How the Rich Live
A few minutes before I left home this morning my best girlfriend called. She owns a tile installation company and rides a Harley. She's not one of my customers. She doesn't wear make-up, doesn't use lotions or perfume, doesn't scrub away the dirt and dust most days. Her fingernails are permanently filled with old grout and mold, but she doesn't seem to notice. We take our dogs to the lagoon beach twice a week and throw rotting tennis balls into the water and talk politics and pets. She'll never marry, she says. A dog is muddy child enough.
"I'm going to take my brochures and see how the rich live." I spoke into the phone with a bad British accent and listened to my friend laugh and laugh.
"Come on Birdie. The rich don't use Avon. They use that Clinique shit. You should stick with the coastal rednecks like yourself."
I had to find out, though, and put my best and most expensive samples in my kilt pockets and hit the road. Fifty brochures weigh as much as a small child, or a bag of dog kibble, or a case of beer. Maybe a baby cow. Or six bars of gold. An extra large sack of potatoes? I spent the first mile contemplating the heft and girth of my ratty backpack and even made up an Avon song to sing to myself. I sung it to the tune of "My Favorite Things."
My town still sleeps, hasn't rolled out of bed like hoity toity La Jolla or Del Mar. Most of the residents work long hours to pay for their ocean breeze and spend weekends tending their lawn and cheering their children at soccer games. But one road snakes through town, along the juniper-laden crest of the tallest mesa, the yellow brick road of sea view glory, and the landowners drive Mercedes and oversized gilded Hummers and hire illegal aliens to tend their birds of paradise bushes and to wash their picture windows facing the beach. This was my destination.
I felt like Maria from the Sound of Music, facing these homes, the way she faced the Baron's mansion, guitar and suitcase in hand. I stood at the entry gate to a stone palace surrounded by a pointed iron gate, remembering how Maria sang a song and swung her guitar in a circle to get over her fear of ringing the bell. I hummed my Avon song under my breath and grabbed a brochure from my back and two Color Rich lipstick samples in muted sensible coral tones and raised the heavy knocker, let it crash to the mahogany door.
A tall man with white hair and a beard opened the door and looked at my face, my backpack, the brochure, my kilt. His mouth turned up in a sardonic grin, and the grey of his eyes matched the geometric pattern of his silk shirt.
"So, Lassie, what DOES an Avon sales woman wear under her kilt?"
I didn't think to answer, didn't stop to think at all, I just threw the brochure and the lipsticks at him and bolted down the drive, down the road, around the corner and collapsed against a gnarled and peeling eucalyptis tree. I think he was kidding. My heart pounded and I placed my hand on my chest as if to physically stop the thump thump thump. He was making a joke, Birdie, just a joke. He's just a man with a lot of money and a dumb sense of humor. It's ok, it's alright.
I slouched home, minus that one brochure, and made a cup of strong tea. I sure hope coral is his color.
7:41:45 PM 
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