The Vendor

A Short Story About Chocolate. 

It was the man in the suit and tie again.

He had that glint in his eyes, as always. The glint of someone who know what he was doing, knew what he wanted and why. He did not walk up to me, but strutted over, his polished dress shoes click-clacking against the sidewalk. He stopped, facing me from only an inch away.

“It’s a good day!” he said, as he took out his change. I regarded him silently.

“I’ll be buying two,” he added, gesturing at the Snickers bars. Money was exchanged, the chocolate bars received. The man in the suit and tie chuckled as he placed them in either pocket, turned on his heel, and went on with his day.

I watched him go. I had to admit that I was curious. In the many years I had been a vendor, I had never seen the man in the suit and tie buy more than one chocolate bar, as he did daily. What had changed?

I had no time to ponder, however, for there were other customers to serve. This time it was the Old Lady. She leaned on her wooden cane as she hobbled over to me. I liked the Old Lady. She wasn’t like the others. She talked to me, but she also seemed to listen. She also liked to tell me stories, like why the top of her cane had an eagle’s head carved into it. The cane originally belonged to her husband. Her husband was in something called “the Army,” and the eagle was a symbol of this Army. I didn’t know what an eagle was, but I believed I had seen other things like the eagle above me in the sky. They flew wherever they wanted. I wondered what it was like to fly wherever you wanted.

“It’s a nice day,” the Old Lady said, looking up at the white fluff in the sky. I regarded her silently.

“Perhaps it’s a day for an ice-cream bar,” she said. She gave me her change. I gave her the requested item. The Old Lady looked at me for a moment, before gently placing her hand on my side. She tutted.

“They should take better care of you,” she said, sighing. I regarded her silently.

“People don’t know that they have a good thing till it’s gone, these days. Mark my words, they’re going to regret it!” the Old Lady said, with a fire I had never seen in her before. The words changed something inside of me.

Without realizing what I was doing, I gave the Old Lady another ice-cream bar.

The Old Lady’s eyes widened as she took the ice-cream bar in her hand. A smile spread across her lips. “Thank you,” she whispered. She hobbled away from me.

I watched her go. I couldn’t believe what I had done. I had broken the one rule I had always known never to break. I had made a transaction without receiving payment. This was terrible. After the interaction with the Old Lady, I simply wanted the day to be over.

Luckily the day came and went, and there were no more strange occurrences. I gave the customers what they wanted, and received payment in return, as always. Then, at the usual time when the sun began to touch the tops of the skyscrapers, the Restock Man came to see me.

He was a burly man. His wispy white mostache drooped low below his nose, almost past his chin. In fact, everything about the Restock Man was rather droopy, from his gray outfit, to his permanent frown and creased eyes.

I did not particularly enjoy seeing the Restock Man, but I did not resent him either. I believe we held a begrudging respect for one another. It was the same every time he came to see me: First, he would collect the change that I had gotten from the various purchases throughout the day. Then, he would hand me replacements for all of the wares that I had sold. Finally, he would perform an evaluation to see if I was doing my work properly. Normally this last step would not phase me. But this was the first time I had broken the most important rule. I was terrified that the Restock Man would find out, and get rid of me, to be replaced by another Vendor.

By some miracle, however, it seemed as if the Restock Man hadn’t noticed my blunder. He patted me twice, then went on his way. If I could have let out a sigh, I would have.

I needed to be more cautious.

The next day, the man in the suit and tie came by once again, as he did every day. But I recognized almost instantly that something was different about him. His usually sharp hair was flattened to his skull, and his tie, normally immaculately positioned, was skewed out of place. His strut was replaced with his feet almost dragging themselves across the ground. Eventually, the suited man arrived in front of me. His eyes stayed staring at the sidewalk as he pulled out his change.

I soon realized that the man in the suit and tie was saying something. “Why would she say no? How could she possibly say no?” He repeated over and over again, in a whispered chant. The man then saw, as did I, that he did not have enough change for his usual Snickers bar. The man turned his back to me, his shoulders rising and falling in a jerking motion. I realized he was choking back his sobs.

I regarded the man silently. Was he really crying? Why would he do that? It was just a chocolate bar. Before I could continue my musing, the man was suddenly leaning against me as he cried.

I was startled. The man’s inability to obtain a Snickers bar was causing him much distress. I quickly came to a decision: I had already broken the most important rule once. It would be alright if I broke it one more time.

I handed the man in the suit and tie the snickers bar. He turned and looked at me with a gasp, before accepting my gift. His eyes had completely lit up, as if I had given him a miracle, as opposed to concentrated sugar and cocoa. The man walked away, shoulders higher than they had been when he first came to see me.

Later, the Old Lady came to see me yet again. She did not normally comes twice in a row, which made this meeting odd. She, too, had a heaviness to her step as she made her way toward me — even excluding the heaviness that came from leaning on her cane.

“My husband passed away yesterday evening,” the Old Lady said, letting out a large sigh as she gave me her change for a Butterfinger. She stared at me for a few moments after I handed her the chocolate bar. “I’m alone now,” the Old Lady said with a quiver in her voice. I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t alone, that of course I was there for her, as I always had been. But I could not.

The Old Lady wiped her eyes. “I suppose that isn’t true, though, is it? I suppose you’ll always be here,” she said. I regarded her silently as she walked away.

Of course I will be.

The Restock Man came and went in the evening, and again, he did not recognize my rule-breaking.

I felt good.

The next day, the man in the suit and tie did not come to see me. This was the first time he had not gotten a snickers bar from me in what had to be months. I was not surprised. This happened frequently: People would come to see me, and then one day, just like that, they would not come back. The man in the suit and tie did not have a use for me any longer.

I served customers as I always did throughout the day, when a group of kids I had never seen before approached me. They were talking to one another.

“Yeah yeah, I saw it with my own eyes! The guy in the business suit got a free chocolate bar!”

“I don’t believe you, man.”

“I’m telling you it’s true! You believe me, right Mike?”

“Who gives a crap, Johnny? We’re here, why don’t we just find out.”

“For sure.” The boy named Mike turned to face me. “You’ll give us some free chocolate right?”

“Sure you will!” Johnny said. All of a sudden, I was being tosled about, this way and that, as the group of boys demanded chocolate. Terrified, I gave into their demands and dropped a handful of chocolate bars all over the sidewalk. The boys giggled as they stuffed as much of the chocolate as they could into their pockets before dashing off.

I knew what was to come next.

The Restock Man was very dissapointed in me. He did not hear me defend my case. He couldn’t. Shaking his head, he lifted me onto his cart, and drove me away from the spot that I had been Vending for decades now.

I was upset, of course. Anyone would be upset with losing their job. But I was content with how I did it. And I knew I would never forget the man in the suit and tie, or the Old Lady with the eagle cane.

Christine Simmons was surprised that the vending machine was gone, as if it had magically sprouted legs and went on its merry way. She had been coming by and buying one sweet or another at least twice a week for a year now. The lack of its prescense threw her morning routine out of wack. Christine decided to ask the Machine Route Worker, Kirk Redmond, where it had gone. Mr. Redmond happened to be her neighbor. A…“droopy” fellow, Mr. Redmond was.

“It went defective,” Mr. Redmond said gruffly after answering his door. “Dropped some chocolate all over the floor, or something like that. It’ll have to be replaced, probably in the next month or so.”

As Christine left Kirk Redmond’s apartment, she felt her chest tightining. It was almost the same feeling she had when her husband passed away. Why did she feel this way about a vending machine?

It was just a vending machine, wasn’t it?