Dirk only grabs his quick picks from this department store when he knows John will be on the clock; everything else he buys comes from specialty stores, anyway.

It's not that he expects John to be on register; in fact, it's specifically because he's not on register that he can waste as much of John's time as he wants. John needs to be pressured, Dirk has learned, if you want him to do anything. He's like Jake: you can't be nice to him.

All that aside, his levels of paranoid vigilance are only barely focused on the people in front of him, and if Solus weren't the most ridiculously distinctively overdressed figure possible, he wouldn't have clocked him nearly so fast.

Distracted by Solus pretty much the instant he steps in the door, though, it takes Dirk a moment to recognise it's John behind the register.

.....

Huh.