She smiles but doesn’t answer—probably preparing her hell-no speech, one I’ll deserve.

The door rattles when I open it, and sets off hanging door chimes that lazily clink together like they’re tired of the place.

Inexplicably, my fingers fall on her lower back, easing her inside, as if she doesn’t know the way or I’m impatient.

Her eyes catch mine, offering a warm smile, but my hand drops, and I regret touching her again.

Inside, the smell hits us first—mothballs, cigarette smoke, and stale beer—with clutter covering every surface a close second.

“Fucking hell,” I mumble. Insisting on a tour before agreeing to the deal would’ve been smart. It’s a shit heap, barely recognizable from the G&G of my childhood.

Old metal shelves flank out like a fan around us. Products are sparsely arranged—candy here, chips there, canned goods over there—but nothing looks organized. Magazines and old newspapers tower in a corner. Random standalone displays of keychains, individual packs of medicines, and lighters occupy odd spaces. Lights flicker in the cold cases along the wall, and fluorescents buzz overhead. A case that once held ice cream sandwiches and Nutty Buddies now only has bait and ice-crusted frozen dinners. Fishing rods and nets line the wall, most crooked.

And like a cherry on top, a legs-up cockroach the size of my fist lies on the rough, paint-chipped floor at Marina’s foot.

In her slow pan of the store, she sees the cockroach but says nothing. I steer her around it, and we walk deeper into the store from hell.

“Is that Marnie?” Christie’s voice rises from the back corner of the L-shaped store.

Marnie’s feet move somewhat quicker through the aisles to reach the source.

Seeing my uncle, his buddies, and what’s become of the place makes me cringe. What Maureen once called “The Canteen,” a short kitchen and bar with a few fixed metal stools where she’d serve us fountain drinks and hot dogs, has been overtaken by cigarette cartons and the insipid grunge of ashtrays.

Roy occupies one stool of the canteen to our right, legs stretched out to the register counter and belly protruding from his dirty t-shirt.

The counter is a large, battered wood monstrosity covered in ancient advertisement posters, mostly for beer and cigarettes. Overhead, a slotted shelf holds loose cigarette packs like an umbrella over Christie and Wade, who occupy high-top bar stools on the other side of the counter. They look like an oddball gang of old bikers, smoking and drinking in their corner, protecting themselves from customers.

Not that they get many. Or any.