Cain fingers the tags of a folded cardigan on the table before him. He says synthetics make his skin itch. He's kind of a bitch about it. As he looks without really seeing, he imagines how he'd look in a such a garment. Dashing and sophisticated, he thinks. Or rather thought. In the three minutes he spent looking for his size and preferred colour, his inner monologue convinced him that he could never pull it off. It usually doesn't take long for Cain to shut down while shopping for his own clothes, but today he soldiers on. He knows he needs to update his attire. He's starting to age out of the safe range for the Average College Boy look, and dates are feeling harder to come by.
Breaking the doldrum, there's a ping from his phone. He pulls it from his pocket hoping for a text from someone with anything interesting to say. An invitation to adventure. A deep question about his personal history. Some kind of generous career opportunity. But it's a notification from an app he thought he deleted months ago. It almost stings to see it, the little banner across the screen. Cain thought it would be fun to gift Naomi a wearable vibrator that he could control remotely. Naomi thought it would be best to engage in respectful missionary intercourse with loving and appropriately non-aggressive eye contact every Sunday night. Ten minutes would suffice.
Cain shakes off his bitterness and taps the notification. It's an open link to someone's device. He raises his head to look around the store. A curly haired woman stands behind a cash register. A young but tall changeroom attendant is folding pants. And with a subtle look to his right, he studies a sturdy blond man investigating a rack of skinny jeans. His triceps look really good. Cain realizes he's still stroking the cardigan with his thumb.
***
"Let's have a little fun," Min types into her phone. Sitting in a fitting room, she struggles to compose the perfect invitation. "Please me while I shop, cutie!" Is that a better line, she wonders? Maybe it's lacking detail. "Make me cum in this Winners department store, stranger!" Keep it simple. "Control my vibrator!" More sass. "Get me off in public, you pervert!" Min's courage is waning with every rewrite. To outpace the urge to back out, she hurriedly retypes option two and taps to activate. In her haste, she forgets to add an emoji. Something silly would have been perfect, she thinks. Like a cute dinosaur.
Minutes have passed and Min is running out of blouses to try on; the fitting rooms have a limit of six items. She considers getting herself off in a silky top that she doesn't own, but it was the thought of a spontaneous and mysterious sexual encounter that had gotten her so excited. She checks her app again. Nothing. Feeling defeated, she puts her own clothes back on and steps out. Handing the blouses to the slender attendant, Min compliments her long black hair. They both blush.
"Looking for something professional?" the attendant asks.
Glancing at the button-ups she just handed off, "Yeah, job interview."
"Oh, good luck!"
"Fingers crossed!"
Walking away, Min let's out an "Oh" with a jolt as she bumps into a rack while rounding the corner.
"Are you okay?" the attendant asks.
A small "yep" is heard from the next aisle.
***
He's in. Even though he spent eons deciding, he still feels like he won a race. There were no other competitors. Concealed in a corner by walls piled high with graphic tees, Cain initiates the vibrator remotely. A wave of excitement washes over him. "Pace yourself," he thinks. "Can't give it all away at the start." He stares at the marker on the screen; it's at the lowest level of intensity. A moment passes and he wonders what to do next. Out of the corner of his eye he spots a middle-aged woman flipping through shirts. For her son, he imagines. He watches her surreptitiously as she raises a black shirt with a gritty Batman symbol on it. "Why couldn't it be her?" he wonders while admiring her ample hips. "Why can't I be the young cutie that this strong, confident mom is counting on for a thrill?" He believes himself fit for this duty. Cain readies his thumb, then swipes a momentary increase in the intensity while studying her face. She sniffs loudly and turns suddenly to meet his gaze. His face turns pink. "Your son would like that one," he blurts out before feigning interest in some other item out of sight.
***
Min is elbow deep in a bin of underwear, trying not to smile too much.
"Excuse me, do you have anything with, like, cute little stegosauruses or something like that?" she asks of the lady nearby.
The woman folding a pair of pants admits that she does not work here.
***
"Why's it so hard to find a simple t-shirt these days, eh?"
Cain looks up and realizes he's wandered up next to the potentially Scandinavian blond man while staring down at his phone.
"Like, look at this shit." The man holds up a white tee with a tatted monkey in sunglasses holding banana guns.
Cain is counting the lines in the man's unexpectedly detailed forearms. "Heh, yeah."
Positioning himself on the opposite side of the aisle, Cain peers back over his shoulder at the man. He's wearing tight-fitting jeans--the stretchy kind--with feet shoulder width apart. A strong stance. Angular calves. As the man is occupied with more shirts, Cain boldly seizes the opportunity to investigate. After ensuring they were the only two in the aisle, he turns quietly and crouches low to sneak a look between the man's legs. When shopping for Naomi's gift online, he noticed a section for men. There he found a bulbous, insertable device designed for prostate stimulation. "Maybe this guy is wearing one," he considers. In that moment, the man shifts. Cain jumps up.
"Oh, uh, dropped my r-receipt," he stutters then walks off. "Gotta return this, uh..." he trails off halfway down the aisle.
***
From across the store, Min is watching a handsome, grey-haired man in the men's section. His shoulders are wide, and his shoes are polished. He's also looking down at his phone. She nibbles her lip, imaging herself to be at the mercy of his whims. She can feel herself getting wet now, and pretends to swipe lint off her chest, but with, she hopes, an unnoticeable moment of lingering over her nipple. The guys she's dated have always been her age at most. Her upcoming interview is for a mid-level position at a well-established design studio. "I could date a much older man," she thinks to herself. She feels the intensity tick up. Did he just smirk?
"Can a manager please come to the front desk?" a voice calls over the PA system.
The grey man frowns at his phone, then starts typing swiftly with both thumbs. A teenage girl comes out from the back room and hands Min a hanger.
"I found this t-rex tank?"
"Oh, thanks!" She clears her throat. "Yeah, I'll try it on."
***
Cain is now eyeing the tall fitting room attendant while pretending to finger the cardigans again. Her hair is straight and lustrous, and falls past her small, boney shoulders. The work vest she wears fits close to her body but isn't nearly long enough to reach the top of her slight hips. "A woman in uniform, hm?" Cain thinks. "Like a sexy flight attendant." Maybe the invitation was misleading. She's not shopping but working. "How..." He struggles to think of a word as fitting as 'naughty' but that doesn't make him as uncomfortable as using the word 'naughty'.
"Be devilishly cute this fall in our new line of chunky knit sweaters!" says the overhead voice with manufactured pep. "Ask a store associate for details!"
Before he can find such a word, Cain feels a cool trickle in his pants as he shifts his weight. He looks down at the app and switches to an oscillating vibration mode, then looks back at the attendant. She raises her head from her folding work and scans the room suspiciously. Cain is captivated, waiting to observe irrefutable evidence of the pleasure he's providing. "She must be getting really hot now," he thinks. "Nipples ready to cut through that tight little vest." He squints at her chest. With a minimal and practiced motion, the attendant calmy slides her hand around the outside of her hip and over her butt. She pulls out her phone as subtly as possible and starts texting.
***
Min already came three minutes ago. Even though she knew it couldn't have been him, fantasizing about the older man's deft control over her vibrator--not to mention the excitement about the success of her plan--sent her over the edge pretty quickly. She gripped the t-rex tank tightly and closed her eyes in anticipation of the rush. Sensing from a distance the glance of the employee that just helped her, she turns back to the bin of underpants to hide her face and plunges her arm back into the sea of tiny, bundled panties. Min hoped the shaking of her legs wasn't perceptible.
