You Don't Know Jack - Part 1
Most of my customers call at reasonable hours. They call me close to the order date during the late hours of the morning and into the orange sky afternoon, leaving detailed messages with page and product number, lists of samples they would like to touch, sometimes questions about colors and ingredients and sizes. Some customers keep odd hours and call me close to bed time, apologizing for the lateness and inconvenience. A few older ladies call me bright and early in the morning, before I've had my tea, when my boys are ocean rowdy and alive. But one new customer called me last week in the dead of night, at midnight-thirty, while I dreamed of swimming in a cold molasses lake somewhere in the crisp blue ether of Austria.
The phone jangled me from my swim, and I raised my head, a string of molasses water drool running from my mouth to the pillow, and opened one eye to look at the red numbers of my clock. 12:35. I didn't pick up the receiver. I listened to the clang three more times, tried to call back the feel of my dream but it faded to nothing as the phone silenced. Thirty seconds later it rang again, rang, rang, rang, and I worried my mom or sister held the other end, carrying bad news.
"'Lo?" I grunted the greeting and grimaced at the strange assortment of growling yelping noises radiating from the phone.
"This Avon?" It was more of a demand than a question, the voice neither male nor female, a loud and scratchy bark, like a seal.
"This is Birdie and I sell Avon. But it's past midnight and I'm asleep. Can you call me in the morning? Like after nine?" I used my best mother-inducing-guilt-exasperation voice and noticed that the dog managed to sneak from her floor pillow to the bed next to me during my dark night in Europe. She stretched along the length of the mattress, head almost on the edge of my down pillow, eyes closed in deep slumber. One yellow paw hung limp over the edge of the bed, gently twitching in rhythm to her breath.
"I need some Skin-So-Soft. This is an emergency. I need it tonight." The growling on the other end continued, punctuated by short burts of yowls and a noise like a straw broom across a tile floor. I decided the voice was female, older, bossy and impatient, an army major of a tone.
Emergency? Who has a lotion emergency? I didn't know what to say. Maybe some woman was in labor, or woke up with killer eczema, or was drinking bad wine or playing mean telephone Avon Lady pranks.
"Um, sorry, I'm just not awake. Let me tell you how this works. I'm not Avon Corporate. I'm just an Avon Lady. I don't keep any stock here at my house but if this is a bonafide emergency, I do have an opened big bottle of Skin-So-Soft that I use for demonstrations. If you want to place an order with me, I'll give you the bottle as a gift, but I can't do this until a decent hour. I have sleeping young children, I can't leave the house."
The woman didn't like my response. She gave a long sigh and grumbled that I could visit her first thing in the morning. I wrote down her address and gate code and when I hung up the phone I stared in amazement at her location. Her home, if this wasn't some prank call, sat on the edge of the water, a tall, weathered and glassy beacon, along the small rich-only access road where homes cost several million dollars.
The next morning I dressed my boys in matching blue t-shirts and spritzed extra Today fragrance on my neck. I grabbed the demo bottle of lotion and a handful of samples and brochures and stuck them in my best leather purse instead of the ratty black backpack. Maybe the lady would buy two hundred dollars of Avon, perhaps three wrinkle creams and some jewelry and the new Colors Dimensions lipsticks. Maybe she'd invite all her rich friends over for an Avon party and I'd give makeovers to the rich and famous and sell two thousand dollars of product. Maybe her house sat next to the green and blue Victorian mansion where I heard the singer Jewel lives. Maybe Jewel would stop by to borrow some sugar and I could give her a book! I imagined how wonderful this customer would be and what she could do for my business as I stripped the old nail polish from my toenails and swiped on a jaunty metallic pink. Finally, something was going to happen with my Avon business.
This is part 1 of a 2 part entry!
12:19:09 PM 
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