“I won’t be too long,” said his wife. “I’ll meet you back in, say, 45 minutes. Tops. Don’t be late again. Not in this weather.”
“Sure, sure,” he replied, edging back towards the car with three bundles of groceries in his arms.
“What did I say?” she asked.
He leaned over to put the bags on hood, hugging them to keep them from toppling over, and twisted as best he could.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“What did I just say?”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Oh. Umm,” He furrowed his eyebrows for a second thinking of her last words, why they were at this grocery store, then remembered. “That the Mennicks are coming over!” he said, smiling broadly at the recollection.
“Don’t you ever pay attention? I said get to me in me in 45 minutes. I’m just having my hair done.”
“Oh, yeah, well, of course, that goes without saying. I thought you meant before. 30 minutes. I’ll be back.”
“And pick up some wine. Decent. Ask the fellow in the liquor store. He’ll know. Cabernet, California. Spend at least $40. Make that $50. The Mennicks are snotty. Oh, and he likes his martinis so get some…”
“Gin…”
“Vodka, he likes vodka martinis as do I. Vodka. Get Kettle One. Do I need to write this down?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“You drive then.”
She wrote down a long list of instructions and put it under the clip that held many such notes on the dashboard of the wagon, shaking her head as she did so. His eyes glanced over towards the note, then shifted up to see a worker handling a jackhammer, his entire body bucking with its loud reverberations. “Cool,” he thought nodding his head in sync with it. “A jackhammer.”
“There!”
“Where?
“There. The salon. For goodness sake, I’ve only been there a few hundred times.”
“Right.”
“I sometimes think you’re half off, you know that?” she said as she got out of the car, tapping the note with the middle finger of her left hand as she did so. “45 minutes.” She shook her head and entered the salon. He noticed an exotic black woman, maybe Ethiopian he thought, open the door and offer his wife a waiting a cappuccino and a smile. “A model,” he thought. “I’ll bet she’s a model.” His wife spoke to the woman, who looked back at him, curious, seemed to giggle to herself, and closed the door.
He waved towards the door, and drove off, looking forward to the 45 minutes, no now 43 minutes he noticed on the clock, he’d have to himself with nothing to do. Nothing to do, he thought, maybe the library. To catch a nap maybe; it was raining too hard for a walk.
More roadwork was underway on the main street towards the library, slowing the traffic to a standstill, forcing him to take several turns around the edge of town, through parts he hadn’t been in in years. He slowed down, rubber necking at the bulldozers and back hoes, hardly hearing the honking behind him. He drove on. “Why so many banks?” he wondered – and then checked to see if he had cash in his wallet. He smiled passing the old stationary store, boarded up, and remembered buying comics there when he was a kid.
It was the source of some family tension. His mother hated comics and complained about the violence and scantily dressed women and, above even that, the ads for things like X-ray vision glasses and sea monkeys, which she insisted were just dried up bugs that would ‘stink to high heaven.’ He remembered her words.
He liked, no loved, Classic Comics Illustrated; those were his favorites. His dad would argue for him. “They’re educating the lad,” he’d say again and again. “They’re not merely comics, but the great works of all time, and history without all the fuss and bother. They’ll encourage him to go on learning, but in a fun way. “
His mother would raise her eyebrows and point out that “father” read those comics more than any great classics sitting around the house and they would both laugh at that. His dad would sneak a quarter or two into his pocket when he was going out, whispering to bring a new one home. And once in a while, his mom too.
On the next block, a ratty sporting goods shop had a permanent “Big Sale” sign painted on its window with all sorts of detritus lined up outside appearing as if it had been there for years. He slowed down again: wooden snowshoes, a toboggan, plastic flying saucers, and a target with a bow leaning on it. “A bow,” he thought, “I bet they have BB guns, inside.” He remembered buying his first baseball glove there and smiled again, until a driver behind him sat on the horn. “Alright, alright, keep your shirt on,” he said to no one, and noticed a woman shaking her head in his review mirror and then turning to yell at a boy playing with the window in the passenger seat.
