Lauren - Mind Control Ads at the mall

This story was inspired by Amus Cobblestone's "Aggressive Ad Campaign".

God, I love Saturdays. I slid out of the Audi in the Westfield Grand parking lot and did that little stretch I always do — arms up, back arched, boobs out — because my spine had been crunched behind the wheel for twenty minutes and because, honestly, there was a cute UPS guy two cars over and I'm not above giving a man his daily blessing. He dropped a package. I pretended not to notice. I'm forty, I'm divorced, and the little voice in my head that used to care about things like "appropriate" packed up and left with my ex-husband three years ago. Good riddance to both of them.

I was wearing this blouse I picked up last week — gauzy ivory, kind of a statement piece, I honestly can't remember exactly which boutique I got it from but I remember the dressing room was lovely. Really nice lighting. Really sweet little saleswoman with the kindest smile. Anyway, the blouse is a little sheer. Okay, it's very sheer. My tits sort of sway around behind it like two pink grapefruits in a produce bag and if I'm honest you can see my nipples from across a parking lot. Which — look. I know. I know. But I'm a 34F and I refuse to apologize for existing, and if a man can't handle a little areola through some chiffon that's between him and his therapist. Besides, with everything happening in the world right now — the Hypnotic Advertising Freedom Act passing three weeks ago, every billboard turning into a goddamn spiral, every mall sounding like a cult rally — a woman has to pick her battles. My battle is not falling for any of that bullshit. My blouse is my blouse. That's just fashion.

I locked the car, slung my purse over my shoulder, and marched for the entrance with my game face on. Earbuds — check. Playlist of my own music — check. Eyes down, wallet in a zippered inside pocket, mental list memorized: new running shoes, bottle of wine for Mom's birthday, done. Two things. Two. In and out. I'd read in the Wall Street Journal (back when the Wall Street Journal still had journalists and not just a rotating centerfold) that the new ad hypnosis works best when you dawdle, when you make eye contact with screens, when you let the audio wash over you. So the trick is simple: don't dawdle, don't look, don't listen. Easy. I am a professional woman. I close six-figure real estate deals for a living. I am not going to be undone by a shopping mall.

The sliding doors whooshed open and the mall air hit me — floral, warm, pumped full of something that smelled faintly like clean sweat and vanilla. The main concourse opened up in front of me, two stories of chrome and glass and screens, screens, screens. I kept my eyes on the floor tiles and started walking. Somewhere above me a woman's voice was cooing something syrupy through the speakers — I caught the word "good girl" and clamped down harder on my playlist, dialing the volume up. See? Easy. You just don't engage.

I made it about forty feet before I slowed down, because I couldn't help myself. There was a woman standing in front of the window at Baublez & Co. — one of those mid-tier jewelry chains — and she looked like she'd been hit with a tranq dart. Mid-forties, navy pencil skirt, white blouse, the whole corporate uniform. Her briefcase was dangling from her fingertips like she'd forgotten it existed. Her mouth was open. On the display in front of her, a slow rotating spiral was framing a photo of this little gold chain — the kind that clips to your nipples and dangles between your tits — and the price tag below it said something insane like ON SALE: ONLY 33% ABOVE MSRP! FINANCING AVAILABLE AT 55% APR! I actually stopped and watched. The woman nodded, slowly, like she was agreeing with a conversation only she could hear. Then she licked her lips and walked right into the store.

I lingered — just long enough, I told myself, to confirm what I was seeing — and watched through the glass as she unbuttoned her blouse at the counter. Right there. In the middle of the day. Pulled out these cute little pale tits and let the smirking male clerk "size" her for the chain, which is to say he spent about three full minutes handling her nipples. She was beaming. He was taking his time. I shook my head and kept walking.

"Jesus Christ," I muttered. "At least I know better." My tits swayed under the blouse. A teenage boy walked face-first into a potted palm trying to look at me. I didn't even register it, which — in retrospect — is maybe not the sign of a totally lucid woman, but at the time I was feeling very superior and very in control and very awake, and that's what counts, right?

My first stop was RunFast Athletics, because my old cross-trainers had finally eaten themselves on Tuesday's jog and I had a run with Manda on Thursday morning that I was not going to be late for. In, out. Pegasus Lite, size nine, same shoe I've worn for twelve years. I don't deviate from the plan. The plan is my armor.

