Be Ind Rewind

Back in the day, there was nothing like a video store job, especially for a film student. It's hard to remember now, what with streaming letting you watch most anything you'd want to, but in the '90s, you really had to look for what you wanted, for the special movies that weren't at just any neighborhood. That's what Video Lab was intended to be: a place where people looked. In practice, we fell short of that ideal.

Mia Soto was its high priestess, the kind of person who bought into the original mission of this as the highbrow video store. She didn't own the place, but she had worked there since she was in high school, and now she was somewhere in her mid-late-20s with the jaded cinematic tastes of a critic four decades older. If you could see a movie at the local AMC megaplex, Mia hated it. She used to drive three hours on her days off to get to the closest art house just so she could sing the praises of a movie no one ever heard of. She was a hipster before we knew what those were.

I could watch regulars visibly relax when they saw I was the one who would process their transaction. Sure, I could be pretentious, but I didn't see a problem with renting

Jaws

, or

Aliens

, or hell, even

ConAir

. If you can't find some joy in "Put the bunneh down" I don't know what to tell you. Trash culture is still culture, after all.

I had worked at Video Lab every summer since 10th grade, and this one, after my junior year in college, was no exception. Consequently, I knew Mia for years, and she liked me a bit better each summer I came back. She still thought I was uncultured, but she liked the way I didn't fish for her approval. since I didn't really care what she thought, Besides, five years of summers working together was bound to soften her a little.

On the day everything began, I was reshelving the display boxes on the floor while she covered the register. She was, at that moment, mid-lecture to a sixteen-year-old kid about why he didn't actually want to see

The Rock

and actually would be much happier with

The Killer

. She was right, but I wasn't in the practice of second-guessing a customer's selections.

Mia, however loved to, taking pride in every time she forced a customer back to the shelves to swap out their choices. The position of the register only added to her authority. The counter was built on a rise, so it was chest-height for customers. Sitting on the stool we had up there, you looked out over Video Lab like a judge. It had gone to her head.

Mia's judgmental screeds intimidated me when I first got here. Now they were my primary form of entertainment. As soon as she started, I was watching her out of the corner of my eye. Mia being hot didn't hurt.

She was tall and slender, with long legs, a narrow waist, and modest curves. She wore her glossy black hair to her shoulders, with straight bangs giving her an old school pinuppy look. She wore chunky glasses, and had an effortless style, with lots of high boots, short skirts, and bootleg t-shirts from Japan. The point was, she was cool in the way that someone like me never really would be.

I didn't even have a crush on her as such anymore. She was a regular in my fantasies, but I was content to leave them there. Mostly because she was at least five years older than me and had a boyfriend I was pretty sure was going to be a fiancé soon. Besides, I was still in college and had "pedestrian taste." She was firmly ensconced in "look but don't touch," territory. As I was doing now, thanks to her homemade v-neck and the fact that she was leaning over the counter to talk to the customers.

"Go over there, to Foreign," she was saying, tapping the cardboard VHS sleeve of

The Rock

on the counter. "Go to the John Woo section and just pick one. Pick any one."

"We want to watch

The Rock

again."

She rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Fine. Die unfulfilled. See if I care."

She rang them up and I went up behind the counter for another load of movies that needed refiling. "You ever hear the term 'the customer is always right'?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, leaning back. "It's stupid." She stood up, brushed her short skirt under her butt and sat down.

"Okay, but when Alvin talks to you about customer complaints, don't come crying to me," I said, naming Video Lab's owner. We saw him maybe once a week, and he liked to hide in the back office that was barely bigger than he was. Mia ran the store, and whatever she didn't want to do got delegated to me.

"Like Alvin's ever gonna fire me."

"Yeah, if it hasn't happened yet, it's probably not gonna."

"Besides, if I can get one of these philistines to watch a real movie, I will have done my good deed for the day."

'You're all heart, you know that?"

"That's me."

I picked up the stack. Video Lab was structured the way that a lot of video stores were back then. Out front on the customer floor, we had the movies on shelves, sorted by genre. "Foreign" was a whole genre, which would provoke an outraged rant from Mia I'd been listening to since I was sixteen. The movies on the shelves weren't the actual movies; they were just the covers with a rectangle of styrofoam put in the sleeves so they would keep their shape. Customers would make their selections, bring those up to the counter, and one of us, usually Mia, would ring them up, and the other one, usually me, would go get the actual movies from the shelves in the back.

