Sean stopped at the convenience store on his way to work. He went over to one of the shelves and examined all of the products there. He picked out one and headed to the counter. Holding up the can of deodorant, Sean asked, "What have you heard about this new super high heat resistant underarm antiperspirant and deodorant for men made by stink blasters?"
"I heard that stuff doesn't work," Sam said.
"Really?" Sean asked.
"That's right," Sam said.
Sean looked at the can and said, "It even has odor fighting micro-capsules that will last all day."
"Won't last a minute," Sam said.
Sean looked down at the can finding Sam's assessment a little hard to believe. The can even had a picture of a thermometer reading 120 degrees on it. He said, "I was hoping that it would keep me from smelling too bad after working in the kitchen all day at the Dairy King. The stuff I used yesterday quit after an hour."
"I only know of one thing that can stand up to the heat of the Dairy King," Sam said.
"What?"
Sam leaned over the counter and, in a whisper, said, "The mildly scented women's deodorant. It is stronger than anything made for a man."
"You're kidding. Why would the women's stuff be stronger?" Sean asked.
Same looked at him as if he was stupid and said, "No woman would ever be caught dead smelling from BO."
"True," Sean said finding it was a statement that was hard to argue against.
"Get the cheap women's stuff. It is the best that we have," Sam said.
"I'll smell like a girl," Sean said.
"That's better than smelling like a skunk," Sam said.
"That's true," Sean said. He wondered how he was going to explain that purchase to his mother.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon and business was slow. Sean was outside cleaning up the front of the store while Mr. Catchums was busy cleaning the kitchen. To tell the truth, Mr. Catchums appreciated the help cleaning the place more than the help cooking. Trying to run the Dairy King single-handedly had required him to cut some corners. One of those corners was giving the place the kind of thorough cleaning that he preferred. That's not to say that the place was dirty; it wasn't. It just didn't have the kind of shine to it that it once had. An unkind person might say that it looked like a dump. A kind person would describe it as shabby.
Seeing that no one was around, Sean commanded the small cloth to clean up the counter that customers used when picking up their orders. He ordered another cloth to wipe down the outsides of the plastic squeeze bottles that held the condiments. He ordered a third cloth to wash the glass of the window. While the cloths moved to and fro, Sean sprayed the appropriate cleanser on the surfaces. Releasing a squirt of ammonia based glass cleaner on the window, he said, "I'm just working my fingers to the bone."
It wasn't long before the windows were spotless, the counter shined, and the condiment containers looked new. Sean couldn't remember ever seeing the windows that clean. The little metal edge of the counter no longer looked a dull gray, but reflected the sunlight. The squeeze bottles looked like they had been polished. He didn't realize that plastic could actually look that nice.
Sean leaned in through the window and spotted a little scrub brush. Waiting for when Mr. Catchums had his back turned, he ordered the brush to come to his hand. He then commanded the brush to clean the front wall of the store. There were lots of little stains and scuff marks left by customers picking up their orders and he thought it would be a good idea to remove them. He stepped back to watch the brush work and noticed that it was removing a lot of the paint that covered the wooden exterior. Muttering, he said, "Oops, that's not good."
He ordered the brush to stop. By that time, the brush had removed almost a square foot of the paint. He ran a hand over the surface of the wall and chips of paint flaked loose. He stuck his head through the service window and shouted, "Mr. Catchums, could you come outside for a moment?"
"Give me a minute," Mr. Catchums shouted back.
Sean stepped back and examined the exterior of the Dairy King. All of the paint was flaking and looked like it would fall off any minute. Even with his gift of magic, Sean was sure that scraping off all of that paint so that it could be repainted would be a major effort. He hoped that Mr. Catchums had enough money to hire a painter or two or ten.
Mr. Catchums came out of the kitchen carrying two cokes. He handed one to Sean. Hot, he went over to one of the picnic tables in the shade. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he asked, "What do you want?"
"I went to clean the area around the service window and discovered that the paint is peeling off the wooden exterior," Sean said pointing to the spot where he had removed the paint. He took a sip of his drink. The ice cold drink was much appreciated.
Mr. Catchums looked at the bare wood that Sean's cleaning had exposed. There was a nice square of bare wood surrounded by flaking paint. The clean patch made the rest of the store look pretty bad. He was not surprised to see that his building was in such disrepair. This day had been coming for a long time and he had hoped to postpone it for another year. He stared at the service shelf and windows for a full three minutes without moving a muscle. Sean was beginning to get worried when Mr. Catchums said, "You did a real good job with the bathrooms yesterday."
