Time to Go (13 page)

“I knew you wouldn't like it.”

“I haven't told you I didn't like it a hundred times before?”

“But you never said you wanted them removed. You intimated. You alluded to. But you never said ‘removed,' Let me sleep, though. I worked hard today. You worked hard today. The whole world did. But I can only sleep for myself.”

“First hear my reasons when I've got a clear head of them and then see if you don't agree that the partitions have to go. Mind if I turn on the light on my side?”

“I can see I don't have a chance now to do anything I want including to mind, but hold it a second,” and he covered his eyes with his hands, said “Okay, I'm ready, turn it on.”

She turned on the light. “Before—”

“Oh, before,” he said.

“Yes, before, I'm saying, and let me finish some more before you speak. Before the partitions were put in—well, maybe up till around five years ago—we had an excellent business and wonderful customers who we communicated with on a first-name basis with almost every one of them. They knew us, we knew them, and something about each other's families and lives. Then the neighborhood changed. Lots of transients or people who didn't want conversation started buying from us and most of the ones we knew and liked moved out. Just about the only people in the last five years we could really still talk to were some of the university teachers and students who still lived around here because they were fairly poor themselves or didn't know better we'll say or just desperate for a place, and who always like to talk to us a lot too. You know it for a fact yourself. Well say something, because you have to admit what I've said so far is true.”

“I can speak now?” he said.

“Sure, why not?”

“So far nothing you've said is really that new or worth my staying awake for that much—I'm sorry.”

“That's not so. Anyway, to go on, one new student or teacher would come in and either you or I, and not planned either or to make a steady customer, would say to him or her something like ‘I bet you're from the university there,' and then ask what subject he studied or taught and what city and state and even country he came from and how they liked living in Baltimore and so on.”

“Please get to the point.”

“The point is we enjoyed talking to them, these last interesting people who were left. And showing them our wine selection and giving them favored treatment in a way and a percentage off if they buy by the case, because they were very nice people who spoke to us like we were more than just store owners with only something to sell and nothing to say. But now?”

“Now we can't talk to them so much because of the glass. I know.”

“Not only is it we can't. It's that these same university people won't even come in anymore because of it. They think it's not human or uncivilized but definitely something awful where it does something to them inside and that they'd walk or drive five to ten streets more for a bottle of wine of even a lesser kind for the same or even more money and nothing off on the case, just to avoid that dehumanizing glass. That's what one of them said when I met him by accident downtown. The Reynolds boy from Idaho, a premed, remember? Dehumanizing, he said. ‘I like to browse,' he said, ‘—pick up the wine, look at the label and see where it comes from and not feel I'm buying it from a pressure tank or fish tank or whatever he called it, ‘and not with the next robber outside about to come in and hit me on the head.' Not even some of the customers we never spoke two words to like to order now through that horrible speaking hole. So I don't care anymore—”

“You want it removed,” he said. “Four times we're attempted or robbed by knife or gunpoint in the year before we put in that glass and not a robbery or attempt since, but you want it removed. Brilliant.”

“You like it?”

“The glass? I hate it like the plague. But what do you want me to do, risk our lives again without it? To tell you the truth, while you were just thinking before about getting the partitions removed, I was thinking of from now on or starting sometime soon, working one hour less a day. That's all I want.”

“All right. Work one hour less. We'll close earlier.”

“I was thinking of opening up later.”

“Both. We'll open an hour later and close an hour earlier. But we'll give ourselves two more hours of nonwork a day.”

“Wait. I was only thinking it, I wasn't so much saying we have to do it. Let's talk about it this week some more.”

“No. It's a terrific idea. We're going to do it. Better for our health. Certainly better for your health, because you're way too heavy and also can't take the long hours so much anymore. So, done. We work ten to seven starting tomorrow. When Donald hears it he'll love you for making that decision and making it so decisively. He's always wanted us to work much less.”

“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.