Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (17 page)

“You’ll have to leave now, Birdie. Noreen is busy and doesn’t have time to greet you.” She hustled me out the door, quickly, her brows furrowed together in a stressed look as if I had seen her commit a murder. She waved goodbye and locked the patio door.

I wavered for a moment as I stuffed Noreen’s check in my back kilt pocket. I kept my ears wide open, tried to hear Trini or Noreen or any other occupant, but the closed door kept the noises locked inside. A hummingbird flew into the Bird of Paradise plant, hovered near the red orange flowers, and rose, flew over the stockade fence guarding Noreen’s perfect sod. I started retracing my steps to the front yard, turned the corner, hitting the paving stones dead in the center with my worn flip-flops. I stopped in front of the tall window once more, stood on tiptoes and tried to catch another peek. I caught the back end of Trini’s dress as she swished under the swinging light fixture, saw shadows dance across the wall, the silhouette of a tall man wearing dress clothes, his chest rising and falling in slow easy breaths against the sage-colored wall.

Trini passed into view again, carrying two martini glasses on a large silver platter. When she returned into my line of sight, the glasses were missing, and she held the platter dropped by her waist. She stopped for a moment, motioned toward the side of the room with her free hand, laughed, then continued out of sight.
What was going on in there
, I wondered.
A dinner party? A secret movie premier?
The shadow man lifted his glass, and like strange shadow anime, I watched the liquid pour into his throat, a tiny olive rolling into his lips. I heard the clink of a decanter against glass, and a small chorus of voices toast what sounded like “Oscar.”

“Hey, you! You’re the local Mary Kay lady, aren’t ya?” A man poked his head over the fence behind me, and I slapped my heels to the ground in surprise. I nearly lost my balance. My backpack swayed behind me, threatened to topple me, but my feet kept their position.

“Avon Lady. Sorry. You caught me being a Peeping Tom! I’m sorry! I don’t normally do this!” I squeaked my response, stared at his shock of blonde unruly surfer’s hair and two blue eyes watching me from the yard next door. I couldn’t see below the middle of his nose. His hands held two of the fence posts - hearty hands, full of calluses and sun spots. He wore a silver ring carved in the shape of a skull on his right middle finger.

“Hey, come over my house. I want to compare notes. I’ve been spying on that woman for nearly a year. I think I know what’s going on.”

The Table

The black Mercedes still rested in Noreen’s driveway as I raced past, headed for Neighbor Guy’s front yard. It still radiated heat, and I stopped for a moment, stared at it, heard a screen door squeak open. I ran like heck, leaped over a scrawny Azalea and landed in the next yard. My ankle hurt from the impact but I didn’t let it slow me.

Neighbor Guy met me at his front door. I didn’t stop to notice whether he decorated with juniper trees or lavender bushes, whether he had a personalized mailbox or accents of colorized stone. He stood to the side to let me pass, and I briefly caught sight of a short fiberglass surfboard tipped against the stucco wall. A cartoon pooch held a hot dog along the bottom of the board, his body covered in flecks of surf wax.

Neighbor Guy laughed as I ran inside and plunked down on a green velvet floor cushion.

“Dude, looks like you’ve seen a ghost.” He closed the door and leaned against the frame, one hand on his hip. He wore a solid black t-shirt with frayed edges and a small hole at his collar, khaki skate shorts slung low, and simple plastic flip-flops. His face was square and flat and huge - the biggest head I’ve ever seen, and though he was a tall and muscular man, his body appeared unusually emaciated and small under that head, as if he were a human lollipop.

We exchanged names and I handed him the most recent Avon brochure and a few samples of face cream. A huge honking head like that needs a lot of face cream, I reasoned, hoping he would place a big order. He rolled the samples inside the brochure and stuffed the cylinder into his back shorts pocket. A bubbling noise distracted me, and I turned my head to see a fifty-five gallon aquarium filled with exotic saltwater fish and a plastic gold-colored treasure chest filled with glass jewels. The chest opened and closed in rhythmic time, releasing bubbles. A striped Clown Fish scooted close to the spray.

“Bird Dude, so what’d ya see at Noreen’s?” Neighbor Guy continued to stand by the door, and drifts of light from the picture window reflected off of his skull ring.

I told him about my delivery, about Trini and the silhouette of a man drinking a martini. I told him about the Mercedes filled with laughing celebrities, about the art deco table and hanging chandelier, about the faint toast to “Oscar” and about my bet with my Turkish friend, Ulak. Neighbor Guy nodded as I spoke, a sly smile growing across his face.

