Fiction - Good Trade

by Josiah922

Margret was nervous for some reason she could not quite figure out. It almost felt like she was doing something wrong. She sat next to her new friend Lisa who had moved into the neighborhood about three months ago. The two had started talking when their two sons put in to start going over to each others house after becoming friends at school.

They had several things in common both being single moms and mothers to boys. Necessity of adult woman company also helped draw them together as friends. Both women could only stand so much talk about Pokémon or whatever was the new fad before they needed adult conversations. It was like having a sister living right down the road. Margret had just lost her job like others all over the country were doing and had to take a job as a waitress like she did in college of all things. It was good to have friends who could help.

Margret had been a nurse at a local doctor’s office when the doctor finally retired after changes in the health insurance laws reduced the amount of money he was allowed to charge to Medicare patients. He just couldn’t keep the doors open. With no job in an already bad job market and the local hospital not hiring, it was bad news for Margret.

Margret thought about the silver tea set and the box of children clothes in the back seat and the place that she was going. The old children’s clothes weren’t much, but the tea set was sterling silver given to her by her grandmother years ago and should be worth something. Lisa had done a pretty good job explaining it, but it just sounded too good to be true. Margret had to see it for herself. Lisa had commented about the place repeatedly and offered to take Margret any time.

On County Road 89 about 2 miles outside the city limits the car slowed. Lisa announced, “OK. We are here,” as she nodded toward a row of warehouses. Margret thought to herself that it sure did not look like much as the SUV pulled through the gate and into the parking lot. She felt like she was going to a drug deal for some reason. Not that she had ever participated in such a thing, but imagined that was how it was from the movies and late night TV shows.

In just a moment the women were stepping out of the car and toward the non-discript warehouse. Well, that is not true. The warehouse was plain enough and no signage marked the front of the building but every building has a description of some sort. It was about a 4500 square foot metal building with two double wide sets of doors on the front as well as one roll up door to the side of the two normal doors with one marked entrance and the other exit. It was beige in color that matched the other small warehouses in the area and its main description is that it looked like every other warehouse nearby.

The women walked to the set of doors on the right marked Entrance. Margret toted the box of clothes and the tea set. Lisa reached into her purse and pulled out her membership card and driver’s license. They stepped through the doors and into a small room. The door closed behind them and Margret looked around. It was a small probably 4 feet by 8 feet room with another set of double doors directly across from the doors they just entered. To the left side was a thick glass window with a desk on the other side and one of those speaker sets to talk to the person on the other side. Margret was reminded of a drive through window at a bank except she was on foot.

Within a moment a young lady bounces into the seat at the desk and turns her attention to the two women. The speaker clicked on and she said, “Hello Lisa.”

Lisa smiled and held her membership card and driver’s license up so the woman could she. “Hello Jennifer.”

“A member in good standing recognized and welcomed,” the lady called Jennifer replied in a very businesslike tone then turned her attention to Margret. “And who is this Lisa?”

“This is Margret. She is not a member, but wishes to shop with me today and see the club.”

Jennifer shifted in her seat and reached for some papers beside her. “I see. Welcome Margret, a visitor. Can you step forward please?” Jennifer put the papers into on of those drawers and pushed a lever to make the drawer deliver the papers to Margret. “Now, please sign the top copy for me, the middle copy is Lisa’s and the bottom copy is yours to keep.”

“What is this?” Margret asked.

Jennifer became very business like again, “This is an Admittance Agreement and Usage Policy. You will be held to all of the policies on the sheet, but basically the gist is that because you are not a member you are not allowed to make trades today. However, Lisa can trade for you under her name. Also please note that ANY negative conduct during the trades or during your visit today can result in banning you from the club and will also reflect negatively on Lisa as well.”

Margret looked at Lisa with a nervous look on her face. Lisa stepped up, “It is ok Margret. I knew this would happen when I brought you here. I trust you.” She turned her attention to Jennifer, “I’ll vouch for her.”

