The Trouble with Bliss
Heading out his building’s front door, Morris runs directly into a flabby, homeless black woman.
“Excuse me,” Morris says, startled.
The woman eyes him suspiciously as she gnaws on a crab leg she found in the garbage. Dressed in an oversized pink skirt and a tight, faded red Make-Out Bandit T-shirt, her rolls of fat give her the appearance of three sets of breasts, one stacked on top of the other. The sidewalk’s littered with the trash she’s pulled from the can, littered with damp coupon fliers from Rite Aid, ripped, cancelled checks from someone named R. P. P. LeRoy Lee III, and orange take-out menus from Ali Bayou, the new Turkish-Louisianan fusion restaurant that specializes in deep-fried Snickers and Doner kebabs.
“Naw, naw, sweetmeat,” she tells Morris, then shakes her hips. “It’s me that needs excusing.” Hiking up her skirt, she urinates on the sidewalk.
“Ah Christ, come on,” Morris says, scooting to the side. The urine puddles then runs toward the street. “You have to do that here, in front of me? In front of my building?”
She laughs a laugh of ripping velvet. “When the muse is ringing, sweetmeats, the muse is ringing,” she says, the crab leg protruding from her mouth.
Sickened by the scene, Morris stalks off to Mr. Charlies.
Mr. Charlies is the owner of Mr. Charlies Deli and Beer, a twenty-four hour bodega around the corner from Morris’s place. A small man, Mr. Charlies has thick, black hair and an overbite that makes him look like he’s constantly smiling. “Hey, buddy, hi buddy” is how he greets everyone who enters the store. He’s originally from India, or Argentina, or from a country with a royal family and a large heroin production. It’s hard to say. His story varies, depending on who asks, and his accent’s strange and shifting, like he’s trying to emulate some actor he’s seen on TV. If pressed as to where he’s from, he’ll answer “The Island” and leave it at that, never saying what island he’s speaking of.
His store—once a Laundromat whose dryers often caught fire, then the fabric store TWEEDS U NEED that sold only Sudanese tweeds, then the home of an Lebanese family who hung a neon sign in the window claiming to read Tarot cards but really only stole credit card numbers and identities—is narrow and long and excessively lit. It has linoleum flooring that was once white but is now a scarred, ghostly gray. There’s a faint smell of incense, cinnamon, and bleach, and a crudely painted gold and black sign in the window announces: MR. CHARLIES SERVE COLD BEAR SNACK & MANY SPICE. Passersby pop in and ask Mr. Charlies the ingredients in his “cold bear snack.” Is it, they ask, a snack made for bears as a between meal tide-over that won’t ruin their dinner? Or is it made of bears and nibbled on by humans while, say, watching a movie, or waiting for the bus, or coming off a three day bender with vicious DTs? Mr. Charlies, never grasping the question, tries to sell them batteries with fast approaching expiration dates or foul smelling liver-wrapped-with-bacon appetizers held together by toothpicks that he claims his wife—the “Mrs.” he calls her—has brought just now.
No one has ever seen his wife, not even his two employees, a somber pair of Colombian twins who stock shelves and stop shoplifters by tackling them the moment they exit the door. Mr. Charlies doesn’t even have a picture of his wife, or of the one or two or five children he occasionally mentions.
Toward the front of the store, next to the cash registers, is a compact display case with a cracked glass front filled with dry-looking meats, wilting lettuce, and darkening cheeses. On the counter sits a gleaming metal meat-slicer that is always broken, a bottle of Witch Hazel, and a five-liter container of orange Mayonnaise that never seems to empty. A Plexiglas container that rests on top of the counter is filled with stale heros, blueberry bagels, and Nan bread as stiff as Frisbees.
Lining the walls of the store are standing coolers packed with beers from around the world, soda, souring milk, and strangely colored sports drinks. The shelved aisles at the front of the store hold canned goods, potato chips, curry powder, tamarind, nutmeg, toilet paper, almonds, hair oil, marshmallows, and candles shaped like men or women that, when lit and prayed over, bring happiness and improved sex to a relationship.