I pushed through the door and the air inside the store smelled… nice. Really nice, actually. Floral and musky, like a yoga studio after a really intense class. The overhead speakers were playing generic pop — nothing weird — and I pulled one earbud out because I needed to be able to talk to a salesperson. Fine. That's fine. I can handle thirty seconds of ambient audio.

The saleswoman who came out from behind the counter stopped me in my tracks. I'm going to be honest with you: my first thought was what in the actual fuck. She was maybe twenty-two, petite, Latina, tan, and she was dressed in — I have to call it what it was — a costume. Her yoga pants were so thin and so skin-colored that from four feet away she looked naked below the waist. You could see the dimples at the small of her back. You could see the little dip between her ass cheeks. You could see her pussy lips, through the gusset, like a watermark. And on top she had a "sports bra" of the same material — basically a sheer mesh shelf holding her little B-cups up for display, dark nipples pointing straight through. Her name tag said RAQUEL — ASK ME ABOUT JIGGLE TECH!

I actually recoiled. I felt a real, hot flash of old-school indignation rise up in my chest — the kind of feminist fury that got me through my twenties — and I opened my mouth to lay into her, because no young woman should be required to dress like that for work, and I was going to find her manager and tear him a new one—

"Welcome to RunFast!" she chirped, bouncing on her toes. Her little tits shivered. "Can I help you find anything today?"

"I—" I started. "Honey. Is that really the uniform? That is — that is obscene. You shouldn't have to—"

"Oh, this isn't the uniform!" She giggled. "This is just what I like to wear! It's so comfortable, and it really helps my form during squats. Would you like to try a pair? We're doing buy three, pay for five, and the third one's half off the already-doubled price!"

I opened my mouth to tell her that wasn't a deal, that wasn't how numbers worked, that she sounded like she was reading off a cue card someone had held up behind my head — and that was when the monitor behind her flickered. Just for a second. A fraction of a second. I almost didn't catch it. A spiral. A woman jogging in that exact outfit, her tits bouncing in slow motion. A caption that said something — I couldn't read it, it was too fast — but my eyes caught it anyway, and I blinked, and I lost my train of thought entirely.

"I — I just need running shoes," I heard myself say. My mouth felt a little dry. "Size nine. The Pegasus Lite."

"Of course!" she said. "I'll grab those. But — and I'm only saying this because I care about your performance, ma'am — are you running in the right base layer? Because if you're bouncing around unsupported" — her eyes flicked, pointedly, down to my chest — "you can actually hurt your Cooper's ligaments. I'd love to show you our Jiggle-Tech line."

Here's the thing. Here is the thing I want you to understand. Three weeks ago, I would have laughed. Three weeks ago, I would have told Raquel — nicely, because I'm a nice person — to pound sand. But something about the way she said it, this nice girl who really did seem to care about my ligaments, and the music overhead had this weird warm quality to it, and the air was so nice, and when I thought about it, honestly, Manda had mentioned the Cooper's ligaments thing to me once, hadn't she? Or maybe I'd read it somewhere. The science was real. The science was there. And my nipples were, I noticed suddenly, so engorged under my blouse that they ached. The mall was so warm today.

"I… I guess I could see them," I said.

Raquel's smile got about three sizes wider. "Perfect. Fitting room's right over here. Follow me."

I followed. I remember thinking her ass was mesmerizing, which — in retrospect — should have been a yellow flag, because I'm bi but I'm picky, and I don't usually just stand there staring at twenty-two-year-olds in a store. But god, her ass. Two tight brown handfuls flexing with every step. I shook my head to clear it. Focus, Lauren. Shoes. You are here for shoes.

Inside the fitting room she loaded me up. Pegasus Lites in a nine. Three pairs of Jiggle-Tech pants in different colors — nude, black, and this sort of sheer rose that was really pretty actually. A three-pack of the matching sports bras. "And this one, with the keyhole over the nipples, is actually our best-seller — it lets your skin breathe."

I looked at it. "The keyhole," I said, slowly, "is just a hole. Over the nipple."

"Right!" she said. "It breathes!"

I stood there holding this garment with a literal hole cut out where my literal nipple would go and I thought: this is absurd. I thought: no. I thought: put it down and walk out, Lauren. But I also thought: …huh. And then I thought: well, it's not like I'd wear it in public. It's for running. Nobody sees you when you run. It's athletic. And by the time I'd finished thinking all that, I was already pulling off my blouse.

