Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (16 page)

“Damn. She IS good luck.” Hawaiian man pointed to the quietest team member, a shy balding man wearing adventure pants with a million pockets. “Take your shoes off, Fred. The championship is at stake!” He moved his finger from Fred to me, and though he pointed at my head he looked straight at my tube top. “And someone get this lady a beer!”

Between turns, I showed the men my brochures, spritzed each of them with Wild Country cologne, each time at the lane meant another beauty procedure. They covered their hands in Silicon Glove hand cream. They lifted their shirts and applied Mesmerize roll-on deodorant. They bowled like pros, too, one strike after another. Maybe it was the Avon, maybe it was the beer, I didn’t know and they didn’t care.

“Hell, I’ll wear lipstick if our scores keep this up!” Bob stood, prepared to take his turn, look at me expectantly, spoke to my breasts. “So. What’s up this time?”

“Uh, we went through all my demo products. I have some ‘Ask Me About Skin-So-Soft stickers.’ How about if I stick one on your shirt?” Bob shrugged his shoulders, stuck his chest out. I tried to avoid pressing the sticker onto any stray chest hairs but in Bob’s case this was difficult at best. He grabbed his ball and twirled. I looked at my sheet of stickers. Hmmmmmm. I removed another one, stuck it on one of the alley’s own balls resting in a tidy row behind me.

“Excuse me? Spare Me Team?” A beefy man with a Surf Bowl manager’s shirt and cargo shorts strode toward our lane. “No excess people allowed in the lane during a tournament. This woman must leave.” He spat out the word “woman” like I had cooties.

“No way, come on. She’s our mascot. Besides the Pin Fall Wizards have a woman at their lane.” Hawaiian shirt man opened his arms wide to indicate a group decision. The manager stuck his hands on his hips.

“The Pin Fall Wizards have an infant in one of those - whatchacallit - baby carrier things. That doesn’t count!” He pointed at me then pointed at the door. “Out.”

I started gathering my leftover materials, started packing demo products and my stickers in my pack. One of the stickers stuck halfway out from the sheet so I removed it and plopped it on another alley ball. The manager’s nose turned from red to violet in anger.

“And stop putting stickers on my balls!!!”

Bob lifted his beer. “You wish.”

The men exploded in laughter, the manager grabbed my arm, man-handled me out the door. I put my hand on his back for a moment as if to steady myself under his assault, slapping a sticker on his shirt in the process. I giggled uncontrollably all the way to my car.

Fat Ass Evidence

I stuffed my utility kilt with samples, a couple of pens, my order book and a calculator. I figured this would free up my backpack for more brochures. I stuffed it so much that it flared out at my hips like a gigantic Celtic tutu. Monday, Monday. I gave silent thanks to the universe for providing two weeks of City Art Camp that started that morning.
How the hell am I going to make it through the rest of this summer
, I wondered? Despite my best entrepreneurial efforts, the craziness of the past week netted me a whopping two hundred bucks.
Who can live on two hundred bucks a week?

I opened a new tube of lip gloss. It smelled like coconut, like the sand of summer, like the roll-on lip gloss I used as a teenager, a shimmering powder pink color that left my lips moist and sticky. Those were the days when my mind was filled with mischief and boys, the summer I got kicked out of Girl Scouts for setting up a side business outside my tent during camping week.

My best friend lined up boys from the Boy Scout camp across the stream, and we charged them a dollar each for a French kiss. We both lacquered up with our roll-on gloss and tousled our feathered hair. The coolness of the night air, the thought that we might get caught, the way Brian the Eagle Scout’s lips and tongue felt against mine as he pressed his body close, was sheer heaven. I would have paid him the dollar.

Between the two of us we made fifty-three dollars before old Mrs. Knight rounded the corner on the way to the outhouse, her mouth falling open, cigarette dropping, at the sight of my friend hunched over to kiss a short scout and me stuffing another dollar in my official green and white shirt. I don’t want to remember the rest - the interrogation, the call to my parents, the long silent ride home in my dad’s station wagon.
Did my daughter raise teenaged cane? Did she kiss strange boys by the side of a campground river?

