A Night At The Video Store, Part Five (Last Part I Swear)

Here are the first four parts:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

So, this is it. As you can see, I just changed the title of this part and as with the other parts only did some minor editing. Hope you enjoy.

The Prestige

“So you weren’t in the mood for anything?” Stevey asked.

He’d suddenly appeared at the end of the aisle and now stood like the Colossus of Rhodes there, slowing me down just before I reached the checkout line to talk to Jenn. I considered bear-walking between his legs, but thought better of it. There would be another occasion at some point tonight when I’d be alone with her.

“Jenn grabbed something,” I said. “Hey, do me a favor real quick?”

“Sure.”

“Look out there to see if the Girl Scouts are still around.”

“O…kay.” He eyed me like I had grown a second head before checking the front of the store. “Yeah, they’re still here.”

“Thanks, dude. See you later.”

Even though he was bewildered, I didn’t waste any time explaining. I moved around him and turned toward the checkout line and saw Jenn and Ralph standing close together, talking about something. Jenn caught me out of the corner of her eye and stopped what she was saying mid-sentence. Oh, so they’d been talking about me?

No doubt she was asking Ralph what he thought of her chances with me. I put on the shy grin and strolled over to them. They were in the middle of the line, so I caught some nasty stares from the people behind them.

“You’re paying tonight, right?” Jenn asked. Her face was a deep crimson. She was nervous, embarrassed. It could only mean one thing.

It was Ralph’s turn to pay, but I wasn’t going to call him out on it. “Yeah.” I beamed a smile at her and took the DVD out of her hands. She turned and went outside.

Ralph and I exchanged an awkward look. His eyes played hopscotch for a moment before he said, “I’m going to catch a smoke.”

I slapped his back. “Funny you two are suddenly not concerned about the Girl Scouts now.”

Ralph looked away and down, then he left the line in a hurry and headed out to the parking lot.

When I turned to the register, I realized Rob, my arch-nemesis, had been waiting for me.

“Hello, sir,” he said through clenched teeth. Rob appeared to be younger than me, but I based that solely upon his level of employment. As he was always wearing a polo shirt with the company name and logo on it, it was hard to tell how old he was. “Robby.” He grunted. His shirt didn’t smell so much as it wreaked.

“Back so soon?”

“Umm, yeah.” I didn’t know if that was supposed to be his attempt at mockery.

I handed him the movie and my membership card.

He opened the DVD box to check the movie and looked at his computer screen. He smirked as if just remembering some knock-knock joke from fourth grade. Or, in his case, it could have been one from yesterday. When he caught me looking at him, the smirk evaporated and he tried to be serious.

“Buy any cookies?” he asked.

“How much for the movie?”

He raised an eyebrow as if offended. “Why so rude, sir?”

I felt like throttling this guy. I didn’t even want to watch the fucking movie. I just wanted a chance to be alone with Jenn, only for a minute or two. That was all I needed.

“Dude, you’re twenty (I guessed his age) and you’re still wearing a digital watch with a velcro strap.” The girl in line behind me snickered. I caught a glimpse of her and wished she hadn’t been jail bait.

That wiped the dumb expression off his face, as much as the dumb expression could be wiped off his face.

He said, “Two fifty-six,” and that didn’t sound right for a New Release. It should have been more. But I had made it one of my life’s missions to get this guy fired. His careless attitude and sloppy demeanor were giving the noble calling of movie store clerk a bad name. He put the movie down on the counter on the other side of the metal detector.

As I handed him the three singles, all the money to my name, I checked out front of the store. No Girl Scouts! Time to skee-daddle.

I waited impatiently while he figured out the best combination of change to equal forty-four cents. A team of monkeys would have figured it out better. I would have gladly traded the extra three seconds for all the crap-flinging that came with it.

I kept surveillancing the lot. It was conspicuously empty. The table with three-and-three-quarters legs was gone. Ralph and Jenn were at the car.

