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"Oh, thank god."

The words are said with a genuine gratitude that seems to gush forth almost to the surprise even of the speaker, who looks a bit like she just stepped out of a board meeting, which seems implausible at two in the morning. She'd pushed open the door in a hurry, fairly trotting along on stocking feet with two very high heels dangling from her fingers in defiance of the NO SHIRT NO SHOES policy--apparently having been treading the streets of Destiny City unshod, risky as such an exercise was--her eyes searching for someone with the look of an employee and landing on Todd with the aforementioned prayer of thankfulness.

"You've got a bathroom, right?"

"Thanks," she said, skedaddling - really, there was no other word for her particular gait - past the jerky. A minute or two passed with no sound of a door opening, until she re-emerged - walking, it must be said, in a somewhat strained fashion - to address him again, although her attention was fixed first on the mascots with vague interest, and then on the TV screen with an emotion that could perhaps be described as "aghast."

"Ah - I'm so sorry," she said with a forced smile, in a cajoling tone as if she somehow thought that Todd had some sort of power that could be commanded if she was skilled enough to succeed at his quest. "It's occupied. And I'll be honest, I'm hearing things going on in there - well. Don't you have a staff restroom or something?" A woman in a suit with expensive shoes not realizing that employees have to use the customer restroom in a convenience store, at least, did track.

If he had hoped for more damsel-in-distress levels of disappointment, he had been mistaken. Elaine had the air of a CEO who was looking at a line graph with a very severe downwards trajectory on it and needed someone to get things back together.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath, and put her fingertips together under her chin. "I have had it up to here," she said, in a voice too calm to be anything but teetering on the brink of a breakdown, "with the Destiny City bullshit, and I cannot deal with a - a sparkling raccoon or a penguin or something watching me piss. Do I look like the kind of person who pisses in alleys?" she added indignantly. "At least not for money?"

She looked at him in disbelief, which was only temporarily interrupted by the caterwauling drawing her eyes back to the television. She considered whether this was more Destiny City Bullshit, or only normal 7-11 Bullshit, and despaired of an answer.

She returned her eyes to Todd with an expression of aggression or possibly open hostility, and with a dramatic flourish hiked up the hem of her pencil skirt and began vigorously scratching at the bare flesh above her stocking.

"Weird!" she said. "I still need to piss! I move to the big city thinking I'm going to be living in a late-night paradise but no! They roll up the sidewalks after nightfall for everyone but possums with some type of regional rabies and mascots with strong opinions about breweries! And guys who--" she looked at him, apparently trying to muster up an insult, but then provided possibly the most cutting one of all with a withering silence instead.

She paused. Perhaps assessing him for an attempted jab had twinged her conscience. "That was beneath me," she said with sudden dignity. "I know this is not your fault. I really, really need to piss. You know that saying, full of piss and vinegar? I am not going to piss on your floor," she finished, as if extending him an olive branch. "They probably pay you five bucks an hour and that is not enough for that." It was decidedly unclear whether she meant that five bucks wasn't worth the effort of cleaning up after her, or if she was deciding that Todd was not financially worthy to see her urinate on the floor. All told, behaving as if the mascots were the weird ones was maybe a little lacking in self-awareness.

She opened her mouth to reply, only for her head to snap up like a hopeful dog's at the sound of a toilet flushing. A moment of intense suspense followed, only to be broken by a voice calling out: "Sorry! Courtesy flush!" in a somewhat distressed tone and causing his customer to visibly deflate.

She turned to him with eyes full of desperation. "Sweetheart. Darling," she said, faintly pleading, once again treating Todd as if he was vested with powers to assist her, "what kind of rabies are we talking? I may have to take you up on - For the love of God," she interrupted herself, as the song, having blessedly briefly ended, was abruptly swapped for another that was somehow, implausibly, even more horrifying. She did laugh, but it was a bit funereal.

"Oh, with the mace," she said, understanding dawning on her after a beat during which her expression wavered between disbelief and a strange kind of flattery at his apparent faith in her aim. She took up the mace, dancing from one foot to another in rising urgency and giving him a shoo-shoo motion to move faster, talking as they go. "I'm not worried about perverts. If perverts show up be sure and get their Venmo," she said, dire, doing a little dance behind him. She added with sudden generosity: "You're a real hero."

She seemed to take it on faith that he would have the decency to turn around and also not abandon his post, seizing up a handful of napkins from the hot dog bar and squeezing past him, tottering far enough away to pop a squat.

"This is the most undignified thing I have done in a week," she said without answering him, lifting her voice over, uh, noises. "And if you knew what else I've done tonight you'd realize what a hell of a statement that is."

Having washed her hands with a vigorous thoroughness, Elaine cast her eyes about, and then scooped up an empty Slurpee cup. She pulled a tube of red lipstick from her pocket and scribbled on it, blowing it dry as she filed into line behind the mascots.

She turned it towards him as she arrived at the till, the red letters spelling "TIPS" with the i dotted with an expert little heart. And then she procured a clip of money neatly folded - more cash than one normally carried nowadays - and peeled off a twenty, depositing it into the cup. "Because I feel sorry for you dealing with whatever is going on in there," she said, pointing a thumb at the bathroom. "And because I was a jerk to you earlier. Expecting people not to piss on the floor ought to be a bare minimum," she added, with a whiff of disappointment, although that is probably for humanity in general and not for Todd specifically. Another bit of noise erupted from the bathroom - in a way it at least is more bearable than the music - and she grimaced, stuffing an extra ten in.