The Table - Part 2
Read Part One here.
I forgot about those subdivision-bound alleged celebrities. My boys caught chicken pox and I spent an entire month sponging them with oatmeal water and calamine lotion. Spring semester started, and my schedule switched from warm afternoon jaunts through the neighborhood pitching brochures against flagstone to overcast early mornings delivering Avon to pilates-attending soccer moms. The afternoons found me carpooling laughing boys to softball practice and music lessons, found me stamping Avon books with pink lettered ink and calling harried customers.
Tuesday late afternoon, a customer called me. Noreen ordered Avon once before, in my early days as an Avon Lady. She ordered the same thing this second time - six opaque bottles of Skin So Soft original lotion and one Burgundy lip-plumping lipstick. I clicked on my computer inventory spreadsheet as she spoke, scanned my products to see what I had on hand.
"I really need the Skin So Soft as soon as you can deliver. Sorry to be so demanding, honey, I should have called you a few weeks ago. But you know how that is, time just flies away." Her voice sounded more harsh and irritating than her words would suggest. I heard a whirring machine sound behind her, a scraping noise, and someone clearing a hoarse throat. I told her I had three bottles in stock and could bring them by in just an hour.
"Good." She took a deep breath and rushed into her next sentence. "But don't come to my front door, honey. Come around through the side gate and knock on the side entrance."
I didn't bother brushing my hair or applying lipgloss. I changed my decaying Padres t-shirt for something clean and crisp and presentable, slipped on my Avon kitty-cat flip-flops - the ones missing the fake-diamond rhinestones. (Frankie the pot-bellied pig ate the jewels one night, licked them right off the toe thong straps, and left them under the treehouse, in a steaming pile of glitter waste.) I stuffed the Skin So Soft in a white Avon lunchbag and added three samples of the new Naturals line products.
Noreen lives in the subdivision overlooking the lagoon, the street into which I once saw the celebrity-filled Mercedes veer. I thought about them as I walked, about rich people filling afternoons with strange obsessions. I wondered if celebrities ever worried about meeting basic bills, about paying electric and water and filling their cupboards with spaghetti and dried beans. I wondered if they spent time sewing patches on their boys' ripped jeans, if they ever reached hands between couch cushions to find milk money. Probably not. I counted the houses as I passed. One, two, three, four. Five. Stop.
Noreen's home looked like every other structure on the street - square, stucco, white, middle-class ordinary, surrounded by a small moat of pristine green sod accented with two skinny desert palms. I didn't notice anything else about her front yard, however, because my eyes found something surprising parked in her driveway - a stately black Mercedes, still radiating heat from use.
To Be Continued....
7:00:31 PM 
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