Price Schemes

A lady and her two kids come into the store one evening. The girl child is quiet and well-behaved, but the boy child is a busybody who insists up and down on renting a particular movie. This irks his mother, who commands him in no uncertain terms to put it back.

“But I really want to see it!” he says to her.

Fernando glances over at them in response to the shout. The mother had placed whatever case she was looking it back on the rack and looks down sternly at her offspring. “Use your brain for one second. Why would I pay four dollars for a movie you could watch for less?”

“It's not on there!” insists the boy.

“I'm not paying four dollars for it, and that's final.”

So the boy comes up to the counter and puts the case down upon it. “Hey, how much is this?” Well-played, son.

Fernando gets up and crosses the office as the mother darts over and snatches the case up. Fernando can't make out the title, but he's familiar enough with the visuals of his inventory to know that she holds The Corpse Bride. “He doesn't need to--” she says to the child.

“That one is two bucks,” says Fernando in response to the lad's question. The boy turns to his mother with a smug grin on his face.

“We're still not getting it.”

“Why not? I want to see it and it's not four dollars!”

At this point the father, who had remained outside with his truck parked in an annoying position directly in the middle of Fernando's parking lot before the door, enters the store, maybe in response to having seen the spat brewing in Fernando's foyer. “What's going on?” he asks.

“I want to rent this movie but Mom won't let me!” says the boy.

Mother chimes in. “I won't pay for an overpriced movie like that.”

Father takes the case from the child. “You heard her. We're not getting this if they charge too much for it.”

“It's two dollars,” Fernando says, hoping to forestall any potential rumors that he's out to fleece the population of their hard-earned money by pricing his wares at an unreasonable rate. This doesn't work. The father just gives Fernando a death stare for daring to interrupt a rhetorical tirade with facts.

The mother takes the case from the father and looks at the son. “Where did you get this?”

The boy doesn't answer. His father hauls on his forearm and pulls him out of the store. The silent little girl meekly follows.

The mother takes one last look of disdain around the Dominion before she throws the case up on the sales rack. Because, apparently, asking the owner of the store where it should go, or even saying to him, “Hey, could you put this back for me? Sorry for all the trouble,” is asking too much.

Fernando bids her a good evening as she walks out the door. She doesn't answer.