Matching Underwear

Touching the void via the extended arms of The Great Andini.

'Can I help you?' the shop assistant enquired casually.

'I sure hope so,' Burt said. 'I'm in desperate need of a pair of camouflage pants.'

'Aren't we all?' the shop assistant beamed through yellow cavity ridden teeth. He heaved an almighty wad of phlegm into the fish tank, quite a feat considering its location on the other side of the store.

The shop assistant's mental arithmetic startled the mouse inside the wheel of his mind as fingers on both of his callused hands aided the computation process.

"Eighteen-bucks-fifty in pure profit," he thought.

In his mind, he rubbed his hands with glee and reveled in the imagined taste of swishing gin and tonic from one side of his mouth to the other.

'Walk this way,' he gestured to Bruce.

With she shop assistant's severe limp guiding both men down the main aisle, they weaved through a cesspool of customers: handicapped war veterans with poorly attached prosthetic limbs; red-eyed street hoods with $10,000 gym shoes and no visible signs of attending to to their crack addicted Alaskan Malamutes; pole dancers with a significant percentage of body weight altered from carbon to silicon, and whose eyelashes and fake fingernails were of greater concern than munitions the store stocked; Armenians; bureaucrats with stained suits and $2 socks; part-time lounge singers with strained vocal cords and unkempt beards; a gaggle of stray geese with a predilection for biting and excreting simultaneously, and Danny Bonaduce sitting on a branch of the pear tree next to a hedge of bayonets.

'Here we are,' the shop assistant gestured with his arthritic palm as the men reached a long rack of the sought after merchandise. 'As you can see, we have every popular colour available, including this season's numbero oono, fuchsia.'

Burt's eyes marvelled at the range.

'Eureka!' he gasped, scanning the mother load. 'I never realised army camos were this popular.'

'Oh, yes,' the shop assistant grinned. Since legislature tripled the number of army enlisted females required for service and since the steady rise in rap music videos, this has become the single most popular range of army products.'

'No!'

'I kid you not. Even the Eye-rackeys are doing a booming trade over there; we get fortnightly updates from our sister store: it's all good. Say, you wouldn't be interested in seeing the new range of matching underwear would you?'

Burt's jaw dropped to around his cankles. 'You wouldn't have them in g-strings would you?'

The shop assistant nodded euphorically. "Forty-three-bucks in pure profit," he thought. "Bare minimum."