I undressed in front of the big mirror and — this is the part I keep going back to, the part I keep turning over in my head afterwards, trying to make sense of — I did not quite recognize the woman looking back at me. My tits were flushed. My nipples were huge, swollen into these fat raspberry points, like I'd just gotten out of a long cold shower. When I peeled off my slacks my panties came with them a little, and the gusset — there was a wet spot. A quarter-sized dark circle. I blinked at it. Weird, I thought. Must be sweat. The mall is really warm. I didn't even register how weird that was. I didn't even question it. I just stepped out of my panties.

I pulled on the nude Jiggle-Tech pants and I actually gasped out loud, because they were so thin I could see every detail of my pussy mound through them. My auburn trim was visible through the fabric like it was a tinted window. The crease of my lips showed through like a pencil line. I turned around, because — fine, I'll admit it — I wanted to see what my ass looked like. And god, my ass looked good. Big and soft and round and bisected by this whisper-thin seam right down the middle. I bounced a little on my toes, experimentally. My ass cheeks jiggled against each other like Jell-O. I thought: huh. These are kind of flattering, actually.

I pulled on the keyhole bra. My tits spilled into the mesh cups and my nipples popped right through the little oval cutouts, standing straight out like two cherries on a sundae. I bounced on my toes again. My tits jiggled. My nipples drew little figure-eights in the air. There was a voice in the back of my head that I only noticed because of the rhythm of it, a soft whispered chant somewhere underneath the music — good girls jiggle, good girls spend, good girls jiggle, good girls spend — and I thought that was a weird song, and then I didn't think about it anymore.

"How do we look?" Raquel sang through the curtain.

"I — I actually look pretty good," I said, and my voice sounded distant and strange to me, like I was hearing it through a wall. "It's — surprisingly flattering."

"RIGHT?" She yanked the curtain open and clapped her hands and squealed. "Oh my GOD, ma'am, your TITS. You have to get all three. You have to."

"I was only going to get shoes," I said weakly. I was already reaching for my purse. My hand was moving before my brain was. I remember thinking why am I reaching for my purse and I remember my hand not caring.

"Shoes AND the Jiggle-Tech bundle. It's basically free. The system's probably going to flag you for the Loyalty Slut discount — oh, there it goes. Seventeen percent off! Although your financing offer is thirty-four percent APR, I hope that's okay."

"That's a lot," I murmured.

"It's actually below market!" she chirped.

Below market. Okay. Below market is good. Below market means I'm getting a deal, right? That's what below market means. I swiped my card. The reader chimed. one thousand four hundred sixty-two dollars. I remember the number because it felt — fine? It felt fine? I remember thinking I just got a steal. I signed. Raquel folded my new things into a bright pink bag with a cartoon ass printed on the side, which I did not question and sent me on my way with a kiss blown off her fingertips.

I did not — and here is where my memory of the morning gets, if I'm being brutally honest, a little slippery — I did not put my old clothes back on. I left the fitting room in the nude Jiggle-Tech pants and the keyhole bra, with just the sheer blouse thrown over the top. My slacks and panties were in the bottom of the pink bag. I remember thinking I'll change at home. I remember thinking it'll be more comfortable to walk (jiggle) around in this. I remember feeling, actually, Lighter. Floaty. Jiggley. Pleased with myself.

I did not, until much later, think about the fact that my bare ass was walking through a public mall with just a layer of body paint over it, or that my nipples were poking two obscene little points through my blouse visible from fifty feet away. I didn't notice. I didn't care. I felt great. I'd gotten a steal!

My blood sugar was crashing by the time I hit the food court — I hadn't eaten since a yogurt at seven — so I detoured for a pretzel. The food court was its own kind of weird right now, and I was trying very hard to look at my phone and not at the people around me, but you know how it is. You see things.

A pack of teenage girls — four of them, maybe seventeen each — brushed past me giggling. I did a slow double-take. One wore a transparent plastic micro-skirt with a glittery thong under it and a tube top that stopped above her nipples, which were covered by two little pasties shaped like dollar signs. Another had on a mesh bodysuit with absolutely nothing underneath it, every detail of her tiny breasts and her neat little pussy on full display, her ass completely bare in the back. The third was wearing what might generously be called a "dress" made of three bandanas tied together. The fourth had a schoolgirl skirt so short that the underside of her bare ass winked out from under it with every step, and a crop top that said LOOK AT MY TITS in rhinestones over her braless chest.

