She laid the clothes flat on the tile and grabbed a spray hose from its holster to send some of the mud down the drain. Cut the water off and went to the door. “Jim!”
“Yes, ma'am?”
“Is my friend back yet?”
“Uhm…. There’s a bag here with the airport tags and some shoes.”
“Huh…. His feet were hurting and I told him to run and find some new inserts. Will you make sure he didn’t get lost?” She shook her head at Doe. Dismayed at the lie.
“Ha! I was thinking he might be in there with you. I’ll go look for him though. Bearded fellow, right?”
“Correct.”
She waited for the door to shut before stepping back into her office. She went to a tall locker on the opposite wall and pulled out some fresh clothes. Doe changed from his bag and she stuffed his clothes with hers into a military launder bag. She tossed a pair of flip flops at him, one size too large but new none-the-less. “You went after shoes. Might as well come back with some new kicks.”
“More like flips…” Doe noted to her.
“Just put them on and tolerate them for a short walk. Grab your bag, let’s go home.” She scooped out her own pack, a digital camo print, and shouldered it. Eased him out the door and locked the office. They walked her brisk pace to the car.
“Today, is simply not the day for answering questions about the shower. Too many fellows here have been itching to fill you-know-who’s shoes and word spreads quickly. We have well over 50k people here daily and it’s still a fast word of mouth deluxe train on crack cocaine speed ways. The word climbs up and down the totem poles as well. No offense but you do not want the wave these testosterone overflowing men will crash on you. Jim will have the grape vine in full bloom before he even knows we have left and then he can start over with us sneaking out of here added onto his tale.” She rambled on as the car doors swung up and out.
Doe had seen the pictures but her celica was something else in person. He did not know how to approach entering the bucket seat without embarrassing himself but was pleased to see she closed the doors in unison with the press of a button after the hard part was over. “I got tired of being too short to grab the handles so I installed this last month. Shorty 1, Car 0.” She smiled at him as they took off.
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