found drama

I’m in a tiny corner store. A liquor store. It’s between two events. (Work and a party? A meeting ending and another beginning?) I’ve got a limited budget and even more limited time but this store has an incredibly deep selection of Scotch whiskies. It is difficult to decide. I turn around to discover that my friend J.M. is keeping the till. He offers some help but we both realize that only I can make any kind of ultimate decision on which to purchase. I start picking up individual bottles. They feel heavy (too heavy?) and many of the prices have rubbed off of the labels. When asked, J.M. is able to recite each price from memory. I narrow the selection down to six bottles, then five. Two women come in and start to peruse the bottles as well. But they seem to be more decisive and start to fill a basket with an impossible number of bottles. I keep bouncing back and forth between those five… then six again… then five… then four. I keep coming back to a curiously shaped bottle — it is unusually tall, with an elongated neck that is bent into a sharp switchback, like a goose’s neck. I keep taking it down from its very high shelf and putting it back and taking it back down. J.M. keeps looking at me and then over to the women as if to say it’s now or never. I turn my back for a second and two of my narrowed-to-four bottles are gone. Now it is between some cheap amber-colored liquid bottled in a cube and the goose-necked bottle which is well over a hundred dollars…

About Rob Friesel