As I drove behind the shallow tunnel of light projected damply by the headlights of my Monte Carlo, I wondered quietly what motley crew I might soon encounter. After all, “Ed’s Grab ‘n’ Go” is the kind of place I only ever go when persuaded by the forced hand of either sheer desperation or gross laziness (not necessarily in that order).

I pulled into the pitted asphalt driveway with purpose, insisting to myself that the brevity of the trip would be its justification. And after I had unclipped my seatbelt and wrestled the grey polyester strap from that uncomfortable area of my neck now permanently scarred from the inside out with seatbelt rash, I was greeted familiarly by a black and white dog tied to the cement bollard gratuitously protecting a phone booth clearly out of service since the early seventies. Despite his drab surroundings and drabber owner – a filthy, disheveled, greyhaired man who appeared as if he had just come from an audition for the part of “homeless drifter” – the dog, a medium-sized herding breed as unkempt as its owner, seemed content to the point of bliss. Its tail thrashed around, and its tongue rhythmically slapped the man’s filthy pant leg as he emerged from within, a bottle peering out the top of a fresh paper sack.

“Drifter. Let’s go, buddy.” He spoke as though forcing his words through a mound of gravel as he untied the flailing animal. I couldn’t help but marvel at the irony. Drifter. Wonderful.

The man’s eyes managed to sniff me out but only in passing. His face told me I was by far the least of his concerns; and after our initial greeting, it was clear that the dog couldn’t have cared less about me anymore either.

To my left, as I passed through a grimy set of double doors adorned with scores of sun-yellowed cardboard beer and liquor propaganda pieces aglow from the weighty fluorescent store front lighting, stood three middle-aged men who, judging by their dialogue and mannerisms, seemed collectively convinced that most – if not all – of the proverbial “them” had been out from the beginning of time to get what had belonged to these three men. I had arrived in the middle of some considerable belly-aching.

“—Yeah, man. I’m tired of it,” cried one of the men, voice gradually building, “Who’s money is it, man? What do I even go to work for anymore? My wife acts like I don’t bring home no bacon no more.” Pause. “And she’s f—kin’ right! I don’t. But it ain’t ‘cause I’m out f— kin’ drinkin’—”

“—Nah, man. You’re workin’ like the rest of us,” chimed in a man who appeared to be slightly more in control of his emotions. “But, we’re gonna get ours – what they been takin’ off our tables. I’m sick of buyin’ Uncle Sam T-bones and then – and then – and then suckin’ the gristle off his bones. You know what I’m sayin’?”

This conversation appeared to represent a long tradition between these three men whose bond seemed to be in that tradition alone. And I couldn’t help but identify with them on some level, having bought Uncle Sam a few T-bones myself. Ironically, though, they didn’t appear to be the kind of men who either had much or had a right to much of anything. As I casually observed them, passing from a solid ten feet away, I was assaulted by day-old body odor mixed with the distinct muddied scent of soiled motor oil. Hiding a twisted wince, I entered the liquor store to the sound of jingling bells beating against the glass store front door.

It was the kind of place where fictional Koreans are often robbed at gunpoint in Hollywood adaptations of South-Central Los Angeles. The aged linoleum was sticky from neglect, and there were vast, downward- protruding mildew stains, accompanied by the smell of wet mold, in the ceiling tiles indicating where roof repairs had been desperately needed but ignored in the interest of replenishing the floor-to-ceiling sea of sizes, shapes, and colors behind the crusty countertop which saddled the outdated push-button cash register. I tried to remember when I had ever seen that amount or variety of liquor in that confined of an area. I couldn’t recall.

Against the audible backdrop of rubber soles sticking to linoleum along with some faint, indistinguishable variety of Middle Eastern music, I headed past the check-out counter to my right, the impulse buy-oriented end-cap arrangements of cashews, dried fruits, and other items no one actually buys to my left, and directly for the cooler. Past the glare of fluorescent lights on the glass, I could see the neatly stacked plastic baby-blue-labeled half-gallon cartons of 2% milk as they approached. In ten minutes, I thought with an accidental grin, I would be at home, sitting on a soft leather sofa, watching two-and-a half seconds of every program on television, and savoring bite after bite of about a million chocolate chip cookies soaked in cool, creamy 2 per cent. I deserved this, didn’t I? Well, of course I did.

I walked, shoes squeaking as if walking down a set of basement steps in the dark of midnight, to the register and placed on the counter the carton, wet with condensation brought on by the store’s oppressive over-heating. The gracious, smiling Middle Eastern man behind the counter, smiling tightly and briefly, patiently searched out the bar code printed on the carton’s label, scanned it, and read my total. $3.68. He was an older man in his early 60’s, with a long grey beard suffocating a thin strip of faded black nestled down its very center. His head was wrapped tightly and neatly in an off-white bun-like turban, which extended downward to roundly cover his ears, framing his face triangularly from the forehead. The way his eyes hung tiredly toward his cheeks, sagging in the middle like a cocker-spaniel’s, told me that he had worked honestly and vigorously during his sixty-some-odd years – there was no question about this. An honest man. A hard-working man.