Farther back, in the rear of the store, the shelves are lined with items that one searches for less often: multi-hued pipe cleaners; 40-watt light bulbs and Christmas light replacements; dusty jars of Vegemite; brown shoe laces for ten, twelve, and sixteen eye shoes; cod-liver oil; mustache wax and beard anti-dandruff creams; bunion ointment; men’s sock garters; and Ma Rose’s Miracle Metal Cleaner for silverware, brass, and copper.
It’s a store that has everything, everything that is not exactly what one wants. Need a pint of half-and-half? Mr. Charlies has only heavy cream, and only in the rare gallon size. Want a specific brand of cigarettes? He has them only in menthol. Unless menthol is what is desired, then he only has the non-filter version of that brand. Want a roast beef sandwich? He has salami, which he awkwardly cuts—rather, hacks—by hand with a cleaver that could take down a small tree. An ounce of spice called for in a recipe requires buying a sixteen-ounce bag. Hostess Snack Cakes? No, Drake. Frito-Lay? No, Wise potato and corn chips. Unless one wants Wise, then he’s out. Or that last bag is opened, has a hole in the side, like a rat got to it. “On order,” he says when asked if there are more. “Tomorrow.” For a can of black beans, he’ll hand you pinto and tell you they taste the same. Coffee, decaf. Diet Coke when Coke is wanted, Fanta when Sprite is desired. Mr. Pibb instead of Dr. Pepper.
And he is always in his shop. Twenty-four/seven he seems to be at the counter, greeting each customer that enters with a “Hey, buddy,” and a “Yes, buddy, what else can I get you?” No matter if they are male or female, old or young, they all get the same salutation. With one exception: Morris.
Morris remembers the day Mr. Charlies opened, in the fall of 1985. It was two months after the police closed the Lebanese Tarot card shop, arresting the entire family, including the thirteen-year-old girl, who had, with her parents’ help, filed seven different personal injury lawsuits against the City, each one for breaking her leg in a pothole on Avenue D and Second Street, a nonexistent intersection. Mr. Charlies opened with no fanfare, no announcement. One day it was there, like it had been the block’s anchor store for over a century. There was dust on the items before they even went on sale.
Morris, a sophomore in high school at the time, was trying to grow a mustache in hopes of looking older, in hopes of being able to buy beer, get into clubs and bars and impress the girls. But after three months’ growth, his mustache was still frail and patchy, making him look more like he’d kissed a piece of charcoal or sniffed a melting chocolate bar than reached manhood.
It was a rainy Wednesday. Damp and uncomfortable, Morris was on his way home from school when he saw the already tattered MR. CHARLIES sign for the first time. The store wasn’t there that morning, he’d swear. Pausing in front of the deli, he touched his sparse, rabbit fur-soft mustache and looked in. For the last year he’d been trying to buy beer, but the delis and stores in the neighborhood knew him, had known him for years. Each time he tried, he was turned down. “Stick with the soda, Morrie,” the deli owners would say, or “Try milk—it’ll help that ’stache of yours grow.” Morris never protested, always put the beer back in the large standing cooler, and walked out.
But with the opening of the new deli, a place that Morris had no history with, he saw a chance to score.
Morris pulled out the ten-dollar bill Mr. Sofar had mailed him for his birthday. Morris used to walk his dog, Hambone, for him, before Hambone was dognapped. Sofar had lived in the building longer than the Blisses, longer than anyone. He’d witnessed Morris grow from a baby to an adolescent. Stavroula, Morris’s mother, and he were close friends, and Sofar was especially kind to Morris. During the three months Stavroula was gone, Sofar would rip open a package of Nutter Butters, warm them in the oven for five minutes, then carry a tray down one flight to Morris’s apartment every few days. “Made from scratch,” Sofar would say, handing them over. ??
?And I made too many. Take them, please.”
Morris, in turn, stopped by Sofar’s apartment after school to take Hambone, a graying dachshund with patchy fur and the distemper of a child with a stomach achingly full of candy, for a walk. Morris didn’t like the dog, didn’t enjoy taking it out and having to drag it by the leash. Hambone hobbled and whimpered and paused every five feet to try to defecate, unsuccessfully. But he walked the dog as a favor to Sofar, a favor he was well paid for.
