“You’re up, Henry,” the driver yelled over his shoulder. I wiped the sweat off of my brow and squeezed my way past the eight other bodies in the sweltering van. I waded through empty energy drink cans and chip bags, while the others cheered for me. They patted me on the back. Called out my name. The ones who had room to do so, clapped. The others banged their feet to pump me up. It smelled of stinking bodies and the air was tight. I couldn’t wait to get some air.
I opened the sliding door and untangled my feet from the guy next to me. I stepped outside and headed for the back of the van, and the driver got out of his side and met me around back. “You’re ready for this,” he smiled and patted me hard on the head. He opened the back door and I pulled out my box. A heavy oblong package weighing somewhere around thirty pounds and standing four feet high. “Don’t forget your attachments,” he barked, and tossed a smaller box on top.
“Thanks Sonny,” I said. I had to get my game face on.
“Remember,” he said, fixing my tie. “We’ll be back in an hour. So get in there, do your full demo and sell them. If you get yourself kicked out, you’re sitting on that hot ass curb and waiting…”
“I know,” I say. “Don’t worry. I’ll sell the hell out of it.”
“Fuckin’ A,” he said and slammed the door closed.
The way this business worked was that us salesmen were stuffed in the back of the van. The driver, who was the team leader, would sit up front, and next to him would be a scantily clad teenage girl. She’s the “knocker”. She’d walk up and down residential blocks, knock doors, show off her tits, and offer to clean one room in their homes for free. Most would get lulled in by the knocker, and say “Sure, honey. Come on in.” That’s when she’d smile, turn, come back to the van, and pull one of us.
That’s where I came in. I was a salesman. A door to door vacuum salesman.
I dragged my vacuum behind me, trying to make it look lightweight, and made my way to the door. I was all smiles and confidence. If she was old, I’d be her grandson for the next hour. Young, her lover. A man, his best bud. The knocker met me at the door. She pulled up her red tube top to keep her breast in order and smacked gum.
“This is Tabby,” she smiled. “She’d like you to clean one room of her house for free as part of our promotion!”
“Great,” I said, smiling broadly. Grandson approach, I thought. I knew my teeth were large and inviting. I knew I was going sell this broad just on my looks alone.
“I’m going go now, Tabby. Henry’s going take good care of you,” she said.
“Alrighty,” Tabby cooed and led me into the house.
“Sell this bitch,” the knocker whispered to me as she walked back to the van. Seconds later she and the rest of the group were gone.
“Now, I’m not gonna buy anything,” Tabby said to me as I closed her front door and she led me into the living room. “The girl said you’d clean one room of my house for free and I just couldn’t turn it down, honey.”
“That’s okay,” I smiled. I was feeling good being in the air conditioned room. Plus everything was going exactly the way they told me it would go. They’re supposed to tell you they don’t want to buy. Then, being the kind, caring, giving guy I am, “Really no problem, ma’am. This is my first week on the job. I’m just trying to get some experience doing my demo.”
“Please,” she smiled. “Call me Tabby.” Grandma approach, I repeated to myself. But maybe a little bit of the lover act too. She was overweight, but only in parts. Her stomach was a swollen hump and her freckled shoulders and back were all flab and oil. The South Texas heat had a way of making unattractive people look downright ugly, and it was no exception with Tabby. Her face was thin, but it was probably because she was missing several teeth, and it made her skin fall loosely on her cheeks. She had the wrinkles on her top lip that told me she smoked. I knew what to do. After I pulled the vacuum out of the box and laid out the attachments on the floor display-style, I wiped my brow.
“Tabby, I’m excited to show you what the Kirbson can do, and I’m gonna make this carpet of yours gleam like the day you bought it, but do you mind if I have a seat for second. Maybe smoke a cigarette. It’s just so hot out today.”