“Yup. You stumbled right into it, man. Let me tell you what I know, and maybe we can figure out a way to get more information, okay?”

I said OK, of course! I’m up for any kind of adventure! Neighbor Guy slowly sank to the floor, sat yogi-style with crossed legs resting on his thighs. His head looked even bigger at eye level. He cleared his throat, and I watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down.

“Bird Dude. Let me start by telling you this: That art deco table? The one under the crystal light? That table belonged to Oscar Wilde.”

Neighbor Guy stared at a point on the floor just beyond his crossed legs. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts, ordering them in the same kind of linear patterns his eyes were marking along the hardwood floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but the slam of a car door brought us both to our feet, to the door, two wild heads watching Noreen’s black Mercedes back out of her driveway, turn north, slowly tool toward the main road. I squinted my eyes to see the couple in the backseat, but I could only catch the long dark hair of a woman maybe my age, maybe a little younger. She sat with a companion, both in heavy dark glasses, and a white silk scarf with sparkled fringe covered her head. Neighbor Guy closed the door, and we both fell to the floor in spastic laughter. I couldn’t stop! I grabbed my stomach with my hands, lay on my back gasping for air. Neighbor Guy laughed too, a near silent sound, and his face turned red as he grabbed air between guffaws.

“Bird Dude, this happens twice a week. Every week. I hear that fucking Mercedes and I’ve got my damn nose plastered to the window. I’ve seen so many fucking stars I’ve lost count. Dude, who was that? Catherine Zeta Jones? Looked like her. The hair. Hold on. Let me get my photo album. And let me get you a beer.”

I closed my eyes as he stood and wandered to the kitchen, tried to bring back the mysterious woman, my hands resting on the floor behind me, my legs splayed out in front. It might have been Zeta Jones. She held her head the right way, her hair matched, but I wasn’t sure about the nose. And the age. And was that her husband beside her? I didn’t see if the companion was man or woman. I rolled possibilities through my mind. Demi Moore? Nah, not thin enough.

I heard Neighbor Guy open a refrigerator, the clink of two bottles, the yank of the opener. He returned to the living room, one hand extended with a local micro-brew, the other holding another beer, a leather-bound book stuffed under his armpit. I took a deep sip, watched my new friend resume his yogi pose.

“Man, I don’t know. I don’t think the nose was right.”

Neighbor Guy nodded his head. “I think you might be right, Bird Dude.” The more he talked, the less big his head appeared to me and the more I noticed a hint of an East Coast accent. His right sleeve fell toward his shoulder as he raised his arm to scratch his head and I saw a ring of tattooed fire around his bicep and an old fading white scar along the back of his arm, reaching to his elbow. He handed me the book.

“Dude, anyway. Come back any weekday. You might see Brad Pitt or something.” He yawned, leaned his back against the wall. The clown fish rippled in the corner closest to us, and I watched it rise and dip, rise and dip, as Neighbor Guy pointed at me to open the album.

I opened Neighbor Guy’s book. The tanned leather cover stuck to the first page, so I carefully pried it from a clear plastic photo sheet containing four pictures. It looked like some kind of kitschy art project, perhaps “Polaroid Mercedes in Suburbia.” Each page featured various shots of Noreen’s car resting in the driveway, turning into the road in front of her house, racing down the street, backing into the drive. I turned the page. More Mercedes photos. Page after page after page of Noreen’s busy Mercedes, and I noticed the slight change of Southern California seasons as the collage continued - a blooming Jacaranda here indicating early May, a cloudy drizzle day of the type only seen in January - every photograph taken from the same location - Neighbor Guy’s front porch.

“Wow. Looks like you’ve got an obsession. I’m surprised Noreen hasn’t called the cops.” I kept looking at the pages as I spoke. A fresh-faced woman in a sheer black blouse and elegant pony-tail covered her face with her hands. “Hey! This looks like Gwyneth Paltrow!” I tried figure out whether her bulging stomach indicated pregnancy or one too many burritos.

“Yeah, I thought so, too, Bird Dude. Turn to the third page, dude, check out the bottom two pictures.” Neighbor Guy guzzled the rest of his beer in one gulp. He wiped his face with the back of his left hand and swallowed a burp. I turned the pages back, one by one, found the third page.

