Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

“The lousy podler, ” he whispered.

“Take it easy, Jake,” Frank said. “She could be a good customer again. So what if she chisels a little? I was happy to see her come in.”

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said, “happy.” He left Frank and went toward the meat counter. “Any phone orders?” he asked Arnold.

“A few, Jake. I can put them up.”

“Never mind,” Greenspahn said. “Give me.” He took the slips Arnold handed him. “While it’s quiet I’ll do them.”

He read over the orders quickly and in the back of the store selected four cardboard boxes with great care. He picked the stock from the shelves and fit it neatly into the boxes, taking a kind of pleasure in the diminution of the stacks. Each time he put something into a box he had the feeling that there was that much less to sell. At the thick butcher’s block behind the meat counter, bloodstains so deep in the wood they seemed almost a part of its grain, he trimmed fat from a thick roast. Arnold, beside him, leaned heavily against the paper roll. Greenspahn was conscious that Arnold watched him.

“Bernstein’s order?” Arnold asked.

“Yeah,” Greenspahn said.

“She’s giving a party. She told me. Her husband’s birthday.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Yeah,” Arnold said. “Say, Jake, maybe I’ll go eat.”

Greenspahn trimmed the last piece of fat from the roast before he looked up at him. “So go eat,” he said.

“I think so,” Arnold said. “It’s slow today. You know?”

Greenspahn nodded.

“Well, I’ll grab some lunch. Maybe it’ll pick up in the afternoon.”

He took a box and began filling another order. He went to the canned goods in high, narrow, canted towers. That much less to sell, he thought bitterly. It was endless. You could never liquidate. There were no big deals in the grocery business. He thought hopelessly of the hundreds of items in his store, of all the different brands, the different sizes. He was terribly aware of each shopper, conscious of what each put into the shopping cart. It was awful, he thought. He wasn’t selling diamonds. He wasn’t selling pianos. He sold bread, milk, eggs. You had to have volume or you were dead. He was losing money. On his electric, his refrigeration, the signs in his window, his payroll, his specials, his stock. It was the chain stores. They had the parking. They advertised. They gave stamps. Two percent right out of the profits — it made no difference to them. They had the tie-ins. Fantastic. Their own farms, their own dairies, their own bakeries, their own canneries. Everything. The bastards. He was committing suicide to fight them.

In a little while Shirley came up to him. “Is it all right if I get my lunch now, Mr. Greenspahn?”

Why did they ask him? Was he a tyrant? “Yeah, yeah. Go eat. I’ll watch the register.”

She went out, and Greenspahn, looking after her, thought, Something’s going on. First one, then the other. They meet each other. What do they do, hold hands? He fit a carton of eggs carefully into a box. What difference does it make? A slut and a bum.

He stood at the checkout counter, and pressing the orange key, watched the No Sale flag shoot up into the window of the register. He counted the money sadly.

Frank was at the bins trimming lettuce. “Jake, you want to go eat I’ll watch things,” he said.

“Not yet,” Greenspahn said.

An old woman came into the store and Greenspahn recognized her. She had been in twice before that morning and both times had bought two tins of the coffee Greenspahn was running on a special. She hadn’t bought anything else. Already he had lost twelve cents on her. He watched her carefully and saw with a quick rage that she went again to the coffee. She picked up another two tins and came toward the checkout counter. She wore a bright red wig which next to her very white, ancient skin gave her the appearance of a clown. She put the coffee down on the counter and looked up at Greenspahn timidly. He made no effort to ring up the sale. She stood for a moment and then pushed the coffee toward him.

“Sixty-nine cents a pound,” she said. “Two pounds is a dollar thirty-eight. Six cents tax is a dollar forty-four.”

“Lady,” Greenspahn said, “don’t you ever eat? Is that all you do is drink coffee?” He stared at her.

Her lips began to tremble and her body shook. “A dollar forty-four,” she said. “I have it right here.”

“This is your sixth can, lady. I lose money on it. Do you know that?”

The woman continued to tremble. It was as though she were very cold.

“What do you do, lady? Sell this stuff door-to-door? Am I your wholesaler?”

Her body continued to shake, and she looked out at him from behind faded eyes as though she were unaware of the terrible movements of her body, as though they had, ultimately, nothing to do with her, that really she existed, hiding, crouched, somewhere behind the eyes. He had the impression that, frictionless, her old bald head bobbed beneath the wig. “All right,” he said finally, “a dollar forty-four. I hope you have more luck with the item than I had.” He took the money from her and watched her as she accepted her package wordlessly and walked out of the store. He shook his head. It was all a pile of crap, he thought. He had a vision of the woman on back porches, standing silently at back doors open on their chains, sadly extending the coffee.

He wanted to get out. Frank could watch the store. If he stole, he stole.

“Frank,” he said, “it ain’t busy. Watch things. I’ll eat.”

“Go on, Jake. Go ahead. I’m not hungry, I got a cramp. Go ahead.”

“Yeah.”

He walked toward the restaurant. On his way he had to pass a National; seeing the crowded parking lot, he felt his stomach tighten. He paused at the window and pressed his face against the glass and looked in at the full aisles. Through the thick glass he saw women moving silently through the store. He stepped. back and read the advertisements on the window. My fruit is cheaper, he thought. My meat’s the same, practically the same.

He moved on. Passing the familiar shops, he crossed the street and went into “The Cookery.” Pushing open the heavy glass door, he heard the babble of the lunchers, the sound rushing to his ears like the noise of a suddenly unmuted trumpet. Criers and kibitzers, he thought. Kibitzers and criers.

The cashier smiled at him. “We haven’t seen you, Mr. G. Somebody told me you were on a diet,” she said.

Her too, he thought. A kibitzer that makes change.

He went toward the back. “Hey, Jake, how are you?” a man in a booth called. “Sit by us.”

He nodded at the men who greeted him, and pulling a chair from another table, placed it in the aisle facing the booth. He sat down and leaned forward, pulling the chair’s rear legs into the air so that the waitress could get by. Sitting there in the aisle, he felt peculiarly like a visitor, like one there only temporarily, as though he had rushed up to the table merely to say hello or to tell a joke. He knew what it was. It was the way kibitzers sat. The others, cramped in the booth but despite this giving the appearance of lounging there, their lunches begun or already half eaten, somehow gave him the impression that they had been there all day.

“You missed it, Jake,” one of the men said. “We almost got Traub here to reach for a check last Friday. Am I lying, Margolis?”

“He almost did, Jake. He really almost did.”

“At the last minute he jumped up and down on his own arm and broke it.”

The men at the table laughed, and Greenspahn looked at Traub sitting little and helpless between two big men. Traub looked down shame-faced into his Coca-Cola.

“It’s okay, Traub,” the first man said. “We know. You got all those daughters getting married and having big weddings at the same time. It’s terrible. Traub’s only got one son. And do you think he’d have the decency to get married so Traub could one time go to a wedding and just enjoy himself? No, he’s not old enough. But he’s old enough to turn around and get himself bar mitzvah’d, right, Traub? The lousy kid.”