I walk a little farther and ask a young woman sweeping the sidewalk in front of a cafe where I can find the pharmacy. The rich smell of coffee coming from inside the shop is enticing, and I make up my mind to stop here for an iced latte on my walk back to the car. It will be my reward for slogging through my errands in this heat.
The shops that I'm passing now are less old-timey and more hipster. For example, there's a butcher's shop whose sign proclaims that it sells "Kind Organic Meat" and a fitness studio that invites me to do bungee yoga, which sounds painful. This town is clearly a mix of the old guard and the newcomers, and I like it more than I expected I would.
The Oak Street pharmacy—definitely old school—has been caught in a time warp. If you want to buy peppermint candies, postcards or compression socks, you're in luck. They don't, however, have my usual brand of shampoo and their chocolate game is seriously weak.
"Is this all the chocolate you have?" I ask the middle-aged guy behind the register as I gesture toward a rack of Nestle’s and Hershey's finest.
"That's not enough? You must really be hungry."
I'm not in the mood for his hilarious comments so I grab a Twix and set off to find the feminine products, the selection of which also turns out to be inferior. I could leave now, but instead I browse the aisles so I can freeload off their air conditioning a little longer. I've always wondered whatGun and Gardenmagazine was all about and now I have the opportunity to find out. It’s right here on the magazine rack betweenSouthern Livingand a cooking magazine with Paula Deen on the cover. The store clerk keeps lurking through the aisles, keeping an eye on me, like he's afraid I'm about to pocket a bottle of nail polish. It makes me feel like I'm back in middle school again.
"Do you need help finding anything?" he finally calls out to me while I'm sifting through the greeting cards.
Apparently, there is no appropriate card to send your department chair to say "I'm sorry I'm slutty."
"No, thanks.”
He appears at the end of the aisle with his hands on his hips. "Please put the cards back in the right spots."
I give him a smile sweet enough to rot his teeth and say, "That's what I'm doing."
The "dickhead" is implied at the end of that sentence.
After putting several envelopes in the wrong places, I add a couple of trashy celebrity magazines to my basket because I like reading about people whose lives are more screwed up than mine. Then I peruse the display of fuzzy socks because the hardwood floors of the farm house are cold in the morning. When I look down at the items I've collected—chocolate, tampons, lowbrow magazines and fuzzy socks—I feel like a single woman cliché. The cashier doesn't comment on my purchases, but I can tell he disapproves of me. Maybe all newcomers to town get his fish-eyed stare. I look around the store for cameras to see if he was watching me mess up his precious card aisle, but don't find any.
After our transaction is complete, I ask him how to get to Twice Nice, and he pretends not to know what it is. I tell him it's the consignment store with the bright purple and white sign, but he still claims not to know it, which seems fucking unlikely in a town this small.
"Are you new here, too?" I ask him, gripping my plastic bag tightly in my hand.
"Nope," he says, with a smirk. "I've lived in this town my whole life."
I try to stare him down, but it's impossible to look at someone with that much visible nose hair for very long. In retaliation, I march over to the aisle with the nose hair trimmers, rip one off the rack and smack it down on the counter in front of him before leaving. It was petty, but I don't have time for passive aggressive Southern bullshit.
Fortunately, I pass a woman on the street who isn't an asshat, and she assures me that Twice Nice is only a block down the street, which is good news because I'm withering in the heat. I don't want to be too drained when I get to the consignment shop because I plan to be there a long time. Hugh and Dad tense up every time I spot one of these places because they know I'm going to sift through every rack, bin and box, looking for gems. Hugh says used clothing gives him the heebie jeebies and won't even shop with me anymore.
I'm so focused on my destination that I don't spot the EMS station until I'm directly across the street from it. There's an ambulance parked in the driveway outside, but no one seems to be around. This is probably where Seth is stationed as a paramedic, and I'd prefer to avoid him. I push my aviators up on my nose, like they're going to provide me with a disguise, then nearly trip on a Vespa parked outside the store.
Like every other consignment store, Twice Nice smells like tissues from my grandmother's handbag, which I find strangely comforting. Returning to air conditioning feels divine after the blistering heat outside, and I'm delighted to see that their inventory is a combination of vintage and thrift. There are rows and rows of clothing racks, wooden crates containing hundreds of vinyl records and a display counter full of jewelry. I'm in heaven.
The woman behind the counter looks to be in her early thirties, and she's wearing cat-eye glasses and a bowling shirt embroidered with the name Laverne. When I enter, she's picking through a stack of CDs, but she pauses when she sees me.
"Good morning!" she calls out.
"Is that your bike?" I point at the robin's egg blue Vespa outside.
"Yup, that's my baby. Her name is Stuart." She waves a CD in the air. "Are you up for some Morrissey or should we go with something more uplifting this morning?"
Her friendliness is refreshing and what I expected as far as Southern hospitality. Shopkeepers in Brooklyn might give patrons a head nod on a good day, but usually they ignore everyone. In the city, ignoring people is not considered rude; it's called giving everyone their space. It's the same reason we never make eye contact with each other on the subway. If someone looks directly at you for more than ten seconds, there's a good chance their next move will be aggressively weird.
I gesture down at my black t-shirt and tell her, "Black is what I wear on the outside because black is what I feel on the inside."
Her smile widens at my lyrical reference, and she bends down under the counter. A second later the first song on Morrissey's new album is blaring through the speakers on the wall. She knows every word, but thankfully she's singing at a low volume. The lyrics to this song are really speaking to my current mood: a big FU to society in general. The shopkeeper and I are bopping along to the music companionably while she straightens a display case, and I work my way through a row of dresses.
I'm already feeling high about what I'm going to score here. This is good stuff. Everything in Brooklyn thrift stores has been picked over or is priced beyond reason. The prices here are low and the quality is high.
"Whoa.” I pull out a fifties-style yellow cotton dress. It's the color of daffodils, and has a flared skirt and pin-tucked bodice. I can tell from the zipper and label that this is real deal vintage. The waist looks too small for me, like most women's clothing made during this era, but it's worth trying on for size.
I continue shopping, finding a couple of t-shirts, a corduroy miniskirt that will have to wait until fall, and a pair of Levis 501s. There's also a pair of vintage overall shorts that are either the cutest things I've ever tried on or make me look like the Fresh Price of Bel-Air. The mirror in the dressing room tells me they're adorable, and I decide to believe it. When I head to the counter with a large pile of clothing in my arms, "Laverne" looks delighted.
