an unusual, usual girl, shopping at the Goodwill at closing time

an unusual, usual girl, shopping at he Goodwill at closing time

fiction
edward w pritchard

She walked right in front of me. If I was younger I would have said something. A long silk type skirt, feminine and ladylike but tight from the back. Pretty but unusual, not like the usual odd shopper at the Goodwill but like a character from Sherwood Anderson's Wineburg, Ohio; bustling about at shopping despite the loneliness and isolation evidenced by shopping at the Goodwill midweek a few minutes from closing time.

I never did hear her voice because I didn't want to spoil things if it was wrong. She went around looking at the dishes, bric a brac, and then the hats and women's accessories. She was dressed well, it looked expensive to me but one has to be skeptical if someone is seen shopping at the goodwill.

Her beauty was like an artist's model but small, too short maybe, dark and intense; like a lemur not in a zoo but free in Madagascar. Intense dark intelligent eyes. If an artist would paint her he would be surprised maybe, her breasts might be different not like any of the other two hundred models who had posed in the past for the painter.

She put the few items she had bought in the basket of the cart, where a child should have been sitting, and then she hurried across the store to look again one last time.

After I paid for my book she looked at me intensely through the thick glass of the double exit doors while I stared at her. I didn't want to look at what she had bought in case it was wrong. Sometimes when I am shopping at the Goodwill just before closing time the lonliness and isolation make me feel like one of the usual odd customers rather than myself.
end