In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

CANAL STREET
There was another customer in the store haggling with the kid
when Penny walked in. She just wanted some CD's and other tech
paraphernalia and this was the cheapest place around.
"I give you four hundred!" The guy held up four stubby fingers.
The kid at the counter laughed and scratched his head. He was
probably younger than she was but ran the shop. The electronic
bazaar's booths were individually run by three generations of a family,
none of whom spoke English except for him.
"Nah, nah, it go for eight hun'erd in specialty shop, this classic,
very rare! I canno' go for four, waddaya, cuhrazy? Fi' fifty, finahh
price!"
The big bully chewed his gum and paced back and forth along
the counter tapping the VCD case on the glass. On the cover was a
faded photo of a naked guy in the throws of ecstasy with a fuzzy cut n'
paste orgy background of more naked guys, all looking more or less like
cover boy. Luckily just the top half of him showed, and the title,
Gemini Blu, obstructed anything offensive at the bottom. Penny
moved away from this sleaze ball and his homo art porn.
"Be careful wi'dat, mistah. Sorry, miss. These?"
He pulled down the package from the wall. "Dis latest one, just
come in from Sony, very best ear bud, wi' megabass, ten to twenty
thousand frequency response, see? One thirty fi'nine-nine, special!"
Flagging his meaty paw over Penny's head, the big oaf
bellowed, "Four fifty, I give you four fifty!"
She moved aside to examine the slick little package. Both sides
were covered with Japanese hieroglyphs, with the articulated ear buds
nestled in the center of the blister pack. There was no English
anywhere, but on the back, over a cute cartoon character modeling the
things, were two diagram windows, one precise and clinical, with a
cross section of the ear canal snugly filled with a bud, and another,
precise and mechanical, showing the plugs and sockets for which they
were designated.
In the street these days it seemed everyone had wires trailing
out their ears, nodding to their own private frequency, or conversing
with phantom friends. Penny had no friends, phantom or real but
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