A Very Nice Hotel

"Oh, right. You can't just walk around wearing a tie, can you..." I wouldn't mind it at all, but I had a feeling that random strangers would find it unsettling. My imaginings were suddenly interrupted by another employee. A short, redheaded girl with a lot of freckles and too much eye makeup.

The girl, whose name tag said her name was Courtney, smiled warmly at the couple. "Hello, I haven't seen you in our store before," she said, a bit too cheerily.

"No, I imagine not," I replied, somewhat dryly and condescendingly. I didn't really care if I was mean to her or not. Strangers were very, very suspicious to me today, after what had happened earlier.

Courtney was a bit off-put by the girl's personality, but she kept smiling. "Will you be needing any help finding your size for a dress this afternoon?"

I was inclined to say no, but then I realized that I really had no idea how dress sizes worked. Erm.

"Um." Well, this was a little awkward. The boyfriends usually walked off to go do other things by this point. Maybe this one, cute as he was, couldn't take a hint very well. "You look a bit slender for misses' sizes, but juniors' might be a bit, um, snug." Courtney took a measuring length out of one of her fancy uniform jacket pockets. "Could you extend an arm, please?

... why on earth did she need to measure my arm? That didn't seem like it had anything to do with anything. I held out my left arm, feeling very skeptical.

Courtney measured from the girl's fingertips to her shoulder, and did not miss the fact that she appeared to be wearing a wedding ring. Looking slightly crestfallen, she added, "I'll need to measure your waist, too," before wrapping the measuring length around her midsection.

Bah. Well at least that made more sense. I still didn't know why the f#ck she'd needed to measure my arm.

"Hmm. It looks like your closest size could be a 2, with a little adjusting. You're quite tall, you know. Right this way." And with that, Courtney walked off towards the dress section.

Er. I glanced at Lee with a questioning expression. Was he coming, too? I wouldn't feel comfortable alone in here with some stranger, really.

I gave Lee a brief smile in return, and then turned around to follow the girl off to the dress section.

Courtney stopped in the part of the aisle with the size 2s. Normally, she'd stay and continue to help, but she got the sense that she wasn't wanted here in the least. Besides, both of these people were extremely intimidating. "I'll be at the register if you need any more assistance," she said, and left.

Well, at least I didn't need to bother telling her to go away. I really hadn't liked the way she looked at Lee. Then again, I didn't like the way any girl looked at Lee. I glanced at the different dresses, and most of them looked pretty stupid, or had necklines practically down to their knees, or were pink, or all three. Only two of the dresses were black, and of those, one of them was extremely long and looked like I'd trip over it. I picked up one of the not-stupid dresses, and looked at it. It had thin straps on it, so it probably wouldn't just fall off of me, and looked like it'd come down to just over my knees. Well, I guessed that was alright, for a dress.

Eh. My clothes were pretty ruined as well, so I went over to pick them and the money envelope up. There was my sword belt, too, but I couldn't exactly put that on in this outfit. Speaking of the dress, it proved to be impossible to bend over in it. I had to sort of bend my knees and kneel down to grab my stuff, and toss the dirty clothes in the trash.

The security guard knocked on the dressing room door, and coughed awkwardly. "One customer per room, please."

I had to hold a hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter. I didn't want to ruin the joke, after all. I sort of wished it hadn't been a jest, though...

The security guard flushed completely red. "It is against company policy to engage in, erm, relations on the premises," he blustered. He was sort of tempted to peek through the tiny crack between the door and the wall, though.