The Prospective Client

            Exasperated, he stood tip-toe and slowly spun three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. He decided to go toward the wall that had a formica-finish sign that said ‘Milk’. That was food. It had to be close.       

            Looking up, and at times walking sideways through the narrow aisles, Singleton worked his way in the direction which he saw the sign. There, the direction of the aisles changed, routing him toward Cough and Cold again. He reset his internal compass with Cough and Cold behind him, and Milk before him, but first had to take a side detour down a feeding aisle. But a woman, placing doormats on the floor, blocked his way.

            Singleton watched her as she stood on each of the five mats in turn. She smiled at him, and he realized that what she was doing made perfect sense. Why buy a mat if you’re uncomfortable standing on it? He just wished that he had such patience when shopping. He detoured from all that, and nearly bumped into a woman, with two children checking everything else out, as children will, and who was looking at fake lanterns from an end-cap, picking them up by the swing handle, and holding them before her with a scrutinizing glance.

            And these were of a type that weren’t ‘hurricane lanterns’. They were ‘keep these indoors, they’re pretty, but they couldn’t withstand a breeze’ lanterns. Singleton backtracked, and, looking roughly in the location he sought, saw, in the glare and shadows, a shelf full of Cinnamon Triangles. So, he knew he had to be close. He approached the aisle.

            In that aisle, there was a short selection of name-brand breakfast cereal. To the other side, there were paper goods, so Singleton disregarded that side, and continued his walk. Then, he heard a complaint from the front of the store, sixty feet away.

            “I can’t believe you don’t have herm hum hum hum.”

            He was glad that he never found out what they didn’t have in that exchange. The checker answered kindly:

            “Hm hm hm hm-hm hm.”

            The bell on the door clanged as the unplacated customer marched out.

            Somehow, the odds seemed against Singleton. He rushed past the cereals, both mainstream and generic, and found the selection of toaster pastries that he was looking for.

            But, now careful, he checked the other side of that, and found 45 cubic feet of shelf space devoted to fruit roll ups. Actually, they were boxes with scenes from animated movies printed on them, and which happened to contain fruit leather, but why split hairs. I mean, whatever it takes to keep the kids away from all those Tostitos is fine with me.

            As it was with Singleton. A woman sidled up to him. And said:

            “um mumble withy hm afternoon?”

            Singleton leaned closer.

            “I’m asking hoy matter hm.” She dangled an empty shopping basket his way.

            “I’m sorry?”

            She smiled, and pointed into the empty basket.

            “you can herdun langam perpsym here.”

            Singleton didn’t want to ‘perpsym’ there, and at that point, just went again with “I’m sorry…” and the woman smiled and floated away and he never figured out what she wanted. He heard a complaint at check-out loud and clear this time.

            “Who ever heard of a store that doesn’t carry hummingbird feeders! Just answer me that…”

            Singleton figured that eventually a customer would settle on a product that the store actually carried, but which they couldn’t find. Imagine how embarrassed they would be. Odds were, it would happen sometime.

            Locating a generic family pack of blueberry toaster pastries, Singleton nearly wept for joy. But then he took it for a bad omen. There is too much of a good thing, so he settled on a deluxe nine pack of strawberry, brown sugar cinnamon, and blueberry instead.

            The brand of the pastries was a generic store brand: ‘SenseWorth Select’. It was all connected with the marketing genius Al Senseworth, who was the one who founded SenseWorth decades before, with only a two-car garage, a dream, and a Gideon’s Bible he’d acquired from a seedy motel room during a coke deal gone bad. This all could be found in his memoir which sold at kiosks at all locations, and which told that after he’d hit bottom, he’d gone on the straight and narrow, and now lorded over 10,000 employees using a simple formula. Provide good products at a reasonable price, then, after a few years, go public and run the corporation into the ground. He was also a strong proponent of exfoliation. As a result, the employees shown in SenseWorth commercials all had the complexion of a newborn on a primetime drama. And, SenseWorth Toaster Pastries were the best, due to an oversight. They still had cane sugar, not corn syrup, since they were made in a factory that hadn’t yet switched over to spigots, due to either lack of investment capital or sheer laziness.

            The store had routed Singleton toward Cough and Cold, and now it was pushing him to complete the purchase. The marketing gods leered benignly from the galvanized ceiling as Singleton took his one purchase down a main aisle.

            There wasn’t much of a line at the registers. Perhaps, Singleton thought, the loss of portable electronic devices had actually put a damper on consumer activity. He wondered what was transpiring on the trading floors as he placed his pastries on a counter where a purchase was just being wrapped up. That of a man who resembled Abraham Lincoln in a grey Harley Davidson outlet t-shirt and blue jeans.

            The checker, Bess, finished the exchange and handed Abe a penny change, thanking him. Then she put a hand on Singleton’s box and looked down the rest of the counter. She then looked up at him, shyly smiled, and shook her head, clearing her mind, having been startled by the fact that the purchase didn’t include impulse items like a can of shrimp or pink earbuds. She scanned the box.

            It just slid across the laser x. There was no gratifying beep. She tried again. No beep. She (Bess) spun the box, polished the bar code with her elbow, then swept it again. No beep. So, she then lifted the bottom of the box again, gave it a short growl, and swept it again, to no avail.

