Chapter 9.1
She stood at the threshold of the stage, her complexion taking on an ashen tinge.
"Ma'am? Ma'am, are you okay?"
She tottered, and security guards rushed forwards from the edges of the crowd.
In an aside, the lanky woman with the sharp features whispered to the girl holding a set of cue cards, hissed, "I told her we would be needing security."
"Okay, okay, ma'am, listen, come on back here. Here, have a seat." The man on stage produced a chair from out of the floodlights at the edge of the stage and shepherded it towards the seemingly catatonic woman. Her gaze shifted to his hand at the side of the chair, which was still holding her bag. She stared right above and through the bobbing heads of the three or so assistants scouring the floor, picking up lipstick containers, compacts, cotton wool, a tampon, a clump of paperclips and pins, a compacted packet of tissues, and a neat handful of change. "Let's have some water for the good sport." The man gestured frantically at the lights again.
"I'll get it." The woman with the sharp features strutted to the water cooler, bent with an exaggerated twist of her hips as she filled a cup, and strutted, still twisting her hips, out on to the stage, and handed the glass to the man, who was sweating profusely.
"Thank you." He handed the glass to the woman, who was now seated, staring out over the crowd gathered at the foot of the modest stage in the beauty section of the women's Macy's. She took the glass, and rested it on her lap. "So, dear. Dear? Okay. So that's one thing that might happen with your old bag. Your old bag, I should say." He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief produced from his trouser pocket.
"But with the purchase of only $50 worth of cosmetics, including the new CoverGirl foundation we've just demonstrated on various patrons here, you too can get this brand new, virtually un-spill-able handbag!" At this point the girl handling the cue cards had put down her cue cards and shovel-tossed an example of the unspillable handbag out to the man on stage. "The patented mechanism is almost guaranteed to not let your valuables slip out of the bag!" He swing the bag around his head as if he were about to lasso the woman in the chair. For one horrified moment, she pictured the bag slipping softly out of his hand, undulating like some sort of airborne jellyfish, in an indelible arc towards her head, knocking her off kilter, and off the chair.
He finished off the remainder of his demo, and as he did so various assistants deposited sundry items recovered from the floor back into her purse. At a certain point one of them needed to get a giant Macy's bag to hold the overflow, which they placed at her feet, once all the items were returned. The one with the cue cards touched her arm, and guided her off the stage, holding the extra bag for her. "I'm really sorry about this. I..." But the woman heard no more. She was hooking the Macy's bag over the slack shell of her purse, which was slung over her customary shoulder. Then she was out of the store, back into the crisper air of the mall, able to breath again.
It was the last time she ever volunteered for a demonstration in public. The least little mercy she had to be thankful for was that at least she'd been wearing her pistol in her ankle holster, and hadn't left it, as she usually did on trips to to the mall, in her handbag.
disclaimer:
Who knows which way the north wind doth blow?
Not the guy next door, that's for sure. He's hung his stinky socks out again.
Handbag, purse. Used interchangeably. Hallmark of a male writer writing about a woman? Chauvinist pig or simpleton? Who knows? I don't, anyway.
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