Trouble is my business

We inched into the city along a choked highway where cars moved slower than the dead-cert I'd bet on the day before.
From the passenger seat, the woman looked across at me. She was short, neat and quick, like a tap to the back of the head.
"Park down there," she snapped, pointing to a closed-off road by the riverside.
"I can't do that, it's a one way road," I replied. "We'll have to drive round."
"You better not be stalling, Mo."
Her small, wrinkled hand reached inside her bag. I sneaked a peek out of the corner of my eye as we waited at the lights. I was right, the bag was loaded. If she tickled me with that one I'd have a lump on my noggin the size of a politician's expense-account.
"Listen," I said. "I know these streets. Believe me, some of them you wouldn't want to walk down, even with your granny."
She didn't buy it, though, "Funny, wise guy. But this is one old lady who can take care of herself. Now find a parking slot before I introduce you to the sharp end of my walking-pole."
The Market is a covered district where all kinds of people buy all kinds of merchandise. It isn't a pretty place, a bit fishy if you ask me, and a lot of faggots, too, but she knew who she wanted.
"Where's the Stick-man?" she asked quietly, looking right at a guy selling hot rolls.
"For why?" he growled, and I could tell by looking at her that he'd soon wish he hadn't.
The little lady looked up at him and smiled, slowly, " I want, to buy, a stick. Do you sell, sticks?"
He'd tried to brush her off, but she had him pat.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean no harm, lady," the sap blurted out. "He's over there, on a stall behind ... the Book-man."
Her precise, "Thankyou" hit him like a glass of ice-water and left him shivering over his little pastries.
He looked at me.
"You with her?"
I nodded.
"Jeez," he said.
"What kind you want darlin'," the stick-man asked. " I got canes, poles, swaggers, wood, metal, plastic, plain, fancy ... "
"I want folding," she said.
He looked her up and down; it didn't take long.
"You sure, doll?" he said. "Folding sticks ain't cheap."
"My last one was. The guy I bought it from was glad to sell it to me ... without VAT."
I watched the words hang in the air between them, like spiders on silk.
"Try this one."
He reached across and pulled down a small package from the side-wall. He flipped it open, snapped his wrist and, with three sharp well-oiled clicks, a full-length stick was in his hand.
It was quicker than any stick-up I'd ever seen, but the she wasn't impressed.
"It looks heavy," she said.
"Lady, this is the latest, lightest, four-section fold-up on the market. Anything else is just tubing."
He caught her eye.
"Listen, rube, I can see you're no tenderfoot. OK. I'll throw in a tooled leather wrist-loop."
She looked a little interested. He leered. She pulled his lead.
"I want it sawn-off."
The Stick-man paled and eyed the passing crowds nervously. He swallowed like a big scared frog and gulped out,
"Jeez, lady, don't tell the world, you'll get my licence revoked. Sawn-off? You know what that means?"
"Yeah, you might make a sale," she shot back, quicker than a hen off a nest.
"OK, OK, sawn-off it is, but keep it down."
"Deal. I'll pay cash," she said. "Don't trust electronic card machines. They never work anyhow."
I followed her as she trotted out of the market. It was raining and the pavements were wet and we had a long walk in front of us.
"Danged if he hasn't cut it too long," she said,
I winced in anticipation, but she smiled.
"Hey, never mind, Mo. I think you've earned a cup of coffee. I'll buy."
I nodded my head. I knew it was not the time to say a word.

No country for old (wo)men

Time for an entry to the blog, after another very long pause.

It is very inconvenient when you lose a bespoke walking-stick. Even if losing things is something that you are very good at. And so, when I heard that my wife's mother (call her Dorothy) had lost hers, and being a dutiful son-in-law, I offered to take her to buy a replacement. She had, after all, gone to the trouble of finding out that her local supplier of such things no longer stocked "her brand", but that a similar establishment in a different, though nearby, part of the city, did.
I duly picked up Dorothy on the appointed morning, and drove her to Canton. Don't be alarmed, it was not a long journey, for that is merely the name of the suburb where the stick-purveyor was to be found. Thinking about it for a moment, though, and with the undoubted benefit of hind-sight, the whole coming experience was to resemble being press-ganged or Shanghaied.
I parked the car in the spacious and usefully sign-posted "Customer's car park" a little nervously. There was another car already standing in a space and, if its driver was, in fact, a customer, then, morally at least, I would be double-parked.
There was a back entrance to the shop from the car park. It was a small, battered metal door with one of those fish-eye peepholes that you encounter in a certain sort of hotel. There was a bell-push. A sign told us to "Push for assistance". I pushed. I am an aficionado of the kind of film where pushing a bell like that triggers a long period in which one hears, ever more clearly, a limping tread and a dragging foot that herald the approach of a hooded and hump-backed Igor. And so I stepped well back. Dorothy, who does not watch films, has no such prejudices, and so she held her ground close to the door. This was a little unfortunate because it opened outwards and so, for a moment, she disappeared from view and I was left to face the denizen of the shop alone. Hooded and hunch-backed only metaphorically, it was a female, and she eyed me, an apparently healthy middle-aged man, with suspicion. I hastily reached my wife's mother out from behind the door and stood behind her, beaming as conciliatory a smile as I could muster, and pushed her forward.
"She wants a stick." I said.
"Indeed." the female snorted. "This way."
And she melted into the darkness of the shop.
It smelled a little damp inside, and the carpeted floor felt unaccountably "sticky" as we walked along a short corridor into the showroom. Here, in a large, low-ceilinged chamber, all manner of "living-aids" were ranged about, displayed on walls and shelves and on the dubious floor itself.
Some I recognised: wheelchairs, powered and otherwise; walking-frames; commodes; and bathroom aids. Others were strange to me, and I kept close to Dorothy for fear of them. On one shelf, soft bundles, faintly phosphorescent, and reminiscent of fungoid growths, bore the inscription "Foam Ring Cushions". Nearby, "Luxury Stocking Aids" cunningly twisted into a chthonic tower, of unfamiliar and nauseous geometry, cast an eldritch shadow in the wan light of the shop's fluorescent fittings.
The sticks, such as they were, cowered in a corner, far from the light, and the denizen, smiling at the prospect of a conquest, waved her hand expansively,
"Many sticks. Choose."
My wife's mother, as I've said, is not party to the protocols of the horror and mystery genres and, unaffected by that which she could not, therefore, perceive, dealt the "assistant" a blow that was as effective as a crucifix in a crypt,
"Which are the cheapest ones?" she asked.
There followed an extended cosmic battle between the forces of light and reason and the armies of chaos. I merely watched, trembling, as the "Igor" fawned over the qualities of the most expensively crafted sticks on the stand.
"Look," she said, "how they fold. See, see the pretty flowers on the stock."
"Too heavy," Dorothy snapped back.
"Feel the handle, it is orthopaedic."
With a delight that was not quite healthy, the denizen stroked a horrid, weirdly carved lump atop one of the sticks.
"I want a simple handle," my wife's mother countered, "and, besides, they're all too tall."
The denizen winced, and cast a sideways glance towards the till.
"Can you cut them to size? The man who sold me my last one could."
The Igor ket out a strangled,
"N-no."
Defeat.
The denizen betrayed it in every gesture. One shoulder raised higher than the other, an eye twitching, she acknowledged the greater skill of her adversary and led us to the door regretfully.
As we approached it, I heard a malicious giggle and then,
"I know a man who sells sticks. In the market, in the CENTRE of the town. He might help."
Snatching meagre comfort from abject defeat, the female leered in my direction and, as she heard Drothy ask, rhetorically, "Will you be able to park near the market?", she smiled and closed the door upon us.