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“What size you think they take?” Ray asked.
I looked up, blinking, to see that it was my turn. “Does it matter? We have plenty.”
“Well, yeah. But they’re all different sizes,” he said, piling boxes on the counter. “And what if the—what if they need something like extra small? You got enough extra smalls?”
“They’re not extra small,” I told him irritably. “They don’t need extra smalls.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know.”
“They’re seven feet tall!”
“Don’t matter,” he argued. “Plenty of big guys got a Tiny Tim. Sometimes I think they all do. I mean, why else spend all that time in the gym? Why get all those muscles? If you got it where it counts, the ladies know. You don’t gotta advertise.”
The mocha-skinned clerk, who could easily have made two of Ray, snorted.
“Well, there’s no way to know,” I told him, “so we’re just going to have to chance it.”
“You could call her and ask.”
“Call—” I stopped. “You mean Claire?”
“Well, it was her idea.”
I had a sudden flash of Claire’s face if I called to ask what size condom her fiancé took. It was kind of breathtaking.
“You want me to ring these up or not?” the cashier asked.
“If they don’t fit, can we bring them back?”
“No refunds on condoms.”
“Just call her,” Ray said.
“I am not calling Claire and asking…I’m not calling Claire.”
“Okay by me. I mean, I don’t care. But you get ’em too small and they pop off, and you get ’em too big and they slide off, and either way, it’s pointy-eared babies all ar—”
“Ray!”
“I mean, I guess they’d go over pretty well at a Star Trek convention, but the rest of the time—”
“All right! Stop it! All right!”
“It’s not just Claire who’s a little tense,” he said, as I dug around for a cell phone I didn’t have, and then commandeered his. I didn’t waste time trying to figure out how to phrase this because some things are better just winged.
“If you’re not buying anything, you gotta get out of line,” the cashier told me.
“There’s nobody else in the store.”
“Don’t matter—there’s rules. Somebody could come in, and I’m the only one on.”
“Start ringing things up, then. This won’t take long.”
“Which ones?”
“I don’t care.” I pushed some at her. “These.”
“These?” She looked dubious.
