When you asked somebody to help you find something in a store, and they point to it and say there it is, and you still can’t see it, that shit makes me furious. Right about that moment is when my helper at the Tip Top had to go back to the front of the store due to another customer skittering in the front door looking all kinds of shifty.
So I was saved further embarrassment.
As I finally found the triple sec on the bottom shelf next to its specialty liquor brethren, I snagged the bottle and slowly made my way to the counter. Ms Shifty had a wild-haired pony tail and was sporting an ate up pair of jeans and a dirty T-shirt without a bra. My first impression was that she was a basehead.
She couldn’t stand still, kept touching her arm, touching her face, looking left and right. This was all in less than a minute as she spoke superfast and supersketchy to the counter guy.
“Gimme a lighter. The cheep ones, man. What are those fifty cents? Ok. Here you go.”
That’s when her cellphone rang and she proceeded to have what I felt was a fairly private conversation, at cheerleader volume, right in front of us. This wasn’t a speakerphone convo, so I guess she gets credit for that much restraint.
She had already paid for the lighter and had seemingly no reason to still be in the liquor store. I mean, yes, I’m a guy buying booze at 11 a.m. on a Sunday, and yes, the counter guy isn’t exactly a civic leader, but when your conversation is so explicitly about getting crack and smoking crack, I would think you would keep that shit on the DL.
But not Ms Shifty.
“Hey, yeah, I’m down here looking for my guy right now. What? He said he was going to smoke a gram with me. Who? Stacy? What? She went to Indiana without me? I know that bitch didn’t go to Indiana without me…”
That’s about when the counter guy looked at me with eyes that said “welcome to my everyday all day” as he gave me the receipt for the bottle.
