Intriguing paradox of ages. She is described indirectly as old, but the salesman asks for her mother without missing a beat. At first I thought he was being smarmy, but then there is the girl. Lots of possible explanations, so nice tease here.

I loved the hook of this story and the use of the word inevitably is the real wow word in terms of what the hell is going on, why should it be ‘inevitably’. This word also can undercut the possibility of the salesman just using his charm school technique on the old woman. Given that inevitably is such a big word in this piece I would really look hard at the other adverbs to see if they are essential and earn their keep in the piece…for instance she shuffled slowly…its hard to shuffle quickly (although having said that my granny could manage it somehow) and the good strong verb shuffle does the job for you without qualifying it, plus you’ve used it earlier. If you use a powerful great verb I think the adverbs can then be used to add impact when you need them to, as in the word inevitably, otherwise it gets lost in a whole crowd of ‘ly’ words. All this may be personal taste of course.
This really is a great beginning and I would want to read on if this was a short story or a novel

Why thank you, Writearound

In common, I think, with a lot of writers, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of time it takes me to write something and the degree of adverb-arrhoea thus manifested. This is an example of something occurring to me on the spur of the moment, and then writing it down in the narrow sliver of time between putting the baby to bed and falling unconscious myself; not my best work, certainly, but refreshingly spontaneous nevertheless (for me, at least).

Huh. A lot of questions here. And yet, I don’t feel a driving need to have any of them answered. This piece may be short but it stands alone. On the other hand, the ideas behind this piece could inspire a great deal of future work. Very cool.