Margret signed the paperwork. Then Lisa signed and filled in her membership information. The bottom copy was placed back into the drawer. After Jennifer looked it over she said, “Margret Crowly, a visitor with a member in good standing as sponsor, welcome. Good trade to you both.” Jennifer pushed a button and the other door clicked open. The two women walked through the door.

It was weird. The front of the building was plain, but once you walked through the doors you would have thought that you were in a small department store. About a half of a dozen people lingered up and down the isles. There were several isles filled with all types of items. Several isles at the front had little sections of shelves marked off. Each section of shelves had a set of numbers assigned to it. “So what are these numbers?” Margret asked.

“Those are membership numbers. That way you can tell who is offering the service or product on that shelf.”

Margret walked up to the first section of shelves. There were a bunch of hand sewn dresses and other items, but the odd thing were several signs that read, “Baby sitting 1/2Sph, sewing 1/2Sph, dog kennel 1Sid and dental cleaning.2S”

Margret must have had a weird look on her face, because Lisa chimed right in. “That is Doctor Rauling and his wife. They also have all of this on their profile online, but he is a Dentist and she is a stay at home wife. Their daughters are in college. I have used them to baby sit my son sometimes. Good Christian folk and they have an excellent trader rating. The trader rating is sort of like a rating system for the people that you are trading with. Make bad trades and people will black flag you and stop trading with you. She is an awesome seamstress by the way. These dresses are handmade.”

“What does the 1/2Sph mean?”

“Oh, yeah takes some getting used to. There is a chart up on the wall of the most common abbreviations. ½ Silver Ounce per hour. Remember that I told you that EVERY transaction is a trade? Well sometimes what you have to trade isn’t wanted by the other party of what you have to trade for. So in a regular transaction you would use cash or some type of ‘medium of exchange’ to settle your debt. Here we do not use money so we use silver coins or at least the value of the coin.”

“I don’t understand,” replied Margret. “Are you talking like an ounce of silver like a silver dollar?”

“Yes,” said Lisa.

“So for 50 cents they will watch my child for an hour?”

Lisa shook her head, “No not for fifty cents, but they will for half of an ounce of silver.” Now it was Margret’s turn to shake her head. “Look, a silver dollar is not worth just one dollar. It is silver. Pure silver. It is one ounce of pure silver and that is worth about $21 an ounce right now. So, a half of an ounce is worth about $10.50 an hour.”

“So they trade services and silver?” Margret asked.

“Yep, well about 90% of the trades are made with silver, which they can use to trade for services or goods for themselves like getting someone to cut their hair, change the oil in their car or buy groceries.”

“What? Buy groceries?”

“I know. There are people of several different professions here. Dentist, mechanic, carpenter, builders,” Lisa paused, “and retail store owners. We just had an air conditioning repairman join.”

“How do you buy groceries?”

Lisa pulled lightly at Margret’s arm to get her to keep walking then said, “I will explain later. Right now, let’s get your goods set.” The women walked to the side of the store where they came to two desks and a table. The desk had two computers on them and digital cameras. “We can do this from the house too but it helps to have the items right here at the club. We will take pictures of everything, price it, post it to the online store and put them on the shelf.”

“You can buy online? How do you buy with silver online?”

“Well, you can buy SOME items online if the owner wants to sell them online, but you have to pay the asking price (meaning you can not bicker about the price) and you still have to come pick it up at the store. As far as using silver on line, you use the silver credits that the club keeps electronically in your club account sort of like a debit or credit card. These credits are directly related to the amount of silver that you have turned into the club or got from a trade as a deposit… AND YES the credits can be claimed for silver ounces withdrawn from the club in return.”

“We will take these pictures and post them online so people know what kinds of kids clothes we are selling and they can come to the store to buy them. When you register them like this it makes a price tag on the printer here. Then when the price tag is scanned at the front counter the computer marks it as ‘sold’ online. As far as that stirling silver tea set of yours I will deal with that in a bit.”

