Lucky Palms - Part 1
I dropped Avon brochures all over town this week in order to beef up my sales. I dropped them at the grocery stores. I dropped them at the nail salons. I dropped them in new neighborhoods, in doctor's waiting rooms, at the bus stop, and even left one perched on top of the gas pump at the minimart. Last night I found six extra brochures under a pile of wrinkled math worksheets my boys brought home from school. Dang. Six more. And Monday is order day! I left 17 in charge of 7 and 9 and jumped in the car to find a new location to pimp my wares. I wore my pink supergirl pajamas but planned on dropping the books without being seen, just a whisper of an Avon Lady in and out some diner or late night hair salon.
I drove past the center of town, past the dark windows of the donut shop and corner deli where they sell tofu pastrami sandwiches with avocado and crushed grain mustard on rye. All of the main streets of my town are named after presidents, and I cruised Roosevelt, Madison, Jefferson, Monroe, looking, searching for a place I haven't left lipstick footprints a hundred times before, found nothing, not one open or inviting establishment. I thought of leaving them at the dance hall but I'm terrified of that place, terrified of the painted windows screaming Girls Girls Girls and the sputtering neon martini glass spilling blue light onto the alley behind the train station.
So I kept driving. It was nice. No kids, quiet, unusual, just me and six Avon brochures and small town California streets with sun washed stucco homes right up next to the sidewalks and impossibly white seagulls bedding down for the night in pepper trees. I drove around the lagoon where three middle-aged men in windbreakers and jeans stood under the high desert palms, fishing, each holding a long pole and a tiny flashlight directed into the murky waters. I drove past the tattoo shops and used car lots that mark the boundary from my town into the next, saw a fat man in dark board shorts and a red t-shirt skateboard, leap over a crumbled curb, land onto a board longer and wider than any I've ever seen, with monster rubber wheels. He looked so elegant and fast, even delicate, his stomach rose and fell like a parachute, and I turned on the radio to find a song I knew, any song, just something to sing.
I drove as far as the coast road allows, right up to the gates of Camp Pendleton, then turned around, hit the highway south toward home, cranked the music loud as I accelerated, merged into traffic. At least I had a good ride, I thought, so great to take time away from the kids, see my town at night. I thought about sticking the brochures under unsuspecting windshield wipers in the parking lot of the all night drug store. Then I saw it. Yeah! I saw it - the one place besides the dance hall I would never consider leaving Avon advertising and samples. It stood next to the post office mail truck annex and across from the municipal swimming center, a squat, flat off-white building with a garish orange, blue, green, and purple blinking highway sign in the shape of a sunset. I pulled off at the next exit and let the lights draw me closer, draw me to the parking lot nearly full even at this late hour, and I marched into the Lucky Palms Casino, purse slung over my shoulder, brochures stuffed under my arm, Avon NASCAR slippers gracing my feet.
To be continued....
9:53:16 AM 
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