"Thanks," Sean said. He had sacrificed two sponges and two bottles of detergent to that little job.
"The counters look great and I can actually see into the store through the windows," Mr. Catchums said.
"Thank you sir," Sean said figuring that his accomplishments probably took the edge off the mess he had created.
"That patch of bare wood makes the rest of the building look pretty shabby," Mr. Catchums said after squatting down to study the cleaned patch of the exterior.
"I kind of noticed that," Sean said.
"I guess I'm going to have to take care of this somehow," Mr. Catchums said.
Nodding his head in agreement, Sean said, "There are only three things we can do."
"Three things? I only can think of one thing," Mr. Catchums said somewhat amused at the idea that Sean was going to advise him on what to do about the building.
"The easiest solution would be to ignore it. What do you think of that solution?"
"It is the easiest and cheapest thing I could do," Mr. Catchums said. "The problem is that it will still look bad and doesn't fix a thing."
Sean said, "I agree. The second thing we could do is hide it by putting some sort of sign over it."
"What would the sign say?" Mr. Catchums asked.
Sean answered, "We could have the sign say something like 'Read this sign and ignore the rest of the building.' That way, everyone will be busy trying to figure out what the sign means and no one will notice the peeling paint."
"That's brilliant," Mr. Catchums said. "Do you really think it will work?"
Sean shrugged his shoulders and said, "Not really."
"I tend to agree with you," Mr. Catchums said. Wondering how much it was going to cost him, he said, "There's only one real solution to the problem."
"You paint the whole building," Sean said nodding his head.
"No, you paint the whole building," Mr. Catchums said looking over at Sean with an amused grin.
"Even though our solutions are identically worded, I like my idea better," Sean said.
Mr. Catchums laughed and said, "You're just like your mother."
"My father mentioned to me that you used to date my mother," Sean said.
"Has he ever gotten over the fact that I wooed Cindy away from him with promises of chocolates and flowers?" Mr. Catchums asked.
"He tells it a little differently," Sean said. This was the first that he heard about his father dating Cindy. He wondered if his mother knew about that.
"I'm sure he does," Mr. Catchums said. He was quiet for a moment while taking a quick trip down memory lane. He patted the side of the building affectionately and said, "Why don't you head over to the hardware shop and get a scraper to start removing the old paint? I guess you'll need a drop cloth, too."
"It is just my second day on the job and I'm already the head of maintenance and chief purchasing agent. At this rate, I'll end up a senior executive by the end of the week," Sean said.
Mr. Catchums snorted and said, "You'll need some money. Take a twenty from the till before you head over to the hardware store."
"Yes, Mr. Catchums," Sean said.
An hour later, Sean was busy scraping the paint off the building. Actually, he was wearing a glove that was holding the scraper while it was busy scraping the paint off the building. He couldn't command the scraper, so the glove was the best that he could come up with. Of course, he had to wear the glove so that no one would notice that the glove was doing all of the work. Despite all of his plans, his arm was getting tired from being pulled all over the place by the glove.
He was about to take a break when he noticed what he thought was a hummingbird next to him. He looked over at it and realized it wasn't a hummingbird. It was a naked miniature person with wings. Judging by the bare breasts that jutted disproportionally from her chest, the gender of his visitor was obviously female. Curious, he said, "Hello."
The little creature flying beside him replied, "Hello."
"Who and what are you?" Sean asked although he suspected that she was a fairy.
"Who and what are you?" she asked.
"I'm Sean and I'm a human," Sean answered fully expecting the little creature to echo his answer.
"I'm Daisy and I'm a fairy."
"It is nice to meet you Daisy," Sean said wondering what one discussed with a fairy.
"It is nice to meet you Sean," Daisy replied politely. She flew closer to the wall for a minute and then zipped back a bit. She asked, "What are you doing?"
"I'm scraping the old paint off the wall so that I can put new paint on it," Sean answered.
"That doesn't sound like fun," Daisy said.
"It isn't," Sean replied. He leaned forward a little to see if she was anatomically correct. It was hard to tell from the angle.
Seeing that Sean was looking at her, Daisy said, "You're just like Merlin. He was always trying to check out the goodies."
"Sorry."
"That's okay, but it won't do you any good," Daisy said turning to face him. She spread her legs and held out her arms so that he could see everything.
"Why?" Sean asked surprised at her willingness to display her anatomical features.