Then Morris’s mother died. Hambone was stolen. Sofar cracked, got strange and creepy.
Morris stopped visiting Sofar.
Standing out in the misting rain, the ten-dollar bill damp in his hand, Morris was determined. He strode forward, walked right into the glass door, thinking it swung in, not out. Stepping back, he prayed no one saw, then pulled the door open. Standing tall, he walked in. “New place,” Morris said as he passed Mr. Charlies and the front counter.
“Yes, buddy, yes,” Mr. Charlies answered, excitedly. A customer. He gazed at Morris like he was pure platinum. “Yes, welcome.”
Morris went straight to the standing beer cooler, where he grabbed a forty-ounce Ballantine Ale. He placed the bottle on the counter, took out the ten-dollar bill.
Seeing the beer, seeing how young Morris was, Mr. Charlies’ exuberance wilted.
“So,” Morris said, holding his bravado. “You the owner, you Mr. Charlie?”
“Charlies,” he replied. “Mr. Charlies.” He studied Morris closely, like he was searching for defects. Morris held still, fearing movement would somehow provoke the man.
Mr. Charlies shook his head.
The gig’s up, Morris thought. He’d ask for I.D. or laugh at him or chase him from the store, yelling, “No, buddy, no, no, no.”
But he didn’t. His face knotted like he’d heard the reputation of his only daughter had been soiled. Still, Mr. Charlies bagged the beer and rang the cash register. “One twenty-five,” he said.
“All right, fair price,” Morris said, looking at the register. He wanted to stay silent, to get his beer and leave, but he couldn’t help talking, his nervousness overwhelming. “Fair price,” he said again, handing him the ten-dollar bill. “You know, Mr. Charlie, some of these other places—”
“You Mr. Charlies,” Mr. Charlies said, snatching the money from him. “You the Mr. Charlies here.”
“I—” Morris said, but broke off, confused.
Mr. Charlies held the bill up to the light, licked his forefinger and thumb, felt the bill’s texture and gauge, then, determining that it was real, opened the till drawer.
Morris sensed the exit ten feet from him, felt the draw of the door.
“Oh, no, no. Mr. Charlies, I’m so sorry,” Mr. Charlies said to Morris, looking into his till. “Problems, problems.”
“You know, why don’t we just—”
“So sorry, Mr. Charlies, but I’ve no change.”
“No change?” Morris asked, baffled. “How can you not—”
“Here, Mr. Charlies,” Mr. Charlies said, taking a bent, crusty flyswatter from under the counter, “take this, buy more.”
“I don’t want more,” Morris said, watching Mr. Charlies stick the flyswatter in his bag. He ran the till for another dollar.
“And how about this?” Mr. Charlies said, grabbing a handful of Lipton tea bags.
“How about some cigarettes?” Morris asked. “Or another beer?”
He headed back to the standing cooler.
“Okay, okay, Mr. Charlies,” Mr. Charlies said, dropping the tea bags in the sack then ringing up another dollar. He excitedly searched for items. “And these, Mr. Charlies,” he called to Morris, packing up a plateful of bacon-liver snacks, “you’ll like these. Mrs. Charlies made them.”
Morris returned with another beer.
“Ten dollars even,” Mr. Charlies said, and patted the stuffed bag. “Oh, oh,” he said, seeing the other beer. “You want to buy more, another beer?” He hit the cash register again, ringing up the extra beer. “Eleven twenty-five.”
By the time Morris left the store—after a solid five minutes of arguing, each calling the other Mr. Charlies—he had a bagful of useless items and rancid snacks. He also had no change. But he felt elated, like he’d just exited a Middle Eastern bazaar, penniless but thankful for his life.
And he had a beer. One beer.
“I’m never going there again,” Morris told himself, tossing all the items except his beer. “Never, never again.”
But he went back. It was the only place he could buy beer or cigarettes. And whenever Morris entered the store, he was Mr. Charlies; whenever he exited, he had no change.