"A. R. Morlan - Dear DB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morlan A R)

Her: (look of utter "slap-me-silly" shock on her face) "Uhhh "
Me: (getting _mucho_ disturbed) "Okay, I'll leave one here and take
them in one at a time, if that's the prob "
Her: "I'm sorry, sir, but you don't understand, this isn't _that_ kind
of store "




Page 4
 Me: (completely disturbed now) "_Sir?_ Are you _blind,_ ma'am? All I
want to do is try on these dresses "
Her: "I I I'm afraid that you can't do that, at least not here "
Me: (something _beyond_ disturbed) "Miss, is there a _problem?_ Is
there a limit on the number of dresses I can take in there? Are you afraid
I'll shoplift these? You are welcome to come in the dressing room _with_ me if
that's what's got you worried "
Her: (barely stifled scream, by now we have an _audience_)
"Please-leave-this-store-immediately! Be-_fore_ I have to call the manager"
All of the above with a plastered-on _smile,_ for cryin' out loud. Thinking
that I would have caused less of a disturbance if I'd put my head under her
skirt like Robin Williams did to Maria Conchita Alonso in that damned _film,_
I threw the dresses on the floor by now people were openly staring, then
shoved their noses in Fabric Care tags when I stomped past and started doing a
number on my Bloomies Charge card with my nail clippers while riding the
escalators to the ground floor. I hope all the little pieces jammed up the
mechanism, too.
During my ride home my unmolested, unpinched ride home I wondered if
New York was going through a gender-blindness epidemic of some sort.
****
Not long after the Bloomies fiasco, my contributor's copies arrived, along
with a little note from the _BQ_ editor, which was to let me know that in this
year's _BQ_ Reader's Poll I'd placed as the fifth most requested author, up
six places from last year, et cetera, et cetera. There was more, but at the
time I wasn't in the mood to read on. I mean, I figured he didn't _know_ what
was happening to me. And I wasn't about to call him up and announce, "Hey, by
the way, the _funniest_ thing happened at Bloomies last week, even better than
that scene in "Moscow on the Hudson" where Robin Williams puts his head under
the sales clerk's skirt. Only they wouldn't even let me try _on_ a skirt, let
alone "
He probably would have attributed it to my fertile mind, my writer's
flair for the dramatic ... but even Larry Olivier couldn't top _this_
situation's dramatics. And no one could be this imaginative.
The dogs, my _boys,_ my trusty Wolfie and Duke, began looking at me
strangely. And they sniffed me more, the wary type of snuffle with no wagging
tail they used to reserve for good ole Dead Fred the helpful back home
neighbor (bless his nosey soul!) and now for Mr. H. when he comes down for the
rent. It couldn't _be,_ not _really_ but the dogs were acting as if _I_
smelled like an old man.
By the next day, I realized that something was _bad_ wrong. When I