vandrophobia

Choose Your Brand: Stark or Cammin?

1st floor. Perfume. Earrings. Purses. Bankruptcy.

2nd floor. Bottles. Toys. Cribs. Another twenty years.

3rd floor. Men's pants. Men's shirts. Men's accessories. That's it!?

4th floor. Mattresses. Vases. Home décor. Lovely.

5th floor. Women's pants. Women's shirts. Shoes. Shoes. Shoes.

6th floor. Dresses!

I ride up the escalator with Tanya and Jeff in Orchid Plaza. Even though it's called a plaza, it's really more of a mall. In need of a Winter Ball dress, Tanya and I decided to make a day of it and go shopping!

I'm not really much of a shopper. To be honest, I'm just not a shopper…of clothes. I come to the Orchid Plaza so rarely that I usually have to line up at the information kiosk with all the other out-of-town tourists to pick up a map of the new stores. When the lady at the kiosk asks me where I'm visiting from I'm too embarrassed to say I'm less than 20 minutes away.

So I exaggerate it a little.

"I'm 20,000 leagues away." I don't know what that means. I just wanted to use nautical terms.

"I'm 20 countries to the north." Where's that?

"I'm from Florence." The most reasonable one since I am Italian after all. I can be sensible sometimes. Scary, I know.

Luckily, this time I'm with Tanya who I can say, confidently, is a veteran shopper. I think she was here earlier this morning actually…

"Alright," Tanya announces, "Lira and I are going this way." She points to her right.

Jeff takes a long look around the floor. It's completely filled with racks of dresses, gowns, skirts—casual and formal.

"And what am I supposed to do?" he asks.

Tanya gestures to the left where a semi-circular couch rests by the dressing room. Men and boys of different ages sit there completely bored out of their minds.

"No way," Jeff says putting his hands into his pockets.

"Then why did you want to come with us?" Tanya says.

"I thought we were shopping for swimsuits," Jeff answers nonchalantly with a shrug.

My mouth drops a little. "In December?"

"I don't know!" Jeff says. "Girls buy things they don't need!" He stares at us for a second. "Fine I'm going down to the men's floor to look for a masquerade ball mask."

"Good," Tanya says and Jeff walks off.

Tanya and I wander around the massive quantities of dresses and begin trying one on after another. But soon I tire.

"It's been half an hour!" Tanya cries out, hidden underneath the pile of dresses she holds.

Looking pathetic with only one dress in hand, I stride off again to pick up more gowns. Seriously, no stamina for shopping.

"How does this look?" I hear a rather deep voice ask.

I freeze and pull the dark green dress I have up to my face. Stripping to the outermost layer of the dress, my eyes manage to peer through the thin green veil that lines the outside of the dress. I hear green is what the army uses to camouflage into their surroundings. Right?

I'm standing at the very end of a long rack closest to the wall. On the other end is a massive girl holding a dress up to her thick neck.

Python. Or soon to be Princess Python.