“Here you go, sir.” Rob handed me my change and was doing his best not to smirk. What the hell was he smiling at? I decided to ignore him—Rob was one of those guys that had a lot of inside jokes…with himself.

I took the change and rushed through the electronic detectors and hurried to the front door. Throwing it open, I stepped into the parking lot. I saw my car, less than twenty yards away. Just had to get there and all would be fine. But as I stepped onto the pavement, I felt like Ryan Phillippe at the end of The Way of the Gun, after he’s grabbed the bag full of money. I just knew something bad was going to happen. By the way, that’s a fucking awesome movie, if you can get past the ridiculous first fifteen minutes of it.

Something tickled the back of my mind. I hadn’t done something…my hands were empty…then I realized what it was: in my haste, I’d forgotten the movie. I considered leaving it because Jenn and destiny and hopefully sex awaited. But I couldn’t leave a fallen man behind, even if the Viet Scouts were still in the vicinity.

“Mister, Mister.” Again, I heard them, but it could have been telepathy.

As I turned back to the store, a kaleidoscope of images sparkled and glittered in my head. The girls, Jenn, Rob, Stevey, everything. Then reality sucked me back into its vortex.

A van, owned undoubtedly by the thermally-challenged mother, had pulled up near me, the driver’s window rolled down. Two faces peered out—Mother and Daughter. I looked at the store and saw Rob coming out of it, holding the movie I’d forgotten. So here was his big chance for little revenge: making me look a fool for forgetting to take my movie. It might not seem like a lot to you, but when you’re trading proverbial body blows with a video store clerk, the insignificant becomes epic.

“Mister!” the little girl was waving from the car. I was going to have to say no to them. This was it. I stood there, petrified. How do you say no to the Girl Scouts? How do you shatter their dreams?

I opened my mouth to speak, but there weren’t any words.
Then Rob stepped in front of the stopped van and stood there pretty dumbly in the headlights. Slowly, very slowly, he extended his arm, holding out the DVD box. I saw then the evil smile carved on his face, revealing all that is wicked in man.

“Would you like to buy some Girl Scout Cookies, Mister?” the little girl sang to me.

“I…I…” My eyes jumped from the girl and the mom to Rob.

“Mister—“ Rob began, doing his best not to laugh, “—you forgot your movie: Cum Hard 2: Cum Harder.”

The little girl, whether she knew it or not, was scarred for life. Mom’s face contorted first with rage at Rob, then with disgust at me. She didn’t need to tell me what she was thinking. She thought me a vile, perverted creep because I had rented a porno. But I hadn’t! Hadn't she seen the sign in the front of the store? Oh no, she'd already found me guilty.

And how did you spawn that little hell-beast in the passenger seat? I wanted to ask. Immaculate conception?

All hot and bothered, Mom rolled up her window, hit the horn so Rob would move, and then floored it, barely stopping before she entered the main drag.

Through the closed windows, I could hear the three of them sing-songing: “Goodbye, Mister.”

Then it hit me. I was a stupid, stupid man. What had been really going on the whole time between me, Ralph, and Jenn. I’d needed this traumatic experience to startle me out of my deluded version of reality.

“Here you are, sir,” Rob said, now unable to contain his mirth.

As condescendingly as possible, I placed my hand on his shoulder. “Joke’s on you, Robby Boy. You just got me out of having to buy Girl Scout cookies.”

A look of confusion crossed his face and stayed there.

“And you just lost a customer.” I nodded in the direction the van had gone.

Rob didn’t understand the ramifications of what he’d done, but at some level, he’d realized he’d made a mistake. He jammed the DVD into my stomach, then stormed inside.

Looking back to the car, I saw Jenn and Ralph next to each other, very close. Ralph’s hand was on her waist. Ralph gave me the eye, and he didn’t take his hand away. I made my way over.

“You guys could have told me, ya know,” I said. I was actually happy for them. Two of my good friends, after all.