“Oh. My. God.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. No way! A famous author known for his high society loving ways stared straight into the lens, one large hand grabbing the head rest in front of him. His hand held the soft leather in a vice grip. I could make out the individual veins running along his wrist.

“Yeah, Dude. See what I mean?” Neighbor Guy rose, walked to the kitchen, and I heard him retrieve another beer.

Hmmmmmmm. I kept staring at the famous author, at his white shock of fluffy hair, into his eyes lined with fatigue and surprise, and wondered what the hell these people were doing in my coyote corner of the universe. I tried to guess the occupants of the car in the pictures above the author. A slender young woman in a baby blue poncho with delicate tassels turned away from the camera, her long blonde hair caught in the ear-holder edge of her silver-rimmed sunglasses. Neighbor Guy pointed to an old instant camera hanging from a vinyl strap off the edge of the window drapes.

“I keep it close, Dude. I’ve got your movie stars, your book writers, your politicians, you name it. Took me nearly a fucking half a year to start taking those pics. Wish I thought of it earlier. I think I just missed getting one of J-Lo getting into the car. Can you imagine? What an ass shot that would have been. I would have fucking had that one blown up and framed, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

He groaned, tilted back his head and drank, and I matched him, angle for angle, picturing that fine Latin backside melting into a sun-baked celebrity driving machine. Neighbor Guy’s room grew warm, familiar, as I finished my beer. I stopped staring at the celebrity photos and started reading the names of the books lining his shelves. Aristotle. A book on human anatomy. Two books by Noam Chomsky. The collected works of Poe. Six books on film studies.
1984
by George Orwell. I couldn’t match the fixation on J-Lo’s butt with his reading list. He’s just a man, I told myself, a man who likes a good ass. But damn. An ass man with a brain. No wonder that head was so huge.

“Oh. Sure. I would have taken a picture of J-Lo’s butt, too. Sure. Blown it up and everything.” I laughed, tried to sound funny, hip, but my words sounded so mom-like, so ridiculous that even Neighbor Guy noticed, glanced at me from the side of his big head and changed the subject.

“So Bird Dude. Anyway. Like I said, that table belongs to Oscar Wilde. Do you know who he was?” Neighbor Guy didn’t ask that question as if he thought I was uneducated. He sounded like a good teacher, some kind of surf man philosopher. I didn’t know how to answer. I was embarrassed to admit my ignorance, but I plowed ahead, clunked my bottle on the floor and gulped.

“I don’t really know much about him other than he was a famous writer or something. In the past. Sorry. I didn’t go to college or anything.” I shrugged my shoulders and looked out the window so he wouldn’t see me blush. A sand flea jumped onto my right leg, and I concentrated on swiping him off as if it were the most important job in the world. I tried to remember something - anything - about Oscar Wilde but drew a big fat blank.
Damn. Damn. Gotta visit the library more often
, I thought.

“You got a few minutes? This might take a while. Let me get you another drink.” Neighbor Guy lifted my empty bottle from the floor and walked away from me. His feet landed in a straight line in front of him, almost a model’s cat-walk saunter, and I wondered if he thought about J-Lo’s Mercedes dip on lonely surf excursions.

“So. Bird Dude. Oscar Wilde loved his wine and food and good conversation, you know? He fucking loved to fuck with people’s minds, too. And Noreen? She loves Wilde. She loves money, too. It’s a deadly combination.”

Oscar’s Ghost

I flipped to the last page of Neighbor Guy’s scrapbook while he rummaged through his kitchen. A series of photos of a lone man covered the last four pages. He was young - perhaps thirty - with shoulder-length honey hair combed straight back from his face. He wore a black oxford shirt in the first, untucked over ratty jeans, his feet bare, one atop the other, as he sat on Noreen’s front steps. He wore a white polo shirt in the next photo, over wrinkled chinos, one arm raised over his head in a stretch. The shirt rode above his waist and I could see a solid six-pack in light tan. The chinos strained under the muscles of his thighs, and his androgynous face with the piercing blue eyes gave him a movie star’s presence. The snapshots continued, young hunky model at rest along Noreen’s property. Look! Sexy man leans against stucco! Look! Sexy man caresses a bird of paradise bloom! Look! Sexy man with hands on hips surveys the neighborhood!
Sexy man
, I thought. I studied the line of hair traveling from his belly button to the low-slung waist of his pants.
Damn sexy.