Once Upon a Spatula

All I needed was a spatula. Really. But you know what happens when you go into a thrift store. It's so easy to get sidetracked browsing all those shelves. You can end up pushing through hundreds of hangers on rods looking for something to wear, then scanning even more shelves littered with the cemeteries of clear glass bud vases left over from every last flower shop in town. Before you know it, you've been in the store for over an hour, but hopefully, you'll leave with at least one decent find. My sister Emily told me I could find a spatula at the thrift store on Mesa Vista Avenue. She also told me not to start up any conversations with the old man that owned the place, or I'd never escape. Little did she know.

It was the kind of secondhand store tucked away in an unremarkable part of town, which is where I lived, inside one of the long and narrow strip malls with the solid glass face that seemed to go on for miles. The kind that rose out of this desert suburbia in the early 1960s, a blank canvas for commerce, the landscape waiting to be stripped, and then strip-malled.

These old strip malls slithered toward the outskirts of town, bellied over curbs and waiting for stoplights to turn green for the traffic that rolled along beside them. 7-11, Sunshine Loans, Ms. Wanda's School of Dance, Dave's Pizza, and Jay's Corner Market. It went on and on like that for miles until it abruptly stopped at the edge of town right where you turn left to get on the freeway to go someplace else.

"Well, hello, young lady, how're ya doin' today?" The old man in the black recliner hollered from about forty feet across the store with the high ceilings, and low fans, and the echo of his voice stopped short by the blades spinning and blowing round. I stood near the checkout, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. Then I located him: smoking and watching Jeopardy on one of the used TVs in the back. I could tell from the smell that the place had never been non-smoking.

"Just looking for a spatula is all."

The old man had a piece of silver duct tape on his black horn-rimmed glasses that matched the silver duct tape on the arm of the black recliner. He was having difficulty standing up, and I thought about leaving because I didn't want to have to help him up and find myself closer to a conversation about the histories of old people that I didn't even know. All I needed was a spatula, and then I was out. My grandparents did this to me all the time, and it was so unfair, the way their turtle's pace always butted up against my millennial short attention span, but I did it anyway: "Here, let me help you up, Mister…"

"Oh, no, I can handle it, don't you worry about me, Missy." I stood there on the beige and speckled industrial vinyl flooring, fearing that the old guy, after hoisting himself up, would get his leg stuck and twisted between the recliner's vinyl seat and the footrest, and I'd watch him fall over and hit the hard floor with a crack, breaking a hip.

Then what would I do? Call 911? Hold his hand and try to comfort him? Tell him everything was going to be OK, and listen to the sounds of him wailing in pain drowned out by the sound of the approaching ambulance? Then watch as they carried him out and stuffed him in the back. And then what? Would I be stuck shop sitting a business for someone I didn't even know? And what about the spatula? Would I even have time to look for a spatula if customers came in? And what would happen when it was time to close? I didn't have a key to the place. Would I have to spend the night?

And that's exactly how it happened. I stood dead center of the aisle flanked by eight swivel office chairs on my right and a retro glass case filled with cheap jewelry on my left and watched as he got twisted up in between the seat and the footrest and fell right over.

And then I heard it. Crack.

Because I'd just had this premonition, I knew exactly what to do. I called 911, knelt there beside him as he moaned and wailed, and waited for the ambulance to get there.

"Hold on, Mister, they'll be here any minute; it's gonna be OK, don't worry."

"Ohhhhh, ohhhhhh…"

"Don't worry, Mister; they're coming."

After the ambulance arrived and they shot him full of morphine, I asked Mr. Barnes if he needed me to do anything.

"Can you call my daughter and watch the store until she gets here?"

"Of course," I said. Of course.

He told me where I could find his daughter's phone number inside a little black notebook behind the cash register.

After the ambulance sped off, a customer walked in, and after that, it was a steady flow for Fifty Percent off Fridays just like the sign on the front door said, and it was like that straight up until closing time.

The first thing I did before all that was to call his daughter, but of course, she was headed for the hospital first.

Finally, after I'd let the last customer out at six o'clock, I turned over the closed sign, pulled the glass doors shut, and locked up. Then I decided to sweep. When I worked at Popeye's, I had the night shift, and it was always the first thing I did after closing. After I swept, I located the phone behind the counter, a phone that still had a cord on it, and I called Emily. After I ran down every last disturbing detail of the day, she said, "Are you freaking kidding me, Dee Dee?" and she started laughing hysterically.

