"All Work Done on Premises"

I had something scribbled about the flourescent light tubes leaving yellowish light....blah, blah, but the marker's green ink had bled out into the fibers of the mushy coffee napkin and it now looked like cartographic doodle. She didn't see me, anyway. She was inside and I was outside in my car. "No soliciting." It was a uniform shop with big windows--"Peach's Uniforms." Inside, cardboard signs hung from the dropped panel-ceiling with "Look!" and "Save Big!" in large black type across gold backgrounds. All of the colors of the place-- and her-- were saturated from where I sat. But with a couple layers of glass between me and the uniform-globe-world, there was a good chance for that to happen. Like a shallow lake bottom is magnified and sharpened, rippled through too, with the thickness of water illuminating its pebbles and flashing minnows. The contents are pressed down and outward.

She was butter and fresh spinach leaves. Peaches was the smell of cigarettes and dull tobacco-skin. Their layers became forced together, depth foreshortened like a kid's diarama-- found objects glued, like props, in the shallow background. I became audience, all eyes and watching.