Short Story / Room Six (Analysis)
This mall was vast, clean, shiny, classier than her mall. Worth the drive. Amy had to come, she drove straight here after leaving The Company at her mall. She’d kept up a punishing pace, skipping lunch. Loaded down with bags she moved through the oranging pools of evening light pouring down from the skylights above toward the wide entryway of an anchor department store. She’d done every store; this was the last one. Ahead, hundreds of stacked boxes formed a phalanx atop the first glass case.
A woman in a black lab coat moved into the aisle, expensive make-up and impeccable hair. She held a slender bottle of perfume; the liquid inside the crystalline glass tinted the same subtle green as the boxes.
“Would you like to try some Midnight Fleur?” she asked. Amy thought the woman had to be near forty but she looked awesome.
“Okay.” The woman sprayed a fine mist into the air in front of her and she closed her eyes and stepped into it inhaling. It was only slightly floral with a hint of musk and an overtone of fresh, wet grass. It did smell like night.
“Isn’t it exquisite?”
“Yes.”
“You should really smell it on your skin.”
Amy held out both wrists and the woman released more of the cool mist across them. She lifted one arm to her nose. Her body’s warmth and smell of her skin, tied the perfume’s scent to the earth without letting go of the night. She opened her eyes the saleswoman regarded her with a smile.
“My husband knows he’s in trouble if he doesn’t buy some for me every Christmas,” she said. Amy looked at the wall of pale boxes. The woman moved behind the counter and selected a medium sized one. “With this one you get the tote.” She indicated a supple leather bag the same shade as the box, boldly stitched in a thick red contrast thread.
“Oh, okay,” Amy said, delighted. She moved to the counter opposite the woman and watched her wrap a velvety ribbon of the contrast color around the box and tie it into a perfect bow. She dropped the whole thing into a translucent rice paper bag.
“Do you want it in the tote?”
“Please.”
“One hundred and eighty nine.”
Amy slid the card across the glass. The woman lifted it and turned to the register in one smooth motion. She hooked the tote under her arm as the printer began generating the receipt with a busy tat-a-tat.
“Enjoy,” the woman said while Amy signed.
“I will, thank you.” She looked deeper into the store, cheap jewelry jumbled on flanking countertops, shoes, purses. “Where are the separates?”
“Third floor. The escalators are directly back,” the woman maintained her pleasant smile through her waning enthusiasm. She started in throwing a thank you over her shoulder. There was no reply.
She stepped onto the saw-toothed join between the steps and adjusted her feet squarely on the dull metal platform. The woman was just tired. She was tired too. She should stop and have something to eat at the food court. She was beginning to shake, jittery with a latte and nothing else in her stomach. Her legs were tired from walking on the unforgiving floors, her arms ached from carrying the bags, her eyes were exhausted from looking but she couldn’t stop. She’d discovered, since getting the job at The Company, the exhaustion specific to malls; the cool, recirculated air, the feeble daylight constantly losing out to powerful fluorescent fixtures, the incessent quiet patter of foot traffic and other people’s conversations.
Pinpoint halogen lights glared down at truncated beds decorated with highly patterned spreads. She saw herself curled up on them her bags all around her. She found the blouses and picked out half a dozen draping them over one arm. She meandered aimlessly through the racks hangars pinging against her knee. She passed a pile of sweaters sloppily folded. Slackers, she thought smiling. She’d probably folded over a hundred sweaters just this morning. Who knows how many more she would have done if she hadn’t left. When she walked in, the first words out of Monica’s mouth were could she work a double. No “Good morning, Amy.” No “Thanks for closing last night.” She would still be there now folding and stacking if she hadn’t decided enough was enough.
She turned a slow 360 degrees in a brightly white intersection of walkways in search of a changing room, failing that she dropped her gaze and looked for someone working the floor. No one. Half the staff on dinner breaks probably. She trudged on through formal ware, found a set of rooms but the stall doors were locked, finally in petites she found four store clerks clustered around one island register like girl scouts around a campfire. They were all dressed in clothes commensurate with the merchandise, probably beyond their budgets even with the employee discount. It was the perk that attracted her to The Company, now she was broke buying “work” clothes. Closthes she used to love, but had begun to hate. An older woman packed onto a floral gabardine pants suit noticed her and stepped away from the group. The silk bow attached to her blouse sagged hopelessly.