The women worked through the clothes very quickly there were only about two dozen pieces. Pictures were taken with the digital camera. Next they entered the general information on the items like manufacturer and sizes. Then they folded the items and placed them on the shelf of Lisa’s area to sell. The items were all marked 1/10 S.

“OK. Let’s go see Mr. Buren,” Lisa said as she pointed to the near empty box containing only the small tea set. Margret picked up the box and followed Lisa to the back of the store where an older man stood. “Mr. Buren,” Lisa called to him.

The older man looked up from the display of Case knives that he was arranging. “Well, hello Lisa. I saw you ladies at the computers taking pictures but I did not want to disturb you.”

Lisa shook his hand, “Mr. Buren this is Margret, the one with the tea set I thought you might like.”

“Hello Margret. Is it a sterling silver set?”

Margret blushed a little, “Honestly I do not know. Can you tell?” She set the box on the shelf next to Mr. Buren.

“Well, let’s see.” The older man took out a pair of reading glasses and picked up the ‘pot’ of the set. He looked on the bottom for a moment. “Ahh, here.” He pointed at some markings. “Yes, you see here where it says ‘.925’ in this little circle. That stands for sterling silver, which is .925 silver with a .075 additive, usually copper. This mark here is the manufacturer’s mark, which I can not place right now. I will have to look it up.” He took a look at the other pieces slowly looking over them. Then he asked, “Have you weighed them?”

Margret shook her head, a little embarrassed, “No, I forgot.”

“Here let’s go weigh them.” Mr. Buren walked back up to the main table and used the community digital scales and weighed all of the items in grams. Then he converted the standard grams of the scale to Troy ounces which is what silver is measured in commonly. A regular ounce equals 28.3495231 grams. A Troy ounce equals 31.1034768 grams. The tea service equaled just over 48 Troy ounces.

“Wow, that is worth a little under $1000 dollars just in the weight of silver?” Margret could not believe it. She smiled thinking of her car payment and electric bill that was due.

Mr. Buren looked at Margret, “I tell you what. I think that I should be able to actually sell this for a little more than that. How about sixty silver? That is worth about $1260 if my math doesn’t fail me.”

Margret look at Lisa then nodded her head, “That sounds great Mr. Buren.”

“Wonderful. Let’s go see Jennifer at the front real quick to make record then I need to run some errands,” commented Mr. Buren as he put up his glasses then picked up the box.

Margret talked to Mr. Buren as he walked up to the front, “Mr. Buren, Margret thought about joining. Would you support her in application?”

“Of course, that was a good deal and she is catching on to our system here. Are you sponsoring her?” Lisa nodded. Then Mr. Buren continued, “Then sure. I will even note a comment on her profile when her 30 days trial are up.”

Both women thanked the man then headed to the front counter. After making a record of the trade between Lisa/Margret and Mr. Buren, both parties entered their PIN codes into the system. Automatically sixty silver units were transferred to Lisa’s account. Each of them then shook hands and repeated the words “Good Trade” to each other.

Lisa and Margret walked back into the club floor where Lisa wrote Margret and IOU for sixty silver Troy ounces. “Now use this IOU to keep track of how much silver you have left and how much silver you spend out of my account.”

“That is ok. I trust you,” Margret said to Lisa.

Lisa shook her head, “Don’t do that. Just because I am a friend does not mean that I can not loose track of how much you are owed or how much has been paid. Keep track of EVERY silver, so there will be no room for error and this deal will not affect our friendship in anyway. It is because I am your friend that you should track this.” Lisa ended holding Margret’s hand.

Margret smirked and then nodded, “OK. We will record everything.”

“Great! Now you need groceries. Come this way.” Lisa led her down an isle and to a closed off section labeled “Maggie’s Mini Market”.

It was sort of a small area of the store that was partitioned off from the rest of the store. The women walked through the curtains at the small doorway and into an area that was about forty feet by forty feet. It had wooden shelves up and down the length of the room with all manner of grocery store items. A voice called from the back, “Just restocking. Make yourself at home.”

