“Oh thank God. It’s you. I thought it was Charles.”
I wasn’t sure who Charles was, tried not to stare into her home to see who else was making noise, lifted my bag of goodies next to my face.
“Uh, Avon? I have your stuff. I didn’t see a check under the mat. Sorry, I should have called first.”
“Oh God, it’s OK, no worries. Come in. I’ll write you a check right now. I’m planning on leaving Charles, but I don’t want him to know about Felipe.” A nervous giggle escaped from the back of the house, and I smirked. The sun, shining through the stained glass framing her front door, cast colored shadows across her face and I realized nothing looks as beautiful as playing dirty.
I have to be honest here. I should have been more intrigued with the hot landscaper adulterous sex, but all I could think was: You’re leaving Charles - whoever he is??? You’re going to leave my Avon route???
Sigh.
I collected my check, waved ‘bye to Kelsey, left her to romp with her gardener giggle boy, and I jumped back in the van. It wasn’t until we drove to the bank later that day that I noticed she wrote the check for thirty dollars extra. Thirty dollars and fifty-nine cents, that is. Avon hush money. Oh yeah!
Ulak by the Seashore
Ulak arrived at the train station five minutes early. He left the Avon bags in his car and bought a ticket to San Francisco. He made the exchange. He boarded the train. He counted the money. He looked for the girl.
“Wait, wait, Ulak!” I stared at him across the table in our favorite diner. We called our meeting Lunch, but the sun set into the auto parts store as we ate all day breakfast and the jukebox played Elton John and Johnny Cash. “You have to tell me what it was like! You can’t just say one, two, three, the end. Come on, Ulak, I need the whole story. What clerk was on duty? Was it Ms. Railway the snaggletooth bitch? Why did you buy a ticket to San Francisco instead of someplace like Orange County? Wasn’t that expensive? Did you see any other people waiting for the train that looked funny or different? Did the police stake out the station? I need to know all of these things.”
Ulak dropped his buttered rye toast on his plate. He glanced out the window to the spartan motorcycle coffee house across the street, to the dingy garbage-strewn auto parts store, to the hint of a right wing beach in the distance. “Birdie. You asked me to follow that woman, and that’s what I did. I’m telling you what happened. I didn’t look at anything. You shouldn’t say ‘bitch,’ it’s not a nice word. Really Birdie. You know better. You’re a mother.”
He picked up his toast and resumed eating. The nerve! The nerve of this man! To have such opportunity! Argh! Crazy Turkish old world conservative man! I took a few bites of potatoes and considered my options, considered all the wild options I could imagine, Turkish torture, or maybe hypnosis, or a new age relaxation tape, or the promise to treat his mother to lunch after suffering through the salon. Damn rational Point A to Point B man. Good thing he can’t hear my thoughts, I sneered to myself, because he’s a fucking old-fashioned know it all. That’s right! A know it all. Blah.
“I don’t know why they won’t take my coffee here. This is terrible.” Ulak grimaced into his cup but kept drinking. His coffee sales business serviced many of the dives skirting the coast, but not here, not in our favorite greasy funny hangout with the nun eating Caesar salad in the corner booth and three marines with shaved Mohawk heads sharing dirty jokes and a mound of freedom fries. “They need a good espresso machine here, and shade-grown dark roast, the organic kind. This is unacceptable.”
Ulak continued rambling about dark coffees he knew and loved, about equipment for brewing coffee, the roasters he visited in Florida, the plantations in Chiapas where Mayans still work family farms under wilting sun and poverty and the deep pockets of distributors like that fancy chain. He spat out the name of the chain, told me how they pretend to have a conscience but refuse to move to all fair trade coffee, how they pay a pittance for beans, how they over-roast and call it gourmet. He didn’t mention the train station or my breasty customer. He described the young Catholic priest running a Mayan cooperative, his tall stature, the way he wore old clothes and worked the fields and fed the children and had a common-law wife and two baby girls of his own, and I realized, oh it hit me, that he fell into the irrational and emotional and whirlpool of color and texture when it came to coffee, when it came to his parents and brother, the things inside his locked-up not-quite-Turkish-anymore-not-quite-American heart. It must be hard to live with old parents, I thought, to live the old ways without deodorant, to speak a language steeped in incense male tradition, to meet with a divorced-mom Avon lady with a dragonfly tattoo and low cut blouses and a men’s utility kilt stuffed with samples and cards and smelling like musk and gardenias.