"Oh my God, Em, gimme a break, for God's sake, this day has been insane, and I'm starving. The only thing to eat here is a dish full of hard candy. Would you please bring me something?"

"OK, OK." She was still laughing.

"And would you stop by my apartment and feed Jax?" Jax, the cat.

"OK, OK,” she agreed. Then she started laughing hysterically again and hung up.

After that, I started feather dusting mismatched china place settings that sat on top of a gaudy Drexel Heritage dining room table from the seventies that was part of the store's window display. I arranged plastic flowers in one of the bud vases and placed them in the center of the table. Then I moved some chairs around, added a couple of half-used taper candles, and once I realized I was decorating, I stopped. I'd already done enough today. Old guy owed me. I needed a job now that school was finally out. Maybe I could work here. On second thought, no, too dangerous.

I looked toward the back of the store past every kind of furniture, rows of clothes, and shelves topped with all brands of secondhand junk and potential treasure. I headed toward the sign that said Kitchenwares. I needed a goddamned spatula, and I wasn't leaving here without one. My old one broke and it was from a secondhand store too. I was sure that the old guy wouldn't mind paying me in spatula for managing his business all day and all night.

Moving through the aisles and stacks of stuff, my eyeballs registered every last item on the shelves, just in case. I needed a spatula, but you never knew what else I might need. I turned left at the sign that said Books and slowly ran my finger horizontally across their spines, speed reading titles, and hoping to find a story that I just couldn't resist. About 300 books in, there it was: The Chronicles of Narnia. My favorite trilogy from childhood that I no longer had a copy of but that I would now.

My heart jumped with joy. It was Emily's favorite book too, and once she arrived, we'd sit down on one of the used mattresses in the back and turn on a bedside lamp. We'd open all the white boxes with red Chinese lettering on the side and devour #47, #82, #21, spring rolls, wontons, and two boxes of fried rice. Then we'd sit back, burp loudly, and break open our fortune cookies and read them aloud to each other. You will have good luck starting a new business, and You will soon come into a fortune.

Then we'd sit side by side, open up The Chronicles and travel back in time through the wardrobe, through the forest, under the street lamp, through a snowstorm, eat Turkish Delight, and await the terrors of the evil White Witch.

But when I pulled the book off the shelf and opened its pages, the inside had been completely gutted. Someone had turned it into a book safe, a secret hiding place for valuables. Inside the recessed cavity between the hardcovers, a purple Crown Royal bag with gold trim sat inside. I took it out, loosened the drawstring, and looked inside.

I couldn't believe it—a fat wad of cash. I started shaking a little. I think I even broke a small sweat. When I was finally able to focus, I carried the bag over to a yellow Formica table and dumped it all out. Slowly, I started counting and arranging all the bills in stacks of twenties, fifties, and hundreds, until I reached the final number: $20,000.

I couldn't stop staring at all that cash. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Never, ever. What the hell was I gonna do with all that cash?

Then, just seconds before all the fantasies of finally owning a used car and paying off school loans and credit cards started to flood my brain, I remembered that this wasn't actually happening to me. This was Mr. Barnes's store, so it was really happening to him. I was pretty sure he'd be needing the money, considering he'd just broken his hip. It felt like a real miracle, but it was Mr. Barnes's miracle, not mine.

Sure, I could use the money, but the fact was, the only thing I came here for was a spatula. Who knew if Mr. Barnes would have ever found it. Maybe another customer would have come in, pulled it off the shelf, taken it to the counter, paid the two dollars and ninety-nine cents for the book—maybe even bought themselves a spatula—and then walked away toward a much bigger spending spree.

One by one, I piled each of the little stacks of bills on top of the other until they made just one pile again and placed it inside the book. Then I walked to the front and opened the cash register. I pulled all the money out and placed each of the three denominations in their designated spots inside the drawer, and when I was finished, I closed it back up.

Just then, Emily knocked on the glass door, her arms full of two plastic bags with all the warm, yummy boxes that smelled so good. I opened the door and let her in.

"Hey, Dee Dee, I got your favorite, moo shu pork, and I stopped by your place and fed Jax."

"Em, you're not gonna believe what just happened."

She looked at me unbelievingly and said, "What could have possibly happened now?"

I hesitated for a second, and then I said, "I just found a new spatula!"