Daisy said, "If you haven't noticed there's a little difference in our sizes. Your battering ram is bigger than I am. At least, I hope so. Actually I don't care how big or small it is, but I'm sure that any women you bed will care."
"It is," Sean said realizing what she meant.
"So you can't play with me," Daisy said.
"I don't have to play with you to appreciate your beauty," Sean said.
"Do you think I'm pretty?" Daisy asked running a hand through her yellowish blond hair. Fairies had a tendency to be more than a little vain about their appearance.
"Very," Sean said.
"That's sweet," Daisy said. There was a little popping sound next to her and another fairy appeared. This one was a red head. Daisy shouted, "Rose!"
"Daisy!"
Sean watched the pair of fairies fly off. Shaking his head, he said, "Those fairies sure are cute little things."
Sean wondered how long it would be before other people started noticing that there were magical creatures roaming around the area. He figured that a lot of people would be seeing them over the next few months, but no one would talk about it out of fear of joining Max at the hospital. He worked another twenty minutes before taking a break. By that time, his arm felt like spaghetti.
He was sitting at one of the tables drinking a soda when Suzie sat down next to him. She asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm working," Sean answered.
Suzie looked at him and said, "It doesn't look like you're working."
"Actually, I'm taking a break. I've scraped all of the old paint from almost this entire side of the building today," Sean said pointing over to where he had been working.
"Wow, you got a lot done," Suzie said looking at the bare wood.
Sean leaned over and whispered, "I'd be done by now if I could really use my magic. I'd get a dozen scrapers going all at the same time. That old paint would be flying off the building."
"I didn't think about that," Suzie said. She said, "I've known you your entire life and I didn't know that you knew how to paint a house. Do you know what you are doing?"
"I have no clue, but I'm not going to let that stop me," Sean said shrugging his shoulders, "It seems like the magic knows what to do."
"That's good," Suzie said. She fanned herself and said, "It is a real scorcher today. It must be murder working in the sun like that."
"It is not that bad," Sean said. It took him a few seconds to realize that she was hot. He said, "Let me go get you something to drink."
"Oh, that would be nice," Suzie said with a smile.
Sean went into the kitchen and staggered back at the heat. He said, "Mr. Catchums, it is really hot in here."
"It is a might bit warm," Mr. Catchums replied. He took another sip of his drink and noticed that all of the ice had melted. He wished for the thousandth time that business would pick up enough to purchase an air conditioner. One large enough to cool the kitchen cost a fortune and he just didn't have the money to do it.
"I'm going to get a little something for my girlfriend to drink," Sean said.
"Who's your girlfriend?"
Sean answered, "Suzie Emery."
"Ah, her mother was one of the three prettiest girls in high school. My Cindy was the prettiest, your mother was the smartest, and her mother was the kindest. I remember she was always taking in stray cats. I imagine Suzie is a pretty young lady with a kind heart," Mr. Catchums said.
"She's the prettiest girl in school," Sean said.
"I'm sure she is. Go ahead and get a drink for her," Mr. Catchums said.
Sean went over to the soda fountain and fixed a diet drink for Suzie. He carried it out the backdoor and over to the table. Handing it to her, he said, "It is diet."
"Are you suggesting that I need to lose weight?" Suzie asked.
Sean shook his head and stuttered, "No. I know that you prefer diet sodas."
"Good save," Suzie said with a laugh. She nudged him in the side and said, "I was kidding."
"Oh," Sean said.
Suzie took a drink of her soda. Leaning back, she said, "My dad was kind of surprised when he heard that you were working here. He said that your dad and Mr. Catchums used to fight about everything."
"Dad was saying the same thing," Sean said.
"My Dad said that Mr. Catchums stole Cindy away from your father. Of course, my mother said that your father stole your mother from Mr. Catchums," Suzie said.
"I heard both versions of the story from Dad and Mr. Catchums. Each of them claimed to be the one doing the stealing," Sean said, "I wonder who stole who from whom."
Suzie asked, "Is that a correct sentence?"
"I don't know. I always get confused with that who and whom business. At least you know what I meant," Sean answered.
"So are you going to be able to make it over to swim later?" Suzie asked.
"I don't know," Sean answered.
Deciding that using her feminine wiles would convince him to spend a little more time with her, Suzie said, "I'm planning on wearing my special bathing suit."
"Hold on, let me check with Mr. Catchums," Sean said coming to a very quick decision.
