The bodega is one of those tiny mom-n-pop--or in this case mamasan-and-papasan--shops that is carved out of a much larger, nobler edifice that typically occupies a corner lot. It has wrought-iron bars on its windows. I assume the windows are made of glass (why else would you need bars?) but the years of yellow dingy buildup give them the appearance of warped plexiglas, like the windows in the exterior doors of dilapidated grammar schools. It's brick-red on the outside, but there's no telling what the original paint color was. I think the place is called the Chinatown Market, but I can't be certain because taking the time to check the signage above the door is the least of my concerns when I'm anywhere in that vicinity.

My back door is a 6-iron from this little corner store and yet I still don't know if it has a real name. Like many bodegas its size, I imagine it has many names. Some probably call it "the convenience store across the street from the Chinese place with the chef in the window." I've heard people in my building refer to it simply by its geographic location. You need anything? I'm going down to the corner store. I call it a shithole.

We left the restaurant arm in arm and cut briskly through the first truly chilly morning of the fall. We walked into the small bodega in search of champagne and orange juice. As neither of us had been inside before, and the only things we'd ever seen people exit with were wrapped in small brown paper bags, we were unsure if we would find either.

The store is incredibly small. It can't be more than 30' x 20' inside and, but for a narrow aisle that runs between the counter, the center display, and around along the beverage cases, every conceivable inch of floor space is occupied by something for sale. No matter where you stand it feels like something heavy is a mere shoulder's nudge away from collapsing and toppling over onto you. Picture an indoor track-and-field stadium where the grandstands extend vertically to the ceiling, the infield is a large double-sided display case, and the track is a narrow strip of dirty linoleum flooring wide enough for two anorexics or one disgusting homeless person wearing every piece of unwashed clothing he owns.

All the wine that did not come with a screw-on cap was in a rickety wooden cabinet on the ground on the backside of the center display. It had a Plexiglas sliding cover like most liquor cabinets you'd find in supermarkets, but this one didn't have a lock on it. I guess the proprietors have discovered that when something is out of sight and out of the price range of your normal clientele, there's no reason to lock it up.

I knelt down on the dirty linoleum to inspect their selection. To my surprise, they had 3 or 4 options. Reflexively, I grabbed the $4 bottle of Andre. I have a love-hate relationship with Andre. I love that it's cheap and effective. I hate that it can make me fall down drunk and start large fires. I pulled it briefly from its dusty place in the front of the wine cabinet and replaced it just as quickly when I felt the penetrating gaze of The Girlfriend from several feet away as she perused the selection in one of the beverage cases. Her eyes, her tight smirk, and her body language all said the same thing: "That shit will not spend one second in my house."

The Girlfriend is funny like that. When I'm being sweet and not doing anything to piss her off, everything is "ours": our car, our house, our life. But when I say something stupid or fuck something up, the dynamic changes. Our car becomes her car. Our house becomes her house. And so on. When I call her on it, she protests and says that I'm exaggerating, but really, who're you gonna believe?

(I just read the preceding paragraphs to The Girlfriend and she demanded that I change them because they make her "sound like a bitch." I disagree. Our contributions to the household are severely lop-sided. I brought a perfect penis and a fleeting combination of charm, good looks, and wit to the relationship. She brought those things in spades (sans penis), plus she opened her heart and her home (and her legs....sssshhh) to me. They are her things and she's worked very hard to pay for them. It's not her fault that her gut reaction is "mine" and not "ours." Ours takes time. I don't expect ours to be the default mindset until well after I've convinced her to marry me in a community property state and I've replaced, with my own money, those things of hers that I have absent-mindedly lost or broken.)

She was right, of course. About everything. Andre is shit and I was neither 20 nor in college anymore. I had no reason for settling with a $4 bottle of carbonated devil water when I could afford something tastier that didn't inspire arson. It was time to elevate the taste buds.

I grabbed the last bottle of Cook's they had and popped up off my knees to join The Girlfriend in front of one of the beverage cases.

"They don't have orange juice," she said feeling my presence at her side. I scanned the shelves and spotted what she had apparently overlooked.

"Yes they do. Right there." I opened the door and reached for the carton.

"That's not orange juice. That's orange-flavored drink." Details.

I looked closer at the plastic carton and she was right. I didn't know that there was actually something called "orange drink." I thought it was an urban legend, perpetuated by shows like Def Comedy Jam and Chappelle Show. I'd seen generic Orange Soda at Harold's Chicken in Chicago, but never Orange Drink. We took a pass on the orange-flavored drink and stuck with the champagne.

We got in line at the counter behind a homeless guy with bad skin and a worse odor. He was dressed in multiple layers of gray and he was buying two Steel Reserve tall boys. At 11:15am. Total price? $2.78. He had exact change.

