NANOWRIMO 08 #3
Title: OVER THE RAINBOW
Episode Title: PUPPY CRUSH
Episode Word count: 2415/ ? Total Word Count: 7711
Dot and Bruce were serving in the Cheesy Pie cheese/cake shop, it was a busy day with a steady stream of customers. They were becoming quite tired but the flow of customers wasn't slowing, Bruce in particular, was getting anxious. He preferred it when the shop was quiet, and he and Dot could just hang back and talk, of course he was happy to serve as well, but when the shop was always full it hampered it his own little side business. Bruce was a cheese monger, in that he sold cheeses from the shop, but he also kept his own secret stash of potent stuff out the back, and a regular customer, or one sent by someone in the know, could get their hands (and mouths) on some for a price. To people uninterested in cheese, it might be surprising to hear that illegal cheese mongering is a big, and dangerous, underground business. Some cheeses are classed as illegal in Australia under old health and safety legislations, in this category you find the 'raw milk' cheeses, and some varieties of fetta. Most professionals agree that these cheeses ought to be re-classified as legal, or at the least separate locally made and imported cheeses, to legalise the first if not the second. However, there remains a large variety of potent cheeses that even those in the business prefer to keep their distance from - certain super-vintages, ultra-blues, syrupy-softs, and sharp biting cheeses that are prone to cause wide spread hysteria from any aroma getting into a wafting breeze, and should ingestion actually take place, many cause short term or even long term comas, halucination, the occassional spontaneous explosion, and most commonly, the state colloquially known as a 'cheese funk'. Since such cheeses often set off hazardous material alarms, smoke alarms, and certainly cause panic among sniffer dogs, they have proven a difficult substance to smuggle through customs, and therefore have become a lucrative business for those willing to take the efforts and risks involved in illegal cheese mongering. Bruce thought himself one of the finest.
When the shop was quiet enough, Bruce was able to take the time to recognise potential customers, sound them out to make certain they aren't undercover cheese police, and then make a deal in the relative privacy of an empty shop. But when it was busy, he had no time to look for the signs, and even if he did, the risk was far too great both for him and the buyer. No, he prefered a quiet shop. Dot on the other hand, usually didn't care either way, work was work, and serving customers usually out trumped being set up with the boss's son for a way to spend the afternoon. On this particular busy day, it was just beginning to slow down for a while, Dot ran into the kitchen to refill the milk for the coffee machine, and take a three second breather. Slightly refreshed, she went back into the shop, put the milk down and surveyed the customers that were milling in again. Right in the front, already speaking to Bruce was a customer Dot had never seen before.
Dot just about fell over her own feet. She could have sworn her heart actually stopped beating. Dot was frozen to the spot, her eyes swollen to twice their normal size, and her brain had clearly decided to jump ship. Bruce was serving a woman that to Dot at that precise moment was the most beautiful woman in the world, or at least the most beautiful woman in a cheese slash cake shop. She was tall. She was slim. She was probably about forty-three. She had the slight fullness of lower abdomen that women generally get when they reach that age, or is it a sign of having had children, Dot found the time to wonder vaguely. She had a clear, firm face, that dimpled with her smile, and eyes that sparkled all the time (or so Dot immediately assumed) and to top it off the most unusual mop of the most gloriously red, curly hair. The stupid fleuro lights in the shop were causing a kind of halo affect around her, but Dot didn't know where the chorus of angels was coming from. Dot began to feel faint, and decided to pump her heart again.
"I'd love something a bit special. Can you recommend something really good? Something strong?" She was asking Bruce.
Bruce regarded the woman for a moment, and quickly checked the remaining customers in the shop, in the end deeming them relatively safe. He answered calmly, "We have quite a range here, is there a particular type of cheese that you were after?" Then lowering his voice he added, "Something a little more, extreme, perhaps?"
The woman made a (delightful to Dot's mind) nonplussed expression. "I'm not sure... I'd really appreciate any help you could give me."
"You would like me to help you perchase a 'special' cheese?" The woman agreed, and Bruce nodded. Even more quietly he added, "Are you a friend of fromage?"
"Pardon?" The woman asked, leaning closer to hear better.
"Are you a pal of parmesan? a mate of m??? A 'cheese lover'."
"Ah, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I'd just like to buy some cheese to put on a platter for a dinner party."
Bruce nodded, clearly he had got his wires crossed, this woman wasn't after his personal stock, he straightened up and immediately resumed serving her in a normal manner, picking out some lovely strong cheeses that would make up a nice platter for the average cheese eater. While he worked at gathering and packaging them, the woman turned to Dot and smiled. For a long moment, their eyes were locked, Dot stopped breathing again, and felt blood rush into her cheeks. She was too bewildered to do anything.
"Hi, how are you?" The woman asked her. Dot's brain refused to function, instead of answering a goofy smile spread across her face.
"Hello?! Am I going to get some service?" Dot glanced in the direction of the loud voice, to see another customer standing by her counter. She turned back to the red-head and managed a strangled, "Good, thanks." before skipping over to the impatient man that it turned out, wanted a cheesecake. She saw him off politely and managed to get one last look at the gorgeous woman as she left the shop behind the angry man, she turned in the doorway to wave goodbye and called out "thanks, see you later." Dot let out the tiniest of giggles. Then she turned back to work, but her mind remained filled with images of the red headed woman.
By the end of the next week, the woman had returned three times, and Dot had become well and truly besotted. On the occasion that Dot saw, or even thought she saw the woman, she would stumble over her feet, fumble whatever she was attempting with her hands, and mumble whatever she was attempting to say. By this stage, Bruce had certainly picked up on it. He hadn't yet decided whether it was worrying, he briefly considered that he would find it less worrisome if he himself was also attracted to the woman, or if she had reminded him less of his grade three teacher. In any case, he decided to simply wait for it to blow over.
