This came about because I misunderstood someone. This is, like, totally off my normal scale of, well, normalcy. If you want my usual helping of angst and h/c, it ain't here. This is what happens when the brain goes off in completely unexpected directions. No excuses. It just . . . is. I promise to return regular readers to my normal angst and h/c at a later date. And this intro is now almost as long as the story itself. (And yes, when I worked in a bookstore, this happened often.)
Pink
"It's pink," she muttered.
Sam, digging through a massive array of battered, decaying pressboard tables full of equally battered, silverfish-nibbled, decaying books in the used bookstore (said store being decidedly used in all respects, including the bathroom), did not at first pay attention.
"It's pink," she repeated, with excessive vehemence.
Dean, he knew, would have ignored her. Well, Dean wouldn't have been caught dead anywhere near the tables. Hell, Dean wouldn't have been caught anywhere near the entire store, which is why he wasn't present, and why Sam was, on his own, carefully working his way through the battered, decaying pressboard tables full of equally battered, silverfish-nibbled, decaying books in the used bookstore, said store being decidedly used in all respects, including the bathroom. Which Sam had visited, to his dismay. (But from which he had wisely and promptly retreated, not wishing to risk Little Sam to potential encroachments of—no, not going there.)
"It's fucking PINK!" she enunciated; and the f-word, along with the volume, caught Sam's attention far more than her mutterings had.
The woman must have been verging on one hundred years of age. Possibly even two hundred. He didn't expect that language from a woman of her . . . maturity.
"Pink?" he echoed interrogatively, and instantly wished he was more like Dean, who would not only have ignored the woman, but would have transported his entire body out of the room rather than succumbing to the impulse to address her.
But Sam was . . . Sam. He addressed.
"I saw it on Oprah!" she cried, fixing him with a frenzied glare. "I don't remember the author. I don't remember the title. I don't remember what it was about. But it was PINK!"
"The book?"
"Was fucking PINK!" she cried.
He blinked at her. "Um."
Her hair was blue, her skin gray. Probably cat hair decorated her clothing. And then Sam mentally chastised himself for falling victim to stereotyping. Possibly the woman was a neat-freak without any animals at all, who washed and ironed everything, including bedsheets, and wore stainless, perfect clothing.
"My eyes aren't so good," she gusted. "Can you see pink?"
"Um," Sam repeated, wondering how a woman who couldn't see pink could manage to see words.
She glared at him. And he located, drew forth from the haphazard stacks a book that was, indeed, clothed in pink.
"Hallelujah!" she cried, and went off clutching the book about which he knew nothing. Not author. Not title. Not subject.
But it was fucking pink.
~ end ~