Goodbye Oliver (Part Three)

Goodbye Oliver (Part Three)


Part Three: Let's Go Home, Oliver

I remember being a little short of breath from walking uphill, wet and I was probably a little red-faced too, as I headed into the store. The elderly, grey haired gentleman that worked in the store greeted me expectantly, as if he was waiting for me to buy my usual bread and milk. "Not today," I said to him, reading his mind. "I'm going to buy a betta fish," I thought to myself. He looked so disappointed that I almost changed my mind.

The young lady who owned the pet shop just totally ignored me as I walked into her part of the store. She was slender and of medium build with a very short, kind of cute, contemporary haircut. She seeemed to be momentarily distracted. Her hands were busy cleaning fish tanks. I looked around casually and saw that the collection of betta fish in the rose bowls was still there.

Only a few had been sold. I gazed at them momentarily, as I waited for her to finish what she was doing. She was obviously in no rush. Finally, I walked toward the back of the room to say hello.

"What do I need to take care of a betta fish?" I asked her. She didn't say anything at all, just turned and reached for some betta fish food from the shelf and then some pills to eliminate the chlorine in the water. She handed them to me. She seemed very quiet that day. What is happening, I wondered. After a brief pause, she said, "They just need a couple of pellets of fish food once a day."

I wondered momentarily if that was actually true. The poor fish are going to starve to death, I thought. I wandered back towards the front of the store and a few moments later, she followed me. I stood beside the table where the betta fish were swimming round and round in the bottom of their glass rose bowls. Each one was in about an inch of water.

You poor fish, I thought. Not one of them appeared to be very active, but then how could they be active if they did not have enough water to swim in. "They don't like being alone," the young pet store owner explained. All of the rose bowls had been grouped close together, as if the the fish could actually keep each other company simply by placing the rose bowls side by side.

Suddenly, as I took a really good look at the betta fish, trying to find one that I thought might be active and healthy, the door behind me opened. In walked a very scruffy looking, old man with long straggly, wet gray hair and several days growth of whiskers on his face. The scraggly grey dog that he had with him, looked almost as rough as he did. THey were both sopping wet and needed to have a good bath.

"They got me!" he said to the pet store owner, who did not seem surprized to see him come into the store. Obviously, he had been there before and she knew him. "Who got you?" she asked quietly, as she watched him sit down on the floor beside his dog. They both simply made themselves at home. By then, the dog had stretched out on his side, as if totally exhausted. "The police," the old man said. "They caught me in the park and made me clean up the mess." The dog just sighed innocently, closed his eyes and drifted off. He was quite content to be indoors, out of the rain and cold.

Not even two seconds later, the door opened again. In walked a very young couple carrying a brown, cardboard box. "Do you take kittens?" the young man asked the owner of the pet store. I could hear a couple of faint meows coming from inside the box. The young man holding it, was standing right beside me. I carefully lifted one of the flaps on the top, simply out of curiosity. A sweet little gray kitten attempted to climb out of the box. The young man roughly pushed it back inside. "We have five of them," his wife explained apologetically. "And we don't know what to do with them."

They were really cute, I realized, but I knew that I did not want to buy a kitten. All I wanted was buy one betta fish and go home. By that time, I had decided which betta fish I was going to take home with me. When I looked at the one I had chosen, he appeared to be the color of the water in Oliver Lake, a small lake where we had the opportunity to swim as children. He was a gorgeous blue-green color with a reddish, almost purple tinge on his fins. That was the moment
when I fell in love with that particular betta fish!

The pet store owner started to make out my bill, as she explained to the young couple that she really could not take any more kittens at that time. "Let the water sit for two days before you put the fish into it," she advised me, as she showed me the statement for the betta fish.

She went on to explain that she already had more kittens than she thought that she could sell at that time. She was very apologetic and finally handed them a slip of paper. "Put your name and your phone number down and if I find anyone who wants some kittens, I will call you," she said gently. They just stood there dumbfounded. It seemed that they had actually expected bring the kittens to the pet store and to get paid for the them. The young woman took the piece of paper and put their name and telephone number on it.

The pet store owner looked at me sheepishly and asked me what I wanted her to do with my new betta fish. "The rose bowl is included in the price," she said, as I paid her for the betta fish that I had chosen. She had a plastic bag in her hand. "Put it over the top of the bowl," the old man sitting on the floor ordered gruffly. She did exactly what he suggested, putting an elastic band around the rim of the rose bowl to secure it in place.

"Want a box?" she asked. "Sure," I replied. "I just don't want him to get cold, as I am walking home," I explained. She headed towards the back of the store and came back with a cardboard box that was about six inches deep, a foot long and nine or ten inches in width. She put the little four inch rose bowl containing the betta fish into the box along with the betta fish food. I almost burst out laughing.

"Better put some paper around it," the old man growled from the floor, where he was sitting against the wall. "It will slide all over the place," he said, as if spouting words of wisdom. The young shop owner immediately headed to the back of the store again and came back with a roll of paper towels. I thought that she would wrap up the bowl and just hand it to me. I waited. She tore the towels off the roll, one at a time and crinkled them, like one would do with sheets of newspaper, and one by one, put them into the cardboard box, around the rose bowl. Then she closed the top of the box the same way that the box containing the kittens had been closed.

That's better, I thought. By then, I could hardly wait to get out of there.

As I headed out of the pet store, and through the doorway into the store, the elderly store owner greeted me again, as if still expecting me to buy some bread and milk. I decided that my hands were full enough already. I was just a little bit embarrassed. "I just bought a betta fish!" I explained to him, as if it needded an explanation.

"Thanks," I said as I turned toward the pet store owner again. I looked at the old man with the dog and the young couple with the kittens, then turned and headed for the door. I chuckled and named him right there and then. "Say goodbye to Oliver!" I hollered to everyone as I left the store.

"Goodbye, Oliver!" everyone hollered back in unison, as I left with my new betta fish. It had to have been the major event of the day for the store and the pet store. "Let's go home, Oliver!" I said to my new friend.