Friday, July 07, 2006

unguarded

The store was big, just like all the others identical to it across the continent.  The air outside, cold and a little moist, startled us as we got out of our car in the vast macadam sea of the parking lot.  We approached the broad glass doors with their automated motion sensors and let them usher us into the protected realm of the retail cornucopium.  The portals welcomed us with a quiet hiss, conveying assonantly that we’d entered a controlled, complete, hermetic space, totally distinct from the clammy wilds from which we’d late arrived. 

Such assertions, by humans or by automatic doors, rarely ring true, so I immediately started looking for the gouge in the veneer - the sliver of human truth that had not yet been subsumed by the prefabricatred environment surrounding me. And there it was, just inside the doors, immediately in front of me:

The security guard was wearing his security garb: blue slacks and black running shoes, with a blue overshirt that tried to make up in pockets, straps and epaulets what its wearer lacked in actual authority.  He was midway between five feet and six, average build, verging on chunky with the onset of middle age but still a petit man.  His hair was cut neat and short and he coiffed it slickly back; his small cheap sunglasses reflected the tube lights overhead and his tidy little moustaches seemed only to accentuate the feminine smallnesss of his lips.  He was stationed by the doors so he could greet us as we entered and keep us honest on our way out.  However, at that moment he was fulfilling neither of those duties.  He was just trying to make a little time.

The object of his attention was a junior member of the sales staff.  She wore regulation shirt and pants and nametag, but not the standard unflattering red vest.  Her face was searingly beautiful, doe-eyed and bee-stung and drenched in the most enticing kohls and rouges; her figure was lithe and tight and supple.  She made her tacky retail uniform look good, and when she bent over to adjust the straps of her sandals she coyly revealed a pair of tattoo kinkywings extending across her deeply tanned sacrum.  She looked fine, and she knew that the security guard knew it. 

As we entered the store I saw her walking across the entry foyer from the returns area toward the glittering displays of the electronics department.  He stood squared off toward the sliding doors, just a few yards off her trajectory, his hands resting on his hips and his pecs inflated.  After she stopped directly in his line of sight to tweak her toestraps, a casual flick of her lush slutty hair as she passed him right by got him off the blocks; he swiveled toward her, called out to her:

“Hey, I pulled in that stack of carts for ya.”

She’s a stockgirl; he probably outranks her, technically.  He’s also a man in his 30s, I’d guess, and she’s a kid, and he’d like to think he should be calling the shots here.  How it’s really going down, though, is he’s doing her scut work, and all he gets in return is a glance over the shoulder and a bored, perfunctory “thanks.” She continues vacantly along toward the CDs, her hips switching freely in their red polyester trousers.  He’s got to stay by the front doors.  He pulls his gaze from her retreating peaches and resquares his stance, adjusts his beltbuckle, and clenches his jaw till I can hear his molars creak.  We walk on in.  He remains at his station, staring through smoked glass at acres of blacktop.