Obama Store

As he lifted the gate that morning, liberal entrepreneur Jeremy Smidgen felt a sudden pang of doubt. Perhaps it was a poor idea to open a store that sold Barack Obamas in 2025.

His back issued its customary sciatic twinge when he had bent to the padlock on the ground. As he stood, he looked around the mall, storefronts now left to empty displays where knock-off jewelry or shoes didn’t pervade. A man in his security outfit leaned by the entrance to the bathrooms, neck craned as he scanned his phone. An elderly pair of white women trotted past on their morning walk. Once, a tall fountain occupied the promenade before his shop, but they had turned it off and drained it five years ago, during the lockdowns. Now it stood disabused, like the rest of the mall; empty and half-disassembled.

The lights flickered on as he stepped inside. A disjointed chorus of “good mornings” came from the Obamas by the racks. These were always the first to greet him. The ones at the shelves further back typically only breathed a curt “’morning,” to him as he’d pass. Those in storage never spoke to him until after he’d had his first coffee for the day. They had little personality until they were clothed and put out on display, but still, the seemingly deliberate lack of common courtesy remained an understandable source of unease.

He owned, to his knowledge, the only shop of its kind in America. He had all of the campaign Obamas. He had a few kits of the modular Obamas sold in 2017 as part of a pharmaceutical promotion. He had all three of the limited edition Obamas made in conjunction with a Star Trek convention, one of which even came with an articulated Jeri Ryan action figure. He didn’t understand the connection, but the action figure was still in its case. He had the suited Obama line, the casual wear Obama line, the golf Obamas, the basketball Obamas, the coveted and short-run senator and professor Obamas. He even had a friendship bracelet Obama.

Had it been simply a private collection, his stock would no doubt have been the largest collection of Obamas in the world. Indeed, his shop had first opened with a substantial collection—large enough, even, to have ended two marriages and required several storage containers to keep track of. It was in the process of cataloging the Obamas he had that led, eventually, to the internet marketplace listings and then to his own website and online shop. Now, a few years later, he’d signed a lease for this humble spot just off the food court at his local mall. Internet sales remained the primary source of income for the place, but he interiorly justified the storefront by considering the storage it afforded him and the retail space granted the store a sense of legitimacy. Whether this would be worth the property fees, rent and taxes had yet to be seen.

By the time he reemerged from the back, Jeremy encountered a young woman browsing the stock near the front of the store. It was rare to have a customer before eleven in the morning on a weekday.

The woman browsed a particular rack of Obamas with a deliberate, fast but unrushed pace, making amused, tight-lipped grins as they offered their usual small talk. She never engaged with any of them, checking instead for marks on their heads, the details of their cuff links, where they had them, ensuring the buttons on their shirts were unblemished and the seams down their pants were ironed. Finally, she selected one from the 2008 campaign rack and brought it to the checkout counter.

“How nostalgic.” Jeremy scrutinized the collar of the Obama as it approached. “This is vintage product, by the way.”

“I know,” she said.

“A gift? We offer gift wrapping services.”

“No.” Another polite, distant smile. “I just got a new job. It just something for my office.”

“Oh, congratulations.” He beamed as he flashed the laser wand over the bar code hidden by the Obama’s ear. “You have some good taste.”

She didn’t meet his gaze and lightly shrugged. “Ha-ha. Thanks.” He mentioned the total due and she held her card up to the scanner. After the payment processed, she looked toward the front of the store before placing her hand on the counter. “Listen,” she said. “It’s just a really liberal place. The new job. You think this sort of thing will make me look fine? Normal? I’m just trying to fit in there. I don’t really care much about Obama. I’m not even old enough to remember any of his terms.”

Jeremy met her gaze with a warm smile. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “These Obamas are the real deal. Just leave this one in your office, maybe give it a flag. It’ll be perfect.”

Her expression softened and she nodded. “Thank you.” She turned with her new purchase trailing behind her.

A young man sauntered in as she left. White, close-trimmed haircut, the scent of the mall’s barber shop still clinging to him. He looked around the store with a thinly-veiled expression of mild bewilderment.

“What can we get for you today?”

The man scowled, as if more inwardly to express his confusion, but he nodded and took one haphazard hand and motioned it about. “I have a date with an art chick tonight,” he said. “I don’t really use these things, but I wanted to impress her. It doesn’t need to be a conversation piece. Just like, you know.”

