Again, last year, Advertiser had some corny holiday story contest. Both children and adult categories. You've read the children's entry I submitted. Here is the adult entry... A tale about tail...
GOT YOUR BACK (ADULT CATEGORY)
Lynn is the manager of an Ala Moana store that sells expensive chocolates.
Late in November, right after the post-Thanksgiving rush, Lynn is working at the store, along with a young girl named Ashley.
Things are slow. Very slow. It’s only after Ashley and Lynn have finished cleaning and adjusting the chocolate displays for the third consecutive time, that a customer walks in.
She’s an elderly woman, in her 60's, rich, white. Her silver hair is immaculately combed back and held in place by a pin shaped like mistletoe, with gold leaves and red berries. In her left hand is a large shopping bag from Neiman Marcus, and in her right is another from Macy’s.
Lynn walks up to the woman, and greets her brightly. “Hello! Why, that’s a beautiful hair pin!”
The old woman strolls past Lynn without responding in the least, her eyes gazing down at the boxes of chocolates around her.
Slightly mollified, Lynn backs away.
Just as she’s about to turn away from the woman she notices it: tucked into the back of the old woman’s skirt is a tissue paper toilet seat cover, gently flapping.
At first, Lynn can’t restrain a grin. The nearest bathrooms are halfway across the mall, so the old woman must have been walking around with this “ring around her rosie” for quite some time, inspiring sniggers and giggles from everyone she passed.
But then, Lynn checks herself. She imagines this woman being someone’s grandmother. Hers, for example. Like her own grandmother, this woman takes great pride in her appearance. And, like her grandmother, it would probably shatter her fragile self-esteem to discover that she had been walking all around town with a white bullseye on her bottom. In fact, Lynn thinks paranoically, who knows, it might even send her into a deep depression. Lynn pictures the woman confining herself to a single room in her mansion in Manoa for the rest of her days, wearing a diaper, so that she never has to see a toilet seat cover, or a toilet seat, ever again.
She shudders. “I have to do something,” she thinks to herself. “Only, I have to do it without her even knowing.”
She pulls Ashley aside, and whispers to her the situation, and her plan.
Although Ashley is a real trooper, she rolls her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says. “Can’t we just- tell her?”
“No we can’t,” Lynn answers firmly. “What if you walked around with something like that sticking out of your butt?”
“I expect people to tell me if I have a piece of spinach on my teeth,” Ashley argues.
“This is different,” Lynn says, though she can’t quite say how. “And, I’m your boss.”
“Okay,” she says. “So I have to distract her?”
Lynn nods. “Distract her with sweetness, while I do the dirty work.”
Ashley dons her cutest smile, and walks up to the woman. “May I help you with anything?” she asks.
Lynn meanwhile slips on a pair of thin plastic gloves, the kind she wears whenever she handles truffles or dipped chocolates, and circles around towards the old woman’s backside.
The old woman tries to give Ashley the same silent treatment she’d given Lynn. But Ashley manages to position herself right in front of her, blocking her advance. Frustrated, the old woman deigns to give Ashley a response. “Out of my way!”
“Might I interest you in a sample?” Ashley asks sweetly. “Freshly dipped strawberry?”
“Alright,” mutters the old woman reluctantly, as though she is granting Ashley the vaunted privilege of serving her.
Lynn meanwhile approaches on tip toe, half-crouched like a lion, nary a foot away from the old woman’s rear.
She reaches, grabs the tissue paper, pulls-
-and with a barely audible shhh! sound, tears one side of the ring open.
She grimaces in frustration, then springs backwards like a cat as the old woman shifts her weight as though she is about to turn around. Lynn casually walks backwards a few steps to catch her breath and to survey the new situation. “Oh great,” she thinks to herself. Now, instead of wearing an “O,” the old woman wears something that sometimes resembles a “C,” sometimes an “S,” depending on how she sways her hips. A slinking tissue paper tail.
Ashley slips Lynn a look over the woman’s shoulder, when she’s not looking: “All pau?”