“So, Ulak. Let’s go get some good coffee at that little place by the train station. We can sit and watch the trains go by and you can tell me the rest of the story, ok? I’ll buy the coffee. They have that good dark Dutch Roast.” I hoped my scheme would work, a trip for coffee, a chat on the bench, The Bench, the one where the policeman threatened to arrest me, the bench Ulak must have used before he exchanged Avon bags of hand cream for cash. Maybe it would jog his memory, maybe the coffee would open those neural pathways, let the scene spill into his steaming cup.
I bought Ulak a rich triple espresso and myself a hot cocoa and we walked to the train station and sat at the fountain. We sat drinking, not talking, watching two teenagers skateboard down the cement steps, over and over, wheels catching on concrete, lifting riders to the sky, the jangle of pocket chains against studded belts. My skateboarding town sets with the sun, doesn’t hold parties, doesn’t sparkle against the ocean like the fancy towns south. We drank and rested, our backs hard against the cool green tiles, drops of chlorine water splashing on our hair.
“So Ulak. Tell me again what happened. Where were you sitting when you met the lady?” I swept my hand in a majestic arc, inviting the drama, inviting actors to step out of his mind through his mouth filled with bitter coffee. And they did, oh yes, they did. I don’t know if it was that Styrofoam cup, the way its contents fired his neurons, catalyzed his brain, or if the fading light through the Lombardy pines triggered a pattern of memory, or if the smell of oil and tar and lonely rumble of the tracks sang a siren’s song, but Ulak delivered, told me a story like I imagined his ancient Turkish ancestors would tell, full of mystery and adventure, and I closed my eyes, listened to the rough lilt of his voice, my own skateboard fountain opium den.
“Birdie. I met her here, at this fountain. But first, I walked to the ticket counter and asked prices of tickets.” Ulak’s story began so simply, so straightforward, a common sense approach to the silly non-problem of Avon sales.
He pulled out his wallet, the battered canvas velcro wallet I knew so well, stuffed with credit cards and store discount cards and cash, loads of cash, and he asked about the tickets. The clerk read the fares, a monotone voice, ran one hand down a list without thought, waited for Ulak’s answer.
“I heard they caught drug dealers here last month. Two girls. I read about it in the paper. Were you the one who called that in?” The man kept staring at the list of fares. He shrugged his shoulders and didn’t answer.
“I better get the furthest ticket you have. I’m not sure where I’m going yet. I’m waiting for a business call.” Ulak purchased the San Francisco ticket, a careening devil-may-care ticket requiring two train switches and a long bus ride through the Imperial Valley circumventing the section of tracks still under construction.
“Geeze Ulak. That’s crazy! You were gonna chase her five hundred miles? I only wanted to keep from getting arrested again and to see if she’d tell a man something she wouldn’t tell me. Geeze. You’re nuts.”
Ulak paid no attention to me, took gentle sips of coffee, spoke of the rail clerk’s trim fingernails, soft hands, hands like a girl, the way the ticket agent carefully collected the tickets and change and handed them across the counter, pointed to t
he boarding steps covered in green outdoor carpeting. Mr. Turkish Spy walked to his car and grabbed the Avon bags and the local paper and sat to wait, here, the same place we sat now, one leg resting on the other, the paper held a bit close to his face, reading the paper with his one good left eye. Ulak heard the whistle of the train, the squawking announcement from the ticket office, and folded his paper.
Ulak turned to me as he relayed the story. He set his cup on the rim of the fountain and interlaced his fingers on his lap, leaning forward with his know-it-all grin, his I-know-something-you-don’t-know grin. He stared at me for a long moment, grinning, watching my forehead wrinkle in confusion and impatience, and he crackle-laughed right out loud in that train courtyard, laughed at me and my Avon.
“Birdie, she came off the train. I saw her right away. She was easy to see. She came right to me because I held those bags out in front. But Birdie. I know who she is. I don’t know her name, but I know where she works. I see her all the time when I deliver coffee up in Venice Beach.”
