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| Caveat emptor! If you fall in, you won't be back. Photo by Joe |
Olivia Jane "OJ" Black stared at her prospective customer for as long as she possibly could without pushing him across the invisible and razor-thin line that divides "puzzled" from "irritated." This was a line with which she was quite familiar, as she basically lived on it. It was September 2023, four months after her graduation from college with her "Bachelor's of Taking Up Space and Time," also known in bourgeois circles as Business Administration - and four months since she'd become a full-time employee at Needful Things, a thrift and weird stuff shop.
"Hey, Darqueness?" she called across the store.
"OJ..." her boss, the owner, said. She hated that he could scold her with just her name, like her parents used to. She had met him four years ago at her family's YARD SALE, right before she left for school, promising as she departed that she would return to marry him and rescue him from this life. She hadn't done that - yet - not because he was ten years older than she, but because she had "accidentally obtained a boyfriend," during her senior year, and she was still waiting for him to disappoint her.
"Sorry - Mr. O'Hauntington?" she called again.
"Brian, OJ," he corrected, approaching her "Curiosity Shoppe" section of the store, "Just Brian, please. What's up?"
"Sorry, Just Brian Please, do we have any more of these Halloween wreath thingies in the back? This one has, what was it?" she turned to her customer, a short and plump balding man with glasses and a t-shirt emblazoned with a reproduction of the first "Superman" comic.
"Too many bats," the man said.
"Yes. That." OJ pointed at the man and gave her boss an eyes-half-lidded look that said, look - he said it, not me!
"I'm sorry, we don't," Brian said to the man in his best customer service voice. "They all have the same number of bats, but they're just tied to the twigs of the wreath with little nylon strings. You could easily take any number of them off..."
"That's what I said!" OJ insisted.
"I was hoping not to have to do that," the man said, disappointed. "I'll give it some thought. I may be back." He turned and headed for the exit.
"Great," Brian customer serviced after him. "We're open 'til nine."
"Have a curious day!" OJ said cheerfully. Too cheerfully. Kind of sarcastically, as a matter of fact.
"Don't do that," Brian said. "I've been cool with your signature blacker than black wardrobe and your gothy-even-though-you-refuse-to-call-it-that makeup. But sarcasm doesn't sell."
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| "It's the 'Vat Of Acid' episode in a cup!" Photo by Joe |
"Don't be mad, O light of my dark, dark heart," she cooed, still fairly snarkily. "I've sold three of those skull & crossbones ice cube trays today using nothing but sarcasm. Well, to be honest, one of those sales was thanks to my describing it to this high school guy as the 'Vat Of Acid' episode in a cup. Oh - and one might have had something to do with my brushing the customer's arm with my boob - totally by accident..."
"Dude!"
"I said it was an accident," she lied, "but I do love it so, when you call me dude."
"Stop. I told you, as long as I'm your boss - and you have a boyfriend - there should be none of that flirty stuff."
"What flirty stuff, sweetie?" she asked, disappointed that he wasn't looking when she fluttered her black, black lashes at him.
"Stop. I'm going in the back for a minute. Can you keep an eye on the main register for me?"
She saluted goofily. "Oh hey - while you're back there, can you see if we have any more of these 3-D pin art board thingies? Some kids were playing with them, and now they're all stuck like this." She held up one of the little stress toys for his inspection...
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| "It's stuck." Photo by Joe |
"Dude!" Brian shook his head, working hard not to smile. "A - I know you did that, B - they're not stuck, C - Smooth them all out, please. I'll be right back."
"Dude," she whispered as she reset all the pin art boards, "I'm totally going to marry that guy. I don't care what my boyfriend says..."
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