“We just wanted to make sure you were cool with it,” Ralph said. “We both know your Senior Year didn’t end the way you wanted it to.”

Thoughtful of them. Senior Year had left me heartbroken and without an acceptance into a graduate program.

I kept the smile on my face because I didn’t want to darken their night too. “I’m happy for you both.” Then I slapped Ralph on the back, and Jenn gave me a half-hug, and everybody had a good laugh, and it was all very smarmy, in a Walker, Texas Ranger kind of way.

We each of us climbed back into the car. This time, Jenn got into the passenger seat, while Ralph lounged in the back.

“So what was all that about?” Jenn asked, referring to my NBE (near-buying experience) in front of the store.

I was about to explain it all but thought better of it. “Oh…that. I forgot the movie, so Rob came out just as the Girl Scouts were driving away. They asked me again if I wanted any cookies. I told them no.”

“Big step for you,” Jenn said.

“We all gotta grow up at some point I guess.”

“So where are we watching the flick?” Ralph asked.

“You know, I’m not really up for it tonight. Why don’t you two watch it.”

“Dude—“

“You don’t have to—“

I held up a hand and started backing us out of the spot. “No really. You two should hang and watch it. It’s cool.”

“What are you going to do?” Ralph asked.

“I don’t know. But seriously you guys should watch it. Really. I hear it’s great.”

************

A couple hours later, I was on my sixth beer when Ralph called.

“Hello?”

“Asshole,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

“Actually, I should thank you. After the initial shock…some good things happened.” He sounded giddy, like he was back in high school and had gotten laid for the first time.

“Good for you, bud.”

Things never work out the way you think they’re going to. And sometimes that’s cool.

A Night At The Video Store, Part Two

If you haven't read Part One yet, I'd suggest starting there. Unless you're just too big a fan of Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, and Graham Greene, and you need your stories to read achronologically.

Here's Part Two:

The Deferrment

“Just keep moving,” I said, between pursed lips like I was ventriloquizing.

The three Girls Scouts waited for us, like Scylla, Charybdis, and the other monster you never hear about, name of Becky. Okay, I made that last one up.

I felt their tiny little eyes on me. Like an angry mob eyeing a guilty defendant who’d just got acquitted by a jury. Now I knew what it was to be O.J. Simpson.

I didn’t even need to hear them ask. They were capable of telepathy—Would you like to buy some cookies?

But my plan would work. They would know I wasn’t interested if I didn’t look at them. I pictured their cute, little crooked-tooth smiles turn into disappointed frowns as I shattered their entrepreneurial dreams, and my heart broke. But my bank account smiled and laughed diabolically.

The triumvirate of what looked to be girls younger than ten huddled in front of a folding table that had one leg shorter than the others. Yeah, look all the more pathetic so people will be even more compelled to buy from you. The cookie boxes leaned over precariously like little Towers of Pisa. Behind the table was an older woman, definitely one of their mothers. I knew she was a mom because she was wearing a sweater and it was almost eighty degrees out.

We had twenty feet to go before we reached the sphere of solicitation. They weren’t engaged in a transaction, so they had nothing to do but stare right at us as we approached. Fifteen feet. I felt a cold sweat on my back. Ten feet. Ralph slowed down half a step—what the fuck was he doing? He could never keep rhythm when we jammed, but now it was having repercussions in the real world.

Jenn stepped ahead of Ralph. The Girl Scouts didn’t seem interested in her, as if they could sense she was one of their own and they didn’t wish to prey on her. It reminded me of that scene in Alien 3, where the monster is about to kill Sigourney Weaver, but stops because it realizes she’s carrying one of them in her belly.

Did Ralph make eye contact?

Five feet.

“Hi, there.”

Fuck. Ralph had said hello to them. Hung out to dry by my best friend.

“Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?” they asked. I wasn’t sure which one had spoken, or if all three had talked in unison, or if they were using their telepathy. I stopped dead in my tracks.

“We’ll see on the way out.” Because I couldn’t say no.