They pass over the dummy box, I go into the back shelves, swap out the dummy for the plastic clamshell with a copy of the movie. When the tapes came back, I did the process in reverse. A trained monkey could have done it, but in my defense I was a trained monkey with opinions about the films of Werner Herzog.

When I arrived that morning, I noticed an alphabetization problem caused by Toby, who worked whenever I didn't, and was generally the bane of my existence. With my refiling done, I had time to fix it. Sure, Toby would fuck it up, but it had to be done. That's when I heard something I barely ever did from Mia.

"Oh, good choice," she said.

I looked over to see what movie she was talking about, but what I saw instead took my breath away.

Mia was leaning with her elbows on the counter, which was not unusual. She was fully off the stool, bent over in an L-shape, which was. Her skirt was so short that in that position, I could see more than I expected. Her panties were black, not quite a thong, riding up between the shapely brown globes of her ass. As she shifted, I glimpsed between the modest gap at the apex of her thighs where the material hugged her the lips of her sex. I was momentarily stunned, my eyes exploring the contours, following the swell her of flesh.

"

Sirens

," she said, turning. I blinked and looked up into her brown eyes. She held out a dummy box. "Hey, are you listening?" Her eyes followed where I had been looking, and a tiny frown creased her brow.

"Yeah, no problem." I grabbed the box and found the movie, relieved to be out of her eyeline. As I swapped out the cardboard box with the art on it for the unadorned clear white clamshell, I tried to analyze the look she'd given me. Had she caught me appreciating her unintentional show?

I handed it over and went back to filing, not so much as glancing her way. She rung the guy up, and then turned in the stool, crossing her legs. They were bare to mid-calf, down to a pair of black Doc Martens.

"Did you see that?"

"What?" I blurted, my face going hotter than the sun.

"

Sirens

," she said. "Have you seen it?"

"Oh, yeah, I saw it. I liked it."

"Bet you did. Nobody wants to talk about the message of sexual liberation. It's just about how Elle MacPherson got naked."

"Both things can be great."

She chuckled and shook her head and gave me a speculative look. I felt that were I to look down in that moment I would find myself completely nude. I turned away, momentarily cowed by her frank appraisal. Nothing else happened that day.

I opened the store on Thursdays. I was finishing up when a police cruiser pulled up on the curb outside. Mia thundered out of the passenger side, and I heard a male voice calling to her from inside. That would be Luis, her boyfriend-maybe-fiancé, and I couldn't make out what he was saying, but judging by the look on her face and the way she slammed the door, they'd had a fight.

This wasn't uncommon and I knew better than to talk to her on those days. Better wait for the first person to come in and try to rent an Adam Sandler movie and let them get both barrels.

The first customer came in around ten, dropping off their movies on the counter and browsing the racks. Just as I had since the day I'd gotten a glimpse of her panties, I went to refile the returned tapes immediately, hoping for another look.

Mia was propped up on her elbows, bent at the waist, ass sticking out. I sucked in a shocked breath. It looked like she had gone without panties. But then, she moved her legs, and I spotted the material emerging from its hiding spot, barely covering her sex. I watched as she shifted back and forth, and fancied I spotted gooseflesh on her roundness.

This show had to be an accident. Had to be. And yet...

The next customer came in and I scurried to my spot in the back, certain that this time it wouldn't happen. It did. I watched every motion of her ass, every sway of her hips, willing more of her panties to disappear between her cheeks. It called me to come closer, to press my face between those globes, to fill my mouth with her taste and her scent. I moved in slow motion, mesmerized by her perfection.

When she turned to take the movie from my hand, she gave me a smirk. It wasn't until later when I remembered the movie was

Die Hard

, and Mia hadn't read the guy the riot act.

It happened again and again throughout the day. Every time a customer came in, I would take my spot and Mia would bend over the counter and give me a show. I started to try to will customers in, find psychic powers I didn't know I'd had to compel passing pedestrians to step inside. Mia's ass was art, and all I wanted to do was appreciate it.

