I usually didn’t work Wednesday evenings, but this week I made an exception and switched shifts with one of the other employees, then waited for Ralston to show up. He hadn’t started unloading his delivery yet. I found him out by the service door in the back, smoking an e-cig.. It was this sickly sweet sour-apple flavor. Who vapes sour apple? What was this world coming to?

“Well, if it isn’t the man himself,” he said, offering a friendly handshake. We got through the niceties of greeting, and then I cleared my throat and launched into this whole preamble that I needed breadcrumbs to find my way out of.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” I told him, “and I know I’ve been at this for a year and I’ll admit the money is good—that’s not what this is about—but I think it’s time I considered the possibility of ending our private business relationship.”

He looked at me, puffed, and got lost behind a candy-apple cloud. When he emerged from the cloud, he said, “So you want out?”

“Yeah, I want out.”

He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What’s your exit strategy?”

“Exit strategy,” I repeated, deadpan and dull.

“Exit strategy,” he said again.

“Well . . . I just figured I’d . . . stop?”

He laughed. It wasn’t an actual laugh; it was the kind of laugh that announced the coming of a condescending lecture.

“Let me explain how these things work,” Ralston said. “There’s you. Then there’s me. Then there’s the guy I work for. Then there’s the guy he works for, and the guy who that guy works for, and at least one more guy on top of that. The top guy is someone I don’t know, and don’t want to know—but I can guarantee you that he’s big and he’s bad. The guy right beneath him, who I also don’t know, is not quite so big, and not quite so bad, and so on and so on, until it gets to me, who’s a pretty nice guy, and you, who are a decent, upstanding kid.” He paused to make sure I got it all. “Now when the upstanding kid tells the pretty nice guy that he doesn’t want to sell anymore, what do you think happens?”

I didn’t answer him; I just wanted him to get to the point. With no response from me, he continued.

“The nice guy (me) has to tell the not-quite-as-nice guy he works for, who then tells the guy he works for, who’s a real creep, and so on and so on, all the way up the chain.”

I knew where this was going, and it was pissing me off. “Are you threatening me?”