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I work at a bead store. I work at a bead store because I love shiny and sparkly things and because of the salary. While the customers are, on average, nicely dressed middle-aged women, some aren’t. The most recently interesting was an incredibly tall woman in heels and a pencil skirt.
She strolled into the room—oversized black sunglasses hiding her face and a slim jim dangling from her hand. A man stumbled behind her; his plaid shirt barely covered his large belly.
"Oooh, look at all this stuff." She snapped her gum and tugged at her ruffled shirt.
I said hello and received an absent minded wave.
He went to the crystal section. "Hey, these are really sparkly. I wonder how much they are."
Her heels clunked on the wood floor. "These are pretty...so pretty."
He peered over her shoulder. "I wonder how much they are."
She turned to me: “It’s so hot in here. It’s so hot.”
I shrugged and issued a slightly perplexed noise: the room was freezing.
“Ha. She doesn’t care. Look at her. She doesn’t care."
He turned and I could see his belly wiggle. “She doesn’t care.”
The woman lifted a chunky purple bead. "This is nice."
He twisted his face up. "It is...but I wonder...."
"Oooh! Magnetic beads!"
His eyes grew wide. "Hey, these are all really good prices. You know that magnet I have? The amethyst magnet that's like all amethyst?"
"Yep." She tore off a piece of the slim jim.
"It was five dollars. Five dollars for the whole magnet."
"Huh. You ready? Let's go.”
"Yea. I'm ready."
"Let's go."
I watched them leave. "Have a nice day."
She turned and snapped her gum. "Yep."
"Hey, you know those magnets?" his voice faded as she slammed the door.
"Yea."
I could hear him through the window. "I wonder...how much they were..."
This visit was prefaced by an older man. I was making a necklace at the time, and my boss was talking to a woman with a Vera Bradley purse. He sidled through the door.
“Hi.” his hands trembled.
My mouth dropped slightly. The man took up so much space. If his neon shirt had been a sound, it would have screamed loud enough to break the glass beads on the wall.
“I make Indian bracelets,” he said rather wildly.
“Ok,” my boss replied with a polite smile. There was nothing else to say.
He shook his head and looked down at the floor. “I make…Indian bracelets.”
The woman with the purse turned around to face the counter. “I saw the prettiest necklace the other day—it was almost like a chain mail, except with crystals.”
My boss: “Ah, we have exactly the materials….”
“Chain mail! Chain mail! I was at a medieval festival the other weekend, and one of my friends, who’s a blacksmith, taught me how to make chainmail, and he made me make it all day, and at the end of the day, my arms were so tired, because I’d been making chainmail all day. So believe me, I know about all that chain mail!” He punctuated his loud rush of words with a decisive nod of his head.
“Oh,” said the woman with the purse, “I imagine it can be tiring.” She tucked her merchandise— tiny rings for making chainmail necklaces—into her purse and left the store.
He looked around at the beads for a moment. He had a rather lost expression on his pudgy face, but I hesitated before asking, “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
He walked to the back room and sat down at the table. “Yes. Yes I am. I’m looking for bone beads, because I make Indian necklaces. I sell ‘em at medieval festivals and conferences and festivals. I need some bone beads, but really I should make ‘em out of stuff I killed, but I don’t want to go hunting and then have to take out the sinew and bone and stuff out of the dead bodies. Do you have bone beads?”
“I, um…”
“Cause I really need bone beads.”
“Right over here. Is this what you were looking for?”
“No. I wanted a long bead with a slightly oval edge.”
“How about this?”
“No. I really need the oval because it doesn’t cut into sinew and stuff.”
I glanced briefly at his faded dreamcatcher tattoo as I took down another string of beads. Little ripples of foul smelling air were coming off the man’s body.
“This is more oval…”
“No.”
“I could order some beads if you can wait about a week. That way, we could get exactly the beads you wanted.”
“No, I just…no. I can’t do that.”
“Ok…did you need anything else?”
“No.”
The man and his yellow shirt walked out to the parking lot and squeezed behind the steering wheel. I returned to my necklace. My boss walked past.
“What did that man come in here for?”
“He wanted bone beads with a slightly oval edge so they wouldn’t cut into sinew.”
“Oh.”
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