            Singleton adored spiky grey-haired Bess, and wished her success, even just for her own sake. But he wondered how long she would keep doing the same thing with the same negative result. But, Bess then turned to the register and ten-keyed it in. What she saw on her register display seemed to frighten her, like she’d just seen footage of a small plane making an emergency landing on a highway, but her face regained a calm expression as she turned and asked Singleton:

            “Did you find this here?”

            “Of course I did.”

            “Okay. What about the book?”

            Singleton had forgotten the bus-reading book he had in the other hand.

            “It’s a library book I brought to read on the bus.”

            “Okay.” Bess said. “I thought it might be one of our Bestsellers. But, I don’t know what to do with these Pop Tarts.”

            She looked over toward a wall with an observation mirror, and a woman, with a name-tag that said: ‘Connie’, popped up beside Singleton. Since Bess and Singleton were looking up, she was able to sneak underneath their sightline like a Navy Seal. No words were spoken. Connie took the box from Bess and told Singleton to come with her to an unused register. She looked to the observation window of the office thirty feet away and raised the product, front first, toward it. The offering was like something a misguided cult priestess would do in Indiana Jones. She lowered the box and actually looked for some sort of answer from the window. There seemed to be none. So, she tugged a radio from her belt, and spoke.

            “Code thirty-two XB.” She flicked her eyes to Singleton sideways as she issued the mysterious call. “Code thirty-two Ex. ‘B’ as in ‘boy’. To register two, please.”

            Connie then clipped the radio back onto her belt, and looked friendly to Singleton, but said not a thing. But, events progressed quickly after her call.

            First, a small, nondescript employee wove from the general direction of the office to register two, and, looking in no one’s direction, whirled a pool noodle in as dignified a manner as anyone could whirl a pool noodle. Singleton then understood why they had given this particular associate the assignment. The pool noodle set up a racket, with the wind whistling against the twirled end:

            “Brawwww!”

            The associate tucked the pool noodle beneath an arm and walked evenly off. Then, the emergency lights seemed to brighten, but that was just an illusion. A tall man with a platinum name-tag took the associate’s place, seemingly sharing space- passing through him; some sort of multi-dimentional thing. A stocker came up to him from behind and raised a finger. The manager spun to him, pointing nearly through him. He ducked just in case. The manager gestured back toward Cough and Cold and aside, toward the Electronics cabinet, saying:

            “Explode the corrugated sixty seven, but not yesterday. Or ever.”

            The checker nodded somehow knowingly to him.

            “And keep the matrix round. Not rotund like last time.”

            He was good. The associate fell into a ball, which also served as a duck as the manager seemed to unwind, spinning with his point in the other direction, and he rolled, like a ninja enjoying worst case scenario, roughly toward Pets. The manager turned to the customer service manager, sweeping a hand toward Milk which went over her head as she executed a nifty duck just-in-case, with one leg bent, the other splayed out to pointed toes, and told her when she popped back up:

            “Coddle the natchy pupae infinitely, ending exactly where it starts, and… I don’t know… tuck the euphoria beneath it dorsally.”

            With that, he swept the hand back, and his colleague ducked beneath it in reverse, anime hero style, seeming to expect it, and bringing a perfect sense of balance into this unbalanced situation. The manager pointed to the front window for no reason and paused. A woman standing nearby with her fresh purchases gazed at him lovingly, fanning herself off with a set of disposable place mats embossed with the phrase ‘Dare To Eat’. A man walked through the checkout stands.

            “Can’t believe you don’t have model rockets.”

            The manager cocked his head, continued pointing, looked at the man, and nodded. The man was walking out, not waiting for an answer. The manager then lowered his majestic hand. He breathed deeply, tugging up his britches, and turned to the customer service manager. Singleton then saw a flash of something right beside him. Someone ran past them with two one gallon jugs of milk and beat it out the store, nearly bowling everyone over. The little bell on the door went: ‘ringedy-ring!’ The manager paused with his hands on his belt, took a breath and looked toward the door the guy had just run out of. Connie, the customer service manager, leaned on the right side of her feet, ready to make that lean into a sprint for the man herself. But the manager just raised his chin and sniffed.

            “Whaddo we have here.”

            Connie handed him the toaster pastries and he looked at them.

            “Those are Toaster Pastries.” he declared, and handed the box back. Singleton was startled by a gust of breeze, and a: “Brawwww!”

            The pool noodle associate beside him finished his whirly task, secured the pool noodle beneath an arm, and marched off to the office again, with the manager following at a stately pace.

            Singleton turned to the Customer Service Manager, perplexed.

            She handed him the box.

            “They’re yours.” She raised a hand against any following comment, but Singleton said,

            “I didn’t buy them.”

            “They aren’t for sale,” she told him. “Believe me, it’s easier.” She then smiled, shook her head, and gestured toward the door.

            “You may leave.”

            Singleton nodded to her, perplexed. She nodded back, all-knowingly. Singleton began to walk away slowly toward the door, then picked up speed. He then slowed, and looked back at the manager. She flicked her hands toward him, palms down. He heard her go:

            “Shoo!”