I first posted this four years ago. I rediscovered it as I looked for a CD to play for the whole six minutes it takes for me to get to work. Instead, I found some articles I wrote (including a series I’ve lost) and this.
VSOP takes place in a gap of time after between the last two chapters of my completed but unpublished novel. I really need to get on with getting that out. Anyway, I made some slight adjustments to reflect the changes in the novel. I retained a couple of tidbits that I eventually left out of the novel. At one point, the novel was going to be a short story and this was going to be a bigger collection called The Herald.
I have plans for my next novel, The Collectors, and I have forced myself to stop writing it until I get Brown River Blues out. This hasn’t spurred me. I thought being on an extended vacation of sorts would spur me in December. I hope something spurs me soon.
Anyway, without further ado,
VSOP by Elliott Robinson.
Harvey Atkins hated going to that store, the only liquor store in Meadow Spring. It was perfectly located though: on the right-hand side of the road heading home. He wasn’t ashamed of going to the store — he just disliked the cashier.
Although Beverley Copeland had a name badge announcing not only her first but her last name, Harvey had no idea what she was called and did not care. If he patronized the store more than once every three months or so, he probably would have picked it up at some point but he still wouldn’t have cared.
Harvey just didn’t like her face. She seemed to look disapprovingly at everyone inside the store as if she was trying to guilt them out of the store. Upon looking at her during your turn in line, it was obvious that her frown was the result of too much sun in the summer of 1984 or the result of years of alcohol abuse. Or perhaps both. No matter the cause, Harvey couldn’t stand her.
Additionally, she had a moustache.
He also hated the clinical way of her transactions. She barely said a word as she adjusted a bottle to scan the price, tell you the total, tell you your change and put your bottle in a long, not-so-discrete brown paper bag or a Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Blue-Gray bag.
No hello. No nice weather we’re having. No have you tried this with coconut milk and Fresca. Just $7.25, out of $20 and $12.75 is your change.
Harvey thought about buying more than the 750 milliliter but he had no idea of what Laura, his wife, would say if he brought that much liquor into the house at once. He didn’t want to find out.
Laura wasn’t a big drinker. Harvey and she would have a bottle of wine every now and then and she often joined him in a beer or two in the den or, on occasion, at a bar in Imperial City. He had never seen her drunk and figured he never would. Every few months or so, Harvey wished he could ask her to get trashed with him but he knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure if he had the stomach for it anymore anyway. Those days ended once he settled down and finally put his ethanol-fueled nights at Radford behind him.
He almost broke down and asked his coworker, Osbourne Rice, to have a drink with him. Oz often reeked of alcohol and decay when he came in. It would have been the wrong thing to do.
But, every few months, the feeling came to Harvey. When the boss gets on a last nerve, when the dishwasher breaks, when the commute from the city to the charming house in the small town that’s barely affordable gets to be too much, some men get the feeling. Some go play a sport. Some play video games. Some go build something in the garage. Some hunt. Some try some sort of meditation technique. Some beat the family member closest to his fist. Some, like Harvey Atkins, need a drink. A good, stiff drink.
Harvey couldn’t get close to smashed unless it was Christmas, New Year’s Memorial Day or the Fourth of July. He wouldn’t. Laura had initially disapproved of him because of his freewheeling college life and he realized that he loved her more than the booze. He didn’t want his alcohol intake to ever be grounds for the end of their relationship. But he needed a drink.
It generally takes Harvey nearly two of the three months between liquor store trips to finish a 750. At times, he would drink about a third of the bottle and then days or weeks would pass before he would consider another dram. Then a day would come where he would have about enough with the world and he would look forward to coming home and waiting for that moment when the world softened around the edges and a pointless smile would appear on his face. At that point, he was still acutely aware of his surroundings, his problems and what he ought to do. But he didn’t care.
That moment was all he wanted: a moment of not caring that the leaky dishwasher sent the water bill through the roof and let’s not get started with the repair bill. So what if Harold Hallam is the worst managing editor in the history of journalism. So what if Osbourne Rice arrives ginned up and late for work sometimes, and some of his work has to be done by the city editor, you, so a newspaper comes out the next day and you wind up being there at 7 p.m., wishing you could fire him but not wanting to because he’s the best copy editor and page designer you’ve ever seen. So what if people insist on talking to Erica Barr although you’ve told them countless times that she is no longer there and you are city editor. So what if Tim Johnson is seemingly untouchable and brags about copulating with her in what they thought was an empty newsroom one Saturday morning. So what if people assume you’re not 29 because your first name is Harvey and you landed a position at a medium-sized daily that some reporters your age hope to get before they turn 40.
Harvey parked his new Ford Taurus, which he could barely afford, in the side parking lot next to the squat red brick building on Hillman Street that was in the transitional zone between the lamely revitalized downtown and the strip malls lamed by better demographics in Imperial City and the incompetence of the former interim county administrator.
Although it was a Friday evening, the only other customer was an older man who looked like he had one too many several months before and never stopped to catch his breath. Harvey wondered if that was part of the reason why the cashier had a Jesus-and-your-mother-are-watching-you-buy-Satan’s-brew stare.
