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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 159: Cooper 51
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 339
Dressed in civilian clothes, Brian and Tommy walked the several miles across town to the army-navy store. The owner recognized Brian, and welcomed him back. “Come for those camping supplies?” he asked.
“You’ve a good memory,” Brian answered.
“It’s my superpower,” the man joked, and Brian smiled at it.
“No, my friend was envying my duffel bag, and I told her I got it here, so she’s come to look for something similar.”
“Well, we have plenty of them. You know where they are.”
Cooper led Tommy to the collection of used duffel bags, and she looked over them for a moment before she said, “Hey, that one’s blue.”
“Navy,” came the voice of the owner. “Just as good, probably picked up a bit more salt in its travels.”
She seemed to examine it carefully, but then seemed satisfied. “I like this one. How much?”
It was the same three dollars as Brian’s had been, and she settled up and stuffed it in the backpack. They left, bound for a grocery store to buy some food and household products.
“It occurs to me that we have a sort of problem,” she said.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I don’t know what it was like in the 1950s,” she said, “but for as long as I can remember if you brought bags into a store that were larger than a pocket book, store security would want to search them. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I can explain my coat and hat, nevermind my kawanaga and utility belt.”
Brian hesitated in his steps. Indeed, his duffel contained two Mister Justice outfits, a flaming sword, and a holstered dart gun with darts. He would have a hard time explaining these to anyone. Walking more slowly, he asked, “What do you suggest?”
Tommy shrugged. “It’s the first time I’ve thought of the problem. I suppose we could go directly to customer service and ask them to hold our bags for us while we shop. I don’t know whether that would work in our time–they would probably want to check to be sure we weren’t dropping off a bomb. But I don’t know.”
Shrugging back, Cooper said, “It makes sense.”
Reaching a grocery store a few blocks from home, they followed Tommy’s plan. As they started up the aisles with a cart Tommy joked, “Hopefully we won’t need to be our other selves before we’re finished shopping.”
“Or if we do,” Cooper answered, “hopefully we can get to our bags.”
He let Tommy make most of the decisions. The prices were very tempting–a flat of two and a half dozen eggs for fifty cents, milk at thirty cents a gallon. She bought some household supplies, a bit of chicken which she said she could probably fry up in her pan, some fresh carrots and potatoes, and a few other things. She wound up spending twenty dollars for it all, and although he had said he would rely on her for the groceries and she said it wasn’t necessary, Cooper gave her five dollars on it, saying she was still going to need to buy lunches during the week. He also commented as everything was packed up that the paper bags could prove useful. Retrieving their gear from the customer service desk, Tommy pulled out her new duffel and packed most of the food into it, and they walked home.
That night she served him chicken fried in butter, boiled carrots, and baked potatoes. It was served in aluminum bowls which almost matched but that one had a handle so it could be used as a frying pan and the other appeared designed to fit to it to close it. She said there was more of everything, but she could only cook a little at a time so she would have to make it another night.
The next morning she served bacon, with eggs fried in the bacon fat, and toast. She said she had wanted to fry up some potatoes, too, but with only the one pan couldn’t juggle all that. Still, it was a decent Saturday breakfast, and cheap.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
