Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady!

by Birdie Jaworski

  Neighbor Guy laughed as I ran inside and plunked down on a green velvet floor cushion.

  “Dude, looks like you’ve seen a ghost.” He closed the door and leaned against the frame, one hand on his hip. He wore a solid black t-shirt with frayed edges and a small hole at his collar, khaki skate shorts slung low, and simple plastic flip-flops. His face was square and flat and huge - the biggest head I’ve ever seen, and though he was a tall and muscular man, his body appeared unusually emaciated and small under that head, as if he were a human lollipop.

  We exchanged names and I handed him the most recent Avon brochure and a few samples of face cream. A huge honking head like that needs a lot of face cream, I reasoned, hoping he would place a big order. He rolled the samples inside the brochure and stuffed the cylinder into his back shorts pocket. A bubbling noise distracted me, and I turned my head to see a fifty-five gallon aquarium filled with exotic saltwater fish and a plastic gold-colored treasure chest filled with glass jewels. The chest opened and closed in rhythmic time, releasing bubbles. A striped Clown Fish scooted close to the spray.

  “Bird Dude, so what’d ya see at Noreen’s?” Neighbor Guy continued to stand by the door, and drifts of light from the picture window reflected off of his skull ring.

  I told him about my delivery, about Trini and the silhouette of a man drinking a martini. I told him about the Mercedes filled with laughing celebrities, about the art deco table and hanging chandelier, about the faint toast to “Oscar” and about my bet with my Turkish friend, Ulak. Neighbor Guy nodded as I spoke, a sly smile growing across his face.

  “Yup. You stumbled right into it, man. Let me tell you what I know, and maybe we can figure out a way to get more information, okay?”

  I said OK, of course! I’m up for any kind of adventure! Neighbor Guy slowly sank to the floor, sat yogi-style with crossed legs resting on his thighs. His head looked even bigger at eye level. He cleared his throat, and I watched his Adam’s apple slide up and down.

  “Bird Dude. Let me start by telling you this: That art deco table? The one under the crystal light? That table belonged to Oscar Wilde.”

  Neighbor Guy stared at a point on the floor just beyond his crossed legs. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts, ordering them in the same kind of linear patterns his eyes were marking along the hardwood floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but the slam of a car door brought us both to our feet, to the door, two wild heads watching Noreen’s black Mercedes back out of her driveway, turn north, slowly tool toward the main road. I squinted my eyes to see the couple in the backseat, but I could only catch the long dark hair of a woman maybe my age, maybe a little younger. She sat with a companion, both in heavy dark glasses, and a white silk scarf with sparkled fringe covered her head. Neighbor Guy closed the door, and we both fell to the floor in spastic laughter. I couldn’t stop! I grabbed my stomach with my hands, lay on my back gasping for air. Neighbor Guy laughed too, a near silent sound, and his face turned red as he grabbed air between guffaws.

  “Bird Dude, this happens twice a week. Every week. I hear that fucking Mercedes and I’ve got my damn nose plastered to the window. I’ve seen so many fucking stars I’ve lost count. Dude, who was that? Catherine Zeta Jones? Looked like her. The hair. Hold on. Let me get my photo album. And let me get you a beer.”

  I closed my eyes as he stood and wandered to the kitchen, tried to bring back the mysterious woman, my hands resting on the floor behind me, my legs splayed out in front. It might have been Zeta Jones. She held her head the right way, her hair matched, but I wasn’t sure about the nose. And the age. And was that her husband beside her? I didn’t see if the companion was man or woman. I rolled possibilities through my mind. Demi Moore? Nah, not thin enough.

  I heard Neighbor Guy open a refrigerator, the clink of two bottles, the yank of the opener. He returned to the living room, one hand extended with a local micro-brew, the other holding another beer, a leather-bound book stuffed under his armpit. I took a deep sip, watched my new friend resume his yogi pose.

  “Man, I don’t know. I don’t think the nose was right.”

  Neighbor Guy nodded his head. “I think you might be right, Bird Dude.” The more he talked, the less big his head appeared to me and the more I noticed a hint of an East Coast accent. His right sleeve fell toward his shoulder as he raised his arm to scratch his head and I saw a ring of tattooed fire around his bicep and an old fading white scar along the back of his arm, reaching to his elbow. He handed me the book.

  “Dude, anyway. Come back any weekday. You might see Brad Pitt or something.” He yawned, leaned his back against the wall. The clown fish rippled in the corner closest to us, and I watched it rise and dip, rise and dip, as Neighbor Guy pointed at me to open the album.

  I opened Neighbor Guy’s book. The tanned leather cover stuck to the first page, so I carefully pried it from a clear plastic photo sheet containing four pictures. It looked like some kind of kitschy art project, perhaps “Polaroid Mercedes in Suburbia.” Each page featured various shots of Noreen’s car resting in the driveway, turning into the road in front of her house, racing down the street, backing into the drive. I turned the page. More Mercedes photos. Page after page after page of Noreen’s busy Mercedes, and I noticed the slight change of Southern California seasons as the collage continued - a blooming Jacaranda here indicating early May, a cloudy drizzle day of the type only seen in January - every photograph taken from the same location - Neighbor Guy’s front porch.

