks out of another tenant’s slit and see it’s an ad for a new hair clinic on Broadway. Afros, facials, pedicures, hair straightening, hairpieces and unisex permanents and haircuts.
“Want this? That tenant’s away and I don’t smoke.”
“Very nice of you, thanks. I can always use an extra pack.” “And the reason nobody answered your rings before is none of the bells work.”
“So that’s why. But you sure you didn’t take your matchbook from your mailbox and then go out? Usually I’m right on things like that.”
“I haven’t even taken my mail yet.” I open my mailbox. Three return manila envelopes and a circular and the telephone bill from the day before.
“That’s a lot more mail than I get in a day. You must do all right or have loads of friends. But now let me tell you what I was doing all my bell ringing and hanging around here for and how you can vote for me today.”
She points to a photograph on the folder’s first page. “That’s me and these are my credentials, so you know nothing’s funny and I’m not here to clean out your home.”
“If this has anything to do with a magazine subscription, you’ve the wrong guy. I’m dead broke.”
“No, what I got for you is even worse than that. You see, that’s my name, Denise Waters. My photo, like a passport photo, though it’s not a good likeness, as passport photos never are. And my age, height and eye color, just so nobody exchanges photos on me and goes around with my binder doing my business what I’m about to describe to you. Do you recognize me?”
“Yes, the photo’s you.”
“I’m supposed to ask you that, which is why it might sound stupid to you. And the height, five-three, and blue eyes, or are, under these shades. Okay. I’m from N-A-B.”
“For the National Association of Booklovers or something I think I recall.”
“So you know us. Then you know all us students and the organization we’re doing this for are honest and straight.”
“One of your members was around about a year ago. Same thing.
The subscriber votes a certain amount of votes for you through the number of subscriptions he buys, and in the end the student who sells the most subscriptions gets the most votes and wins thousands of dollars.”
“One thousand, and not for the most subscriptions. Some are worth seven and eight times as many votes as others, like one to Vogue over a slim comic book. Though if you take a comic book subscription for ten years we’ll say, fat or slim, that’s good too and maybe better than two years to Playboy or Vogue. But that’s not even the worst part of what I’m here to do to you.”
“What else?”
“You see, I want that thousand dollars. I need it. And I’m going to get it, so I’m sure you can afford to put down at least a few hundred votes for me.”
“I can’t. Nothing.”
“Let me explain. I have nineteen thousand so far. That’s a lot of votes but not even enough to make the semifinals. I need a thousand more and only then I’m in the running for the grand prize. Twenty thousand votes gets me the chance to sell subscriptions for another week against what could be the other thousand semifinalists. And if I get more votes than the rest of them, which I will, the thousand dollars is mine. So you’ll help me, won’t you? I worked this hard, you don’t want to see me suddenly fail. Take any magazine here for a year—the cheapest is worth at least fifty votes for me.” She opens the folder and shows me two pages filled with the names of magazines and how many votes a subscription to each of them is worth for one, two, five and ten years.
“I wish I could, Denise. Honestly, I wish I could.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Will.”
“That’s a nice name—Will. What do you do?”
“A waiter.”
“You don’t look like one. You’re too nice. But I bet you make lots of tips being that way.”
“I only started Monday. I owe two months rent and will probably have to borrow to pay it and some other bills. Lights, gas. This phone bill here.”
“Please, something says you’re fooling me, Will. You’re no waiter. You’re not the type to let yourself get that far behind. What do you really work as?”
“I’m a waiter. Other times I’m a writer. Waiter, writer. When I save enough, just a writer. And sometimes when I’m waiting and not too tired, I do both, but not as much writing as waiting. Now I can’t do any writing I’m so bushed. The first week or two of going back to waiting does that.”
“I believe you now. What’s in the box, books? They look like them.”
“Five hardcovers, five soft, of an anthology I’m in. My. first book. Arrived yesterday but the box was too big to stick in my mailbox so I had to pick it up at the post office,”
“Well if you’re someone famo
us who makes piles of money from writing in books and all, then I know you can help me with a hundred votes.”
“I didn’t get any money for this. Just the books.”
“They got to be worth money if you sell them.”
“I’ll probably just give them away to friends and my library and keep two.”
“Can I see?” She sticks her hand in the box, pulls out a hardcover. “Let me try and find you.” She reads my name off the mailbox nameplate, turns the book over a few times and says “The cover’s black except for a sprinkling of white dots running through the middle of it on both sides. What is it, a photograph of a string of pearls like on a necklace strung out but shot in the dark or so?”
“Night lights from a bridge I think. I’m not absolutely sure.”
“This is a book about bridges? I love bridges. The symbol of them, connecting. Going over things, making traveling easier.”
“It’s fiction. An anthology of. Like a story collection of one person though in here of different writers, but not all the stories about bridges of course. Maybe none of them. I haven’t read any of the stories yet but mine.”
“Don’t play with me, Will. If it’s an anthology of stories, I know they can’t all be about bridges. I read. I like reading. But I like famous people more. To me anybody who has something in any book is famous. Even if he didn’t write the book but just has his name in it for something he did, no matter how bad. But let me see if I can find you.”
“My name’s inside with the others.”
“If it isn’t and you’re also not in the index, then you’re not in the book, right? But I’m sure you weren’t lying.” She opens the book to the first two blank pages and stares at them.
“Go further.”
“No, I was only looking. Still all black but now no lights. Bridge in the night with no stars or cars or lights on it it could be. Just guessing.” She turns the page. “The Black Book. That’s the title. And black page with red lettering this time. Very devilish. I think I’m getting the gist of your book now. Edited by Ralph and Ernestine von Blake. That’s not you.”
Time to Go Page 11
