Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (18 page)

Neighbor Guy carried a plate of Ritz crackers and sliced processed cheese. He handed me another beer and a green plastic plate.

“Sorry. I don’t usually have company.” He folded a cheese slice into quarters and stuck it between two crackers. He popped it in his mouth, and I grabbed my own crackers and cheese and mimicked his actions. The cheese stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“Ith OK. I like cheethe.” I drank a good swig of beer, tried to pry the extra cheese from the roof of my mouth. Neighbor Guy ate two more cracker sandwiches, then pointed to the photos.

“That’s Luke. Or ‘Oscar’ as they call him.” Neighbor Guy folded another cheese slice and I noticed his hands shook as he spoke. His voice held an unusual edge, the sort of tone I recognized when male customers discussed cheating wives and long gone gold-digging girlfriends. “Fucker got Noreen fooled, all those celebrities. It’s difficult to talk about.” He took a long drink. His head looked large again, huge and pained and stuffed with secret solitude and misery. Does a large head make large sadness, I wondered? Or does the sadness expand the dimensions of the head? I stared at him, didn’t hide my examination, let my eyes trace the square of his forehead, the lump and slide of his nose. Six freckles outlined his right eye, none on his left.

He ate another piece of cheese, the last one, then started to stand with the plate. I grabbed his arm, made him sit back down, made him drop the plate to the floor. His eyes filled with tears, and I leaned over to give him a huge hug.

“It’s OK, man. I understand. You don’t have to tell me. I know. I know, Honey. It’s OK.” I hugged him tight like a mother hugs a son, and though he probably had a few years on me, I felt as if he were twelve years old, my own boy. He didn’t lose composure, but I felt a ripple of pain leave his body, rise from his stomach to his head, lift into the air above us. I felt J-Lo leave, too, felt his masculine fake bravado shake from his body. He might be an ass man, I thought. But J-Lo ain’t doing nothing for this guy.

“Just tell me about Noreen, OK? I don’t need to know other things.” No wonder he was obsessed. “Tell me about Noreen.”

Neighbor Guy released his hold on me. He grabbed my hand, held it tight, and started to talk.

“I met Luke at the beach. I know actors are trouble, but I couldn’t resist, Bird Dude. He was fucking hot. Plus he knows the same kinds of things I know. I thought we had true love, dude.” Neighbor Guy scratched the back of his neck, let his eyes water and drip, didn’t care, kept telling the story of his love affair with Luke, how Luke moved his vintage wooden surfboard and library of philosophy tomes to Neighbor Guy’s home, how Luke met Noreen, how he asked Luke to elope to San Francisco with him and become his legal husband.

“We broke up and that was that, man. I didn’t even know Luke was involved until three months ago.” Neighbor Guy sobbed, and I fished through my backpack for the personal pack of tissues I always carry. I dabbed his face, handed him the tissue, and he took four deep breaths. The clown fish darted to the surface of the tank, and I wondered if he knew his owner cried. I tried to send a telepathic message to the fish: It will be all right, I promise. The fish dove behind a green filmy plant.

Neighbor Guy spit the story in short bursts between sobs. Luke pretended he was the bona fide reincarnation of Oscar Wilde. It’s California, Dude, and people believe this shit, Bird Dude. Luke convinced Noreen to hire a friend of his - an ex-lover chef who once served the very president of the United States - and to start an illegal gourmet speakeasy in my blue suburb heaven. Hilarity ensues. Many celebrities. Expensive dinners - one fucking thousand dollars a plate, dude. One. Fucking. Thousand. Bucks. One. Thousand. Dude. For lemon grass and salmon, dude. One. Fucking. Grand.

I listened to Neighbor Guy ramble. His tears stopped, but his body still moved in the rhythmic bursts of the lovesick. He told me about Luke’s idea, Luke’s fucking brilliant idea, to convince everyone he was Oscar, to get everyone to overpay for gourmet fare, and to experience an evening quizzing the New Improved Sexy and Young Oscar Wilde on politics and love and society and sex. Oh yeah, sex, baby, that’s where it’s at. And the celebrities and other guests sign six pages promising secrecy, swearing future children and makeup trailers that they will not spill the beans. Invitation only. No press inquiries allowed.