“I’m looking for a changing room,” Amy said. Without a word the woman turned back to her companions, one of which reached under the register and produced a key chained to a large block of wood. The woman took it and with a nod as she passed Amy started across the walkway through the racks to an unmarked archway whose beige-on-beige wallpaper rendered it nearly invisible. Around the corner, she glimpsed the clerk, then herself, strobing across the angled three-part mirror, her bags buldging under the riot of blouses. The woman unlocked the third door. The clothes hung over the first two doors looked like they’d been there all day.
“Thanks,” she said. The woman nodded and disappeared from view. Amy pulled the door shut until it latched with a loud click. She dropped her bags, swept the pins off the tiny triangular shelf in the corner and sat down with a sigh. The weight of the hangars pulled the blouses down her forearm until they hung like a bright rope over her wrist. The mall would close soon. She would have to leave. The woman outside gathered the clothes from the other stalls. She was a little surprised that a classy department store like this locked their stalls.
Exhausted she closed her eyes. She could go to sleep perched on this little ledge but she wouldn’t let herself.
“Customer assistance in dressing room six, whose got it?” Melinda’s voice crackled over her headset this morning. As if there was someone besides her and Melinda on the clock at that hour. Apparently Melinda had heard the customer but was too busy to attend to the woman herself. Amy wadded the tee shirt she was folding at the 30 percent off stand and headed for the rooms.
“I’ve got her,” she said into her mouthpiece.
“Who?” Melinda said even though she fucking knew who. “Employee number?”
“Forty-three, Melinda,” Amy answered and went to dressing room six. The woman swung the dressing room door open as Amy arrived.
“Oh, you’re here,” the woman said. She stood in the doorway in her bra and a pair of the new low-rise crops, her hair askew. What looked like a year’s worth of clothes filled the room. Crumpled jeans formed a tottering pile in front of the mirror; sweaters cascaded onto the floor from the bench; tees and empty hangars were sprinkled across the floor.
“Jesus,” she thought. They’d only been open an hour.
“Can you get me those, you know, those adorable little cut off things?”
Amy smiled, “Sure. The short shorts or the mini skirt?” She tried not to think about what this woman was going to look like in the short shorts.
“Yes, no – I don’t know. Why don’t you bring me one of each, dear?”
“Sure thing.” She turned and started out.
“Don’t you need my size?”
She looked like a size twelve but Amy said, “Ten?”
“Oh, don’t be a bitch!” the woman laughed as if they were best friends. “Eight!”
She pulled a pair of shorts. There were no more eights in the skirt on the rack. Maybe in the storeroom but fuck that.
“Here you go,” she said sweetly as she swung the garments over the top of the stall door. “Just let me know if you --” An orange double knit sailed over the door landing on her head.
“Could you bring me that in medium, dear?”
Amy walked toward the display with it balled in her fist.
“I hope that’s a piece of trash you’re carrying like that.” Melinda’s voice boomed over her headphones.
“Yeah, it is,” Amy shot back. She glared over at Melinda who lounged behind the register. There was no one in the store, just the three of them. Mercifully, the table of double knits was out of Melinda’s view. Amy shook out the shirt and took her time refolding it before pulling the medium.
When she returned she could hear the woman struggling with the shorts grunting and swearing softly. Amy flipped the sweater over the door then turned and sat on the little stool by the sorting rack. Her feet were already starting to hurt. She put them up on the folding table. Melinda wouldn’t leave the register even with no one in the store. She closed her eyes but a shattering sound brought her to her feet.
She looked at her startled face in the mirror. She must have dozed off. The weight of the hangers had pulled the blouses off her wrist, the hooks clanging on the polished linoleum floor among her bags. She stood, pushed the bags to the wall with her foot, shook out the blouses and hung them one after the other on the hook beside the mirror. She pulled her tee shirt off and swung the first one over her shoulders, slipping her arms into the sleeves in one smooth motion; A weighty rayon brocade pattern in bone white. Classy. It looked expensive. She looked at the tag, it was. She buttoned the first couple buttons and tugged at the collar. Expensive and casual, it would look awesome with her new jeans, not from The Company. She listened for the woman who’d let her into the changing room. Silence. No music piped into these dressing rooms, apparently no other shoppers either. She thought about going out to have a look at the shirt in the three-way but didn’t want to leave. She turned and looked over her shoulder at the back before pulling it off and settling it back onto the hanger, placing it on an empty hook, the “yes” hook.
