Discount
Francis W. Porretto
Copyright (C) 2010 by Francis W. Porretto
Cover art by Francis W. Porretto
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(Human concepts of right and justice vary widely. Some folks will always feel they're not getting their due. The worst of these make terrible drinking buddies...and they don't always improve when, by some twist of fate, they get what they claim are only their just deserts.)
Schiffers was drunk. It was his normal condition on Friday and Saturday nights. It was becoming his normal condition on all the other nights.
The other regular patrons of the Black Grape had long since learned how to avoid Schiffers's attention without causing unpleasantness, an important survival skill in all neighborhood bars. But he could still snag the occasional newcomer, who was usually too polite to escape from his unvarying diatribe on the unfairness of the System before he began to gesticulate or slur.
"They give the real s-story away," he intoned portentously to his increasingly restless audience of one, "with the s-s-seasonal discounts. You notice how everything's twenty percent off when they really want to fill the s-stores up, like at Christmas? Well, if they can make money at those prices then, they could make it that way year round. They're just used to gouging us, and until we rise up and ch-change things, it'll just keep going."
Schiffers could hear his speech losing precision. He pulled himself erect and bore down on his next few words. "They've got it the way they want it, see? You can't expect them to change the System for us. They're on the inside, we're on the outside." He waved his empty beer stein in an attempt at emphasis. "It sticks out everywhere. We s-sow, they reap. We work, they profit. We pay, they play. And it won't change until we s-step in and change it."
The lowering glare Schiffers affected at this point in his declamation was as typeset as the rest of his text. Intended to convey a sense of enveloping menace, it only made him look drunker. He leaned forward to heighten the effect, which caused him to slip off his barstool and into his startled victim's arms. One of the other regulars helped the poor fellow unload Schiffers into a conventional chair against the wall. The newcomer quickly absented himself for parts unknown.
The regular straightened Schiffers up against the tavern wall and shook him gently. "Rich, things have been going good for you, haven't they? You got your shift differential. I hear you even got a raise a couple of months back. And Marge's getting married soon, so you won't even have to pay alimony any more. Why do you go on like this?"
Eight steins of beer in under two hours had undone Schiffers' articulation as completely as his posture. "Matter of principle" was what he tried to say; a barely modulated slur was what he produced. But he always said the same thing to anyone who reproved him, and all the Black Grape's regulars had endured his litany until they knew it by heart.
"Matter of principle, my ass. You've got no self-control. You can't keep hold of yourself when you see something you want, but you don't want to pay the freight. Booze, toys, cars or women, it's always the same with you. Well, it's over for tonight. Tony's cut you off, so get yourself together and go home."
He released his hold on Schiffers, who slumped down against the wall, for the moment too fuddled to produce a satisfyingly sharp retort. When he had collected himself sufficiently to frame a thought, what he shrieked at the backs of the other patrons was not part of his stock tirade.
"I don't want anything I don't deserve, and I never have. You think I've got no self-control? Well, if I could get any decent kind of break I wouldn't need it, and I wouldn't hear about it from the likes of you!"
But as sensible people everywhere do when confronted by something annoying but not damaging, the other patrons of the Black Grape simply ignored him, in that way which expresses contempt for the person ignored more clearly than any phrase or blow. Humiliated, Schiffers marshaled what remained of his motor faculties and shambled homeward, thinking only that it was time to find a new place to drink.
***
Mornings after are difficult for all of us, but especially so for those, like Richard Schiffers, whose nights before are no longer matters of volition. He had adopted intoxication to evade the chaos he had made of his affairs, but he could not evade the consequences of intoxication. A hot shower helped to relieve the cramps in his long muscles, but only dulled the agony from his dehydrated sinuses. It was noon before aspirin and coffee had cut through the fog in his head, which was seldom entirely clear these days.
Schiffers had turned forty only a few weeks ago. He had chosen to ignore the event, nor had anyone else commemorated it with so much as a greeting card. His apartment had not been thoroughly cleaned for a very long time, and looked like the worst nightmare any woman has ever had about a bachelor's flat. He had ceased to notice the disorder or the dirt. It was his habit to concentrate on a single enthusiasm at a time, which usually centered on some item he had just bought.
But he had not bought anything new for himself lately, and his old diversions and amusements did nothing for him. The expensive stereo, the synthesizer, the video game system, the big screen TV, the home computer, his Italian sports car, all had palled on him. It would undoubtedly be awhile before he could buy any more toys, for he no longer had a valid credit card, and no one in the area would accept his checks.
All his adult life, he had indulged himself despite inadequate ability to pay. A complete list of his creditors would include names he could no longer remember.
He made a decent living, especially for a single man. His legal obligation to his ex-wife was not crippling, and they had had no children. Yet he was always short what it would take to pay: for his necessities, for his alimony, for the many things he saw in store windows and knew at once that he had to have.
A condition that had persisted for so long could not be his fault; it had to be a feature of the System. Schiffers talked and thought a lot about the System, and he knew it for his enemy.
