[center][h2]Undercover Shopper[/h2][/center]

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/lECs9U6.jpg[/img]
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The crew hadn’t let the grass grow beneath their feet.  Since Captain Strand had given the order to pick up bedding for forty smuggled souls, a respectable stack of those goods  was now sitting in the galley lounge.  Edina went through the heap,  organizing the disparate items into individual stacks.  [i]One pillow each,[/i] she ticked off the mental checklist, [i]One blanket…[/i]

Someone had brought in a shopping bag full of towels, a riot of mismatched colors which she distributed among the refugee kits.  She  concluded the job by laying out the kits in a neat row, then arranging the rest into organized stacks for easy counting.

“Toiletries,” she said aloud of the single greatest deficiency.  Combs.  Toothbrushes.  Little “travel size” bottles of shampoo and toothpaste.  A few menstrual pads, a handful of razors, and lots of little bars of soap.  “No bulk shoppin’,” Captain ordered plain as day…but to pick up these little items in ones and twos could eat up half the day, whereas an easily believable white lie told to a bored shop clerk would provide the cover for a perfectly forgettable transaction.  

As she made her way toward the stairs and the city beyond, Edina concocted her little white lie, a contented smile rising to her face.

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“Whatterya doin’?” the clerk asked.  “Settin’ up an army?”   He lifted the first toothbrush from a pile the woman had landed before him.

“There are forty of those,” Edina offered.  “In fact, forty of everything.”  She gave the man a warm, natural smile.  “Young Adventurers.  Our pack is headed to wilderness camp for a week.”

“The Y. A.’s” he said as he rang in [b]Toothbrush - Qty 40[/b].  “I didn’t know that was still a thing.”

“Don’t tell that to my girls,” she quipped.  “They’re seriously worked up about it.”

The cashier’s eye met hers.  “Forgetful, too,” he added, “if you’re pickin’ up all their kit like this.”

“It’s self preservation,” she grinned.  “I don’t know if you remember what girls are like in their early teens?  Amazing what they’ll forget when they pack.”  She punctuated the remark by adding two packages of [b]Ultrapad - Max Absorbency[/b]  to the stack.  “I really don’t want a crisis when we’re forty miles out in the woods,” she smirked.

“Yeah…yeah!” his brows lifted sympathetically as the last items were scanned.   “Tell you what.  You’ve bought a lot of stuff here today, ma’am.  Seeing as it’s for such a good cause, let me give you the manager’s discount…thirty percent off.”

Edina’s eyes grew wide with her smile.  “Really?” she exclaimed.  “Thank you!  Thank you so much!”

The clerk shrugged it off.  “Least I could do for the Y.A.’s.”  He smiled as he handed her two shopping bags.  “With a rambunctious pack of kids like that, I need to leave you some coin for the liquor store down the street.”

“That’s true!” Edina laughed at the little joke.  “You’ve been  more than kind,” she hefted the bags and turned for the door.  “Thank you!”

The surrounding neighborhood reminded her of her own childhood.  Here resided the working class, those whose labors in the dirty underbelly permitted the upper castes to live in gleaming towers or the opulent communities on the city’s eastern side.  Once a flourishing middle class urban scene, the now weathered three and four story walkups seemed to be sagging, their brick edifices slumping over the dingy street as if about to fall.  She was only guessing, of course, but Edina conjured that for the folk who lived among this declining world there were only two more stops along the line, the blackout zone…or a penal colony.

If there was an upside to this place, it was the reduced number of image captures monitoring the streets.  she ducked into an alley, taking shelter behind a large bin.  Once hidden, Edina reached inside her sweater to remove a folded canvas tote bag.  She hurriedly transferred all the toiletries.  The two store bags, printed with loud titles proclaiming the store’s name and locale, landed in the bin as she set off down the alley.   The local metro rail station was two blocks over.  She’d make it back to the boat in time to help with the first wave of refugees.