Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (25 page)

My cards spread out in front of me - Ace of Hearts, Joker, Queen of Hearts, Nine of Clubs, Ten of Clubs, Queen of Diamonds and King of Hearts. I ordered them into these two hands:

Five card hand
: Ace of Hearts, Joker, Queen of Hearts, Queen of Diamonds, 9 of Clubs (
Two Pairs I figured
.)

Two card hand
: King of Hearts, 10 of Clubs (
Two High Cards
)

The dealer looked around the table and nodded at each of us. He began to look at his cards, looked at ours, started mixing and matching, and I saw my teacher shake his head.

“Miss, you know only enough poker to be a danger to yourself. Those are good hands, but you must beat the banker with both hands. You have a straight - that should be your five card hand. Then Queen and Ace in your second hand. Still, you have better than me. But it depends on the banker, let’s see what he gets.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. I looked at his cards, a two, a three, seven, other mismatched cards, just one low pair of fours in his favor.

I stared at my cards. I didn’t know what a straight was, must be a run of cards, and oh! I saw it! A run starting with the nine, and I wished I’d taken more time.
Dammit.

The banker laid down his cards, it seemed in slow motion, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. He smiled. “Bank loses. We have a winner!”

My teacher chuckled, leaning back in his stool, looking at me through eyes nearly closed, cigarette in mouth, one hand resting against his head. He looked at me the way men look at women and I felt a rush of heat rise through my body.

“Star TREK Lady in Pink takes all, believe it or not.” The dealer accented the Trek with a nod in my direction. He made his declaration with a straight face and steady voice but his eyes gave away a laugh. I couldn’t believe it! I won my first poker game ever! I set my purse and Avon brochures down on the velvet of the table and pushed my stool away, stood up and did a Woo Woo Woo butt dance with my hands in the air.

“Uh huh Uh huh Uh huh I won, I won, I won, Uh huh Uh huh Uh huh,” I chanted, and sat back down to notice every person in the entire room staring at me. Whoops. Maybe one doesn’t do butt dances in poker rooms.
They should though
, I thought,
they should!

The dealer counted the cash, made change, placed a small amount in the house box and pushed the rest toward me. I grabbed it all at once and shoved it in my purse. I looked at my pile of brochures and decided to quit while I was ahead.

“Thank you, gentlemen, for your patience and your money! I am giving you each a crisp Avon brochure to take home to the woman in your life. There is a sample inside each book, make sure you let her know that.” I passed around the brochures, and held my hand out to shake the hand of my teacher. The men shrugged shoulders and laughed. The letch to my left shook his head and rolled up the brochure, shoving it in his back jeans pocket.

“This is for you.” I gave my teacher a faded one dollar bill. “It’s only fair. We didn’t make an agreement about what I give you if I win.” He grinned, teeth clamped on cigarette, and accepted the bill and stuck it inside his jacket, next to his chest, at the same time pulling out a business card.

Roger. Gemstone Broker.

“Call me,” he said with a voice as low as a whisper.

I waved goodbye and sped home. Ulak snored on my couch, the bags of Avon sitting on his lap. I removed the shwag and covered him with a blanket strewn with embroidered bunnies.

Late that night I stuck a dollar bill under each of my boys’ pillows while they slept. And I held Roger’s card, stared at it, traced the letters with my index finger for a long, long time. That night I dreamed about a black card shark lover wearing diamonds, me in my pink super girl pajamas, in a spaceship shaped like a poker table.

Wherein I Test a Product on an Animal

Suzie woke me up at two in the morning. She jumped on my bed, whining and scratching, and I sat and stared, let my eyes adjust to dim light, as she continued pawing at the covers. And then I heard it. A strange loud gnawing sound coming from the wall behind my open door. A rat. A BIG rat, too, the way that sucker was scratching against my internal two-by-fours.

