Karl, against his better judgment and perhaps the natural forces of common sense, approached her, idly fingering his name tag. He hoped against hope that she was looking for an orange juice maker, because he had just stocked ten of them and knew exactly where they were. The gods of the universe, packed and coiled tight inside some 23rd dimension, laughed at him.

Instead of saying it, he wore “can I help you find something today” on his face, in the universal language of the employee who makes just enough more than minimum wage to not have the stomach to quit the job arbitrarily.

Claretta looked at him with her eyes just wide enough. Subliminally, she was utterly offended that he had even considered the idea that it was permissable to approach her without having exactly what she was looking for already in a shopping bag and a coupon for comfy socks tucked in for good measure. With the last tiny bits of energy, she told him that she was looking for a device that would analyze a piece of ginger and determine the best way to slice it, length wise, to get a thin sheet with as much area as possible.

Karl blinked. Then he died a little inside. Then he blinked again.

Three aisles away, Fevre has his hands deep in his pockets, and was pretending to concentrate with all of his and management’s might on a display of corkscrew and egg timers. Actually, he was doing everything he could to recall the time, about a week before, when he’d walked into the break room just as Kellie! was standing up and he’d caught a microsecond’s glimpse of a nanometer’s swatch of virginal white panty. He considered where the sighting lay, from the perspective of looking at a vulva head on, and determined it was at, more or less, 4 o’clock. Fevre knew that 4 o’clock put his sighting outside of even labia majora, but also knew that on Kellie! the tisn’t would be an extremely sexy place to be.

He hadn’t told anyone not, not even Karl, though he had, in a roundabout way, gotten the word for that part of the body out of him. They agreed that the proper term for the area between the vulva and the anus was the tain’t. So the area between the vulva and the thigh, therefore, must be the tisn’t. As Fevre was an unapologetic perv, Karl never questioned why the discussion had been started in the first place.

Fevre was having a hard time concentrating, however, owing to the proximity of Claretta. He didn’t know her name, of course, but he knew her type. And her type fairly radiated frustration. Fevre’s theory was the easy sex came to those who found, one the one hand, girls from broken homes, or on the other, women who created them. Kellie! as it turned out, had an excellent relationship with her father, so no luck there. But in as much as a white man who digs blacks chicks has Jungle Fever, and guy who’s into Asians is a Panda, Fevre felt he could easily become a Big Game Hunter, or in other words, a dude into cougers.

So he could almost smell Claretta three aisles away, which is at least what he told himself as he drifted over, saw Karl trying to swallow his own Adam’s apple, and Claretta doing an amazing impression of King King swatting at biplanes without lifting a finger or moving a muscle.

Feeling sly, Fevre told Karl that Jackson Stevens needed him in the warehouse. This was a lie of course, as there was no Jackson Stevens. It was a fake name. Fevre and Karl had made it up one day to scare Kellie! From ever going to the warehouse. Karl felt guilty about this, but he didn’t want her to accidentally see him having a smoke. Since then, Jackson Stevens had become a code word for goofing off. Fevre’s use of it now meant only: I am bored, let me play with this one.

Claretta turned on Fevre and said volumes about his age, lack of education, lack of motivation, most of his genetic structure, and his taste in music, clothes, and sports, all without uttering a word. Fevre smiled and used a technique he’d learned in the ROTC where one concentrates on something at the edge of their field of vision, her breasts, to be precise. They were sequestered beneath some kind of winter-sturdy woolen coat and he made a mental note that she should leave it on when they had sex.

Karl asked Fevre where they kept the devices used to analyze a piece of ginger and determine the best way to slice it, length wise, to get a thin sheet with as much area as possible. This was a technique he had memorized from the training video on his first day. Never say do we have a, always say, where is the.

Fevre said okay, and told Karl to go deal with Jackson Stevens, and that he would take care of miss…? Claretta, struggling to will the molecules in her hand to exchange atoms until she had sufficient iron to form a weapon to cause blunt force trauma, couldn’t deign to respond his query with as much as a Ms. Instead, she pinched her lips so tightly the wrinkles actually made a tiny desperate crunching sound.

Karl tried to say have a nice day, mixed it with up good luck, and the resulting have good nice a luck day seared several of his brain synapses so badly that, if he ever were to fall victim to Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, it would be the one moment he would never ever forget. The distance between where he started walking and the doors to the warehouse increased from 50 feet to roughly 17 miles and his normal 2.7 mph gait geared down to a mud-traversing .08. Sweat fairly sprayed from his forehead like a mini Bellagio fountain, but without the charm, grace, and gentility of a Las Vegas afternoon.

Claretta found herself, impossibly, following Fevre. He seemed to be wandering aimlessly as they entered the most sterile and least beguiling maze of shelving she had ever been in. Fevre waived languidly at this appliance and that kitchen tool, murmuring something about a sale or low stock or discounts for bulk purchases, all the while mentally spritzing breath freshener in his mouth, lighting a few aromatic candles, and making the last payment on a sound system purchased exclusively to play Barry White CDs.

In Aisle 10J they stopped, for this was, by a few lumens and almost some hint of shadow, nearly the darkest, coziest part of the incredibly brightly lit department store, and Fevre turned to ask her what exactly she need a device used to analyze a piece of ginger and determine the best way to slice it, length wise, to get a thin sheet with as much area as possible. He told her that the reason he was asking was because if it was what he thought it was for, he had something in mind that would actually service her much better. And he actually said the phrase service her.

In the warehouse, the color was coming back to Karl’s cheeks, and he tried to decide between his water bottle in the break room fridge, a quick smoke, or grabbing a few more orange juice makers just in case some had purchased one during his ordeal. He’d already smoked one cigarette that week, and the orange juice makers made a disturbing rattling noise when he carried them. So he headed over to the break room.

He opened the door just as Kellie! was standing up, and he caught brief flash of white panty. Kellie saw that he saw, and Karl saw that Kellie! saw that he saw. She smiled at him disarmingly, Karl smiled back, and just so you know, they were married about four years later. Karl and his father-in-law became very good friends.

After the water, Karl walked back out to the floor, to see how Fevre was doing, or what he was doing. He found him next to the sushi bowls, curled up into a tight ball, his hands to his groin, silently rocking, his face pinched tight. Karl asked if he was okay. Fevre opened his hand, in which he clutched a crumpled piece of paper with Claretta written on it, and a phone number, written in a spidery but feminine handwriting. Karl raised an eyebrow, and Fevre smiled through the pain.