My trip to the mall

I went to the mall today to buy a couple of humidifiers. I passed through wearing a nice leather jacket and carrying a gray uschanka hat. (I replaced my not-really-all-that-Russian-style hat with a new fur hat that almost looks like it came from Russia.) Oh, and I was probably wearing my habitual smile. What I did not have was a woman on my arm, and that apparently made all the difference.

As I walked along, a pretty young woman caught my eye. “May I ask you a question?,” she asked.

“Sure,” I answered.

“Do you know about the Dead Sea?”

This led to a sales pitch for Dead Sea cosmetics. She wanted to show me a nail buffing tool she thought my wife would like to have. Thinking it sounded like a reasonable stocking stuffer, I let her demonstrate on my thumb. She cupped my hand in hers and began to buff my thumbnail. As she continued, I allowed my hand to relax and found my fingers resting in her palm. She looked into my eyes and told me that I was really going to like this. Well yes, so far I was liking it just fine. She drew me toward the light (and the cash register.) I noticed that she was showing a little cleavage. She buffed some more. Finally, she let me see my thumbnail, which was very shiny.

It turns out that I couldn’t buy just the buffer. She wanted me to buy a rather small box of stuff, including some hand cream and cuticle exfoliant. She claimed that it normally cost $89 but today I could have it for just $69. I thanked her and walked on toward the appliance store.

Presently another cute young woman stepped out and inquired whether she could ask me a question. I didn’t think much about it when I answered in the affirmative, but then she asked me if I knew about the Dead Sea. She even petted my fur hat in much the same way the first sales girl had done. I told her that I’d already had the same sales pitch from her colleague at a different kiosk and I showed her my shiny thumbnail. “Oh,” she said, “then I’d like to try to sell you something else. Put your hat and gloves down here and I’ll show you.”

Next thing I knew, I was standing with my hands over a basin with a very cute girl scooping oiled salt onto my hands. “Rub it in,” she instructed. “Like you’re washing your hands.” When I finally wiped the stuff back off of my hands they were indeed very clean looking. “See?,” she said, ”you scrubbed off all of your dead skin.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I scrubbed off what was left of my tan.”

She asked me if my wife would like that stuff.

“Yes,” I replied, “she definitely would.”

“Well then,” she challenged, “how much do you think this costs?”

“$69,” I guessed, “on sale today only for $49.”

“Oh no,” she replied. It’s normally $79 but I can sell it to you today only for $59.”

I can’t describe the amount of flirtation that went on during this whole process, but she was definitely teasing me. As we discussed the facts that I didn’t want to pay all that money for a jar of salt, that we already had a similar product in our house, and that she could cut me an even-more-special deal, she drew me by the hand step-by-step toward her cash register. Each step towards the cash register came as she was telling me really special prices that she didn’t want anybody else to hear.

Being a normal guy, I was severely disadvantaged. I was about 50% aware of the fact that I was being led around by a cute girl with warm hands and an earnest manner, and only had about 50% of my normal mental capacity left to decide whether or not to buy her product at an ever-more-stupendous price.

Finally, I told her that she should really get a job selling timeshares in Cancun but that I wasn’t going to buy her product. Her super-duper price was based on the fact that I could have unlimited refills all year long and I told her that I’d be in Belarus for about half the year and I was pretty sure they didn’t have any outlets in Minsk. She thought somehow that Germany would be close enough, but even with my diminished mental capacity I managed to say no.