"Oh my GOD," one of them was squealing, "I love your fit, you look so stylish!"

"Thanks babe, I know, I just feel like, I look so like the hoe I am, you know?"

"Totally. Me too. Hoe summer forever."

"Hoe winter. Hoe fall. Hoe every season."

They dissolved into giggles and sashayed off toward Hot Topic. I stared after them. Something itched at the back of my brain. Those girls were seventeen. Seventeen-year-olds should not be — should not be — I lost the thread. Something about the way they moved. Something about how stylish that one girl really did look. I shook my head. I kept walking.

I passed a long row of tables where a dozen or so women — teenagers to grandmothers — were eating their lunch directly off their own breasts. I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. A young mother had her shirt pulled up and her bra pulled down and she was slurping ramen noodles out of her own cleavage. An older woman was spreading hummus onto her saggy, elongated nipples and dipping pita into them. Two college girls had piled frozen yogurt on each other's chests and were taking turns licking it off. A banner over the whole scene read SAVE THE PLANET — EAT OFF YOUR TITS — ONE LESS PLATE IS ONE MORE TREE.

I stared. I remember distinctly — and this is the part that embarrasses me most, in retrospect — I remember thinking, out loud: that's actually kind of smart, though. For the environment.

I bought a pretzel. I did not take a plate. I ate it off the shelf of my left tit. Salt stuck to my nipple. I licked it off absently. I felt virtuous. I was saving a tree!

I was halfway across the food court when I heard the shouting. A woman — mid-forties, leopard-print catsuit cut down to her navel, dark lipstick — was holding up this tiny scrap of leather and chain in front of a girl who was clearly her teenage daughter. Sixteen, maybe. Jeans, a baggy college hoodie, hair in a messy ponytail. Arms crossed. Face bright red.

"MOM. I am NOT wearing that. I am NOT wearing a BONDAGE HARNESS to Chloe's birthday party. What is WRONG with you?"

"Baby, it's cute, it'll bring out your figure—"

"IT'S A HARNESS. WITH NIPPLE CLAMPS ATTACHED. YOU WANT ME TO WEAR NIPPLE CLAMPS TO A BIRTHDAY PARTY."

"They're decorative! The clamps have little bells on them! The bells are cute!"

"MOM. MOM. Listen to me. Listen to me. You are brainwashed. You have been brainwashed by the stupid ads! Please, please snap out of it. Look at what you're wearing. Look at what you tried to make me wear! You're not acting like yourself. Please, Mom. Please."

I slowed down. Something cold slid down my spine. I watched the mother blink at her daughter in genuine confusion. "Honey, I don't know what you're talking about. I feel wonderful. I feel better than I've felt in years. Marriage is better, work is better—"

"MOM—"

"Is there a problem here, ladies?" A warm, syrupy male voice slid in from the side. A salesman had materialized from a nearby storefront called Little Minx — mid-thirties, slicked-back hair, open shirt, wolf smile. He had a tablet in his hand and he angled it, oh-so-casually, toward the daughter. On the screen was a slowly rotating spiral.

I watched it happen. I watched the daughter's eyes catch the spiral. I watched her arms uncross. I watched her mouth part.

"I… I would?" she said softly, in response to something I hadn't heard him say.

"Oh, absolutely. You have such a slutty little body under that hoodie, I can tell. It would be a crime to hide it."

"You're right," she murmured, and pulled her hoodie off over her head. "I have a slutty body. It's a crime to hide it. Mom, you were right. I'm sorry I was such a brat."

"That's okay, baby," her mother cooed, and the salesman's hand had slid up under the mother's catsuit and was openly groping her bare tit while she smiled dreamily into the middle distance. "Mommy forgives you. Let's go shopping."

The three of them walked off toward Little Minx together, the salesman with a hand on each of their asses. I watched them go. I chewed the last bite of my pretzel. And here — here is the part I keep going back to — I remember thinking, with real warmth: good for them. Nice to see a mother and daughter bonding.

The daughter had been trying to warn her mother. The daughter had been trying to say something true. And something in my head had taken that whole sentence, flipped it upside down, and filed it away under heartwarming. I didn't even notice I'd done it.

