Etude: An umbrella, a feather duster, and a book, Part 3/5

A continuation. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

She was talking, telling him about the different optical character recognition software packages they carried. He only half heard her. He was looking earnestly where she pointed, but his mind was filled with her. They were standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder in a cramped, non-prime corner of the store. He could smell her—what? Shampoo? He wondered. Fruity. She wore a silver charm bracelet on her left hand, the charms jingling as she gestured at each of the boxes. Then she picked up one package and pointed to some information printed in a small font on the back. He took that opportunity to lean closer, nodding as if contemplating all of the options listed there.  

She looked at him, waiting for him to say something or take the package from her hand.  He smelled nice. A mild cologne or aftershave. Spicy, but not overwhelming. The stubble of the day was rough on his cheeks. She wondered if he ever shaved at lunchtime. She decided that she’d hate to have to shave often if she had heavy beard growth.

“I can give you some time to look them over? You let me know if you have any questions.” She bobbed the box toward him a bit, and this time he took it from her, nodding and smiling. 

“Thank you. I will,” he said. 

They exchanged smiles and she walked a few steps away, pretending to straighten the shelves so that she looked busy. She didn’t go too far. Of course, it only took about ten long strides for her to cross the entire store, so unless she left, she wouldn’t be far.  

He pretended to read the packages. He’d read them all many times before. He really did need an effective OCR program. It would save him loads of work manually transcribing documents. He imagined placing each page on the flatbed scanner, clicking two buttons and having a fully manipulable text file on his computer. Nothing was quite so simple though. OCR was still so quirky. Scanned documents still had to be proofread meticulously to sort out errors between easily misconstrued letters. 

Right now though, the software was just a handy pretense to try to talk with her. He wasn’t exactly the video-game type and he was trying to project an air of sophistication to her. Hence the umbrella in the doorway, the trench coat draped over his arm. He’d have bought the software already if someone reliable had actually used any of the programs, but none of the college kids who worked here had any need of OCR apparently. He had no reason to think she was any different. He was wondering how to segue from studying the boxes to talking with her again. He had practiced a few possible lines at home, but all of them sounded absurd to him here in the store, under the glare of the fluorescent lights, with the beeping and random music in the background.

“If you’re having trouble deciding,” she interrupted his thoughts. He didn’t notice her return to the corner. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” She laughed a bit, in sympathy, he thought.  

“What? Oh, that’s ok. I guess I was just—uh,” he laughs. “It’s ok. What were you saying?”

“Um, if you’re having trouble deciding, I can tell you off-the-record that this one is almost useless unless the print is clear and large. This one here works fairly well, but still gives a pretty significant number of misreads. This one here is my favorite. It seems the most accurate and to a limited extent can ‘learn’ the quirks of a document and thus recognize its own errors sometimes.”

He blinked at her. “You’ve, you’ve used these?”

More tomorrow…