Lynn returns a pained look.
“Okay,” Ashley says, “Would you mind waiting here for a few moments while I get the strawberries?”
The old woman exhales in frustration. “I haven’t got all day,” she mutters. “Please be quick about it.”
And as Ashley strolls off to get the chocolate strawberries, Lynn saunters off to join Ashley behind the counter.
“So?” Ashley whispers, as she places a chocolate strawberry on a serving plate. “Did you get it?”
Lynn shakes her head no. “I think I made it worse.”
“Shouldn’t we just give up?” Ashley asks. “She’s such a B.”
Lynn has to actually think about it. But finally, she shakes her head. “No,” she says firmly. “It’s our duty to serve our customers.”
“Serve our customers chocolate,” Ashley mutters.
“Serve our customers in any way that we can,” Lynn corrects. “Give her three strawberries. Whatever you need to, to buy me some time.”
Ashley rolls her eyes, but nods.
When she returns with the plate of strawberries, the old woman greets her with an “About time!” She grabs one of the three strawberries on the plate, takes a bite out of it, and then, as if to insure that the other two don’t run away, swipes the plate itself out of Ashley’s hands.
“How is it?” Ashley asks brightly.
The old woman doesn’t respond. She hands Ashley a green crown of strawberry leaves, the bottom wet with saliva, remnant of the first strawberry. Ashley accepts it graciously in her gloved palm. And then, the old woman greedily attacks the second strawberry.
Lynn meanwhile circles around the store once again to approach her prey, the paper tail.
She reaches tentatively, makes contact, both with the skirt, and with the tissue paper. Now, if she can only pull the skirt away from the old woman’s body, just enough to loosen the paper!
The second strawberry is practically swallowed whole. A second strawberry crown is deposited in Ashley’s palm. The old woman takes a large wolfish bite out of the third strawberry, absently handing the now empty plate to Ashley.
Ashley leans to one side, giving Lynn a look of desperation. “It’s now or never!” she seems to say. With dexterity that she never knew she possessed, Lynn simultaneously pulls the elastic of the skirt ever so slightly off the old woman’s body, and yanks the tissue paper. It instantly falls away like the molted skin of a snake.
The old woman spins around suddenly. “What ARE you doing!?” she demands, spitting droplets of chocolate and strawberry hash into Lynn’s terrified face.
“I- uh- I-“ Lynn stutters, before catching her momentum. “I’m- sorry. I was just- picking up some garbage off the floor.”
“How rude!” snaps the old woman. “Get away from me!”
“I’m sorry,” Lynn repeats, slowly rising. “I’m really sorry.” Then, she bows awkwardly like an actress who’s screwed up her lines, and exits stage right. Towards the trash can.
“I honestly don’t know how you survive as a business,” the old woman snaps at the only remaining audience, poor Ashley. “First of all, your store is filthy. And second, and almost more importantly, why, these strawberries aren’t ripe, and the chocolate is mediocre at best. They certainly don’t warrant the price you’re charging for them.” She picks up her large shopping bags. “I’m walking out of this store, and I’m not looking back, I can tell you!”
Ashley courageously suppresses a giggle.
“Oh, are you going to cry?” the old woman says, turning back, misunderstanding her expression completely. “Well, I’m actually quite glad. It means that you care. But you’re just a little behind in showing it! Goodbye.”
As soon as she storms out of the store, as soon as she glides off the edge of the store front window, Lynn and Ashley let out a shriek.
“We did it!” Lynn shouts.
“My good deed for the century,” Ashley sings.
“Well, that’s the lot of a retail worker,” Lynn murmurs, “Thankless. And insulted to boot.”
“What’s it all for?” Ashley sighs.
“Don’t ask me,” Lynn mutters.
Just then, another customer walks in the door. Tall. Dark. Handsome. And with his fly open to the breeze.
“My turn!” Ashley whispers, grinning wickedly.
No comments:
Post a Comment