  “Wow. Looks like you’ve got an obsession. I’m surprised Noreen hasn’t called the cops.” I kept looking at the pages as I spoke. A fresh-faced woman in a sheer black blouse and elegant pony-tail covered her face with her hands. “Hey! This looks like Gwyneth Paltrow!” I tried figure out whether her bulging stomach indicated pregnancy or one too many burritos.

  “Yeah, I thought so, too, Bird Dude. Turn to the third page, dude, check out the bottom two pictures.” Neighbor Guy guzzled the rest of his beer in one gulp. He wiped his face with the back of his left hand and swallowed a burp. I turned the pages back, one by one, found the third page.

  “Oh. My. God.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. No way! A famous author known for his high society loving ways stared straight into the lens, one large hand grabbing the head rest in front of him. His hand held the soft leather in a vice grip. I could make out the individual veins running along his wrist.

  “Yeah, Dude. See what I mean?” Neighbor Guy rose, walked to the kitchen, and I heard him retrieve another beer.

  Hmmmmmmm. I kept staring at the famous author, at his white shock of fluffy hair, into his eyes lined with fatigue and surprise, and wondered what the hell these people were doing in my coyote corner of the universe. I tried to guess the occupants of the car in the pictures above the author. A slender young woman in a baby blue poncho with delicate tassels turned away from the camera, her long blonde hair caught in the ear-holder edge of her silver-rimmed sunglasses. Neighbor Guy pointed to an old instant camera hanging from a vinyl strap off the edge of the window drapes.

  “I keep it close, Dude. I’ve got your movie stars, your book writers, your politicians, you name it. Took me nearly a fucking half a year to start taking those pics. Wish I thought of it earlier. I think I just missed getting one of J-Lo getting into the car. Can you imagine? What an ass shot that would have been. I would have fucking had that one blown up and framed, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

  He groaned, tilted back his head and drank, and I matched him, angle for angle, picturing that fine Latin backside melting into a sun-baked celebrity driving machine. Neighbor Guy’s room grew warm, familiar, as I finished my beer. I stopped staring at the celebrity photos and started reading the names of the books lining his shelves. Aristotle. A book on human anatomy. Two books by Noam Chomsky. The collected works of Poe. Six books on film studies. 1984 by George Orwell. I couldn’t match the fixation on J-Lo’s butt with his reading list. He’s just a man, I told myself, a man who likes a good ass. But damn.
An ass man with a brain. No wonder that head was so huge.

  “Oh. Sure. I would have taken a picture of J-Lo’s butt, too. Sure. Blown it up and everything.” I laughed, tried to sound funny, hip, but my words sounded so mom-like, so ridiculous that even Neighbor Guy noticed, glanced at me from the side of his big head and changed the subject.

  “So Bird Dude. Anyway. Like I said, that table belongs to Oscar Wilde. Do you know who he was?” Neighbor Guy didn’t ask that question as if he thought I was uneducated. He sounded like a good teacher, some kind of surf man philosopher. I didn’t know how to answer. I was embarrassed to admit my ignorance, but I plowed ahead, clunked my bottle on the floor and gulped.

  “I don’t really know much about him other than he was a famous writer or something. In the past. Sorry. I didn’t go to college or anything.” I shrugged my shoulders and looked out the window so he wouldn’t see me blush. A sand flea jumped onto my right leg, and I concentrated on swiping him off as if it were the most important job in the world. I tried to remember something - anything - about Oscar Wilde but drew a big fat blank. Damn. Damn. Gotta visit the library more often, I thought.

  “You got a few minutes? This might take a while. Let me get you another drink.” Neighbor Guy lifted my empty bottle from the floor and walked away from me. His feet landed in a straight line in front of him, almost a model’s cat-walk saunter, and I wondered if he thought about J-Lo’s Mercedes dip on lonely surf excursions.

  “So. Bird Dude. Oscar Wilde loved his wine and food and good conversation, you know? He fucking loved to fuck with people’s minds, too. And Noreen? She loves Wilde. She loves money, too. It’s a deadly combination.”

  Oscar’s Ghost

  I flipped to the last page of Neighbor Guy’s scrapbook while he rummaged through his kitchen. A series of photos of a lone man covered the last four pages. He was young - perhaps thirty - with shoulder-length honey hair combed straight back from his face. He wore a black oxford shirt in the first, untucked over ratty jeans, his feet bare, one atop the other, as he sat on Noreen’s front steps. He wore a white polo shirt in the next photo, over wrinkled chinos, one arm raised over his head in a stretch. The shirt rode above his waist and I could see a solid six-pack in light tan. The chinos strained under the muscles of his thighs, and his androgynous face with the piercing blue eyes gave him a movie star’s presence. The snapshots continued, young hunky model at rest along Noreen’s property. Look! Sexy man leans against stucco! Look! Sexy man caresses a bird of paradise bloom! Look! Sexy man with hands on hips surveys the neighborhood! Sexy man, I thought. I studied the line of hair traveling from his belly button to the low-slung waist of his pants. Damn sexy.

  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.