I delivered the signed and notarized documents to Fed Ex. I kissed the thin parcel goodbye as I handed it to the clerk. Her nose was triple pierced. A tiny bit of snot clung to one silver hoop and I tried not to stare. She didn’t ask me about the red in my eyes, the lump in my throat. My boys ran circles in the courtyard. I could see flailing arms and legs appear in the windows. Jimmi Hendrix played in the Fed Ex office making my boys’ motions look like synchronized air swimming. I walked them to the City Parks Recreation Center and headed for the lagoon.

I threw small stones against the wood slat fences along the street, kept chucking at board after board, kept telling myself that if I hit
this
knot I would have something lucky happen, if I hit
this
scar I would win some money.
All my life’s a gamble
, I thought,
and I don’t hit many knots
. The stones scattered along the sidewalk behind me like petrified crumbs.

Ruth met me at the door in a pair of chic Juicy Couture sweats and a sky blue silk t-shirt. She has a smoker’s body, all chicken skin and angles, dark circles under eyes so brown and lined they look like walnut shells with gritty black pupils. She must be seventy. Or eighty. I met her six months ago, at the Senior Citizen Center. She sat near the knitting circle, fresh copy of Vogue across her lap, and she waved me down, demanded a sample of every product I carried, and gave me her name and number.

“Birdie! Come in! Come in! I want to talk to you about that cellular cream.” She waved me inside, pointed to the green stuffed chair and I plopped my backpack on the beige shag carpet and took a seat. Ruth lifted the bowl of granola and tilted it toward me.

“Granola, hon?”

“Uh, no thanks.”I bent down to open my pack and pulled out the latest brochure. “Now, what cream? The Cellu-Sculpt?”

Ruth grabbed a handful of granola and started chomping. She spoke as she chewed, and stray bits of berries and oats fell out of her mouth and onto the carpet.

“I can’t stop eating this granola. Ever since I quit smoking. It’s healthy for you. Go on, have some.” She waved the bowl at me again, and I put both hands out like a traffic cop. No. “This granola might be getting me in trouble. I want that cream for my ass. You said it works, right?”

Ass? What ass?
I watched Ruth shovel another handful of granola in her mouth and wondered where all those calories went. Her skin hung from stringy arms, and her fashion sweatpants must be a size two.
What seventy-year-old woman eats granola and wears Juicy Couture and uses the word Ass?
I thought of my dead Gramma, how she swore like sailors on steroids, and realized these old women were cut from the same bolt of uneasy cloth. Tough. Magnetic.

“I want two bottles of it. And I need you to help me. You always talk about that unconditional Avon guarantee, right? I want my money back if this cream doesn’t work.”

Ruth walked to her kitchen, just out of my sight, and I rolled my eyes five times in a row to get the urge out of my system.
Fat ass? She means no ass
, I thought.
How can that Cellu-Sculpt remove an inch of ass from no ass? It’s one of those mysteries of the universe
. I rolled my eyes again. Ruth returned to the living room, a small canvas case in one hand.

“Birdie, I want you to take a picture of my ass.” Ruth handed me the case and grabbed another handful of granola. I opened the case and kept repeating my saleswoman’s mantra. The customer is always right. The customer is always right. I turned the camera on, opened the shutter, watched Ruth turn her velvet butt toward my face, and before I had the chance to laughingly say “Smile” she dropped trou.

Click.

Noreen lives in the subdivision overlooking the lagoon, the street into which I once saw the celebrity-filled Mercedes veer. I thought about them as I walked, about rich people filling afternoons with strange obsessions. I wondered if celebrities ever worried about meeting basic bills, about paying electric and water and filling their cupboards with spaghetti and dried beans. I wondered if they spent time sewing patches on their boys’ ripped jeans, if they ever reached hands between couch cushions to find milk money. Probably not. I counted the houses as I passed. One, two, three, four. Five. Stop.

Noreen’s home looked like every other structure on the street - square, stucco, white, middle-class ordinary, surrounded by a small moat of pristine green sod accented with two skinny desert palms. I didn’t notice anything else about her front yard, however, because my eyes found something surprising parked in her driveway - a stately black Mercedes, still radiating heat from use.