“Okay,” they said merrily, not realizing I’d just turned them down. “Be fast because we’re leaving soon,” one of them said. They kept smiling at me, but Mom glared at me, as if I’d just told them they were the poster children for abortion.

When I got inside I stared at Ralph till he was forced to look at me.

Finally, he said, “I couldn’t help it.”

“And after you talked, I couldn’t say no.”

“Don’t pass the buck on that dude,” he said.

“You could have said no,” Jenn said before walking away.

“They’re leaving soon,” I said. “Let’s take our time.”

A line snaked around the front of the store to the register. I realized the place was abuzz for a Friday night. Then I felt ashamed because I knew the place was abuzz for a Friday night. The TVs suspended from the ceiling were playing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a classic in anyone’s book. My eyes cut through the crowd to see who was working the register.

“Our arch-nemesis,” I said to Ralph, and bobbed my head toward the register.

His name was Rob. Not Robert. Not Bob. Not Bobby. He made sure to tell us that all the time, and we made sure to call him anything but Rob. He’d screwed up our account balance once, trying to charge us for two copies of the same movie. When I explained how it didn’t make sense—no one would rent two copies of something—he’d failed to see the logic. “If it’s in the computer,” he’d said, “it’s in the computer.” I’m still not sure what that meant, but it was in the computer.

So we’d asked for his manager, and the manager explained to Rob, in front of many customers, how Rob was wrong.

Ever since then, his wounded pride had tried to exact vengeance upon us any chance it got.

“Where’s Jenn?” Ralph asked.

I stood on my toes and craned my neck up like a periscope. “She’s talking to some…”

“Didn’t think he was around anymore,” Ralph said.

A Night At The Video Store, Part One

Okay. So I wrote this short story, "A Night at the Video Store," eight years ago. I recently came back to it out of curiosity. What you see below is the first part of the story as written back then, with only minor editing done on my part. Depending on the feedback, I'll post the next part, and the next part, etc.

The story is basically about three college kids that go to the video store one summer night and...well, hope you enjoy it. Oh, it does contain some bad language, so consider this your warning. And please bear in mind I wrote this when I was twenty-two. Not that I've gotten much smarter over the years, but every little bit I hope has helped.

The Ride

“What’re you in the mood for?” I asked Ralph. He barely shrugged, like he was too tired to think about it.

We rolled down the Boulevard in my black Toyota, windows down in the summer heat, radio blasting Springsteen—the only way to listen to the Boss—Ralph riding shotgun like always.

Jenn sat behind Ralph. She was no stranger to the backseat, as I liked to quip.

We were heading to the local video store to rent a flick.

Me and Ralph hadn’t hung in a week. I’d called him a couple times to see if he wanted to shoot some stick or hit the bar now that he was (finally) twenty-one, but he’d declined each time, citing excuses that sounded made-up to me. I knew he was still hurting from his break-up with Michelle, even though it had been two months ago. It was a shame because the girl was a tramp. She wasn’t worth the brooding, I wanted to tell him. But, you couldn’t say things like that to your buddy. And I was trying to be delicate because I understood how he was feeling: I’d been there not so long ago myself.

It was then I remembered that the Girl Scouts would be selling their wares outside the store. So, I said, “Shit.”

“Dude,” Ralph said. Many people think the word “fuck” is the most versatile in the English language—I’ll take “dude” any day.

I gave him my best Shatner impression to add drama to the really drama-less situation: “The Girl Scouts...will be there.”

“You got money?” he asked a question that should have been rhetorical. The Sahara gets rain more frequently than I have money. It was a strange inquiry too, because I was pretty sure it was his turn to pick up the movie, so he should have had money on him.

“No…only enough...for a movie.”

“Cut the Shatner crap. Jenn?” Ralph asked, twisting his head around.