The wine shop — Vintages & Vices — was tucked into a quieter corner of the mall, and I pushed through the door with a sense of relief, like I'd been swimming against a current and finally reached the shallows. Mom's birthday was Sunday. Rachel was a woman of refined taste. A nice Burgundy. Maybe a Barolo. Something elegant. I had a plan. I had a plan.

The salesman behind the counter looked up as the bell jingled. Fifties, salt-and-pepper hair, expensive suit, the easy predatory smile of a man who had very recently discovered that his job had become a lot more interesting. His eyes went directly to my tits — the bouncing, keyhole-framed, blouse-outlined centerpiece of my current ensemble — and I felt a little flush of pleasure. GREGORY, his name tag said. SOMMELIER & LIFESTYLE CONSULTANT. Lifestyle Consultant. I remember thinking: that's a weird thing for a wine salesman to be. I did not pursue the thought.

"Welcome to Vintages and Vices," he said, voice like warm oil. "What can I do for you, gorgeous?"

"I need a bottle of wine," I said, crisp as I could manage. "For my mother's birthday. She's turning sixty-three. She has refined taste. I was thinking a Burgundy — maybe a Gevrey-Chambertin — or a nice Barolo from a good year, if you have one."

"Mm." He came around the counter. He had a tablet in his hand. He tapped it, and I saw — I saw — the spiral start to rotate on its screen. I even thought, briefly: oh, that's one of those. I even thought: don't look. And then I looked. Not for long. Just a second. He held it, oh-so-casually, right at my eye level as he talked. "Tell me about your mother. What's she like? Help me pair the perfect gift."

"Well, she's — she's elegant, she's refined, she's — she's—" My tongue got slow in my mouth. My eyes kept drifting back to the spiral. "She's — she's a — she's a — "

"Yes?" Gregory purred.

"She's a — a big slut, probably," I heard myself say.

I blinked. Had I said that? My mother was a lady. My mother wore pearls. My mother ran a book club. My mother was a — well. My mother had been married four times. My mother had enormous tits. My mother wore red lipstick at breakfast. My mother had once broken a Mercedes convertible by having too enthusiastic sex on the hood with the car salesman. Doesn't she?

"She's a big slut," I repeated, more firmly, as if I were just now realizing it. "A huge slut. Honestly, Gregory, she's probably a bigger slut than I am."

"Mmm, that's quite a claim," Gregory said, letting his eyes travel down my body, lingering on my see-through top, my painted-on pants, my bag with the cartoon ass on it. "Because, forgive me for saying so, but you look like quite a slut yourself."

"Thank you," I said automatically, and I felt a hot pleased wave roll through me at the compliment. My thighs squeezed together.

"Well then, we need to go bigger than wine. A woman of such — appetites — deserves something memorable. Follow me."

I followed. He pulled aside a curtain in the back of the store that I somehow had not noticed on the way in, and led me into a dim little room full of glass cases, and it took me — I'm embarrassed to say — a full ten seconds to understand what I was looking at.

Dildos. Enormous veiny lifelike silicone dildos. Vibrators the size of flashlights. Rows and rows of butt plugs arranged by circumference like a jeweler's display. A whole wall of leather harnesses. I made some small dazed sound.

"These are — Gregory, these aren't—"

"We've expanded our offerings," he said smoothly. "Vintages and vices. For the discerning MILF. Now — for a woman of your mother's stature — I think we need something substantial." He opened a case and lifted out a cock the size of my forearm. Two-toned silicone, flesh pink shading to deep purple at the glans, bulbous suction base, thick veined shaft easily ten inches long and three around. He held it up like a trophy. "Three-ninety-nine. Financing at only twenty-nine percent APR for forty-eight months. A real investment piece."

"That's — that's enormous," I breathed. My mouth was wet. My mind was slow. There was a little bright coil of alarm somewhere far away in my skull, trying to get my attention, trying to say Lauren, that is not wine, that is not a Burgundy, that is not what you came here for — but it was so far away. And Gregory was so close. And his voice was so warm.

"Isn't it? Now, before you buy — I always insist that my customers test the merchandise. Quality control. Can't send a defective product home to a woman's own mother, can we? That would be rude."

"T-test?"

"Mm-hm. Let's just slip these pants off, shall we?"

