| Joe stared at his grilled cheese, drummed his fingers on the counter. Waiting for the ketchup. Not a bottle on the counter that wasn’t empty. What were the chances? Hey, boss. I got an idea. Let’s go into printing. Expand. We control the presses, we can do color cheap, we can set the price, and hire out the excess capacity. See us through the lean times when the button business isn’t exactly keeping us in caviar, you know? Not in a million years. The last innovation the boss approved was an extra line on the office phone. For all Joe knew he’d been using whale oil and flax wicks for illumination through the forties. After he’d left other drug store he’d driven down the block, spotted another drug store, and decided to see if he was on a roll. It was a smaller store with disorganized, half-empty shelves; what remained in stock looked battered and dusty, suggesting perhaps it was just a front for a man in the back who ran the numbers. But he found a neat thin fellow in a pharmacist’s smock counting pills into a bottle, whistling softy. He had a bandage around his left hand; it was spotted with fresh red. “Hello,” he said when he heard Joe approach. “You must be the fellow from General Medical.” Joe had introduced himself, laid his card on the counter. “Huh,” the man said. “Matches. How about that. I ran out last week. I used to be with United, you know. They supplied all those things, but we parted ways last week. I just didn’t see what a chain was doing for me.” “People trust the independent guy,” Joe said. “They know it’s your name on the line. So why not have it on the matchbook?” “Well, exactly. There have to be fifteen Uniteds in town anyway. The matchbooks didn’t even have my name. You know they took all my stock when we split?” He frowned. He touched the bandage on his finger. “The fellow from General was supposed to be by this morning, sell me a new line. He’s late. Had a fellow come in just a minute ago for Epsom Salts, and I didn’t have any. He’s never coming back. What could I say? Sorry, I got some combs, and an Ace Bandage over in aisle three, maybe that’ll help? No, if you’re going to be a drug store, you ought to have some drugs.” “Makes sense. You know, we could put something on the match that says ‘Your independent neighborhood pharmacy’ on the back. Give you a competitive edge over the Rexalls.” The man’s eyes widened. “You sell to Rexall? Are they coming in around here?” Joe shrugged. “I’ve heard. I was just over at Johnson’s. He’s . . . well, concerned, I suppose you’d say. But I can do for him what I did for you. Custom matches at bulk prices. You don’t like the sample I cook up, we shake hands and that’s it. Can I show you some samples?” He left with an order. On the way out he noticed streaks on the door, fragments of an old decal. Someone had spent a lot of time taking a razor to the United sign. Not an easy job. Joe guessed it wasn’t the guys from the chain. “Sorry about that, hon.” The waitress placed a bottle of ketchup on the counter. “Red lead. And your matches.” Joe stared at the book. See what you could do with color? He checked the spine, and grinned – ah, the Consolidated Razor Blade Company. A division of Consolidated Gas. Everybody was consolidating. So much for anti-monopoly laws, I guess. Bring on the Razor Trust. “Tissue thin” was a lousy slogan – tissues were thin, sure, but they fell apart; who wanted to shave with a Kleenex? "It’s the edge that counts.” Well, with a razor blade, that’s true. No argument there. Sort of like saying try Pabst, it’s wet. Then it hit him. Berkeleys. When Sal was killed in an accident in Basic they sent all his stuff back to his parents’ house. There was an opened pack of Berkeley blades, GI issue. He’d taken them from the box when no one was looking – not that anyone was paying attention to details that week. They sent back his razor, too, one blade still in the holder. You could smell the shaving cream. It didn’t smell like Sal. He’d practiced shaving with Sal’s razor when he was alone. When dad was on the road, when Mom was off, he’d take the razor from his drawer – the one mom never checked, the one with baseball cars and comic books and tin medals and old Indian-head pennies, and gone to the bathroom. Closed the door. Lathered up. The blade felt clean and smooth on his skin. He got used to the ritual, the hot water, the medicinal tang of the shave cream, the slow strokes on his hairless chin. He learned to make the hairpin turn around the jaw. He learned how to make faces and make the upper lip taut. He learned about the word “philtrum” those two lines that came down from your nose, because one day he cut it and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. He looked “face” and “nose” and “head” in the encyclopedia, trying to learn if he’d severed an important vessel. It was just skin, as it turned out. But it never healed right. Not a month went by he didn’t open it up again. |
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this is a work of fiction c. 2005 j. lileks. / joe home / lileks.com home