Finally, though, it was closing time and I realized I wasn't getting another show. Probably good, since I'd been walking around with an erection all day, and it was right on the edge of being no longer fun. I thought about taking care of myself in the tiny employee bathroom, but that door was tissue paper. No way I wouldn't be heard.

"You up for closing tonight?" she asked, giving me a winsome smile.

"Luis isn't here yet," I said.

"Oh, fuck him. I'll take the bus."

"I'll drive you," I blurted, then cursed inwardly. The longer I had to wait to take care of myself, the more unbearable this would be. Yet I wanted to be with her more. Wanted to marinate in her scent, to bask in the heat from another smile.

"I guess we'll both close then."

With the two of us, it didn't take long. We closed, and took the back door out into the narrow parking lot that served the line of businesses up and down Fairview Ave. We climbed into my shitty Tercel and I tried not to be too obvious ogling her long legs.

In the confined space, her most palpable feature was her scent. Mia wore perfume, but never bathed in it. It was always over the top of the rest of her, the clean smells of soap and makeup, then something darker, spicier beneath. It was like her smile in that way, beautiful on the surface but hiding mischief. Now it folded me up, sparking every memory I had of her bent over, her perfect ass shimmying back and forth.

"I probably should have asked where you live," I said.

She laughed. "Yeah, I was just wondering if you knew."

As it turned out, she was about fifteen minutes away in the complete opposite direction to where I lived, down the coast rather than up, a neighborhood that was quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. As though to hammer the message home, a freight train, giving a mournful whistle, thundered past one intersection while we waited.

"Thanks for the ride," she said.

"Least I could do. This is a long-ass bus ride."

"I just couldn't fucking deal with Luis right now."

"What'd he do?"

"Be a macho asshole."

"He's a cop."

She sighed. "He's a sweet guy, but he thinks that I'm gonna marry him and just quit my job."

"But you love movies. To an annoying degree."

"It's more than that. The money I get is shit, but it's mine. He thinks I'm just gonna stay home and pump out babies."

"Oh yeah," I said. That was right when I realized there was a great deal I knew absolutely nothing about.

We turned at a corner with a market tucked into the ground floor of an old apartment building and we were on Mia's street. Palm trees loomed over crumbling two-story houses. Children's toys bleached on dead lawns. And yet, this place felt alive to me in a way my suburb defiantly, secretly was not.

"Thanks for the ride," she said.

"Any time."

She got up, and I couldn't help myself, I watched her go. For the last time that evening I got my glimpse of her bare buttocks, and the barest flash of her pussy straining against her panties. And I swear she paused just long enough for me to get a look. Then she was out the door and walking up her stoop, her hips swinging back and forth like a pendulum. I watched the maddening dance of the hem of her skirt, willing it to flip up just a little bit more, show me and flash of bare flesh, but it refused. She let herself in and waved to me.

I drove home and immediately went to my room. Memories of Mia got me off, but soon, I didn't need memories.

For the next week, we continued that game. By the third day at it, the possibility that this was an accident was vanishingly small. For one thing, she usually broke up the short skirts with jeans or cutoffs, but not this week. Every day it was one of her skirts that barely made it to the top of her thighs, and every day a new pair of panties. Some lacy, some plain, some boyshorts, some thongs. All that remained was to test the boundaries.

It took several days to work up the courage. On the day I took the next step, I knew from the moment I woke up. My heart hammered against my ribs. My blood was electric. My whole body hummed as I went through my day on autopilot waiting for my chance.

I watched for customers. Whenever someone walked by on Fairview, I tensed, hoping to hear the collection of bells hung by the door to ring. Maddeningly, they stayed still, and there was Mia silent as the sphinx, perched on the stool behind the register, long, bare legs crossed. As the morning wore on, I was starting to hate every person that passed. Didn't they know we had

movies

?

I was sitting at the far end of the counter, failing to read the Clive Barker novel I'd brought with me, when I heard the ringing of the bells. My heart jumped. I looked up, pathetically eager, saw the first customer of the day. I knew the guy, he was a regular, and he immediately went behind the beaded curtain.

