I entered the dollar store to the greeting of “Welcome, Sir,” from the tall, muscular, light-skinned, gang-tattooed cashier at the first lane. There was a vastly-hipped pear-shaped woman running the front end, and a not very bright young man of the same age and condition, but with beard and darker compaction. The three staff were only outnumbered by the customers by 1. There was Megan, pushing pillows and baby clothes in a small cart.

There was a lady leaving with her purchase.

Before me, as I walked in, was a dark-skinned woman a wearing shear purple poncho, which did not conceal her enormous breasts. She was perhaps six and a half feet tall in heels, and broke into a wide smile when she greeted me with a “Hello, babay.”

I politely tipped my hat as I returned the smile and wondered if each of her breasts were indeed larger than my head. She certainly suffered from an unresolved, white-daddy fantasy abetted by a Santa Clause fetish. As I walked over to Megan, the woman’s bright smile inverted into a dark grin and she glared at Megan, who pushed her cart down the aisle hurriedly, whispering, “Good Lord, that beast woman wants you. Christ, she could be the wet nurse for the Washington Redskins!”

I followed Megan around as she pretended to shop, glancing over the aisle tops, until she saw the towering shadow of a woman leave by the front door, and determined it was safe to come up front and purchase medicine, chiding me under her breath, “Oh, not much has changed. The monster bitches still love dey Mista Jimmay.”

Our checkout ordeal was mildly comical, as these three former gang members, trying to start life afresh at minimum wage in their late twenties, stumbled good naturedly through the process that we both used to supervise a full decade ago.

The vastly hipped woman glanced jealously at Megan as I tried to figure out how much her ass actually weighed—I think more than Derrick—who was our cashier. Derrick was such a fine looking athletic specimen that I almost asked him if he’d be interested in boxing.

Derrick was tan to goldenrod in complexion and had an impressive collection of tattoos:

1. A Crown Royal bottle on his right neck, from collar bone to ear

2. A heart-shaped tear under his left eye

3. The name, birth date and date of death of a friend, tattooed over an RIP on his left neck

4. Another RIP notice on his left arm

5. Two names in Arabic tattooed down his right arm

6. Various tattoos on his hands and the back of his arms which I could not make out

Derrick was as nervous handling Megan’s purchases and money as the two Middle-Eastern guys who were helping the Sikh liquor store owner’s son, guard his property. Derrick and his coworker were trying very hard to be something they do not appear to have been for long. Megan and I complimented them on their efforts—able to tell after training hundreds such clerks, that they really were trying to learn their new occupation. Cobbling together a work force from such broken people is no easy thing.

The walk home was uneventful, and the chat over whiskey is where I got the back story for this little shopping expedition that appears in part one of this series. I do not have a certain overall opinion or thought concerning this insightful stroll through a neighborhood under attack by Dindu horde, only that this dead place appears—to me at least—to be its own goal.