Harvey walked straight to the brandy/cognac aisle. He knew exactly what he wanted: E&J VSOP brandy. On sale for $6.90. It was his poison of choice although he knew there was way better and had better. He got it because he had a memory of his older sister singing its praises as the perfect drink to prep oneself for a night in the string of bars along Old East Imperial Way in the city. Harvey had hoped to have a beer-soaked night with Sarah when he turned 21 but an aggressive case of multiple sclerosis ended her partying years before.
When Harvey bent down, thinking about the hilarity of going bar hopping with his currently 43-year-old sister, if she were capable, a man in his late teens or early 20s came into the store wearing a grey hoodie despite the 80-degree weather outside. When Harvey looked up, he saw that the guy, who had his hood up, was probably a meth addict and — yep — he just clumsily pulled a flawless revolver from the hoodie’s front pocket. It probably belonged to his father’s collection. His father probably thought his son would never do such a thing. Harvey froze and his heart pounded.
“The money,” the man said. He was about 5’10”, 130 pounds soaking wet with bushy brown hair that flew out of the hood. He was wearing denim bondage pants with tartan patches and skate shoes, possibly Vans. Once, years ago, his shoes were black. Yes, they were very worn. The gun was black and he didn’t cock the hammer. Harvey wasn’t sure if one actually needed to do that to make that type of gun go off. He wasn’t about to be a hero and find out.
Beverley never said a word. She didn’t even look frightened. The old alkie continued to shop. The robber ignored everyone except for Beverley. He was probably too strung out to notice them. Harvey briefly wondered what sort of form the creature at the counter took in the robber’s drug-fueled haze. Walrus. Definitely walrus.
“The money. Quickly.” Beverley noiselessly pressed the no sale button and the robber scooped up some of the bills and stuffed them in the hoodie pocket. He wasn’t wearing gloves. The hoodie had the Charlotte Hornets logo on it. Yes, Charlotte. It must have been from before the move to New Orleans. He then jammed the gun in the same pocket and ran to the door, leaving a trail of bills.
When he yanked the door open, the gun fell out of the pocket and discharged when it hit the ground. The bullet hit the robber in the right arm. Beverley shrieked, the robber stumbled and kept going. The glass door cracked but did not break. The old man dropped a bottle of Evan Williams.
Thanks to having a new sheriff — a new, competent sheriff — deputies were on scene within seconds. Beverley had tripped a silent alarm with her foot. The deputies in the liquor store asked the standard questions and gave the standard comments: what happened? What did he look like? What’s your name? What’s your address? You may be asked to testify in court. We got him. He has a record a mile long. The moron was bleeding like a stuck pig and didn’t get very far. Said he didn’t know it was loaded. Et cetera. Do you have any questions?
“Can I still buy this?” both men asked at nearly the same time.
Harvey’s phone rang for the third time when he got in the car. It was Laura. He was still shaken. She was worried. He was very late. He didn’t want to tell her what happened over the phone. He called “The Imperial City Herald” to get his eyewitness account into the story for the next day although he was slightly embarrassed to say he was in the liquor store in print. He drove home.
“Harv!” Laura said as he walked through the back door. “You look like you saw a ghost. I’ve been trying to call you. What happened? Did you get in an accident?”
“Robbery.”
“You were robbed?”
“No. The ABC store.” He set the brandy on a kitchen counter and unscrewed the top. He grabbed a red wine glass from a cabinet and placed it beside the bottle.
“What happened? Is everyone OK?”
Harvey told her all he knew before he filled the glass. He stared at the empty glass. The desire had passed. He felt that he had wasted $7.25. At least, in a way, he got a moment of being a reporter of sorts out of it. He screwed the top back on as he finished the story and set the bottle on top of the refrigerator.
“I’m so glad you’re OK,” Laura said as she held him tightly. “I don’t want you to go to that dreadful store again. This town is getting dangerous, isn’t it? You think you leave the problems of the city behind and they follow you home.”
Laura wasn’t a plain woman but she stopped watching her weight after the wedding then instantly feared that she would be left for a smaller woman. She didn’t believe Harvey when he said that he liked her more with some meat on her. When he didn’t pick up his phone, she was certain that day was the day her stocky, pale, hairy yet prematurely balding husband Harvey wasn’t going to come home again. She embraced him because it was a man, a man with a gun, not a woman, who nearly took him away from her forever.
Harvey was partially ignoring her. An interesting tidbit popped into his head.
“Beverley,” he didn’t mean to say aloud.
Laura instantly let him go. “Beverley? Who’s Beverley?” She tried not to overreact.
“Yeah. The cashier’s name is Beverley. After all of the times I’ve gone in there, I never knew her name. When she finally rung me up after the robbery, she did everything as usual as if nothing had just happened. She had the same disapproving frown, the same lack of conversation, the same everything. But, somehow, her face, her eyes, looked different. I can’t place what or why exactly. Maybe she actually was scared although she didn’t look like it at face value. I don’t know. But it made me remember her name somehow. Beverley. It’s spelled out on her name badge. Beverley Copeland. I wonder how many people who go in there more than I don’t know her name or care what her name is because she’s just some object that takes their money in exchange for boozing. I wonder if she’s been waiting for someone to come in and say, ‘Hiya, Bev! Nice weather we’re having today.’ I wonder if she actually passes judgment on her customers or if she doesn’t know or care who we are at all.”
