A guy in his late 50's with absolutely the worst response to male pattern baldness it is possible to make, short of pouring kerosene over your head and sticking it in a lit BBQ, came in earlier. I think they were hair plugs? But I've seen bad hair plugs, and they just look like little islands of hair sprouting in a desert. These had black roots. Like, a grid of greasy black dots across the top of his scalp, looking like a tattoo done with shoe polish. Older readers & graphic artists, think Zippatone. It looked awful anyway, but the weird patterning on his scalp took it to another level.
It was hard to look at and simultaneously hard not to look at.
I sat partially mesmerized while he told me a lengthy story involving seeing a ventriloquist on a teevee show many years ago, and how impressed he'd been by his puppet's ability to pick up a pretty girl with snappy patter while the ventriloquist drank a glass of water.
"Because, you know, the gal knows he's not just some LOSER, he knows how to TALK to her..."
"...with a puppet." I couldn't help interjecting.
Shaken from the hypnotic reverie brought on by his...whatever it was, I darted into the other room to shelve. The necessity to ring up sales eventually brought me back, to find him camped out at the counter with a stack of art books from Japan, which provided a geographically inaccurate segue to his next tale. Something about being at the place next door to the Dali Lama's house in Tibet, at 7,000 feet, where they were mining coral THAT USED TO BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN*.
Then he showed me a coral bracelet he'd bought from a vendor. Himalayan coral.
A college kid waiting with an armload of flyers joined me in bearing witness to his parting monologue, delivered while exiting the shop:
"Yeah, who knows how long it took to get all the way up there? But everything's gone to HELL since I got that coral- quit my job, wife left me, maybe it's cursed or something!"
*violent emphasis his
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