The Carpet Store

She was a carpet salesman and I rushed into her store. I was late but without knowing why I was late. I was late or I was rushing. I was rushing because I was late. There were lots of samples, square ones, all cut to the same size of about 18" x 18". All the samples hung onto moveable displays standing 8 or 9 feet tall and 3 or 4 feet wide, wider at its base where it stood atop black dolly wheels. Each brown display, covered in fake woodgrain which you could see peeled at the edges if you stood close enough and observed for longer than a few seconds also measured about a foot depth-wise, but this measurement really didn't matter as each large station was positioned near a wall with it being necessary, therefore, to only hang samples on one side. It would have been more efficient to use both sides so that the displays could be positioned all throughout the large showroom set off from the small adjacent frontroom with the small glass display below the beige cash register. With each set of samples hugging the wall, the space left in between was too great. The small, fuzzy samples were no match for the emptiness created over the expanse of the hard, brown floor. And in my rush I am pulled to a section which holds tan, orange, and brown carpeting. As I look again I notice I am with other shoppers and that all the samples are tan, orange, and brown. Indeed, the way the light curves through the windows and blends with the light inside, the size, shape, and color of the flooring, the displays, the samples, and the general mood I feel in this place, the general mood this place exudes... everything within the store, indeed, everything without it, is entirely tan, orange, and brown. I speak with a clerk, wanting to get my words out but the words never come. Then she is selling to me. She asks me what I want and when I want it. I am in a carpet store, her carpet store, but I have no words for her, no answers. I want to tell her that I feel nervous, that I am here but that I need to go. That if she understood, she would really just say it was okay to leave. No worries. But I make myself too anxious and it seems I know nothing of carpeting. I don't understand these samples. I don't understand how to shop or the reasons for shopping. I terribly want this to end when she asks again what it is I need and all I really am doing is deciding between tan, orange, and brown, thinking all along that I don't even need a carpet, that I haven't even a place for it.