The day's mail contained the usual circulars, the usual solicitations, and more than the usual dunning notices. Envelopes with windows he simply tossed aside, knowing from the return addresses that they contained warnings and urgings from creditors, which he simply could not face in his current state. Christ on a pogo stick, what did he have to tell these people before they accepted that he just couldn't pay them? What would it take to get them to wait graciously for him to pull even, as he had done these many years?
There was one envelope with no return address. Curiosity edged out anxiety. Instead of tossing it aside, he opened it. It contained a single printed sheet folded around a pearl gray plastic card the size and shape of a credit card.
The card bore only two features: across the middle, his name, and at the top, the legend "20% DISCOUNT," both in the raised-lettering style of a credit card. It indicated no account number, no grantor institution, and no date of expiration. He put it aside and turned to the accompanying letter, which was brief:
Dear Mr. Schiffers:
We are pleased to grant you a 20% Discount Card. You will find its use to be simple and convenient. Simply present it at payment time and your merchant will deduct 20% from the cost of your purchases.
There is no activation procedure for the Card; your first use of it will automatically activate your account, establishing your privileges and obligations as a Cardholder.
If you decide not to use the Card, you may simply destroy it; there is no need to return it. Please do not discard it, as an attempt to use it by someone other than yourself would have consequences that we would prefer to avoid.
Thank you for your attention.
Like the card, the letter gave no indication of its source. It was unsigned.
Bemused, he put the letter down on his kitchen table and rubbed his
eyes. A 20% Discount Card? On what? And for what? What kind of account was this supposed to be drawn on? Had one of his drinking buddies (for so he thought of them) gone to considerable trouble and expense to make him a fake credit card? Where were the laughs? Had every merchant in town been told to expect him, and to put on some sort of foolery if he presented the card? Was this some new Candid Camera stunt?
His mood lightened a bit. It was a droll idea. If only it were for real. And it could be, in the proper sort of society; hadn't he said as much himself? Obviously he couldn't forsake his friends at the Black Grape, at least until he found out which one had had the initiative and wit to come up with this.
He pulled out his wallet and slipped the card into the slot vacated by his defunct Visa card. The gag had done one thing, at least: it had reminded him that the refrigerator was empty.
***
Schiffers had never patronized the Cow Palace. Ordinarily, the meat for his table came from the supermarket. But he found himself entering the butcher's shop without thinking, and without a clear purpose.
"Can I help you, sir?" The butcher's face was open, pleasant and without recognition. Schiffers surveyed the meat case. He had enough for a couple of pounds of pork chops, but a large sirloin steak tugged at his eye and his appetite in a way that was too insistent to ignore.
"How much for that sirloin on the left?" He pointed at the steak, and the butcher obligingly lifted it out of the display case and weighed it for him.
"Three and a half pounds at three ninety-nine a pound, comes to thirteen ninety-seven, sir." As the butcher wrapped the steak, Schiffers counted his meager holdings: twelve dollars even. Before he realized that he meant to do so, he extracted the 20% Discount card from his wallet and presented it to the butcher with a baroque, self-mocking flourish.
"Do you honor these?"
For a moment the butcher looked at the card in bewilderment. Then there was some sort of event... something that briefly charged the air like a nearby stroke of lightning. It left Schiffers with an almost imperceptible humming in his ears and the faintest tang of ozone in his nostrils. And now the butcher's face held no expression; he worked the keys on the cash register as Schiffers returned the card to his wallet.
"Eleven dollars and seventeen cents, sir." No hint of the butcher's thoughts was evident in his visage. It was as blank as a freshly washed slate.
Schiffers counted over the money and accepted the package and his change. At the door he glanced back over his shoulder, unable to believe that he would not be stopped, but the butcher had turned to other chores.
There was nothing waiting for Schiffers outside the door of the Cow Palace: no camera crews, no gaggle of friends and acquaintances poised to leap at him and shout April Fools. The same mild spring day was in progress. He suppressed an urge to run.
Back in his apartment, Schiffers put the steak into the refrigerator and took the card out of his wallet to inspect it once more.
The card had changed slightly. In the lower right corner, where previously there had been no markings, there was now a raised-letter "A".
***
It worked at the supermarket. It worked at the department stores. It worked at the laundry. It worked at the gas station. It worked when he presented it to his landlord. And when he went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to pay a fine from a speeding violation, he presented the clerk with the Card and it worked there too.
Always they took it, puzzlement fading swiftly into expressionless acceptance and adjustment: twenty percent off.
The subsequent transactions weren't quite like the first one. He no longer asked if the Card would be honored. indeed, he had formed the habit of presenting it without speaking at all. There was no repetition of the electrified-air sensation. The face of the Card had undergone no further changes. But it continued to work, and work, and work.
His sense of a gag in progress, a pratfall about to be sprung, had only taken two or three transactions to dissolve. He did not care how it had happened; he had finally gotten his due. The System had cracked beneath the will of some benevolent Power, which had reached through the crack to give Richard Schiffers, telephone lineman and would-be bon vivant, twenty percent off.