A Siamese cat peeked from behind the thick brocade drapes in Noreen’s picture window. He rubbed against the glass, then jumped away. I wasn’t sure which way to go. Two side paths framed the house, each leading to a latched iron gate. I chose the left side, the one closest to the garage. I’m not sure why. My stomach lurched a bit, tried to send me a “Be Careful There Might Be Celebrities Lurking” message, so I moved slowly, quietly, didn’t slap the marble paving stones with my flip flops.

I tried to steal glances in the two front windows as I passed through the side gate, but thick curtains and blinds covered each one. I kept my ears open, too, but I only heard the ocean wind. The side of the house stood close to a stockade fence marking the property border. A black spider missing one leg crawled along the stucco ridges. There wasn’t much room to move. There wasn’t a side door, either. I must have taken the wrong side path, I reasoned, and debated whether to turn around and try again or follow the spider toward the back yard. I chose the spider.

One small window accented the rear corner of the house, set high into the wall, just above my head. I stood on tiptoes and peered inside, into a dark laundry room. The door to the rest of the house was ajar, and beyond the washer and dryer and two baskets of dirty clothes I could see soft yellow light, the left side of a crystal chandelier, a mahogany bookcase filled with leather-bound books, and the edge of a dining room table. Shadows lurched across the wall, broke the rainbow patterns cast by the chandelier, and I briefly saw one lone slacks-clad foot and black patent leather shoe dart into view. The window was slightly raised, and I inhaled as deep as I could but only smelled fabric-softening dryer sheets. I dropped from my toes to my heels and waited a moment. The spider continued scaling the stucco and slipped inside the window.
Good luck, spider
, I whispered.
I wish you could return and tell me what’s inside. Good luck.

I walked to the backyard, turned right, and knocked on the sliding patio doors. Nothing unusual here, I thought. Typical So Cal backyard with Plumeria clusters and Birds of Paradise, a swatch of clean sod, a small Koi pond with one fat orange carp blowing bubbles, a view of the beach and lagoon only hampered by the cylindrical rise of the power plant, an expensive set of redwood-accented outdoor furniture. Nothing strange or personal, no garden gnomes or steel sculptures of modern art. No one answered my knock so I hit the door again, this time a bit harder, louder. A minute later the door slid open and a Latina I didn’t recognize motioned me inside a small living space filled with overstuffed chairs and a leather loveseat. A few standard beach-side prints graced the walls - a sketch of my downtown, a watercolor of the beach at sunset done in purples and yellows, and a Justin Coopersmith lithograph of three stately palms. I could smell garlic and braised meat.

“Are you Birdie?” She wore her hair short and spiky, with gold highlights along the tips, and a tight black cocktail dress. She spoke with the accent of someone from Mexico City. I estimated her age to be twenty-five, her air to be intellectual, sophisticated. She walked on three-inch silver stilettos but I still towered over her by a few inches.

“My name is Trini, nice to meet you.” We shook hands, and I felt her chunky silver rings before I saw them. “Noreen is busy at the moment, but she is expecting your delivery. I have a check for you, please sit down for a moment while I get it.”

I didn’t sit. I stood and waited, watched Trini open a door, then close it behind her, heard her clip toward the middle of the house. The door didn’t latch closed, however, and the fat Siamese pushed it opened, snuck into my room to check out the visitor. I stooped to scratch him as he arched against my bare legs, and as I rubbed my fingers into the space between his ears, I swiveled my head and froze.

The room beyond the room beyond the room was visible - my secret spider room! A long ebony and brass Art Deco table filled the center of the space, set with simple mismatched Art Deco chairs and three elegant place settings of fine china and Irish linen. The chandelier was larger than I thought. It hung low, vibrated each time someone moved. No one sat at the table. I heard voices, clinking glasses, the sound of pouring liquid, and surmised some drinking was occurring stage right. I edged closer for a better look, but Trini returned, check in hand, and closed the door tight behind her. She shot me a warning glance.