Tree rats are the scourge of my coastal town. They live in the tall palms, fat, content, nesting, and sneak down tree at night to forage the gardens and garbage of the rich and poor alike. Everyone’s got ‘em. I don’t care if you live in a rock-lined castle on Skyline Drive or a small apartment in the barrio, you’ve got rats. Several companies work the rat problem in my area, setting traps in attics and returning once a week to retrieve rotting carcasses. And I thought Avon was difficult work.

I shushed my dog and shoved her outside. Frankie the pig stood at the front door. He didn’t want to stay inside; he didn’t want to go out. I locked him in the laundry room. I didn’t want to wake couch-crashed Ulak or my boys. And I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands, pondering my options. I could wait until morning to deal with the rat. I could dig through the garage and find the old rattraps I kept in a box for just such an emergency. I could call one of those Rat Emergency Men and report an infestation. And as I sat and thought and listened, the rat grew louder and louder, almost thumping against the wall. I knew I could not sleep. Images of the rat finding a way inside the body of the house and nipping at my sleeping toes washed into my vision and I stood up and declared war.

I searched through the garage in vain. I shone a dim flashlight into every box in my garage but no rattraps. Damn. And then I spied it - the pepper spray swinging from a plastic holder on my beach cruiser bike. I could stun the rat! And shove him in a box! I grabbed one of a hundred empty Avon boxes piled in stacks by the garage door and the pepper spray. I pushed down on the spray switch, testing the trigger, and Hsssssssss. Nothing blew the space but stale air and one gray flake of desiccated pepper madness.
Crap
. I had to figure out a new option.

I tiptoed back through the house with my box and set it on the floor under the attic access outside my bedroom. The rat continued feasting and nesting, a hearty “claw claw claw” against wood-grain, then a running-in-circles pattern, rinse, repeat. I looked around my bedroom for a good weapon. Books, banjo, pillows, nothing seemed safe or rodent-worthy. I looked in the bathroom, too, for good measure, and grabbed the one item that might do the trick - my Avon Advanced Techniques Volumizing Mousse for Fine Hair. I opened the hatch, pulled down the miniature ladder and tossed the box in, following close behind.

The attic was dirty and dark. I held the mousse in front of me like a stun gun and crouched as quietly as I could, listening for my intruder. I heard him gnaw and arrange, gnaw and arrange, only twenty feet to my left and three feet down. I pushed the box across the floor of the attic and kept the mousse at hand. The gnawing stopped. I stood still, waited, held my breath. And then BAM! The rat scurried up a hole in the floor and toward me! I screamed! I squeezed the mousse trigger and an arc of heavy foam hit the air, flew, fell, right on top of Mr. Rat! I screamed again, watched the rat flail against the floor, rubbing one arm against his face to clear the sticky material. I slammed the box open side down right over his body and sat on the box, breathing heavily, listening to my boys jump from bed yelling Mom! Mom! Mom!

“Birdie! Birdie! Where are you?” Ulak ran from the living room. I could hear the thump thump thump of his feet as he ran from kitchen tile to hall parquet. His voice echoed – loud – and it made my boys scream louder!

“Ulak! I’m OK! I’m in the attic! Come on, climb the stairs and sit on the rat box while I look for a good piece of plywood to slip underneath!”

Ulak’s head peeked through the access panel. He pulled his tall body into the small space and hunched to my location.

“Birdie. The middle of the night is not the time to catch vermin.”

Ulak sat while I searched the attic for a suitable containment device. I found a slightly warped section of paneling and slipped it under the box. We carefully carried the Ark of the Rat Covenant out of the attic, out of the house, upside-down box on four feet of plywood. We carried it all the way through the night to my cranky neighbor’s house three houses down the street and my boys hid in the shadows. I grabbed one point of the box, angling my feet to run for home, lifted the box and zoomed the bejesus outta there. The rat ran for cover, hopefully my neighbor’s bed, and I collected the box and board and walked home. Ulak walked beside me. He looked to the night sky but the haze from San Diego covered the stars.

“Both the hunted and the hunter rely on God.”

I looked at him out the corner of my left eye.

“Well, Ulak. I think even God appreciates a rat-free home.”