I took it all in, kept my eyes focused on Neighbor Guy’s enigmatic expression, knew he was telling God’s Truth. I heard an engine rumble as he finished explaining Luke’s gritty appeal, ran to the window. The black Mercedes came to a stop, and a short man exited the vehicle. He ran to a simple Ford parked along Noreen’s street, jumped inside, and sped from the neighborhood.
Wow
, I thought.
Wow. A thousand bucks of wow.
Neighbor Guy paused, blew his nose hard and clear in the tissue I provided.

“So Bird Dude. You probably don’t know what they do with your Avon, but I figured it out. Some guy comes over at the end of the meal and gives the guests a foot massage. He’s really hot. Maybe you know him?”

I stared at Neighbor Guy, remembered an Avon customer desperate for strange feet. I need foot cream, he said. Lots of it. Different kinds, too. Can you bring some samples? A lot of samples! I need around a hundred.

“A hundred samples of foot cream? One-zero-zero? Foot cream?”

Man, this must be a kook
, I thought, even though his voice held steady, sounded flat, respectable.

“Yes. I understand this is a large number, so I would be happy to pay for the samples.” He breathed deep into the phone, and I flinched as if someone blew air straight into my ear.

“Um. Ok. I’ll be over at ten.” I didn’t have a hundred foot cream samples. I didn’t even have one foot cream sample. I only had a demo tube of the Avon Cracked Heel Relief Cream and a hundred brochures, so I stuck the tube in my backpack along with a few brochures and some of the men’s product samples and hit the road.

Foot Man lives on a street I blanket with brochures every campaign. His house looks like every other house - all white stucco and red tile roof and short dry grass a Latino landscaper massages to life once a week. I walked to his house, my backpack swaying in time with my hips, and wondered why a middle-aged sounding man would need a hundred foot cream samples. I decided he must be an endurance runner, one of those guys who runs the length of Death Valley in late July, his feet holding a million blisters from the radiated heat of the road. Or he owns a nail salon! That must be it! His employees need those convenient tiny samples to pamper the soft feet of bored suburban mothers.

I rang his doorbell but I didn’t hear the reverberation of digital tones, so I lifted the brass knocker and let it fall. I glanced at his porch. A twisted iron chair held a basket of wooden apples. Small painted tiles circled the door, a mermaid, a sea serpent, an ocean wave.

“Hello?” A man’s voice echoed behind the mahogany door. I could feel his eyes pressed against the peephole.

“It’s me. Birdie. The Avon Lady.” I shucked off my backpack and held it up with a smile. “I have a demonstration foot product to show you.”

Foot Man opened the door. I saw his nose first, then a rugged chin, a lone black shoe, his body moved sideways, a homeboy sidewinder, he slinked the door open, and wow. Wow. Curvy black hair fell into brown eyes, beautiful eyes, but I wasn’t looking at his eyes. He wore no shirt, just drawstring linen pants the color of ripe eggplant, soft leather black driving moccasins. The hair on his chest trailed to his bellybutton, and his muscles rose and fell as he closed the door behind me and motioned me inside. He smelled like expensive after-shave and some kind of spicy shower soap. Combine Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, High Jackman, Viggo Mortenson and all hot celebrity men wild and wonderful and add a dash of local homegrown cute and you’ve got Foot Man. Actually he was a hundred times cuter than that. Times a million.

I think I floated inside his house. I think I tripped into his steel and glass coffee table, dropped my backpack on my toes. I think I stuttered as I thanked him for the Avon call, as I unzipped my bag to get the foot cream. I don’t really remember, only recall the way my cheeks translated my emotional thermometer.

I took a seat next to him on a brown leather couch. Foot Man took the demonstration cream tube from my hand, opened the top, took its scent in deep breaths, squeezed a generous dollop in his hands, and he began to rub it back and forth between his palms.

“I need a foot to properly sample the product. Would you mind if I apply it to your feet?”

I tried to speak, started mumbling that I didn’t have all the samples he requested, just this lone tube of heel relief, but my words sounded pickled and sliced. I giggled, kicked off a flip-flop and lifted my leg.

He rubbed the cream into my foot. He’d obviously done this before, knew how to apply just enough pressure to keep the tickle reflex at bay. He kept kneading even after the cream vanished inside my pores, kept a rhythm of push and pull and I realized my eyes were closed. I opened them to see his eyes closed, too, in some kind of strange earthy rapture.