He crouched. I watched, from somewhere high above my own body, as his hands hooked into the waistband of my Jiggle-Tech pants and peeled them smoothly down my thighs. My bare pussy came free — flushed, glistening, absolutely dripping. I hadn't realized how wet I was. There was a thin thread of my own slick clinging from my pussy lips to the gusset as he pulled the pants away, and he admired it for a second before setting them aside.

"Oh, you've been enjoying your shopping trip, haven't you?" he murmured.

"Yes," I whispered. It was the truest thing I'd said all day.

He stood, cradling that huge silicone cock in one hand and placing the other at the small of my back, guiding me gently backwards until my bare ass pressed against the padded edge of a display counter. "Lean back. Spread those pretty legs. Let's see if this will do your mother justice."

I leaned back. I spread my legs. My tits spilled out of the keyhole bra as I lifted my arms behind me for balance, and my nipples pointed at the ceiling like little pink antennae. Gregory stepped between my thighs and ran the fat purple head of the dildo up and down the length of my slit, parting my auburn curls, dragging through my slick, catching once against my clit. I shuddered so hard my teeth clicked.

"Oh, you're ready, aren't you?" he chuckled.

"I'm ready," I breathed.

And then, with a slow inexorable pressure, he fed that enormous silicone cock into my hungry pussy. Inch after inch after inch. My cunt stretched impossibly around it. My inner walls grasped and clenched and welcomed it. I gasped. My eyes rolled. My head fell back. I felt the fake balls thump against my ass. Ten inches. Buried to the hilt in the middle of a wine shop by a man I had met four minutes ago, and I did not have — I honestly did not have — the capacity to object.

"How does that feel?" he asked, in the same tone he might use to describe a Pinot's finish.

"S-so full," I whined. "So full, oh fuck—"

He began to work it in and out of me, slow and strong, twisting it on each stroke so I could feel every molded vein. I came on the second stroke. I came again on the fifth. I came a third time — a shuddering gushing climax that soaked the display counter beneath me and left my thighs trembling and useless — somewhere around the twentieth. He did not stop. He fucked me through all three, and through the next one, until I was a limp drooling slack-jawed thing with my tits bouncing in the keyhole bra and my mascara running down my cheeks and my voice reduced to a thin, broken whine.

"I think your mother will enjoy this very much," he said finally, sliding the dildo out of me with a wet obscene shluck. My pussy gaped open behind it. I could feel it gaping. I could feel the mall air on the inside of my own cunt.

"Y-yes," I slurred. "She'll love it."

"Shall I ring you up?"

"Please."

He bagged it — still gleaming with my juices, he didn't bother to wipe it, and some faraway part of me noted that and filed it away as a kindness, as a gift, like he was letting me keep a souvenir of myself — into a tasteful black gift bag with a ribbon. Four hundred and twenty-three dollars with tax. Financing at 29% APR. I swiped my card. The reader chimed. He handed me the bag and gave my bare ass a familiar proprietary pat as I turned to leave, and I felt a small warm pulse of pride at having been claimed, and I floated out of the store on wobbly legs with my pants still in a bag rather than on my body.

I did not notice. I felt great.

The parking lot was warm and bright and I stood by my car for a long moment with three bags in my hands, letting the afternoon sun soak into my skin through the sheer blouse. My hair was tousled. My lipstick was smeared. My nipples still ached. My inner thighs were sticky and tacky and the mall air was slowly drying them. My credit card was few hundred dollars lighter than it had been two hours ago, financed at interest rates that would've made a loan shark whistle. My pants were in a bag, not on my body. My mother's birthday present was a ten-inch dildo with a suction cup base. My new "running outfit" was body paint with holes cut out for my nipples. I had eaten lunch directly off my own tit in public. I had agreed, out loud, that my mother and I were both huge sluts.

And I stood there in the parking lot, and I clicked my key fob, and I thought — I remember this so clearly — I thought:

Thank God I'm smart enough not to fall for any of that hypnosis bullshit. Those poor, poor women. I'll have to tell the girls about this at book club.

I slid into the driver's seat. My bare, wet ass squeaked on the leather. I didn't notice. I started the engine. The radio burbled to life — a woman's voice, honey-thick: "…and remember, good girls jiggle, good girls spend, good girls spread…"

I hummed along without hearing the words and I backed out of my space, a smart sophisticated in-control woman who had successfully navigated the mall without, in her own very firm opinion, falling for a single trick.

I could not wait to come back next weekend.