She pulled the next shirt off its hanger, an impossibly soft denim. The pale blue perfectly picked up the blue detail in the paisleys in the new skirt she wore. She swiveled her hips watching the bottom of the skirt swing out and around her legs. Out on the floor a walkie-talkie squawked. She froze, eyes on the door. The police? More likely Mall security. She listened trying to make out the incoming message but whoever was carrying it was already moving away. She looked back to the mirror her face noticeably paler. There was something wrong with the shoulders, too boxy rendering her arms shapeless. They stuck out of the sleeves like PVC tubes. Trembling just a little, she unbuttoned the shirt, hung it and put it on the “no” peg. A wave of nausea rose to her throat and she slid down against the wall too look under the stall door. Nothing.
The woman barged out of dressing room six. She was down to her underwear, brandishing the shorts in her hand like a battle flag.
“These don’t fit!” she shouted. Amy jumped up banging her arm on the partial wall to her right. Disoriented, she immediately began parroting one of The Company’s suggested responses.
“Each style is cut a little differently. Would you like me to get you another size?”
“No! Eights always fit me.” The woman whined as if she was trying to win an argument.
“I don’t know, ma’am. Maybe you’ve put on a little weight.” Amy heard the words come out of her mouth with only mild disbelief. The woman’s face froze, lips compressing to a tight, impossibly thin, line. For a split second Amy imagined her mouth disappearing entirely.
“What did you just say?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I just --”
“What did you say?” A vein appeared right down the middle of the woman’s forehead. Amy was starting to feel relieved. Today was the day she would get fired. Fuck the money, it wasn’t worth it.
“I said, maybe you’ve put on some weight,” she repeated in measured tones.
“Where is your manager, young lady?”
Amy laughed, one short burst. The bitch could go find Melinda herself. The woman took a step toward her. Under her marshmallow stomach and cellulite dappled thighs she was sturdy and athletic, like someone who could afford a personal trainer but who was also daily losing her battle against middle age and that third glass of chardonnay. Amy stepped back coming up against the butt end of the partial wall.
“I asked you a question. Go get me your manager this instant.”
“Go get her yourself,” she said. She stepped sideways trying to sidle past her. She could get to her locker, get her stuff and be half way to her car before this harpy even found her jeans and got her sorry ass out to the floor to find Melinda. No way she’d get her last paycheck now.
The woman grabbed her arm, manicured fingernails dug in hard. Startled, she lunged into the woman trying to shove her out of the way. Once out of the dressing rooms Melinda would probably see her ducking into the staff room but that couldn’t be helped. The woman held on, grappling with her, raising her other hand to slap Amy. With her free arm, Amy grabbed her wrist and shoved.
The woman let go, both hands flying up in an attempt to save her balance as she stepped back into the morass of discarded clothes. Amy watched her falling, the woman’s face receding slowly like a tree being felled. She seemed to gather speed only at the very end, her head cracking against the hard linoleum edge of the bench, the only part not padded with clothing. The woman’s face turned, looking towards the floor as she slumped the rest of the way into the clothes piled under her.
Amy could not move. The woman was breathing but only shallowly. Deep red blood began to spread over the ice blue tee crumpled under her hair. It was silent except for the piped music. The song she used to love before she started working here and hearing it a gazillion times every shift.
“Amy?” She jumped and spun around when Melinda’s voice came over her headset. “You still with number six?”
“Yeah,” she managed. This woman is going to sue she thought. “Why? Do you need me?”
“No, no. You go ahead and take care of her.”
“Okay.” She could just tell: this woman, with her money and her expensive gym membership, was going to take her to court for all the money she would make for the next ten years. All because she had the balls to say she wasn’t a size eight. The woman grabbed her first. It would be her word against this woman’s. Hell, she was probably a lawyer. “Are you getting busy out there?”
“No. A couple customers. I can send them in to you.”
“Okay.” She couldn’t see the woman breathing any more. She got down and knelt over her face. She couldn’t tell if her lips were turning blue or if the overhead lighting created her pallor. She could hear the shoppers now, two of them at least. Their voices rising in giddy conversation.
“Oh, look at this!”
“That is so cute!”
She scuttled into the dressing room and latched the door behind her.
After a modulated tone, intended to sound like some kind of Zen chime, one of the department store clerks got on the intercom to say that the mall would be closing in one hour. The announcement ended with the plastic clatter of a phone receiver being dropped into its cradle.
One hour. She looked up at the blouses: One yes, one no and at least five more to try on. She stood up and watched tears well up in the mirror. She turned away, tilting her head back, not allowing them to spill over. She tried to concentrate on the blouse in front of her its pattern now rendered abstract. She yanked it off the hanger and threw it over her shoulders getting the buttons right before resolutely turning back to the mirror. Nice. Fine. It went on the “yes” peg. Suddenly, she wondered where, exactly, she was going to go in these clothes. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she deserved them. She deserved something nice; she tried on the next shirt. Buttons too small, plain and made the whole thing look cheap. She’d earned it, unlike the woman this morning. The woman had no taste. Well, to be fair you couldn’t tell if she had any or not as she had one of everything in there with her in that dressing room.