“Purely ornamental.”

“Uh,” he said. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever. I guess.”

Jeremy directed him to a rack of Obamas over at the right, beneath the large screen that played some dated documentary entitled PRISON PLANET. He’d never actually watched the documentary, but it played nonstop and quietly enough that his unconscious mind had memorized the entire script. Some nights it would play in his dreams. It had seemed like an appropriate piece of period media that helped outfit the store’s ambiance.

The man drifted around some of the Obamas who offered in return various gazes: some blank, some suspicious, all of them hiding some nearly palpable malaise behind them, as if it were merely the simulation of something deeper and more horrible. But that could never be the case, being that they were merely Obamas: accouterments, accessories, simulacra of something once real that had since passed into memory or museum. They were little more than the nostalgic remnants of an age that no one was left to remember, even though it had only been a scant decade since the administration ended.

As the man continued browsing, Jeremy’s reverie dipped into a puzzled recognition. Those eight years had disappeared as if they had been a dream. It hadn’t been an altogether unpleasant dream, he considered, trying hard to recall what had taken place during that time, but not an altogether pleasant one, either. He remembered the recession. The loss of value to his house. Gas prices. He remembered social media’s infancy. He remembered Trayvon and Mike Brown. He remembered Romney. He remembered the ACA. Unemployment. His first shop drowning under taxes and fees due to the government in 2009. Laying off his last employee. Seal Team Six got Osama bin Laden, hadn’t they? Being out of work and paying the healthcare tax to the IRS that year. Watching Obama stutter for words on a stage while he held a microphone the way one might hold a flute.

“Is this one any good?” The man had brought one of the newer Obamas to the checkout. It peered about the store with a look more blank than Jeremy was used to seeing on them. A mild sheen across its forehead reflected the white lights above them. “It seems like one of the cheap ones.”

“Yes, this is from a run done sometime late in the administration. You can tell whether they’re authentic or knock-offs by the shape of their earlobes,” Jeremy said. The man hadn’t asked. “The Chinese versions add an extra crease here, and the Vietnamese ones droop. I think it’s something to do with the materials.”

The man shrugged. “I was just going to put it in the trunk of my car.”

“The trunk?” Jeremy let slip a mild note of alarm.

“Or the back seat,” the man said. “I don’t know, man. I’m not a collector or anything. It’s just sort of going to be there.”

With an attempt to hide his exasperation, Jeremy rang up the total and presented the payment pad him. “Well, you’ve chosen a good one for that,” he said. It pinged as the card processed. “Just. The trunk gets so hot this time of year. Even if you don’t care about the condition, it’s going to smell.”

“It already kind of smells, doesn’t it?”

He left gently pushing the Obama out of the store, his gait somehow less self-assured now than it had been when he entered.

Near noon, the shop again empty, Jeremy hung the ‘We’ll Be Right Back’ sign in the window and locked the gate. He walked across the promenade to one of the fast food joints and purchased a meal which he ate at a nearby table. The small assortment of mall goers populated the court. More than average for a weekday, he thought, but then he thought about it again and considered that it was probably exactly average. There was a mother with two young children nearby. The one in the stroller was crying and seemed old enough to be trying to shout words at her. An elderly man scowled into a handheld phone. A gaggle of young people in casual attire shared a table and discussed the day’s work, using words like “client,” “account,” “settlement,” and “MySQL.” At the counter to the fried chicken joint across the way, a man with a bandanna around his unkempt hair shouted into the rafters about not getting enough sauce for his fries. A security guard watched him but made no motion to intervene.

He returned to his shop and winced again as his sciatica twinged in the bend to unlock the gate. He stretched his back as he stood and caught the attention of one passing by.

He was African American. “Oh man. An Obama? I haven’t seen one of these things in ages!”

“The ones against the back wall are vintage,” Jeremy said. He motioned for him to enter the store, which brought a smile out.

“For real.” He wandered around for a minute, making off-hand conversation in a way that suggested his stream of consciousness had been hard-wired to his social cordiality. “How’d a white guy like you get such good taste? I’m kidding. All the liberals loved this dude. You like Obama a lot, huh?”

Jeremy thought for a little while. The man didn’t seem to notice his silence as he picked through the suited Obamas in one of the back racks. His commentary continued unabated, surprised at some of the wear that a few of the older and more traveled Obamas had sustained.