Lisa looked at Margret, “You will like Maggie. Let’s start over here.” The ladies each picked up one of those shopping baskets that you find in stores and walked over to the first isle. It looked like a small convenience store. Food, normal food, was up and down every isle. Canned vegetables, canned meats, bags of potatoes, bags of macaroni noodles, salsa, bags of chips and etc. just like a mini grocery store. She even had one shelf with health and beauty related items, then another with household items.

Margret whispered, “We can trade for this with no money?” Lisa smiled and nodded.

Then out around the isle bounced Maggie. She was a twenty something red haired red freckled thinly shaped energetic woman to say the least. She bounced up to Lisa and squealed “Hey Lisa!” as the two women saw each other and hugged. Margret thought that they looked like two teenagers meeting before they went to the mall. They both smiled at each other.

“Maggie this is Margret, a visitor and a currently out of work nurse who might be trading with us soon.”

Maggie looked at Margret for a second smiling then said, “There are no strangers here. Bless you,” as she gave Margret a hug too. Even though Margret was at least five years the younger girl’s senior Margret got the sense of a very happy but old content soul in the younger woman as she hugged her. Maggie looked at Margret straight in the eyes as she held her hand and said, “Thank you for trading with me today. Now, do you need anything special?”

Margret looked at Lisa for approval as she said, “Just some groceries.”

“Well, give me your list or tell me what you need and I will see what I got,” said the freckle face woman to her visitors.

After rattling off a list of needed items Maggie walked them around the small area. “Here is my collection of cereal. They are all one tenth ounce silver right now.” Margret picked up a box of her son’s favorite sugary cereal when it clicked.

“Wait that is like $2 a box? How can that be? These are like $4 at the store right now,” Margret inquired.

Lisa smiled, “She IS quick. Maggie here is our resident coupon queen.”

“I prefer the term ‘power couponer.’ Thank you very much,” Maggie mimicked flexing her arm muscles as she smiled bigger since a smile never left the woman’s face. She then straightened up and answered, “You see Margret I take advantage of coupons to their fullest potential. I use manufacture’s coupons and store coupons together with a store sale to buy items for a fraction the price they are normally sold at.”

Margret blinked.

“In other words I bought that four dollar box of cereal at a three dollar sale price with two one dollar off coupons for about a dollar a box from the local grocery store. So I bought 22 boxes on my last trip with the amount of coupons I had. Get as many as you want.”

“Wow! So this is actually cheaper than the store. Awesome,” Margret exclaimed.

Lisa added, “All of Maggie’s prices are cheaper even if you were paying with cash.”

“Yeah I could never do that with coupons.”

Maggie said, “Of course you could.” Maggie walked to the front of her store area where she picked up a flier and handed it to Margret. “Here is a few websites that you should check out. The first is Southernsavers.com. There is a link on there called ‘Learn To Coupon.’ It teaches you how to do what is called coupon stacking where you use an In Store coupon AND a manufacture’s coupon to double your savings. It is especially effective during a store sale on the item.”

“Or you can just let Maggie do all of your leg work for you and come trade here. She makes a small profit and we don’t have to go crazy shopping coupons all over town,” said Lisa.

Maggie pointed her finger at Lisa, “Now you can do this just as good as I can.” Maggie looked back to Margret, “I tell everyone that, but for some reason people keep letting me do the shopping and they just shop here.”

Maggie continued to show her items after item of flour that she bought for a penny, toothbrushes she got for free and even tampons that she bought for a dollar a box. All of these were marked at silver prices that still calculated to at most half of what the store sells them for in cash. Margret looked to Maggie as she almost started to cry, “Thank you. This really helps me a lot.” Margret had not had enough money for several weeks to buy food for both her and her son so Margret had actually skipped several meals and had even began to thin up because of it. Now, both Lisa and Margret had their baskets full of items that Maggie recommended.