Jenn was staring out her window. I checked her in the rearview. She’d been tanning down the shore last weekend, so her skin was even more a golden-brown than usual. Highlights streaked her dirty blond hair. She seemed pissed off. Maybe she was mad because none of the life guards had noticed her. Or maybe she was mad because one of them had noticed her. So far, she hadn’t gone into much detail about the weekend’s exploits. Not that I cared.

“I didn’t bring my purse, remember?” she said.

Me and her were supposed to hang out last night, but she had cancelled nearly last minute.

The three of us were in different places. I’d graduated, Ralph had another year to go, and Jenn was studying abroad her first semester of senior year. We’d entered the lazy days of early summer. I was still waiting to hear back from a couple of grad schools.

“We have to buy cookies this time,” Jenn said.

I was ready to go into my T.E. Lawrence spiel about how nothing is written, but instead I said, “How you figure?”

“Last time Ralph and I were here, we said we’d buy some the next time,” Jenn said. “This is the next time.”

Legally, I didn’t think Ralph and Jenn’s promise would hold up as binding in a court of law, and even if it did, there was no way a court would force me, an unwitting third-party, to be bound by their quasi-contract with the Girl Scouts.

“Guess they don’t take a card,” Ralph said.

I didn’t feel the need to address that one. “If we turn them down tonight, maybe they’ll take the hint.”

But I said it in vain. Everyone knows you can’t not buy cookies from the Girl Scouts.

“I’m not telling them no. I was the bearer last time,” Ralph said.

That was the second reference to a “last time” I hadn’t been a part of. Were Ralph and Jenn tired of hanging with me? Now that I was a graduate, I didn’t have anything in common with them, or something?

“Maybe they won’t be here tonight.” Literally as I said it, I saw the little she-devils standing in front of the store. There was a parking space open right in front of them, but I opted for one in the back of the lot, as far away from the Girl Scouts as possible. I could feel their eyes burning holes in my car though. They knew.

We needed a plan.

“It’s like they’re just waiting for us,” Ralph said.

I pulled out my wallet. After I got through the cobwebs, I found three singles. I fingered my ash tray for some change, found a few quarters. “This should cover us.”

But inside I was seething because I had to give my not-so-hard-earned money away. Because in a civilized society, you just had to buy Girl Scout cookies. It was noble or something. Or maybe it was the fact that a man couldn’t say no to a woman, no matter her age.

“What about the movie?” Ralph asked.

That was too much. Societal duty or not. “We came here to rent a movie, not buy cookies. It’s the principle,” I said.

“You’ve got principles?” Jenn asked. What was up her ass?

“Only easy ones I can stick to.” Which was more than I could say for her.

In the rearview, I saw Jenn lean back and stare blankly out the window, crossing her arms. A silence blossomed.

“It’s getting late,” Ralph said.

“It’s just eight now,” I said, wondering why he was in such a hurry.

“I mean, maybe we can wait them out.”

“That’s true,” Jenn said, leaning forward again. “Maybe we could.”

The idea seemed preposterous, three people waiting for the Girl Scouts to close up shop so they didn’t have to buy cookies. But I considered it. I’d reached a new stage of depravity.

“We’re always in here awhile too. We could tell them that maybe we’ll buy on the way out, if we have any change. Then we hole up till they go,” Ralph said.

“Just like John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo,” I said, trying to make it sound more adventurous than it was.

“If we tell them we’ll buy on the way out, they’ll wait for us,” Jenn said. As always, she was full of solutions.

I threw my hands up in the air because our conversation had reached a new level of absurdity even I couldn’t stomach. “Look, just don’t make eye contact. They’ll understand. Nobody has to feel bad.”

I got out of the car, not waiting for another criticism from the backseat or another dumb idea from the passenger seat. I loved my friends.

I turned and waited for them to get out. They took their time. Then they gave each other a look and shuffled past me fast. Ralph said, half under his breath, “You’re heading up the rear, pal. Just in case.”

I agreed, not knowing why the one in the rear would have to do the talking if all went awry.

Once more into the breach, dear friends.