I flipped another page of the magazine lazily. It was far too hot to be stuck at work, and the shitty little box fan on the floor wasn't doing nearly enough to help the situation.
"God I'm so fucking bored!" I shouted to the relatively empty shop, slumped over the counter.
"Careful now," called Hailey from somewhere in the back room, "the Bible thumpers will hear you!"
I scoffed loudly at my co-worker; for one thing, the entire county of this back wood hick town was at the Peach Cobbler Festival over in Landsdown all weekend. Nothing got between these rednecks and their summer fair; it was almost a religious observation for them.
Then, of course, there were the actual, literal religious observations that kept the majority of them away. Or so they all pretended.
The phone rang out loudly and I reached to answer it with the languid urgency of a hungover ground sloth.
"Dirty Dan's Dildo Depot, home of the world famous $5 footlong special; five bucks off every foot of dildo all summer long. How can I help you?"
"Y'all open t'marrow?" said the gruff voice of a local bean farmer I knew to be Gus Johnson. Gus was a regular. Gus's wife did *not* know this; none of the wives did. Or they all looked the other way.
"Gus, you know that we are," I chided, drawing circles in the air next to my head with a finger for Hailey's amusement as she peeked around the corner.
*Click*
"And good afternoon to you too, dick hole," I said, slapping the cordless handset back into its stand.
"Gus again, eh?" my companion called again from the back, having resumed her unpacking of the inventory order.
"Every weekend," I replied with the dull enthusiasm of a man forced to watch paint dry.
"What's his problem, anyway?" she asked. I heard a box hit the ground, and she cursed loudly.
"You alright?" I asked over my shoulder. She made a reassuringly affirmative sound. "Yeah, I don't know. You know how these dudes are; every single one of them addicted to this stuff, and exactly zero of them willing to admit it."
"Well," she said, stepping out from the storeroom with a clipboard held toward me, "Jesus really is a hell of a drug I guess. Sign this for me?"
I took the offered cartage record, scratching my name across the bottom of the form and returning it to the diminutive little redneck emo who worked the store with me most days. She insisted that she was a 'scene kid', but the lack of available alternative outfitters nearby meant that black t-shirts and black box dye were as good as she could manage. It wasn't much, but she stuck out like a sore thumb in these parts; anything that wasn't a dress on a woman was decried as scandalous in town.
And no, nothing ever happened between us. I didn't look enough like whoever Gerard Way was.
Still, she made good company during the long hours at Dirty Dan's. Between poking subtle fun at the ignorant hicks who came in, and generally goofing off during the unreasonably quiet evenings, we had an easy sibling-friendship thing going. It was just nice to hang out with someone who wasn't a world-class prude like everyone else in that God forsaken shit hole.
"You going to the peach thing at all?" I asked idly, still flipping through a shockingly out of date issue of BombShells Monthly.
She looked up at me over her phone, slumped in the rotting old chair that served as our break area behind the counter; her eyes rolled so hard that I feared she'd detach a retina.
"I'd rather get kicked in the box" she said sarcastically.
"I'm sure that could be arranged," I mused, marveling at the centerfold pullout of the vintage issue in my hands.
"You wish," she laughed, idly kicking a heavily booted foot in the air in boredom.
The door to the shop dinged loudly; we both craned our necks to see who it was, but the stacks of sex toys and shelved DVDs hid the newcomer from view. Hailey turned back to look at the globular security mirror affixed to the ceiling in the back corner of the long, narrow shop.
"Shit!" she hissed, slinking to the ground behind the counter like she'd seen a ghost.
"What the...Hailey, Jesus," I stammered, scrambling to avoid having my toes crushed as she crawled on all fours back into the storage room she'd only just emerged from. "Hailey where are you..." She peeked back around the corner, pointing conspiratorially at the large mirror on the wall, angled to let us see most of the shop from behind the counter.
I squinted, hard, still not sure Hailey's reaction was warranted, even if the customer wasn't our usual type; instead of a burly farm hand in denim overalls, as I might have expected, a woman in a yellow sundress covered in little white daisies moved through the store at a glacial pace. I looked back to Hailey, still on the ground in the room behind me, to shrug my shoulders. She might have recognized the woman, but I couldn't place the brunette's face to save my life. There was nothing for it.
"Welcome to Dirty Dan's!" I called out, trying to sound friendly. In the two summers I'd worked here, she was the closest thing to a woman I'd seen walk through the door. The figure in the mirror looked around, orienting herself to the sound of my voice.
"Hello?" she called back, turning the corner of a rack of fake leather harnesses and spotting me out. Her hands smoothed the front of her dress nervously as she approached.
"Hey, hi there," I said with what I hoped was a warm smile, "anything I can help you with?"
"Well," said she said nervously, trying hard to pretend she wasn't fighting a mighty urge to look around her, "I, ummm, thought you could..." She gave into her curiosity and let herself see her surroundings properly; the posters of topless women, the racks of rental movies on flimsy wire shelves behind me, the giant motorized blowup cock turning slow circles in the air above us on its tether. I imagined it was all a bit much for a girl like her.
But what a girl she was. Rosy cheeks and a wide band of freckles were framed by wavy tresses of brown hair, and I threw myself into a weak moment of dreaming about her big brown eyes staring into mine. She was built in a way that the local farm boys affectionately referred to as 'corn fed'; not overly curvy, but in no danger of blowing away in a breeze either. I'm not sure the sundress could have fit her any better if it had tried. I wanted desperately to see underneath it.
"First time?" I asked, hoping to snap her free of her speechlessness. She treated me to a wide, if nervous, smile.
"Yes. Yes! It is," she said, still trying to work up the nerve not to run out the door. Her hands fidgeted at her waist. "I was just, umm, well...I was hoping you might be able to help me with a little something?" The lazy drawl of her accent was like a cool glass of sweet tea on a Sunday morning, or whatever other hideous cliché you'd like.
"Well I'll certainly try," I offered, trying to slide the dirty magazine I'd been reading off the counter unnoticed.
"Well I just thought maybe y'all had some, uhhh..." her nerve was failing her quickly, "Oh gosh, I feel so silly!"
"Is it the dick balloon?" I asked, pointing above us at the phallic zeppelin buzzing along its inexorable flight path. She looked up, laughing sweetly at the absurd blimp, covering her nose demurely with a hand when a brief snort escaped. It was the cutest little oink I'd ever heard.
"Oh goodness!" she chuckled, "now that's funny!" I was elated that I'd banished her nervous reluctance, but still didn't recognize her from any of the other 20-something girls in the area. "I just need something and thought this was the kind of place that might be able to help."
