lolita at fifty
"Lolita Haze, now Guccioni (though currently single), angled her shopping cart and knelt down for the bottle of fallen fabric softener that her sashaying walk had knocked into the aisle. 'Let me get that,' mooned a stock boy, and Lolita, peering over her sunglasses, breathed, 'I've got it.'"The usual crowd had gathered at one end of the aisle, knowing that Lolita herself would be doing the retrieval, but it was the rear view from the checkout stand that was the best: the accordion bend of the long body, the knees locked but the ankles splayed, her arms becoming longer than her entire folded frame as she reached, and the slight shift to translucence of the yellow mini as it stretched in response the breathtaking bend. A shudder traveled up the hierarchy of the supermarket, from box boy to general manager. Even the security camera ground to a halt in the middle of its traverse.
"Rolling her way to the checkout stand, a teenage cashier only recently elevated from box boy quickly hid the Ten Items or Less sign, hoping to encourage Lolita to come his way. Paying with a check at snail's pace, she delicately wrote her signature with a heart-dotted i, an action that had three purposes: the first was to sign the check, the second was the three-quarters lean-over that caused a jittery eye motion from the box boy, and the third was to raise the back of her short blouse inches above the yellow mini, creating a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sphere of influence.
"Once in the parking lot, Lolita propped herself against her yellow Miata, idly tapping the hell of her half-dislodged shoe against the asphalt, using her toe as a motor. A sweating thirteen-year-old loaded her bags into the trunk. She broke her akimbo slouch (Lolita was rarely not akimbo; in fact, her third husband, Mark, observed that at any given moment, a randomly selected part of her body was always catty-corner to another) and drifted over to the remaining plastic bag full of apples, in a manner so lazy that even after the walk was over, it seemed as though it hadn't happened. She hoisted the bag lazily in a locked fist and rested it against the back of her raised forearm, slung the bag into the trunk with a slew-footed twist, and handed the gaping boy a single. Reading his name tag, she raised her eyes and gave him a 'Thank you, Rory.'
"The boy replied, 'Thank you, Miss... Miss...'
"'Lo-lee-tah,' she tongued. A column of sweat drained down the boy, and he entered puberty."
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