Had he liked Obama? The past had turned to dim mirrors in his mind, smudged over and left to accumulate smears and dust. He could barely remember the Obama campaigns, and he’d been part of them. Both of them. He’d done door-to-door voter solicitation and managed one of the local campaign chapters in 2008. Even met Obama at one of the conventions, but that was early on and before his presidential bid. Now, however, as he tried to recall his feelings about the man, the administrations, the events that transpired between 2008 and 2016, only the commercialized Obamas that hung in his store came to mind. Their empty stares. Their artificial smiles. The words that carried the thinnest trace of manufactured charm while saying nothing at all.

“You know, man, I wasn’t going to get anything but I kinda like this one.” The man had sauntered up with one of the vintage Obamas in tow. “It speaks to me. Like it’s got soul. You know what I’m saying?”

Jeremy recognized it immediately. “That’s one of the more worn Obamas,” he said. “It has a shattered ankle.” He remembered that incident. It was in 2016, while campaigning, perhaps begrudgingly, for Hillary. After an event, the Obama was sent to wait at the curb with the rest of the crew. Its foot slipped and rolled off of a curb, spraining it at first, just as the loading van came and an inattentive driver pinned it to the street. Like the others, it hadn’t made any sound or noise except for the sick crack and pop of bone and tissue.

“Yeah, I know. That’s sort of what I like about it, though. He’s seen it. Been through it.” He gestured to its obviously mangled leg that stood concealed beneath old black socks and a mild but fraying pant leg. “Like, it just looks real. Like he’s real, or something. You get me?”

“Of course,” Jeremy said. The effort to plumb his conscious recollection was dispelled by the sudden spark of pride he felt in fulfilling his station in life. Another happy customer. Another satisfied Obama owner. He completed the transaction at the register and offered the man a cheerful parting as he left. The Obama walked with a limp.

The afternoon passed as most do without much of interest. A pair of customers, a young couple, browsed the racks in light spirits and asked a couple of questions but did not buy anything. An older man came to inquire about a specific model of Obama that Jeremy had been aware of, but it was unfortunately quite the collector’s item and the last one he’d seen was sold off more than a year prior. One customer passed a screening and arranged to rent a dozen of the ‘08 campaign Obamas for some sort of social event over the weekend. That was Jeremy’s highlight. It was rare for an event in 2025 to still hold such a demand for Obamas.

“It’s for my cousin,” she said. “He’s. You know.” The smile she offered like a door caught in passing. He understood her immediately. Perhaps at one point, he was just like this cousin, a long time ago. Now, he just ran a humble store for humble things. Humble Obamas. Obamas that gave the same salutations and stares every time he opened up shop.

His business day neared its end. Sunlight through the distant skylights above the promenade was almost at its brightest at this time, where the angled windows faced the sun as it descended toward the evening’s hours. Dinner was not far off for Jeremy, and he had begun the final acts of the day’s work before closing time began. The sound of hurried steps near the front of his shop caught his attention. Looking up from his register, he found the young woman from earlier returned with the Obama he’d sold her in tow. No one could have mistaken her striking features.

“Back again,” he said. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes.” A quickness in her voice betrayed her. “No,” she suddenly said. “Well, it’s not your fault, though.” She had brought the Obama from earlier back with her. It seemed to be in exactly the same condition as when he had sold it that morning. She began apologizing. Desperation lurked beneath her tone as if her words were prey openly stalked by a patient predator.

“I just couldn’t do it,” she said. “I’m sorry. I never return things. It’s not like me, I know. I never do this, but I can’t. I don’t even want the money back. Please, keep it, keep the money, keep this—this thing, this Obama—I don’t want an exchange or anything. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I came here this morning. It was such a mistake.”

“I don’t understand,” Jeremy said. “Did it not go well at the office?”

“What?” The threat of a black streak near one eye alerted him to her subtle application of mascara that he hadn’t seen before. “No, no. They loved it. They thought it was fine.”

“Then why all of… this remorse?”

“That’s just it.” Her eyes were moist. A cavern opened beneath his heart, his stomach dropping the moment he noticed, as if he had suddenly transgressed into a place that he did not want to be. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know. I just can’t. I hate it. I hate this thing. I hate that I went and purchased it. I just hate it. Do you know? Do you understand? I just hate it!”

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