“Um, sir? Excuse me, sir? I think the cream is gone.” I didn’t know what to say, kept giggling, pulled my leg back to my own space, and Foot Man snapped his eyes open and inhaled.

“Let me try that again, if you don’t mind. I need to get your other foot.” He sounded like rumpled blankets and candles and Egyptian musk. He sounded like full-on midnight sex. I saw a bead of sweat grow under his neck, saw him shift his body, his legs, saw something I really didn’t want to see rising from the eggplant depths of his lap.

“Oh! I think I left my stove going! Here! Just keep the cream! Good bye!”

I grabbed my pack, shot up from the couch, strode fast for the door, yanked it open, felt brochures and men’s samples falling to the ground behind me, didn’t care, just kept moving, walking, running, sprinting home, didn’t notice the flip-flop I left lying on his floor.

I breathed, in and out, in and out. I breathed a long time. I looked at Neighbor Guy.

“Yeah. I think I know the foot massage guy.” Yeah. Wow. Dumb celebrities.

The fish hid behind the treasure chest as Neighbor Guy closed his eyes, leaned further against the wall. His chest moved easy now, rose and fell with every third tick of his grandfather clock. I watched him fall asleep, patted him on the head, and whispered a message as I left.

“Hey dude. Don’t look into the past. Take pictures of your future. That’s all any of us can do. And man, if you can manage, just be yourself to everyone. It hurts at the start, but then it gets easier, and you can drop all your pain. I promise.”

I closed his door behind me, left him snoozing against the eggshell wall, remembered I had my own moment of strange disclosure to make with my own children, knew Neighbor Guy would be OK, the way we all end up OK, with memories of grief and love piled heavy beside us.

Pig Town Dilemma

I left messages for Ulak and Shanna.
Come on, guys, call me! I have serious gossip!
I wanted to tell them about the celebrities and Neighbor Guy and the rattle-trap Mercedes, but my friends didn’t answer. Ulak’s brother finally called me back a few days later, left a grainy Turkish message I only half understood, something about coffee and travel and the Holy Lands.

I waited for my friends. I waited for my birth daughter. I waited for the Avon deliveryman, too, so I could bag the goods ordered at my yard sale, but when he arrived and I tried to make delivery arrangements, most of my customers were gone on vacation. Kilt Man’s girlfriend, or whatever she was, Eliza, returned my call and asked me to visit her home in two weeks. I marked it on the calendar and hoped she was ready with cold hard cash.

I took my boys on long neighborhood walks. The days turned into a week, a week and a half. We spent a few evenings playing Go Fish and teaching Frankie the pig to sit, to stay, to dance. I renewed the Free Pig classified ad, but no one called. I honestly thought I would be inundated with calls, at least twenty, maybe thirty, or forty! There must be a bunch of pig-loving folk in North County, I figured.

The phone finally rang, just when I’d given up porcine hope, and a woman with a voice like sharp gravel asked if I still had the pig. Heck yeah, I said, come on down!

They arrived ten minutes early and knocked first before ringing the bell. I locked Suzie in my bedroom and screamed at her to shush her barking and I grabbed Frankie’s leash and ran for the door.

“Hey, welcome! Come in! I’m Birdie!” I swept my arm inside, inviting them to enter and meet the pig. “So, you’re pig lovers?”

The man and woman looked hardened, sun-weary, with aging lizard skin. The man wore dark jeans under a grade-A stomach and I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t make a comment about pot-bellies. He looked at me as if I were insane and he grunted.

“Well I like a little sausage. Heh heh.” His laugh creeped me out, covered my arms with petrified bumps, and my eyes opened wide.

“Oh he’s such a kidder, aren’t you, dear?” His wife smiled in apology but I could see something strange behind her expression. I didn’t know what it was.

“Well, let me get Frankie. I didn’t name him that, but he does know his name. Hold on a minute.”

I waved them toward the good couch and walked slowly toward the backdoor. I didn’t like these two, didn’t like the way the man practically called Frankie lunch, but I decided I was being a bit silly and presumptuous. I passed through the kitchen and saw the green stuffed rabbit that Frankie loved to chew, the box of milk bones I used as training treats and I almost started to cry.