Sean went into the Dairy King and said, "Mr. Catchums. I was just thinking that I could probably get more work done on scraping the outside of the building if I work when it is cooler."
"Maybe," Mr. Catchums said glancing out the service window. He could see Suzie sitting there drinking her soda. She reminded him of her mother. He grinned and asked, "The little lady out there wouldn't have something to do with you wanting to leave a little early, would she?"
"Let's see. She promised a swim in a cold swimming pool while she's wearing a skimpy bathing suit. That's to be contrasted with the fun of scraping paint under a hot baking sun," Sean answered while scratching his head as if trying to solve a difficult algebra problem. He said, "Nope, she didn't have a thing to do with me wanting to leave early."
Mr. Catchums laughed. Expecting that Sean had only done a little of the side he had been working on, he said, "Well, let me see how much you've done out there."
"Okay," Sean said.
Mr. Catchums went outside and looked at the work that Sean had done. He was shocked to find almost the entire side had been finished. He figured that it would take an entire day to get that much done. Sean had only been out there for about two hours. He said, "You got a lot done."
"I would have gotten more done, but there are a lot of people around and it is hot," Sean said. He figured that in the morning there would be no one around and he'd be able to get two or three scrapers working.
Mr. Catchums walked up to the wall and examined the work carefully. He was amazed at how good of a job Sean had done. It looked like a real professional job. He said, "I'll bring a ladder tomorrow so that you can reach the high spots."
"Great. Just two days on the job and I'm climbing the corporate ladder," Sean said.
"Well, after you clean up here, get out of here and take that little swim in the pool with your lady friend," Mr. Catchums said.
"Right. Clean up the area first and then leave," Sean said.
"You'll come in the morning?" Mr. Catchums asked.
"Bright and early," Sean said knowing that his mother wouldn't let him sleep late no matter how much he begged.
"I'll bring the ladder over at about nine," Mr. Catchums said.
"I'll be here," Sean said.
Sean ran over to Suzie and said, "I can go after I clean up the area. It will take me about fifteen minutes."
Suzie smiled at him and said, "I'm so disappointed. Now I have to wear that special bathing suit."
Sean had very clear memories of that special bathing suit. He tried to look sad as he said, "I share your disappointment."
"I'll go home and change into my swimming suit. Delaying my disappointment any longer isn't going to help any," Suzie said standing up.
"I'll clean up here and be over at your house as quick as I can," Sean said.
She leaned forward and said, "Maybe I should give you a kiss to remind you not to take too long."
"Remind away," Sean said leaning forward to accept a kiss from her.
She paused and sniffed him. Frowning, she said, "You smell like women's deodorant."
"Remind away," Sean said puckering his lips for a kiss. He was hoping to avoid that discussion.
"I'm serious. You smell like women's deodorant," Suzie said stepping back and looking at him.
Wanting to change the subject, Sean said, "I saw two fairies today."
Suzie said, "They are called gays."
"They weren't gays; they were real fairies like in fairy tales," Sean said. Seeing her sidewise glance at him, he added, "They were only about four inches tall. When I saw the first one, her wings were moving so fast that I thought she was a hummingbird."
"She?"
"They were both females," Sean said.
"Were they wearing fairy gowns?" Suzie asked remembering the pictures of fairies from the books she had read when she was a little girl. She had always wanted a gown that looked like the ones pictured in those books.
"Uh, no," Sean answered wondering how the conversation had gotten around to what they were wearing so quickly.
"Oh," Suzie said looking over at him. He looked a little guilty about something. She asked, "Were they naked?"
"Uh, yes," Sean answered guessing what her next question would be.
"You wouldn't have noticed if she was anatomically correct, would you?"
"She was definitely anatomically correct," Sean said wishing even as the words were flowing from his mouth that he could take them back. He couldn't believe that he had answered that question despite knowing that it was coming.
"How would you know that?" Suzie asked.
Sean came to a sudden epiphany about men, women, and deodorants. The reason women's deodorants didn't fail was because women didn't get asked questions like that. Wiping his brow, he said, "She showed me."
"Was there any chicken choking going on?" Suzie asked. There was a definite trace of frost in her voice.
"No," Sean said thinking that they sure could use her voice in the kitchen at the Dairy King. One or two comments in that voice would cool the kitchen down by ten degrees.
Suzie shook her head and asked, "What is it with all of these magical female creatures showing you their anatomy?"
Sean was about to answer, "Just lucky," but his less than stellar and very shy commonsense finally asserted itself. He answered, "I don't know."