And on the corner, with a decidedly worrisome wooden porch, stood the store where he spent most of his time and any money he had. The simple name said it all and didn’t need to say more:, The Hobby Shop. He pulled into an open parking spot as soon as he saw it getting yet another loud and steady honking from an angry looking man behind him who made a rude gesture as he passed. His eyes, however, only saw the old dusty window of the shop and the treasures that lay behind it.
Through the rippled glass, he saw boats, and tanks and cars, and monsters, and planes and rockets and, well, models upon models, some of which he thought had been there since he was a kid.
He had to force the door open, swollen from the rain, ringing a bell suspended from the door know that brought out the manager. “Need a hand, son?” Son, the man called him son. “No sir. No, just looking. Haven’t been here in, god, a hundred years.”
“Hundred years, huh? Quite a while, quite a while. You look good for your age. Can’t say I do. Can’t say I ever did come to think,” the older man said. “Well, welcome home. Holler if you need anything.”
“Will do,” he said.
“Oh, and half off.”
“Half off? Half off what?”
“Everything. Closing shop, son. Store going, too. Moving to, heck, moving somewhere warm is all I care about. When it goes.“
“Oh no. Why?”
“Well, put it this way. You’d be the 20th customer today if 19 others had come in today. As it is, you’re the first. Probably the last, frankly. Anyway, look about.”
Which is what he did. The old floors creaked as he went down the narrow aisles that had once made his eyes go wide and heart pound. There on the shelves were the balsa-wood planes he’d make with his father, the glow-in-the dark Frankenstein, Dracula and Wolfman – they still make them, he thought, or maybe never sold. The PT 109, Sherman tanks – he picked up a scrimshaw kit with a genuine ‘sperm whale tooth, the box covered in dust. It was marked $5.95.
The man peaked his head around the aisle corner. “Finding everything?”
“Yes, and more. Some of this stuff was here when I was a kid.”
“Models and such. They do take you back, you know. And, well, yes, that’s sort of the problem. That scrimshaw thing’s been here since Ismael brought it in.
He leaned closer, “Illegal these days I suspect.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Half off.”
“And this,” he said, grabbing the PT 109, then a Tiger Panzer tank kit. “Hold a sec.”
He went up and down the aisles grabbing more and more and bringing them to the front. “Paints, I’ll need paints, and glue, and X-Acto knives. Do you have those?”
“Well, yes. How about a complete set? I don’t think they make them anymore here. In US, I mean. This one’s the real McCoy.”
“Yes, I’ll need that.”
“I got a Dremel, you know. One of the old ones. Made in the good old US of A. Which is funny if you’re going to build that tank model. Yankee tool making a Panzer tank. Half off.”
“Do you have the drills, sanding stuff? All that”
“I’ll put them upfront for you.”
He went back to the aisle and reached up for the big kits, the wooden ships, that he couldn’t get to when he was a young.
“Are these really hard?”
“Not easy, not easy. Why don’t you start with something easier and build up. Like this…” It was a skiff: a simple wooden skiff. “It’s a Peapod Dory. A real classic that.”
“Yes, and after that?”
“Well, there’s the lobster boat. That’s a bit more challenging. Then maybe the Pequod. Ismael brought that one in, too.” He chuckled at his joke, and then fell into a mild coughing fit. “Too much sawdust on the lungs. When they cremate me I’ll burn for days.”
“I’ll take it all.”
“And a deal you’ll have. These’ll keep you busy for a while.”
“No, I mean everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything!!”
He put down three hundreds to start with, and brought boxes of models to the wagon. The old man scratched his head, a bit suspicious, but wrote down the number of his lawyer in case. “Give young Rubinstein a call. He’ll handle the sale. You’re not joshing now, are you?”
“I’m not joshing in the least.” He handed over his business card. “Keep the change as a down payment. I’ll be back.”
When he came out of the door the sun was shining. “What on earth was that woman talking about?” he wondered, and remembered he had to pick up his wife.
He was 20 minutes late. She let him have it before she sneezed harshly as the dust rose from his accumulations after she slammed the car door. She turned to look into the back and, eyebrows furrowed, asked, “What the hell is all this crap? I’ll bet you didn’t make it to the liquor store.”
“Are you even listening to me?”
He turned, smiled, and said, no, he hadn’t heard a word.