“Boy, milk sure has gotten expensive,” I said, having no real recollection of the historic cost curve of milk and no real idea why I had just said that. He responded graciously by uttering something just completely unintelligible to which I nodded politely.

As I reached into my back pocket to retrieve what I had just arbitrarily decided to be the unreasonable amount of $3.68, I was startled to stillness by something subtle, something muffled by the glass door through which I had entered moments ago. I was pretty sure I was overhearing someone standing at the storefront, maybe 10 feet from the entrance, telling a joke. The only thing I could clearly make out, though, was that it was an awful joke if it was a joke at all. I stood there with my hand in my back pocket for what seemed like an hour – but what was probably more like twenty seconds – having become completely unaware of the kind Middle Eastern man, trying to filter out the ambient noise from inside the liquor store (coffee machine gurgling, that strange middle eastern music droning on, coolers and freezers clicking and humming) in order to more clearly decipher the conversation outside. I was now almost desperate for the punch line to what I was beginning to hope on hope was a joke, since, from what pieces I was able to put together, it appeared to be a joke about some store clerk choking on poison while some guys robbed him as he lay fighting to keep from choking to death on his own vomit.

As it struck me that the gracious clerk may too be within earshot of this “joke,” he violently clutched his chest with a fleshy-sounding thud dampened by the cloth of his cleanly ironed white pearl-buttoned shirt. Then a small spot of a foamy white substance peeked out of the very corner of his mouth and began dancing like sea foam as he inhaled and exhaled. The man’s jovial, kind smile was now a twisted downward expression of terror. His eyes drooped while his gaze turned blankly toward the ceiling. As he collapsed behind the counter, he writhed like a dead animal animated only by nerve impulses and began alternating fits of coughing, choking, gurgling, and gasping. Definitely not a joke, I thought to myself, suddenly panicking yet somehow suspended in time with the same hand in the same pocket digging for the same change as before.

I flashed a look toward the store front. Entering like gangsters through the double doors were the three smelly men. They were coming in for the take, and I was a dead man unless I could manage to unfreeze. With one adrenaline-fueled leap, I found myself on the other side of the counter with the now clearly incapacitated Middle Eastern man.

“Wow,” I thought to myself, “Look at all that liquor.” Even with certain death looming, it was impressive.

Looking up from the floor, where I was now huddling next to a frothing, writhing aged liquor store clerk, I noticed that the cash drawer was wide open. These smelly guys really knew what they were doing, I judged. Impeccable timing, no doubt. One of them, a thin-lipped, red-haired, freckled individual, wearing a navy-colored automotive-style work short with the name, Chaz, embroidered to the left breast above the pocket, was now walking around the counter with long intentional gaits while the other two stood watch at the door. I couldn’t believe he was wearing a nametag to an attempted murder-robbery! To my surprise and delight, he approached the register without paying me any mind at all, in all likelihood unaware of my presence altogether. He had been feverishly grabbing fistfuls of fives, tens, and twenties when the two men outside began screaming and waving their arms.

“Cops!”

“We gotta go!”

“Move it! Move it!”

Chaz, who had just been frantically cramming wads of bills into his work-weathered hands, now clearly terrified, dropped every dollar to the ground next to where I had been playing dead as if to avoid a mountain lion attack. He ran out the double doors and disappeared, along with the two others. I couldn’t move. Although I was almost certain now that the three smelly men had been completely unarmed, the shock, terror, and desperation of the situation was overwhelming, especially in the face of this foaming mess of a man I was now pretty much lying on top of in order to remain invisible.

After a few moments, I regained my composure, grabbed some stray bills which had landed on the linoleum next to where I had been huddled, stood up slowly, and began putting bills carefully back into the register. The poor Middle Eastern man on the ground needed help, sure. But I didn’t know what to do for him. I might as well return his money, I thought. I was there, after all, and the bad people were gone, I reasoned. I’d surely be hailed as a hero either way.

So I stood there, completely composed, towering over a quivering, nearly dead liquor store clerk holding two fists-full of cold, hard cash when several gun-wielding police officers entered violently through the grimy double doors adorned with scores of sun-yellowed cardboard beer and liquor propaganda pieces.

At that moment, cookies and milk had never sounded so good.

“Freeze!” screamed one officer.

“Don’t move!” screeched another.

“On the ground!” came one more.

Then “Holy Cow, Johnson! Look at all that liquor!