Venice Beach lies just south of Los Angeles, a long strip of chaos wave white sands and gay muscle boys and bikini roller girls and stall after stall of henna tattoo and velvet art and cheap jewelry vendors along a cement boardwalk. It was considered the “Coney Island of the Pacific” during the first half of the 20th Century, with its beachside veneer and inland town resembling Venice, Italy with a network of canals and a business district built in Venetian architectural style. Ulak delivered coffee to many of the restaurants bordering the beach, walked the boardwalk dragging a personalized dolly towering with boxes of roasted beans and specialty herb teas and Turkish spices.
“I saw her many times at one of those street tables, Birdie. One of those tables by the Mexican restaurant next to the used bookstore. The one by the public bathrooms. She’s there every time I make my delivery.” Ulak paused and tipped his cup to finish his coffee.
“What? What? She’s selling my Avon at Venice Beach? I don’t get it! How can she make money doing that? She’s buying it full price from me.” I tried to picture the vendors by the bookstore, but I couldn’t remember them. So many vendors, cheap clothes and plastic bangles and California t-shirts, a blur of a tourist beach.
“No, you have to wait. Let me finish telling you. You’re so impatient.” Ulak smiled and closed his eyes. He carved a tableau of the hand cream hand-off - a beautiful sea maiden with a golden sequined mini-skirt and bright red sneakers with no socks handing cash for hand cream, no questions about why the coffee man stood in my place, no surprise in her dark blue eyes, all sparkle business, a quick handshake, a dive back into the train. Ulak waited a moment, counted the money, and climbed the ridged metal steps one car behind, choosing a seat near the front door, an aisle seat.
The train thundered along the coast, past the Army men playing Cowboys and Indians with rip blade helicopters and olive tents, past the brown sad border patrol, through small ocean cities like raw pearls strung like lights. It rolled to a stop at the Santa Ana rail station, the biggest baddest piece of rail construction in the country in the 1950s, an adobe palace with red tile and blue marble flooring, a good station to stop at if you wanted a side trip to Venice Beach or Hollywood or Beverly Hills. Ms. Mystery stepped off the train, Ulak shadowing her from one car behind, onto the cool blue marble floor. She ran to a waiting car, a Buick, said Ulak, a dusty red Buick with dark glass windows and a vanity plate he didn’t understand. She slid into the shotgun seat, slammed the door shut, and the car lurched into the ant colony of Los Angeles traffic.
Ulak paused here, eyes still closed, and for a moment I thought he’d fallen asleep. I watched the rise and fall of his barrel chest, thought about poking him in the side with my sharp index finger. He opened one eye, the eye facing me, and raised one bushy eyebrow.
“So what do you think I did next Birdie? I sat and thought What Would Birdie Do?” Ulak laughed, a harsh drum beat yowl, as if what I would do would be the most insane ridiculous thing in the world. “And I thought, Miss Birdie would follow that car to Venice Beach and confront the girl. She would make a scene, that Miss Birdie. Yes, you would,” he continued, seeing my scowl, “You would try to be stealthy but everyone would see you, and then you would make a big scene when you saw what I saw.”
What? What did he see? What would make me yell or point or flail around in agony? I wanted to ask, to demand an answer, but I was more embarrassed that Ulak was right. I would sneak around like a two bit marital problem detective, then snap a photo and point and cry or whatever the scene warranted, yes I would. Crap. Am I that transparent?
“So Miss Birdie. I grabbed a cab to Venice Beach and walked slowly - slowly, Birdie, slowly, not fast like you - to the bookstore and waited. I just waited, and talked to my friends at the restaurant, and looked at the vendors, and I looked out at the sea, and I found out all about your little friend. What do you suppose she does with your Avon? Do you have any idea at all?”
I didn’t flinch, didn’t change my expression, just stared at Ulak’s left eye, the eye pinning me to the fountain tiles.
“She sells lotions by the seashore,” Ulak singsang like the tongue twister, “She sells ‘intimacy’ lotions with sandalwood and myrrh. Massage lotions. She squeezes out your Avon into glass bottles and mixes them with essential oils and sells them for twenty dollars a bottle. Here, I bought one for you.” Ulak pulled a blue glass bottle from his cargo shorts and handed it to me. The label said “Magikal Massage Lotion - Clove” in spirited twirly script and I opened it, breathed it in, and smelled the unmistakable scent of cloves mixed with Moisture Rich hand cream. Fifteen bucks a bottle, and no walking door-to-door? Geez. Why didn’t I think of doing that?!
