She was there to pick up a book she’d had on hold for the last week: 4Play – Meals to Excite. She made her way down the ramp in the bookshop and circumnavigated the tree, a previous business’s folly, to arrive at the counter. She had reserved the book by phone, and wanted to have a quick look before she bought it.
‘No,’ she muttered, leafing through it at the counter ‘that’s not what I was after.’
She looked the assistant straight in the eye and explained that she had a rather thoughtless and younger partner who just did not know how to please her.
‘Where…’
She hit the counter with a pointed forefinger, and then adjusted the top of her leopard skin tights, where were the books that would assist her with that…?
A little taken aback, the assistant lead her over to the Health and Family department, where on the bottom shelf and in lurid colours the SEX section was located.
She leaned over, on her cane, and peered downwards. ‘Which one? Which one will tell him…? You’ll have to pass them up, I can’t read from here and my knee…’ She gestured to the brace on her leg.
Kneeling on the carpet, the assistant started taking the books off the shelf, handing them up to her one by one.
‘This one is just photos… Oh, this one is just positions (that’s quite curious…) The Psychology of Sex… This… oh no that’s more about gender….’
She dismissed many straight out, but took a good look at the final two.
‘I like this one,’ she hefted the larger tome, hardback ‘but I might take this’ in the other hand a lighter paperback.
To the counter they returned where she flipped through the paperback, showing the assistant the diagrams and explaining what her partner really needed to do to her…
Gestures accompanying the words…
‘You see what he needs to do is really get right up there you know…? For me…’
She let out a gentle laugh at the assistant’s constant blushing and seeing that the book was secured in a brown paper bag she patted the hardcover abandoned on the countertop.
‘Senior’s discount?’ she asked.
Sex Bible For The Over 60’s was left as she tottered out of the bookshop with Hot Licks and Sex Tips clutched firmly under her arm.
Her octogenarian partner none the wiser of what would be in his Christmas stocking this year.
