Free Fall

32

I need a beer.

I’m not sure Ceepak has any in his fridge. At least not the real stuff. Ever since his time in Iraq, he’s big on Near Beer-stuff like O’Doul’s and Coors Non-Alcoholic.

So I pull into the parking lot for Neptune’s Nog Discount Liquor Outlet.

It’s another flat-roofed building the size of a small supermarket with every kind of beer neon glowing in its front wall of windows. Bud. Miller. Corona. Sam Adams. Blue Moon.

Inside the store you’ll find aisles lined with shelves crowded by battalions of wine and liquor bottles, not to mention rack after rack of salty snacks. You’ll also see towering stacks of beer packaged in what they call suitcases-24-can cartons with a handy handle for toting down to the beach or up to your motel room.

I pull into the parking lot next to a dinged-up Ford F-150 pickup and douse the headlights so the moths will leave my Jeep alone and go attack the fluorescent tube lights giving the package store its ghoulish green glow.

The instant I climb out of my Jeep, I see Ben Sinclair and a few of his young suburban gangsta buddies leaning against the booze mart’s grocery cart return corral.

They have their hands stuffed into the front of their hoodies or the pockets of jeans hanging halfway down their butt so they can show off their plaid Ralph Lauren boxer shorts.

They’re waiting.

For somebody in the store, judging by the way one of the kids keeps craning his neck and going up on tippy toe.

By kids, I mean neither Ben nor any of his crew are over twenty-one, the minimum legal drinking age.

I know who they’re waiting for.

The same guy me and my underage buds used to wait for outside a package store on a warm June night down the Jersey Shore: an older dude to go inside to buy us our brewskis for a small handling fee.

I hang near my Jeep. Wait to see who Ben’s dude is. Ours was a wino we called Clint The Splint because he always seemed to have one limb or another in a plaster cast. He’d go into Fritzie’s package store and get us anything we wanted for five bucks. Cigarettes. Boone’s Farm. Malt Duck. Colt 45. Slim Jims. Hey, we had to eat something.

I hear sleigh bells tinkle. The front door swishes open.

And out comes Mr. Joseph “Sixpack” Ceepak.