Runaway Nuts
The summer rounded a corner, turned from July to August. Serious Avon Apathy moved to my address. Sure, I knocked on doors, left satin smooth brochures and samples of beauty promise on beach cottage porches, under doormats, stuffed behind screen doors, balanced on mailboxes. But my heart didn’t hold any Skin-So-Soft or Lift and Tuck. It carried the harsh reality of unpaid bills, a drumbeat unrest with life and location, sparse communication with friends and family, and my customers noticed. They started leaving me desperate messages. Hey, Birdie! Come play makeover with me! Give me diamond cut lips! Reduce my hips! C’mon, Birdie! I know you’re there!
I ignored them. I left Avon bags of goodness in the moonlight, let them mail me checks as some customers faded to nothing, to other Avon Ladies full of lipstick lifeforce. The hell with Avon, I thought. I need a change. This ain’t cutting it anymore. Why hasn’t Kilt Man Kevin called? Where the hell are my friends?
My potbellied pig didn’t care that I paced my yard calculating inadequate income and overwhelming outflow. Frankie sure made himself at home. He discovered every cabinet containing food and started stealing the dog’s chew toys. He learned to sit and stand and roll and play dead and dance and fetch and sing! He took to climbing the hill and trotting across the catwalk to the treehouse and spent long afternoons up in the Mexican Pepper tree watching people walk up and down the neighboring street. One day he even dropped a heavy rawhide bone on the sidewalk-ridden Boxer who left gifts of dog doo under my pear tree. Klunk! It landed on the offender’s lumpy head, and I received a snotty call from an irate owner.
He snoozed in the morning sun, his pink and black and white sides coated with perspiration, while the kids played water fights. He sat under the early evening shade of the Macadamia trees and mimicked the call of sparrows and crows in an uneven earthy grunt. One afternoon I heard a raucous cheer from the neighborhood kids and ran out to the backyard to see Frankie run at full speed across the yard and then SPLASH!!!! A full stomach belly flop and fast scoot along my boys’ Slip ‘n Slide. He rose at the end, up on four hooves fast, and I swear he bowed and waited for his score. He ran to the end of the line and waited his turn without a push or shove, and he stood with respect until the tiny boy before him finished his slide and stepped off the plastic.
Frankie plopped his body into the dusky clay under the Macadamia trees and pushed the round nuts with his snout most afternoons, let the sun and wind coat his hide with fine sand while my young boys sat on his back and hugged his bulging neck. I fed him bowls of piggy kibble and leftovers, and watched him grow fat and happy and sure of his place in my world of child management and bottled allure. He put away more food than each of us human animals combined. He let crumbs fall from his mouth onto the floor, near x-rated ecstatic groans escaping his lips, the first bite to the last. He honored the meal with a sideways flip to the ground, a full-on collapse of satisfaction, ending each meal with a gratified snore. He ballooned to 125 pounds of solid pack pork and I exchanged his small cedar pillow for a wicker Great Dane dog bed.
My boys fueled his fire, snuck snacks while I sat at my computer, stuffed Graham crackers and peanut butter sandwiches under their shirts and let Frankie munch them under the shade of the deck. 125 became 140 turned 160, and I noticed Frankie developing an unhealthy obsession with the creak of the refrigerator door. His stomach started to sway from side to side as he walked, like the lurching swing of an old dancer’s hips.
“Give that pig some exercise!” I pointed to the harness and leash hanging over the laundry room door, and made Marty and Louie saddle up, walk Frankie around the block, once, twice, three hundred times.
Good, I thought. He’ll slim down and the boys will keep out of my hair.
A week passed. Then two. The pig enjoyed his exercise more than I anticipated. Frankie stood at the front door for hours, waiting for Walk Time, and I stared at his speckled gut, wondering why the damn pig looked swollen and impatient. My boys hustled down the street, tied pig in hand, and I shrugged my shoulders. A pig is a pig is a pig. They simply aren’t small animals.
Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! Page 21