* * *
A quarter hour later, at the finer foods/liquor shop, I asked Terry, a salesclerk with an impressively non-devious and expertise-exuding broom of a salt-and-ginger mustache, to help me spend $350 on a bottle of Scotch, but that proved impossible. There were numerous bottles in the $200–$300 range, but above $300, there wasn’t anything for less than $500. I could have gone elsewhere, I suppose, to seek out a $350 bottle, but that seemed so rigid and beneath the spirit of celebration I was trying to honor that I went with Terry’s recommendation to buy a MacGuffin 18-Year-Old Sherry Cask–finished for $265. Terry claimed that the age of a Scotch meant a lot, but not everything, and that, given how much I liked MacGuffin 12 and Glenfibbly 21, this would be the best sub-$600 Scotch for me that they sold in the shop, and I had a lot of faith in him for not trying to upsell me.
The total, after taxes, came to $293, and by the time I’d gotten halfway to my truck, I’d decided to go back into the shop and spend the $57 surplus on a bottle of something else, for Clyde, but as I turned around to do so, I caught sight of the new A(cute)rements Warehouse (formerly known as A(cute)rements PerFormulae/CureWear/ EmergeRig-vendor), which anchored the strip mall across the road, and thought: “No, get something for Blank—Blank’s the one you’ll be celebrating with, plus when was the last time you bought it something nice?”
I couldn’t even remember.
* * *
A(cute)rements Warehouse was supermarket-size—at least five times as large as the old location—and when I got there, my first impulse was to seek out a clerk who could help me find the best toy or game for Blank (in the wake of my pleasant experience with Terry, my esteem for the wisdom of salesclerks was high), but every clerk I came across was occupied with customers, all of whom, strangely, seemed needy and exasperated, so I decided to navigate the store on my own. I walked up the middle, reading the signs that hung above each aisle to my right and my left. I found PlayChanger PerFormulae aisles, GameChanger PerFormulae aisles, Boutique-Brand Formulae aisles, an aisle of CureSleeves, an aisle of PillowNests, an aisle of standard EmergeRigs, an aisle of special-edition- and gift-set EmergeRigs, an aisle of “PerFormulae Abuse Laboratories Recommends”–stamped products, an aisle of WorkPellets, an aisle of Cuddlefarmer Gear, a T-shirts/DVDs/Coffee Mugs&Collectibles aisle, and a Discount aisle, but no Toys aisle, Games aisle, or Toys/Games aisle.
I entered the “P.A.L. Recommends” aisle to see if P.A.L. recommended any toys or games, but from the looks of it, they weren’t recommending much of anything at all: apart from a stack of P.A.L.-branded “no-slip” water thimbles and a pile of CureSleeves made of “moisture-wicking” material, the shelves were entirely empty.
So then I entered the Discount aisle, thinking perhaps there’d be some out-of-fashion yet nonetheless intriguing older toys or games in there that might interest Blank, but no go. It was mostly just leftover Halloween stock: matching costumes for Curios and their owners/users, some Curio-proportioned jack-o’-lantern buckets, and bags of miniature chocolate-free candy bars.
A number of customers were gathered at the Discount aisle’s endcaps, at each of which stood an oil barrel stenciled with the words TRICK OR TREAT? $1.00! NOW 75¢!!! The barrels were a-brim with single WorkPellets in cellophane wrappers of varying color, and from what I could gather by listening to a friendly argument between three of the young men who were digging and sorting through one of these barrels, 5 percent of the WorkPellets had been spiked with a single dose of one of twenty-five different formulae or PerFormulae that ranged widely in price, whereas the other 95 percent had not. One of the young men argued that the colors of the cellophane wrappers were “meaningfully systematized, i.e. encoded,” and that someone who understood the system would be able to tell, just by looking at the wrapper, whether the pellet within it had or hadn’t been spiked; another young man said that the colors of the wrappers held no meaning whatsoever; and the third young man went even further than the first, claiming that the wrappers were coded by “style of end twist and overall wrinklage” as well as by color, and that if one knew how to read the wrappers, one would not only know which pellets had been spiked, but which exact formula or PerFormula the spiked ones had been spiked with. None of the arguments seemed to be supported by evidence. Young Men 1 and 3 agreed that it “wouldn’t make sense, in terms of systems theory” for the wrappers to be different if the differences lacked meaning, whereas Young Man 2 insisted that it “wouldn’t make sense economically” for the wrappers to be different if they communicated meaning.
I was swayed by none of them, nor very interested in taking a position, but because they all seemed, at the least, to think that they knew what they were talking about, I asked them if they had any idea where I could find the toys and games, and the third young man, who, despite his theory of complex wrapper-coding, seemed to me the dimmest (eyes like dimes; high, hollow voice) answered, “I think I saw a like cure-themed Shoots and Ladders over there with the T-shirts and collectibles.”
“I meant toys and games for cures to play themselves,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “I got no idea. Maybe they got something like that in the Hobbyist/Fetish case with all the BullyKing bats and other weapons and stuff?”
“They got a set of little swords in there,” said the one who’d argued for the wrappers’ meaninglessness. “I guess swords is a kind a game, right? Bloodsport.”
“Yeah, that counts,” said the one who hadn’t spoken to me yet.
* * *
—
As I approached the Hobbyist/Fetish case, the clerk who was manning it showed me his palms and said, “I’m just working this case, sir. I know nothing about shipments. The customer service desk’s taking complaints.” He pointed to the nearest corner of the store, about three aisles away, where at least twenty people were waiting in line.
“Shipments?” I said.
“Okay, look. I apologize on behalf of A(cute)rements that we’re still out of Independence. I know we were supposed to get more in today, I know everyone heard that, and I know that you must be very disappointed, but there’s nothing I can personally do about it, so please: customer service desk’s right over there, and they’ll give you a form to fill out. If you were on the waiting list, you fill out that form, you’ll get ten percent off when the shipment does come in, okay?”
“I’m not here for Independence,” I said.
“Oh…good!” said the clerk, and, smiling, drummed the edge of the case with his thumbs. “How can I help you, sir?”
“I’m looking for a toy or game that my cure might like.”
“A toy?” the clerk said. “A game?” he said. “Well you’re at the right case.”