His plans had begun to burgeon. Perhaps, with the Card, he could afford a house, something that, given his inability to amass a down payment, had always been beyond his reach. Could he persuade a bank to give him a mortgage, using the Card as his down payment? Twenty percent down was what banks wanted to see, wasn't it? If he could get twenty percent off the fine for a speeding ticket, surely he could get twenty percent off his property taxes. Or perhaps he'd take some nice vacations: places he'd always wanted to go, like Aruba and Hawaii, or perhaps Germany to see the ancestral homeland his late father had rhapsodized about. It couldn't possibly be as splendid as the old man had said, but what the hell! Twenty percent off!
If only it had happened sooner, he could have avoided so much unpleasantness. He could have had the life he was entitled to, the life he was destined for, rather than a youth spent in deprivation and frustration and a middle age spent hurrying to catch up.
A month went by, and another, and another. No Statement of Account arrived in the mail, nor did a Notice of Payment Due. He received no phone calls about his use of the Card. Relations with his bank were normal: he was still overdrawn, but things were no worse than usual. Merchants and professionals to whom he presented the Card never made reference to it, nor did their behavior toward him change on return visits.
There remained one place where he did not try to use the Card: the Black Grape. He sensed a connection between the Card and all the ranting about the System he had done there while in his cups, though for the life of him he couldn't imagine what it might be. Whatever the reason, it seemed fitting that he should pay full fare at the Black Grape. And too, he had been drinking less of late, and the other regular patrons were no longer avoiding him quite so rigidly. One or two had even deigned to ask how he was, and to swap a few words of small talk. Some of them were local merchants and tradesmen with whom he had used the Card, but none ever spoke of it.
It was almost a pity that his days of paying alimony to Margie were over and done. He would have loved to find out if she honored the Card.
***
Schiffers was putting the last of his six bags of groceries into the shopping cart when he began to listen actively to the exchange behind him. The young woman behind him in line did not have enough cash to cover her selections, and was telling the checkout clerk which items to set aside.
He had noticed her beauty when she joined the checkout line, of course, but had not thought to speak to her. She could be no more than twenty-five, and probably would not be interested in the attentions of a man so much older. She might even be married. There was no ring on her hand, but the married ones didn't all wear rings, nowadays.
Schiffers had concerned himself very little with women the past year. Perhaps advancing age was attenuating his desires. Or perhaps his energies were simply absorbed by his other pursuits. But he saw an opportunity to do a good deed, at no cost to himself. More than one good deed, really, for the line of shoppers behind the young woman was becoming impatient and vocal.
"Excuse me," he beckoned to the clerk, interrupting the stream of sacrifices and calculations. "I believe I can help." Clerk and customer both turned to him curiously as he deployed the Card for the second time in five minutes. "Will this cover the difference?"
The clerk squinted at him as if she did not see the Card in his hand. "Will what cover the difference?"
Schiffers could not believe his ears. "This." He thrust it forward. The clerk recoiled as if he had swung at her.
"Mister, if this is some kind of joke, you can see we're very busy here. Or should I call the manager?" The young woman he had intended to help had become alarmed, and was backing away from the register.
Schiffers was dumbfounded. No one had ever rejected the Card. He insp
ected it himself, wondering if it had chosen just this inopportune moment to change for the second time, but it was as it had been for more than a year.
"I'm calling the manager." The clerk picked up the intercom handset and punched numbers. Schiffers swiftly returned the Card to his wallet and made to cut and run.
"There's no need," he said, smiling awkwardly, "I've just made a slight mistake. Have a nice day!" He pushed his shopping cart toward the nearest exit as fast as its sticky wheels would allow. Once in his car, he laid his head against the steering wheel and gave way to the shakes.
It didn't work. For the first time, it didn't work. That same clerk had accepted the Card for Schiffers's own purchases just moments before. Impossibly, she had seen and recognized the Card the first time but not the second.
His prosperity and comfort were creations of the Card. Now he didn't know if he could trust it to continue to function. His dependence upon it was a gulf that had yawned wide to swallow him, a gulf he had created but had not suspected.
Many minutes passed, and quite a few curious passers-by, before he regained some measure of calm. If the gravy train had reached its terminal, he had to know now, before he committed himself to something he could not escape.
Deliberately, he entered the hardware store adjoining the supermarket, and selected a tool he didn't need, a framing hammer. Wordlessly, he presented it to the clerk at the register, and after the clerk had rung up the sale once, he presented the Card. The clerk looked at the Card and rang up the hammer a second time, at twenty percent off. Schiffers paid for the hammer and left the hardware store without a backward glance.
So, the Card still "worked," but there were some things it would not do. What were they? Was it the attempt to use the Card twice in the same establishment in the same day that had tripped him? Or on the same clerk?
He pondered for some time before the answer appeared in his thoughts, perhaps placed there by the Power behind the Card for him to find and recognize. The account is mine. What I buy with it must be for me, no one else. It had the simple clarity that convinced without supplementary argument.
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