Behind us was a man who lived in the halfway house around the corner. I'd seen him around the neighborhood several times before and there was nothing about him that was out of the ordinary beside the fact that he always looked exceptionally tired - like Droopy Dog from the Hanna-Barbera cartoons - and he once told The Girlfriend that he would give her "8 inches" as she passed him on the way home from work. He was buying a can of Carnation powdered milk, two cans of Dinty-Moore cocktail franks, a 99 cent bag of Utz salt-n-vinegar chips, and a carton of orange-flavored drink. I don't know what he was buying all that stuff for nor did I know what he had done earlier in his life that landed him in the halfway house upon being paroled. I just hoped he didn't have a roommate at the halfway house because if he did he ran a significant risk of farting him to death.

There we stood with our champagne; the creamy white filling in the double-stuffed urban Oreo.

As we waited for the beer connoisseur in front of us to fish out 78 cents from his pockets with mittened hands, I made eye contact with the clerk behind the counter. He was a slender, middle aged Chinese man with glasses and a simple white button-up shirt. He probably owned the place with other members of his family and manned the register by default because he learned the most Ingrish out of all of them during the long shipping container ride across the Pacific to America.

He flashed a gracious, yet tentative, smile that said at once both "thank you for patronizing my establishment" and "I hope no one tries to hold me up today for the register take and a carton of Pall Malls." As we left the store a couple minutes later, I was struck by how the clerk's reserved and cautious smile seemed to embody the essence of what has become a dying breed in this country: brick-and-mortar small business.

He was just friendly enough to inspire confidence in the pending transaction, but just hesitant enough to remain at arms length to protect himself from being fleeced. In a time when you can buy nearly everything you need without ever seeing money and goods change hands, it's comforting to be a part of a face-to-face exchange in which each party is a bit leery of the other and both are worried about getting rolled once it's all said and done.

Armed with but half the necessary ingredients for homemade mimosas, The Girlfriend and I went looking for orange juice. A fairly recent trend in the construction of high-rise condominiums has involved creating retail space in the bottom floors to incentivize potential condo-buyers to pick that building and to offset lost revenue from unsold units when those efforts fail. I'm a little skeptical of this tack to the extent that it creates traffic in and around a residential building from people who have no stake in keeping it nice. Admittedly, I've seen it work to great effect with stores like GAP or Williams-Sonoma or even Starbucks in areas a city is trying to gentrify (read: drive the minorities from).

My building put in a CVS.

Great, why don't you just put a fucking homeless shelter in the lobby? As a developer and commercial real estate manager, how do you decide to put a convenience store on the first floor of a brand spanking new condo building in the middle of downtown Washington D.C.? Yeah, I guess it could be convenient when I need to fill a prescription or buy deodorant. You're right. It might also be convenient if the phalanx of homeless degenerates that accompany every other CVS downtown didn't develop here too. But, I'm not going to hold my breath. Never mind that CVS attracts the second-worst customer service employees (AMC theaters are still #1) in a city renowned for bad customer service.

That Sunday morning, the CVS in my building only had two things going for it. For one, it was still new so it had yet to hit the "Best Places to Panhandle and Harass the Gainfully Employed" section of The Street Sheet. For two, it had orange juice.

We stumbled giddily through the glass double doors and into the warm, empty CVS. Despite having been inside this particular store at least a dozen times before, I had no clue where to find what I wanted. For the first time since I moved here in May, I felt like a true D.C.er. I was unshowered, dressed inappropriately for the weather, carrying a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag, and wandering around mumbling about OJ.

The Girlfriend found the orange juice in 12oz plastic bottles next to the other uncarbonated beverages (the water). We grabbed a couple and went upstairs. In the elevator we struck a deal. I would make the mimosas, she would make the post-coital football watching plans.

I lived up to my end of the bargain and The Girlfriend got on the horn to her best friend from her college days. She lives in DC too and had called earlier in the week wanting to know if we were going to come over to watch football since she and her husband have NFL Ticket and we are stuck with digital fucking cable in a building that does not allow multiple satellite dishes attached to its face. Something about being ugly and a safety concern and blah blah blah words words words.

She and The Girlfriend settled on a time that we would be over and kicked around the idea of ordering some food for between the early and late games. They hemmed and hawed back and forth, unwilling to make a decision without first consulting their significant others. Their conversation wound to a close as the television--which had been on, but muted, the entire time--lit anew with the mesmerizing images of the KFC Famous Bowl being constructed in delicious slow motion.

Her cell phone tossed to the end of the bed, and her soft, warm perfect body pressed against mine, our eyes locked and our minds melded: mmmmmm, Famous Bowl.

To be continued....God Knows When...

Posted by nils at 7:05 PM

Print Friendly · Digg it · del.icio.us · StumbleUpon · Netscape

Comment Policy:

Anonymous comments are allowed. All anonymous comments and comments from those not registered with TypeKey are moderated. They WILL NOT appear until they are read and approved by a moderator.

It is strongly encouraged that you sign up and login with a TypeKey account. Once you do that, your comments will be immediately posted.

Comments

Post a comment