No Purchase of Wine

No Purchase of Wine

        By Douglas Guzzletop (alias, Dougy One Time)

              klipsch

Snyder went to the counter with his bottle of red wine and paid for it. He walked through the mall and as he did so he unscrewed the top. Behind a big tree under a skylight he took a drink. He tried to hide the tilting bottle in a corner the elevator made but he thought a gentleman in a trench coat on a bench nearby had noticed him. He took one more good pull at the bottle and put it in it paper bag and into his pocket. Christmas carols played on the intercom. Along the ceiling curtains of white blinking lights shone. Rudolph stood at the head of a line of miniature reindeer. Santa nodded mechanically in a store window and sat holding children who waited in a short line-up across the corridor in front of the Safeway grocery. Salvation Army matrons stood near the store door and it was better to have some change handy to put in the plastic globe than to have to apologize to them as you tried to pass by.

       Rhonda came out of nowhere. She did not see him. He saw her walk up to the same tree that he had hidden behind and take a paper bag out of her purse. Checking around her, she tilted it back and took a swig. She noticed the gentleman on the bench watching and took another quick, big drink before placing the bottle back in her bag. She came out from behind the tree and walked into The Bay. Snyder followed her to see what she was up to. She went from one department to another looking at things, purchasing now and again an item. At Men’s Fashionable Clothing she bought a fedora Snyder’s size. At Burma’s Charm she bought a small kit of perfume and eyeliner (likely for Charnese, Snyder thought). At Handy Home Repairs she eventually purchased a brand name cordless drill and a rooter for, Snyder surmised, Snyder himself and his workshop.

       She ended up at Lingerie and Fancy Things. She was in a booth trying on some items that he saw her pick up. It was a curtained booth. He could see her legs underneath. He watched her dress come off around her ankles and a pair of underpants reached down for to be taken over a foot before he opened the curtain and looked in. Rhonda shrieked. A male attendant came running up. The attendant and Snyder both gazed into the change room where Rhonda stood naked.

       “It’s okay,” Snyder said to the young man beside him, who looked as if he should try to help or comfort her. “It’s just my wife.” The attendant asked Rhonda if that was true. She fumbled with her dress, trying to put it on without raising her arms. The neck of her bottle showed from her purse on the floor at her feet. She nodded, got the dress on and flounced out of The Bay.