“Typical!” she yelled. “Soooooo typical! You can’t get a woman in real life, so you waltz on over to some shitty fantasy-land and toss money at poor, ignorant girls! It’s disgusting! You might as well just burn their souls away with… with… gasoline! You’re pathetic! Miserable and pathetic… and the worst part is you won’t admit it!”
“Listen,” Thomas growled, “you’re not going to talk to me like that…”
But she’d already hung up. And her maniac voice had bounced in and out of his head all day. It was there as he munched on his lunchtime sandwich, it was there as he watched the pelicans skim along the ocean, it was here as the late-afternoon light turned from gold to liquid orange. He knew his sister often acted like a petulant child, but this was harsh even by her standards. For some reason, her “you can’t get a girl” comment stung. He actually had a friend-with-benefits, but he’d never told Emily about Kara. So why did her comment bother him? Perhaps because he knew that his “relationship” with Kara was waning?
He sighed now, rocking on his feet. Maybe his sister was going through one of her “rough patches” — but he tried to put all that aside and focus on the pleasing scene before him. The clouds had turned purple, like billowing royal capes, and a somber grayness was descending on the beach. The sun was melting into the ocean, as it did at Atlantic Beach during the winter months. Its orange light was glorious; it was giving one last salute to the world, like a theater actor bowing before an applauding audience.
It was remarkable how a day off rejuvenated him. The eight-hour days at the grocery store were more grueling than they used to be. In his twenties, he had flown through them, working quickly and sometimes recklessly to show off how strong and able he was. In his thirties, his pace had slowed a bit; he no longer flew, but glided. Now, at age forty, he fluttered and hopped like a bird with a lame wing. His feet ached more, and if he lifted something too quickly or in an improper manner, he felt a twinge in his back. After work, he sometimes found himself dozing off in his recliner. He accepted all this without rancor. Evidently some people believed they’d never grow old, but Thomas was not one of them.
His position at Oxendine’s Grocery wasn’t in jeopardy. He wasn’t going to get tossed aside and replaced by some young stud. Old Vernon Oxendine didn’t operate that way. He was a man from the old school. He had the quaint notion that an employer should have some sort of responsibility to his employees. If a person put in a good effort, their employment was guaranteed. If they stuck around for a while, they got a raise — a small raise, but a raise nonetheless. If they got sick, they could take a day or two off without worrying about getting fired, and Vernon’s portly and gregarious wife Yolanda would personally deliver a get-well card, its message written in her indecipherable cursive. Oxendine’s Grocery had yearly Christmas parties where the employees bought gifts for each other and Vernon dressed up as Santa Claus. He would pat his potbelly constantly, bellow out endless strings of “Ho ho ho,” and hold mistletoe over his head with a glint in his eye, hoping that one of the younger female employees would give him a peck on the cheek.
Yes, Vernon was what some people called a “character.” He told dirty jokes. He laughed often, without restraint. He cried whenever an old friend died, or when he watched a movie that showed heroism or outstanding displays of character. He kissed his wife in public, sloppily, and pinched her belly fat. He flirted with female employees and customers, and called the males “buddyrow.” His white hair was never combed, his face was pock-marked, and his wardrobe consisted of tan Dickies work pants and checkered shirts in bright colors. His handshake was bone-crushing, and he looked everyone in the eye.
In his youth, when he first started working for Vernon, Thomas didn’t realize there was anything wrong with being a “character.” He laughed at Vernon’s jokes and teased him about his slowly-growing potbelly, and Vernon said he was a foolish youngster who was not too long out of diapers. But one day Thomas’s father said something that confused him. His father was reading the Wall Street Journal as Thomas recounted one of Vernon’s dirty jokes. After the punchline was delivered, Frank Copeland flipped down the paper and grunted instead of laughing.
“Don’t try to emulate that man, Thomas,” he said, pointing his finger at his son for emphasis. “He doesn’t know how to comport himself.”
“Hunh?” It was not the most eloquent response, but it was all Thomas could muster at that moment.
“You’ll figure it out.”
So Thomas started to pay attention to his boss’s “comportment,” or rather how people responded to that “comportment.” When Vernon tried to talk to certain customers, the conversation was one-sided, with snickers and sidelong glances directed at Vernon. These customers were usually office workers from Up North or from Raleigh (as they reluctantly told Vernon), and they seemed surprised that this huckster was trying to talk to them. They were either pale and flabby or ultra-fit and bronzed. Certain employees, too, chuckled patronizingly when Vernon told the one about the two nuns bicycling down a cobblestone road. These employees (daintily pretty and mumbling girls, clean-cut mumbling boys, whose parents worked in offices) usually quit after a few months. Thomas began to pick up on the pattern, though the lesson he was learning wasn’t the one his father wanted him to learn.
He wondered if Vernon recognized this pattern as well. After more observation, he had no doubt that Vernon was well aware of how he was perceived — not that he let anyone’s opinion stop him. Certain sly comments (“What type of shoes are those? Bet they cost more than my pickup truck!”) were staples of Vernon’s inoffensively offensive manner, and he seemed to delight in making certain people uncomfortable — but not in such a way that someone could accuse him of being downright malicious.
Yes, Vernon could be sly, but only when the person deserved it. Thomas had been working at Oxendine’s Grocery for twenty-five years, and he’d always been treated fairly. He’d gotten numerous raises — a quarter here, fifty cents there — and he was now paid $10 an hour. He worked forty to forty-five hours a week, usually early morning to late afternoon, Wednesday to Sunday. Of course, he by no means earned an extravagant amount of money, but he was able to pay all his bills and live in a comfortable one-bedroom apartment. He even got a week’s paid vacation. It didn’t feel shameful to be a grocery store clerk at age forty. It felt right. He’d had a glimpse of the other side when he was young, and it had left him feeling cold and empty. He wouldn’t want to feel like that day in and day out, not for any amount of money.
The sun had sunk below the horizon. The wispy clouds were black, the western sky a thick cobalt. Thomas gazed out reverently. The faraway silhouette to the west had disappeared, and the older couple, after passing by him with nods, were now silhouettes themselves. Watching this sunset had stirred him perhaps more than it should — but then again, if one day such things passed him by without eliciting a response, he would know it was time to step away from the table and cash out his chips.
The afternoon had been pleasant, but it was much cooler now in the twilight; he could feel the chill on his ears and nose. It wasn’t ideal grilling weather, but grilling was what he was going to do. It was his birthday, after all, and he deserved a nice steak seared over a charcoal fire. He thought hungrily about the marinated ribeye sitting in his refrigerator as he walked back to the Circle parking lot. During summer, the tourist horde would throng to this spot on Atlantic Beach, and it would be a challenge to find an open parking space. Today there were only five cars in the entire area, all of them parked in the sandy lot closest to the beach. Some of them belonged to patrons of the low-slung Driftwood Tavern, a bar right on the edge of the sand which stayed open all year. The soft interior light and flickering big-screens beckoned, and Thomas could probably get a free drink or two if he mentioned it was his birthday, but he didn’t really feel like going in. The day had been too pure. He didn’t want to tarnish it by drinking expensive beer and eating greasy food while televisions radiated at him and half-drunk locals babbled about the weather and the bartender loomed over him every three minutes to ask how he was doing and if he needed anything else. No, a personally-cooked steak, a few beers bought at supermarket rates, and a movie in the solitude of his apartment would be a fine end to the day. If Reggie were here, he would insist on dropping in to the bar, but Reggie was at work, like he was most nights. Thomas regretted that their schedules prevented them from hanging out more, but at the same time he had a feeling that theirs was a friendship that wouldn’t last if they saw each other all the time.