Silently she, gently piled clothes over the women until she had completely disappeared. It wouldn’t look like an accident but it would buy her some time. She stood and found herself facing the woman’s purse, hung on an empty peg, big and ugly as a saddlebag. She reached in trying not to touch the sides for some reason, like that game Operation. Still chattering away, the two shoppers came into the dressing area, found an empty stall and went in. Amy lifted out the woman’s fat wallet by its golden clasp. She opened it, three or four credit cards squeezed into every pocket straining and tearing the worn leather, dozens in all. She picked three and put them in her back pocket before dropping the wallet back into her purse. The shoppers were still babbling on in their stall so she turned, unlatched the door and moved out to the folding area.
“Can I get you ladies anything?” she asked in her best customer service voice.
“No. We’re good,” one of them answered. Amy left the dressing room and crossed the floor veering away from Melinda and the register.
“There you are she said,” still using the headset even though they weren’t ten feet from each other. Amy grabbed something off one of the tables, anything would do. She looked down at what was in her hand, another one of the fugly orange sweaters. “Is that woman still in there?”
“Yeah -- she’s on the phone.”
“Oh.”
Heart racing, Amy stopped and forced herself to look at Melinda directly. “Do you need anything?”
“No. Just bored.”
“Yeah,” Amy agreed. She held up the sweater and headed back to the dressing rooms. The two shoppers were just leaving, perfect. Girls, high school age; she wondered if they were skipping class. She threw the sweater on the folding table and looked under room six’s door. Everything was unchanged. She peered out at the floor. Melinda was busy with the girls and their purchases. Amy skirted the sale wall to the break room. She got everything out of her locker, hung her headset and slipped out the back door to the utility corridor, which led to one of the secondary mall entrances. Then she was out in the brilliant sunshine. Her car was on the other side of the mall by the main doors. She started the long hike around the massive, nondescript squinting in the sunlight. When she came around to the front doors she tacked out into the parking lot weaving between the cars to double back to her own. No one seemed to be looking for her.
She stood and gathered up her bags. She couldn’t stay any longer. She left all the blouses on their pegs in the dressing room and walked out. She walked toward housewares and the exit, leaving the clerks behind her, gathered at their register exactly as they had been when she went into the dressing room. She stopped in front of a display of brushed nickel travel mugs. She picked one up and took it to the nearest register pulled one of the woman’s cards out of her back pocket and slid it through the machine.
“Would you like it in a bag?” the clerk asked.
“I’ll just put it in one of these,” Amy said. They stood facing each other in silence, the mug between them, waiting for the tape to come up. It was taking a long time. Amy concentrated on the display of pots and pans directly behind the clerk. She wouldn’t go home. No one had asked her for an I.D. for any of her purchases, she was going to just say she’d forgotten it, lost it, it’d gotten stolen… Finally the register produced the receipt. Shakily she signed the woman’s name and took the mug. She pocketed the card and left.
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This 490 word review has not been unlocked.
“The Company” Just curious, is this supposed to be capitalized because it’s the actual name of a business or is it just a company?
“oranging pools” The language is somewhat awkward and clumsy.
“A woman in a black lab coat moved into the aisle, expensive make-up and impeccable hair” Should be “with expensive make-up and impeccable hair”
What works in this piece is the detail. This almost reminds me of Mary Gaitskill. Everything is described down to a minute detail, and his helps me picture what exactly is going on and the setting. While at times I got confused with some of the actions, overall I like that you show, not tell. Too often fiction writers gloss over specific descriptions.
However, I have to say this piece ultimtaely feels incomplete. Towards the middle I really got into the story, especially when she told the old lady perhaps she’d grown out of being a sie eight (that almost caused to me to jump out my chair!). But what is Amy’s backstory, her psychology? Why does she attack the old woman and steal her wallet (I presume she’s dead or severly incapcitated?)? I get an apathetic, discontented sense from the tone of the work. This really needs to be expanded. While it definetly peaked my interest, I was left wanting a bit more.
Your diction is particularly stunning, as it carried a simple yet verbose tone. Personally, I have to say this is one of the better pieces I’ve read n here in a while (and believe me, I’d read some bad stuff). Good work.
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