Sephora and the Movies

Linda and I wanted to catch a movie this weekend but settled on running a couple of errands instead. At some point along our route we found ourselves in Sephora, which is the make-up equivalent of a child’s candy store. Candy apple red nail polish line the shelves aside bubble gum pink lip-gloss and smoky shades of eye shadow. Banks of scrubs, blushes, powders and balms are enough to keep even the most disinterested housewife spinning at top RPM’s.

On the right side of the store, running the entire length is a wall dedicated to the shiny silver tools associated with cosmetic upkeep. Since face powders and potions hold little interest for me I generally congregate in front of these mechanical wonders along with the rest of the men in the store, where we share unspoken gestures suggesting, “You too? Yeah, but check out this really cool precision ground pair of clippers fabricated from surgical steel,” as we do our best to keep from getting bored.

While Linda looked for a new face scrub at the back of the store I noticed what I originally took to be a small elderly man hovering around the perfume counter. His grey hair was cropped short then slicked back tight against his head. He had a severe part down the left and wore what looked to me like the boy’s version of a men’s crisp white oxford dress shirt. It was un-tucked, hanging down over a pair of tight but ill-fitting jeans.

At first I imagined he was shopping for a gift, possibly for someone special in his life but what really caught my attention his quick side -o-side glances as though he were casing the joint. “Looks like we’ve got a shoplifter on our hands. Something’s going down and I’ve got a front row seat,” I thought as I moved in for a better view. “This is turning out better than the movies.”

When my little inmate transitioned from smelling and glancing, smelling and glancing to vigorously pumping the perfume into a cloud that engulfed his entire body from head to toe I decided I needed to move back a bit and maybe seek a better angle. It was at this point I realized the person in question was not actually a tiny thieving man but rather, an oddly coifed middle-aged woman. My movement must have startled her, our eyes briefly met as she took one last glance in both directions then pumped a dozen or so sprays into her crotch and bolted from the store.

Much better than the movies