This is going to sound as confusing to modern audiences as the idea of commercial air travel would be to Thomas Jefferson, but there was a time when you had to rent porn. The sad thing was, it was the porn section, a small room that ran parallel to the store, that paid the rent. The rest of the selection was more like a bonus.

I got up in anticipation, lingering in the shelves behind the counter. As I passed Mia, I caught a little smile quirking her lips. The man came to the front, and though we all knew what was going on, he never made eye contact with any employee. We never judged. Hell, one of the perks of the job was access to those same pornos.

Mia bent over the counter. "Oh, this is a good one. One of my favorites," she said.

She raised her ass from the seat. Today, she was wearing something relatively demure, the line of her panties running halfway across her cheeks. The contrast of the white of the fabric with her brown skin was intoxicating. As she moved, the line crept back and forth as she shifted in place.

I found myself moving without intention, drawn by her ripe display. I came up next to her, leaning over to grab the box off the counter. As I did, the back of my other hand ran over the bare flesh of her buttock.

"Your c-c-card," she stuttered, shivering at my "inadvertent" caress.

The customer handed it over and she sat back, ringing him up. I retrieved the man's porn, and handed over the clamshells. He took them and lumbered out. I sat back down at the far end of the counter and pretended to read. We both knew what happened, but neither of us said a word. We let the electricity hum between us, there but unmentioned. Talking about it would have broken the spell, would have made this fine. And neither of us wanted that.

When the next customer came in a bit more than an hour later, I was still jittery. I popped to my feet, grateful that the counter would shield me from the waist down. My erection was a swollen pipe running down my thigh. I went to the back to grab the movies.

This time when she lifted her ass from the seat, she swayed it back and forth, beckoning. I came up behind her to take the dummy box. With my other hand, I reached down, and I brushed the edge of her panties. Deliberately, I ran my finger along the line of fabric from the apex down her cheek, stopping where her buttock curved under. I waited for her to spin, to slap me, to call me a motherfucker.

She didn't. She shivered as my touch ran up that secret curve, her eyelids fluttering for a moment as my finger slipped under. She cleared her throat, and to the customer, "Excuse me? Sorry, I missed that last part."

I moved off to fetch the movie while she took the video card. When I turned back with the clamshell, I found her presenting her ass to me again. Swaying back and forth. Back and forth. I put the movie on the counter, then ran my finger down the other side of her.

Once again, when the customer left, we said nothing. I did some refiling, we sat in our spots. She watched Here and Elsewhere on the TV while I read the same page over and over again. Sometimes I would look over at her, where her long legs were crossed. She shifted back and forth, her thighs languidly rubbing together.

With every customer, our dance progressed. Each time, I explored a little more. A caress across her buttock, a touch along the cleft of her ass. I wanted to reach below, to cup the sultry place between her thighs, but I didn't. We were still too close to the beginning.

Each time I approached her scent grew stronger. A heavy, womanly aroma washing up, fighting through her perfume. She still never spoke, though I saw her fighting to keep her breathing even. Her face was flushed and sweat beaded on her forehead.

I was disappointed when, as we closed, Luis picked her up in his cruiser. He came in, greeting me with a nod and a "Hey." I did the same while Mia hopped off the stool and swanned out, waving to me with a smile. Luis had to smell her arousal. He couldn't miss that. And then what would he think? I'd spent the day playing sex games with a cop's girlfriend, which was at once the stupidest and most exciting thing I'd ever done in my two decades of life.

Not that blatant stupidity would stop me. Mia was too intoxicating. This game of ours had broken a dam inside me. Five years of a crush I didn't know I had. The woman I'd been intimidated by, then looked up to, then surreptitiously admired. She'd been many things in my subconscious. Now she was a drug that I craved.

The very next day, she wore a thong. At the first customer, when she bent over, I swear I heard choral music. At first, I thought she had thrown caution to the wind, gone commando, but then I saw the tiny white triangle at the top of her cleft, the string disappearing down that sweet line. I put my finger at the bottom of that triangle and followed the cloth, headed for places south. I felt her warmth on both sides of my digit, and she clenched, whether to keep me out or hold on, I couldn't tell. Maybe she didn't either, knowing it was wrong and wanting it all the more for it. And then the terrain changed. The smoothness gave way to a rubbery place at the center of her. I paused my descent, my finger poised over her.