Shop Talk: Two Decades at the Heart and Soul of Denver Retail

The first thing I noticed was the sound of the oxygen tank. It was kind of a breathy sound, but as if the whisper was underwater. It sounded like drowning.

She would come into my store once a week, sometimes twice — an attractive woman with bright brown eyes that seemed to laugh when she blinked. I looked forward to seeing Jessica because she was snarky and hysterical. And she said “Fuck” a lot, too.

She was looking at some goat’s milk lotion at my store one day, and told me that she had drawers full of lotion at home but all of them had caused her to develop a rash on her skin — “even the fucking hypoallergenic kind.” It was then that she very matter-of-factly told me she had stage four…