It was a Tuesday night in the middle of January the only customers in the store were two old ladies looking through thousand dollar purses they would never be able to buy. Aside from them there was two managers(the head of the VIP club and the women's attire lead) a couple of associates and myself. I had worked at Saks for over two years and recently decided to make a change; to move to asset protection. The job was just as one would expect in a high end store; boring but at least it got me off the sales floor. I decided after hours of watching the cameras to no end( the people that walked in to steal stuck out like a sore thumb) I decided I would check the VIP club rooms to make sure all the clothes that were reserved were ready to be tried on by a customer that had an appointment the next morning.
As I walked into the room my keys jingled and I saw Selene walk out of one of the inner hallways of the room. Selene was my old boss she was also the head of the VIP rooms. She was tall and had short brown hair with blond highlights put into it and her eyes were as green as emeralds. She was in her early forties and still kept her figure.
"So what is such a fancy lady doing in here? She can't even come to visit but she can come check on the rooms?" She said to me in a very sarcastic tone. I could tell she was upset that I had gone behind her back to be transferred into asset protection without letting her know first.
" I was just checking to make sure you weren't up to no good" I replied with a smile trying to soothe the bitterness of her sarcasm before it became worse.
"You know, if you didn't like me that much we could have worked opposite schedules you didn't have to leave the department" she retorted with a grin.
I knew she would not let me live this down any time soon, she was going to pull passive aggressive blows for a long time if I continued to work around leaving her department without even telling her.
"I'm sorry I left, it wasn't because of you...it was because of the people... I got bored of them. All of their stupid questions about pant length and purses. Now I get to just watch them, I find it more interesting" I said to try and save myself from further comments.
The reality was we had never really gotten along we had conflicting personalities but at the end of the day I could put a smile on and sell ten thousand dollars in a day without blinking an eye and that worked well for her metrics.
"Do you want a drink Alex?" She asked me in a voice I had never heard before...it was soft...weak even. She was nothing close to weak she was a lion, a hungry vicious predator with claws made of steal and fangs made of stone.
" I'm only nineteen, you're going to offer the person in charge of firing people for getting minors drunk a drink when she's under aged?" I asked in a kidding manner expect ion her to take it badly and retract her statement
" it's eight pm and we're closing tonight, underaged or not you deserve a drink. We both know that we're going to be here at least till midnight making sure we close correctly with all the new people" As she said this she turned around and walked toward one of the doors in the room; it was her office. She had it filled with very modern black furniture which I had always admired and had a large picture of Marilyn Monroe hanging on one wall. I could see her hips rocking from side to side as she walked up to her desk bent over and pulled out a bottle of vodka and two cups. I couldn't tell if she was trying to walk that way or if she had always walked that way and I was always too professional to notice.
She poored me a cup and we got ice from one of the dispensers in the other room and began to drink and talk. She told me about her two kids that were now nine and ten and about her new husband and her ex husband. She told me how her new husband was too nice but her ex husband beat her. I told her how sorry I was that he hit her and she responded to me saying "don't be, if it wasn't for him hitting me I would have never gotten my teeth redone and I always wanted them done" in a joking manner but as I looked into her emerald eyes I could see the pain. I didn't see fear, she wasn't afraid but it still hurt her to remember. I didn't think it hurt her to remember the physical pain but more so her pride was what took the worst beating, it hurt her to know that she, a lion let herself get overpowered by a simpleton.
