Shirt Shopping

As anyone who’s bought a shirt for work or special occasions will know, your size is based on the thickness of your neck. I was making such a purchase the other day, when I approached a sales assistant for help. He was a stately man of great height, as if his height was entirely influenced by how well he thought of himself. Even without speaking to him I picked up an air of authority emanating from him, though this may have just been his broom moustache. I went to tap him on the shoulder but thought better of it; I noticed a coiled tension in his back muscles, as if they wanted to burst free. He became quickly aware of my presence and spun round to face me. Without further adieu he looked at me piercingly, his eyes seeing something indiscernible to everyone else. “I’d say you’re 15 and a half inches,” he said with confidence. I was about to ask him how he could possibly know that when I realised he was referring to my neck.

I was awestruck by this display. This was surely the coolest party trick ever, to just by looking, gauge the circumference of someone’s limbs, to peer at their appendages and croon sagely, “Yes. Just what I thought, you have a fat neck.”

What worried me is that this man saw more than just my 15 and a half inches, the amount of scrutiny he gave made me wonder what else he observed. Perhaps the eyes aren’t the windows to the soul at all, we’ve been looking in the wrong place all along. He surprised me when he followed up with, “You were never happy as a child, were you Khyan?”

I was stunned into silence, although I didn’t ask how he knew my name, he answered me regardless, “I have ears everywhere.” His eyes darted to each far corner of the room to indicate this. My own eyes darted to follow his gaze, very much expecting to find fleshy lobes hanging from handrails, invisible to me until now.
“I was happy,” I said uncertainly.
“Don’t lie,” he said, “I can always tell when you lie.”

I’m not lying, I wanted to say, but his piercing glare had now become scarily wide-eyed. I felt a sensation of weightlessness descend on me, as if I were falling from a great height until a cough developed from deep within me. I was able to retrieve my handkerchief just in time to splutter what felt like a warm mucous. I looked into my hanky to find a stain of blood.

“Blood,” the sales assistant confirmed. He seemed please by this development, and offered me a clean handkerchief, apparently in trade for my soiled one. I felt wary about accepting any gifts from such an unnerving man, and re-pocketed my own hanky. The sales assistant was now very close to me, his head bent down towards my own. The smell of menthol was overpowering, which he blasted into my face with exertion. I soon became aware of a massive hand invading my pocket; it seemed less concerned with finding the hanky than violently groping my leg. His breaths now became short and sharp whilst his eyes bulged. They bulged so much I was afraid they were going to fall on me. And then just as suddenly as the hand was there, it was gone, taking the hanky with it.

We looked at each other for a while after. I had no idea how I should react, and oddly felt little need to. My reverie was broken when I heard the pounding of feet behind me; the sales assistant reacted physically, bolting into a graceless run, as if he were unused to using his legs. Two burly security guards charged past, giving chase and calling to no one in particular, “It’s him again! The bastard’s back again!”

Afterwards I was called into the manager’s office, a glorified cupboard with cheap wood panelling. The manager, a tired looking man who hid his girth behind a dinky desk said to me, “That bastard,” which was how he was commonly known around here, “that bastard did it again. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. It won’t be the last.” He turned suddenly to face the miserable view out the window, and he let the silence build, perhaps to weight the importance of his words. I was impressed with how long he drew this out, until he said again, this time with less conviction, “It won’t be the last.” The security guards, who flanked him on either side of the desk – and made the room even more claustrophobic – looked uneasily at each other, as if their boss did this a lot.

The manager turned back to face me, looking older already, as if he aged by the minute. He pulled on a drawer in the desk, and retrieved a brown envelope and gun which he placed on the desk in front of him, then quickly replaced the gun in the drawer and looked at me anxiously, as if he was worried I saw. He pushed the envelope towards me, “If you could not say anything…” he said, letting his sentence drop off, either too embarrassed to finish it, or happier just suggesting it. I took the envelope and had a quick look inside, disappointed to find a thick wad of Marks and Spencer vouchers. One of the guards got the door and let me out, immediately closing it after me.

I went home and showered for a long time after that.