Maggie noticed the tears swelling in the single mother’s eyes and pushed the basket out of the way as she gave her another hug. “Listen this place is not like the world out there. It is not formed on greed. We don’t trade items for fake money only to make a private bank wealthier. We trade value for value. No person will ever go hungry here because we all are of value.” Margret wiped her eyes and recomposed herself.

Lisa and Margret said their goodbyes to Maggie and went back to the front desk and Jennifer recorded the trades. Lisa asked for 20 of the silvers to be withdrawn out of her account and physically given to her.

Jennifer rang up all of the grocery items from Maggie’s and ended with a statement that was almost scripted in tone, “Lisa please enter your PIN into the keyboard.” This transferred silver credits from her account to Maggie’s.

Lisa did so and Jennifer printed out a receipt. While Lisa and Margret were waiting on the printer, Lisa reminded Margret to subtract the silver ounces for the groceries and the physical silvers from her IOU. Margret did so. Jennifer handed the receipt and the twenty silver eagles back through the window drawer. Then she ended with “Good Trade. Will there be anything else?”

Lisa spoke up, “No, thank you Jennifer.” The two ladies made their way back to the car and then down the road. Lisa spoke again as she turned onto a bigger road heading to a small strip mall just outside of town, “Now let’s see about getting your bills paid. Let’s head to the ‘bank’.”

They pulled into the strip mall and walked into a store called Lombardi’s Jewelry. They walked through the first set of doors then another set oddly similar to the way the bartering club had been made. A very preppy lady dressed in a white long sleeved shirt, black crossover tie, black dress pants and heels greeted them from behind a jewelry counter, “Welcome ladies. What can we show you today?”

Lisa spoke up, “Hello Rachelle. We need a transaction.”

“Wonderful. Right this way please,” She motioned to the back room. As Rachelle turned Margret could see several things hanging from the woman’s belt around her back. At first she did not react but then a little surprise crept into her mind. The first was the Glock 23 handgun at about 4 o’clock on her hip. Next was a KaBar TDI Knife in black at about 8 o’clock on the belt. Then was a double magazine case at about 9 o’clock. Margret walked to the back of the store as she said, “I will get Mr. Lombardi.”

Lisa and Margret made their way into a private room and sat down at a table with a loop and microscope on one side of the desk. They only had to wait a few minutes before a middle aged well dressed man wearing the same gear as Rachelle walked in. “Lisa! Good to see you. Welcome. Welcome,” said the man with an almost hidden Italian accent as her shook both of the women’s hands. “What do you need?”

“Mr. Lombardi, this is Margret Crowly and she has several silver coins to sell,” informed Lisa.

“Margret, thank you for coming to my store. Let’s see what you have.”

Margret produced the 20 silver eagles all with various dates. Mr. Lombardi looked through the coins. “OK. I am not noticing anything rare. These will be sold as bullion?”

Lisa nodded, “Yes they are from the club,” she said as she showed him the receipt where she withdrew them.

“OK. Wonderful. Current silver prices are $21.68 per ounce. That is $433.60 for the 20 coins. Acceptable?”

Thoughts of her $350 apartment rent and a couple of other little bills popped into her head. Margret smiled, “Yes, that is fine.”

“Now, is there anything else?” asked Mr. Lombardi.

Lisa spoke up. “Mr. Lombardi it might interest you to know that Margret here is a nurse. Perhaps you might want to interview her in regards to your mother. She would be transacting this through the club.” Over the next several minutes Mr. Lombardi asked a few questions to Margret concerning her experience and the possible employment through the club as a sitter for his aging mother that was no longer in good health. They agreed to talk later to finish the interview and Margret knew that things were working out.

Mr. Lombardi jotted the figure of the silver sale down on a note pad and ushered the girls to the sales counter where another man dressed similarly with the same gear on his belt rang them up with a small word from Mr. Lombardi. They all shook hands and with a wink Mr. Lombardi said, “Good Trade.” Margret repeated the phrase and both women headed to the door.