Ulak flopped on the couch and I tucked the boys back into bed. I didn’t sleep. I sat at my desk, fingers on my computer keyboard, and composed another letter to my daughter. I didn’t fight the tears this time. I let them fall, cover my cheeks, my chin, my neck, as I wrote the things I most wanted to say.

I want to meet
, I said.
I know this is moving at the speed most comfortable for you, and I don’t want to add pressure. But I want to meet you. I have loved you ever since I knew you existed. The reasons why I gave you up are serious and personal. I will tell you why when we meet. But please know it’s not because you weren’t wanted or loved. I loved you and still love you the same way I love all my children. You are nothing less than a full daughter to me. I want to meet you, when you are ready
.

I signed it
Love, Birdie
, and I clicked send.

I lay awake until the sun snuck through the marine layer and the pig pressed two hooves and a snout against the side of my body. All three men slept, so I left a note telling them to rustle up breakfast while I made a few Avon deliveries.

I grabbed my demo of the new Avon Magic Shimmering Body Spray and stuck it in the side pocket of my kilt, placed five packages of samples in the back butt pocket, and counted thirty brochures and stuffed them in my trusty black backpack. I noticed a new hole developing close to the zipper, so I cut a piece of silver duct tape in the shape of a heart and applied it over the worn area. Festive! The morning was breezy, cold for summertime in Southern California, so I added knee high rainbow socks and my Doc Martens, plus the only sweatshirt I owned, one with Rudolph pulling Santa’s Sleigh. His nose used to blink but the battery pooped out two years ago and I haven’t replaced it.

I carried a fancy bag with rope handles filled with the best skin care items inside, a customer’s order.

Lea lives in a dinky beach cottage near the Interstate 5 underpass. She ordered everything in the Anew Clinical line - the wrinkle cream, the fake botox treatment, the two-step facial peel - and I wrapped them carefully in baby blue tissue paper and added a free Glimmerstick and a tube of Silicon Glove hand cream as thank you gifts.

I left brochures and samples along the way, set them on pollen-covered plastic lawn chairs and beside painted mailboxes, even stuffed one under the arm of a cement St. Francis guarding a quiet front door. I cut through a backyard and squeezed through a hole in the chain-link fence bordering the train tracks. Somewhere between the Jimson Weed decaying next to the railroad and a lumpy green metal dumpster, a flutter of dirty paper caught my eye. An Avon brochure. Old. Faded. Crusted in salt and red dirt. I recognized the cover - the Christmas Campaign 24 book - and flipped it over to see what local representative littered my favorite short cut.
Oh. Wow. Me. Damn
.

I stuck the book in my kilt pocket and cursed my Avon life.
I’m adding so much rubbish to this world
, I thought.
I’m giving people brochures they don’t want, colors and creams they don’t need, trying to sell women on the fake idea they don’t have a one-hundred-percent drop dead gorgeous life without slimming lotion and shimmer blush. What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell. I’m just a stupid makeup prostitute
. I kicked a flat black stone and watched it skip across the railroad ties. My boots thwacked the silver line, rang an echo of slow sell-out despair. I wished I wasn’t adding to the problems of the world. I also wished I sold a lot more stuff, and that dichotomy nearly split my mind into two.

I hiked a good twenty minutes, past the lagoon, past the elementary school where my youngest son swings high on the monkey bars during recess, over the El Camino Real which snakes the long lonely way from Mexico to San Francisco, into a simple middle-class neighborhood. The Magic Shimmering Body Lotion hit my thigh with every step, and I found myself singing Christmas Carols to the rhythm.
Christmas in July
, I sang,
Christmas near the ocean
. While I waited at the traffic lights, a man wearing a Von Dutch baseball cap slowed his pick-up piled high with newspapers, slowed to a crawl as he passed me.

“Hey Lady! Wanna take a ride?” He leered, leaning into the passenger seat to let me see the lust fever in his eyes. I kissed my hand and smacked my ass at him, turned to look in the other direction, and heard a woman laughing from the condo balcony at my back.