Chapter 24: Twine (8/11)
And, Also, Gangsters
A few months ago, we sold out of seeds (and, memorably, soil), and now those seeds have long since taken root and grown.
Around the balconies and porches of South Boston, you can see gardens and plants growing fervently. As one mother pointed out back in Chapter 9, you cannot grow corn on a condominium patio, and now her daughter is back to buy our last bit of jute twine—which is the twine you use to tie plant stalks to chutes to keep them growing straight up.
We’re all out of jute twine, in fact, and it’s not that we haven’t reordered it.
Like many things in The Invent-Ory, everyone is out of it. Everywhere.
No supply line on earth was anticipating a mass psychosis where people feel the need (or are forced to) grow their own food, so many items in this book have yet to be restocked. And if and when they are (like, moving boxes for example) they promptly sell out.
As people (ideally) peel away their levels of psychosis, they loosen their needs. So as with toilet paper, say, we have restocked that.
Strangely, the liquor store never ran out of liquor and the convenience store never ran out of lottery tickets.
Speaking of alcohol, the bars have started to open up their insides now (with the tables all separated by six feet and hanging slabs of plexiglass because that makes sense) and I’ve taken to going to get a TGIF burger at one of them.
They have a jukebox that you can program via app, which is good because you still cannot touch the jukebox. This one is particularly loud, and I typically play very loud country break-up songs (did I mention that, at the beginning of the year, my leftist wife left me for my totally insane friend?)
This one is a particular favorite:
Suddenly a beer appears.
A guy at the end of the bar raises his glass. After we toast he comes over and thanks me for keeping the hardware store open. I recognize him from those little gatherings we would host from time-to-time.
He’s the GM of this particular establishment.
“You’re the only place I can go to anymore,” he says.
If you would have told me six months ago that people would buy me things because I … worked at the hardware store, I would have asked you: “Why in the world would anyone do that?”
As for the Godless heathens males that are left in Boston, they all watch The Bachelorette, and tonight is the grand finale. So the now packed bar turns down my jukebox and puts The Bachelorette on every TV screen. Men and women sit segregated at their various tables, and hoot and holler at the reality dating show.
There is apparently (of course) a betting mechanism to all this.
Suffice it to say, I don’t stick around to find out who “wins.”
Addendum: There are still gangsters in South Boston. And occasionally they send in one of their minions to buy something.
And it typically is something very, very particular.
In one case, a very nervous and disheveled man is looking for a particular screw and washer combination. I imagine it is for an old office chair.
He keeps texting someone, asking for exactly what it is, and then sending pictures of the screw. And then, getting on the phone finally and triple-checking that this was the right thing. “Are you sure? … OK, OK … OK, I’m coming right back.”
He shuffles up to the counter and I ring him up for the combination, probably a buck forty-nine or something like that.
He hands me a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.
Next week, the crops continue to grow and … here come the moscas.