Close to closing time that Friday, Bruce was busy trying to manouver a particularly unstable cheese from the back room and into a customer's specially designed, triple locked, air tight container. Dot was whistfully windexing the glass on the cake cabinet when the phone rang, and sinse Bruce clearly couldn't stop half way through such a risky procedure, Dot put down the paper towel, and answered the phone.
"Good afternoon, Cheesy Pie cheese cake shop, how can I help you?"
"Hi, is it too late to order some cakes for Monday? The name's Mindy..." Dot took down the order, hung up, and wondered why she felt slightly hot under the colar.
Monday proved to be a far quieter day, around mid morning whilst the shop was completely empty and Dot and Bruce were amusing each other by miming ways to die, the bell jangled and a familiar red head (with a rather familiar body attached) came through the door. Dot froze mid strangulation, watched the woman aproaching, and in her ensuing panic decided to run. She turned on the spot and... fell flat on her face. But she recovered quickly, and sprang back up to smile at the customer with a 'how can I help you?' expression successfully covering her inner 'how can I make you love me?!" expression.
"Are you okay?"
"What? Yes. What? What can I do to you? Erh, do you, for do, erh what can I how can I help you?" Dot answered smoothly, well, quickly.
"You just fell over, are you alright?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah. Fine. Just tripped over my shoelaces." She shrugged it off, shrugging and shaking her head a little.
The woman, being quite tall, easily looked over the counter, and smiled quizzicaly. "Your shoes don't have laces?"
"Ah, no. No they don't. It was a loose one. On the ground." The woman looked amused but sceptical and was about to look over the counter again. "I kicked it under the counter when I tripped on it, didn't I. Wouldn't bother looking for it, I'll get it later. How can I help you?"
"I'm just picking up my order, a couple of cakes...."
"Oh, yes, erh, what name is that under?"
"...Mindy." And she smiled.
Mindy. Mindy!! "Oh, yes, yeah, I was the one who took your order." Dot said goofily, and tried not to giggle. "I'll just get them." She turned and started off in a hurry. Only to land flat on her face again. "I'm fine!!" She called out loudly as she sprang back up and continued to the back fridge where orders were kept. She walked back more slowly to avoid dropping the cakes, then handed them to Mindy.
"And what's your name?" Mindy asked as she handed over a fifty. Dot closed her eyes for a second while she tried to remember.
"Dot."
"Dorothy?"
"Ah, no. I'm named after Dot and the ah, kangeroo, koala, etcetera. Just, 'Dot'."
Mindy exhaled a laugh through her nose. "Well, Just Dot, it was nice to meet you." Mindy held a hand out in her direction in a vague kind of wave, point, offer of a hand-shake, gesture, and then she smiled and almost winked, and left.
Her composure gave out, and Dot collapsed onto the counter. She felt like she'd just melted into a puddle of warm gooey liquid. She let out a huge sigh.
Bruce tutted, and shook his head. "You're a dork, you know that?"
Dot held her head up, "Mork?" she let her head melt back into the pile of free goo.
"She's got to be forty." Bruce said. Dot sighed. "I'm pretty sure she's married." Dot sighed a little more dejectedly. "In fact, she's been in here with her kids before." Dot sighed, now more in annoyance with Bruce.
"I don't care! I'm a sucker for a mother. They do things for me."
"Yeah, like train you to go potty, wash your clothes, cook your meals..."
"To me. I meant." Dot said angrily, at least, as angrily as Dot could get. "Anyway, I don't mean all that stuff, I was excluding my own mother, you're sick, and besides, my mother doesn't do any of that - I'm a fully independant grown woman, thank you." Dot stood up and regarded Bruce for a moment. "You just don't understand because you've got a warped view of women. Magazines lie, you know."
"I have? You're the one who's reduced to a blithering mess every time she's in the room." Bruce said. "She's just a woman, you know. And just what is it that you see in her?"
Dot sighed, and nearly melted again. "She has these eyes, and her smile, and, and that hair!" She sighed again. "And, you know, it's just her..overall...gis."
"Gis?"
"It's a birdwatching term. What?!"
Bruce held his hands in surrender. "So it's purely physical? I mean, you don't know her? It's just her looks?"
Dot scoffed. "The gis is a little more than just the way a bird looks. I mean, it's a little more complicated than that."
"And yet, you just compared this Mindy with a bird."
"Huh, well, only literally. Anyway, she kind of is like a beautiful rare bird. I mean, she's always been there, but I've never managed to spot her before. You know? She might have been that tantalising, prize bird up the top of the list, and I might have gone my whole life without seeing her, but now, I can tick her off. And of course you'd like to catch her and cage her, but you know you can't do that, but I've been lucky enough to find out her territory and I can come back and find her again, and maybe take a picture to keep and look at on wet lonely nights."
"You see, that's what I mean. You don't see her as a person.You treat women like they were some other species."
"No I don't!" Dot scoffed, then added to herself, "maybe I should get a bird whistle?"
"You do, I've seen it in the past, you get all obsessed but totally incapable of even the most rudimentary connection. Women are just people, like you or me." Bruce waited for Dot to agree, but she just shrugged. "You have to stop viewing them like aliens, and see them as equals, you know, and talk to them, find out what she's interested in, if you have anything in common. It's disrespectful to do any less."
"Yeah, alright. Gees." Dot shook her head with a smile. "I will then, I'm going to speak to her, we'll talk, I'm going to form a perfectly natural, normal relationship between equals. You'll see."