VENDING MACHINE

Vending Machine, 2017 Benedikt Partenheimer

Dennis Hals was not in the best of moods. He had been trying all morning to fulfill a family obligation: to buy a present for someone he didn’t know too well, an uncle he had only seen a few times in his life. This was a man who lived on the other side of the world, who was coming to visit his mother. It would have been nice if she could have done it herself, but with her sprained ankle in an air cast, she was in no condition to go shopping.

Two solid hours had yielded nothing, and now a further aggravation: he had forgotten what level he parked his car. He was in sub-basement number four, and about to head back to the elevator, when something in the far corner of the space caught his eye. It was a gaudily painted cabinet or an arcade machine, possibly abandoned. It sat near a stack of pallets and the detritus of packing materials left there either by a shopper or a lazy store employee. Out of curiosity, he approached it.

Vintage. Not mint, but admirable condition. Cool details, like the ceramic pull knobs and expressive, old-time lettering. Worked only with nickels. What it vended seemed less clear. The words LOVE, FORGETTING, REVENGE, POPULARITY and MONEY were emblazoned in a column facing each knob.

Dennis scoffed.

It surprised him that the thing was actually plugged in. Digging into his jeans, he took out a handful of change. Two quarters, four dimes and six nickels. Why not try each one? The first coin fell into the slot, and he pulled the knob for LOVE. Nothing happened. Then the machine lit up. It rattled and made rolling ball-bearing sounds, chittering and carrying on like a cheap printer. The delivery tray lit up and Dennis put his hand under the swinging door, removing a little glass test tube looking thing with a scroll inside. A cork sealed the tube. 

He put the stopper in his pocket, unrolled the message, and read the first line:

          “Get in here, Stringbean.”

Stringbean. What she would say when she wanted to hug him. Helene, his long-lost love from university days, the only person to ever call him this, and the only girl he ever wanted to marry. She had died in a car accident the summer they turned twenty-two. Dennis stared at the scroll with fear, anger and hatred for this thing that was dredging up the single most dreadful moment in his life. How did this machine know about stringbean?

The scroll went on to say, again in Helene’s voice, her words, how she loved him still and would always love him, that she would wait as long as it took for them to be reunited, unless he had moved on. Dennis read with tears blurring the letters: “I love you so much—I would even give you up. I would do that for you if that’s what you wanted.” 

Dennis sobbed and with shaky fingers, put another nickel in the coin slot that said FORGETTING. Out came a soft, clean cloth that smelled strongly of roses and sandalwood. He wiped his eyes and forehead with it. Unable to remember what he had been doing or thinking, his body calmed down. The mindlessness brought on by the cloth was so complete, he could not fathom where it had come from, or what he needed to do next. Maybe his blood sugar was low, he thought, and the running nose and teary eyes could be an allergic reaction to the dust rag, which he stuffed in his back pocket.

Because he was seeing the vending machine for the first time, he ran his hand over it and whistled. The kooky categories he thought amusing.

          “Oh!” he said with a laugh, as he realized there were coins in his hand. 

          “Shit, I need to snap out of it.”
He shook his head from side to side.

          “Let’s see here…Love, nah, fuck that; Forgetting. Yeah, I don’t think so. Revenge? What the hell? How could a vending machine sell me that?" 

Revenge.

He put a nickel into the slot and pulled the knob. The machine did its little routine, and out popped a beautiful little bottle with REVENGE written across the front. The bottle was fluted, as old-timey as the machine itself. He uncorked it and took a sniff. Nice. Musk and citrus or something, like for a night out. He put some on because it had to be ninety degrees in there, and he could smell his own funk.

Next thing he knew, he was thinking about a co-worker called Drew Carlton, who had influenced his boss to divert budget money away from his project. It burned him up that Drew had won the boss’s approval and a seat at the inner staff meetings he used to be invited to attend. “His young lions”, his boss called whatever jackass he thought he could manipulate. Dennis saw Drew, the fucker, rack up a lot of extra debt in ‘small expenses’ and his line manager had been letting the department’s debts slide. Why hadn’t he called them out by now? Proving the irregularities would not be so hard. He knew where to look. With just a little effort, he could be rid of both. 

          “Outstanding!” he laughed and took out another nickel.

He looked at the menu again. Popularity was neither here nor there with him, but he was dying to hit the money option. 

This time, the machine gave him a single coin, which looked like some ‘faceless men’ shit. It was definitely not an American coin, or any other he knew of. He shrugged.

          “Valar Morghulis,” he said, putting it into his pocket along with the perfume bottle. He considered taking the coin to the pawn shop where they would probably tell him it was ersatz junk.  

That just left Popularity, and since he had been enjoying himself so far, he took out one of the last three nickels and gave it to the machine, pulling the knob and waiting for the prize. That’s when his cell in the other pocket wailed like a three-alarm fire. He took it out and saw 14,000 likes and 200,000 new followers in his favorite social media account, and since he had cross-posted that morning, all the others were doing the same. A few minutes later, he got an email from his boss, telling him the CEO had ordered his plans to be reinstated with an additional two mill added to the allotted budget. He even apologized.

Dennis lost it. He was dancing like a lunatic in front of a vending machine. He actually put his arms around it and kissed the glass. 

          “I’m on a roll!” he shouted, eyeing the Love knob, and he was about to get out another nickel, but he stopped himself. If Vegas had taught him anything, it’s that if you get lucky enough to win twice, your odds do not improve.

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