“Of course,” she called out. “Get in this kitchen and have yourself a sit. Here.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes out from in between the sweating mounds that heaved over her moo-moo. “Have one of mine.” Even though they were menthol, which I hated, I smiled and took it. You never turn down anything a client tries to give you. “I don’t care if you’re Jewish and they offer you a goddamn porkchop,” my leader had said in training. “You never turn it down.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Now, I already told you about that,” she laughed. “Call me Tabby.”
“Tabby,” I said as we sat at her kitchen table. “That’s right.”
“And what’s your name again?”
“Henry,” I said.
“Henry,” she repeated. She lit my cigarette and lit herself one. She poured me iced tea from a pitcher and we sat back. I took a deep drag and we looked at each other.
“I hate for you to go through all the trouble of cleaning, but when that girl said y’all were doing it for free I was just tickled. Been so busy around here, I haven’t had a second to clean.”
I almost laughed as I imagined her sitting in this exact spot sixteen hours a day, smoking and watching TV, never having a single second to get anything done, but I composed myself. “Tabby, now listen. Don’t feel guilty about it. The fact is,” I took another drag and we ashed in unison into a glass ashtray. “The fact is that I really do need the practice with this equipment. It’s no problem.”
“If you say so,” she smiled. I could tell she was looking me up and down every time I looked away, so I stood and walked over to the fridge so she could get a nice look at my ass.
“This must be your husband,” I said and pointed out a picture on the freezer door.
“Yes, that’s Bill. He’s at work just now.”
“I see. Sorry I won’t get a chance to meet him.” I walked back over to the table, took a few quick drags and put the cigarette out. “Thanks for the smoke,” I said. “It’s so nice to be around someone that doesn’t get in my face for smoking a cigarette.”
“Lord, I know!” she called out. “You can’t go anywhere without someone giving you all kinds of hell these days.”
“That’s why people like us have to stick together,” I smiled. Again, I beamed friendship, and I was her family, and we just got along so well.
“That’s right,” she said.
We moved back out to her living room, and I got down to business. I opened the box and assembled the vacuum. First the long handle into the huge base. Then the bag onto the handle. Finally the bag onto the base.
“That thing uses bags? What about all those fancy vacuums on TV I keep seeing that don’t have no bag. And they look much lighter than that big ol’ thing. Aren’t those better?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered. “Bagless cleaners don’t get as good a suction as this one. Besides, the Kirbson may not be the most fashionable looking fella in town, but he’s got a tried and true design. Same design since 1957. And a Kirbson vacuum has a lifetime warranty Tabby. Can you say that about those other guys? And I mean a lifetime warranty. Not one of them limited time offer things,” I had already slipped into my faux-homegrown-Southern-boy accent. “And I don’t care if you put this badboy out in the driveway and run it over with your car five, six times. It’s not gonna break. And if it does, Tabby…”
“Lifetime warranty?”
“Lifetime warranty. Kirson will replace it free of charge.”
Then I got ready to show her the magic. I pulled out a stack of white cotton pads. We put these pads in the way of the bag on the vacuum so that we can trap all the dirt. This way we could pull out the pads easily, and show them the dirt we’re pulling out of their carpet. Usually it’s pretty God-awful. We called this “pulling pads”.
I flipped the machine on and took a few swipes around the living room. I pulled a pad and showed her a quarter inch of dirt on the pad.
“Oh, Good Lord,” she cried. “That’s just from one little patch?”
“That’s just from one little patch” I repeated back to her. I handed her the pad and let her reflect on how disgusting her home was. Let her reflect on how much I could do with this little wonder. I saw something happen in her eyes. It was the moment she went from thinking she wasn’t going to buy, to at least flirting with the idea that she wanted one. She tried to hand the pad back to me, but I left her arm outstretched holding the wretched thing, and I flipped the Kirbson back on. I ran it all over the living room. I pulled pads. I tossed the vacuum on the couch and pulled dirt out of the couch cushion. I pulled pads. I tossed the vacuum on the La-Z-Boy and pulled pads. All the while I yelled over the hum of the machine shit like, “And if you have allergies, forget about Claritin. This is your new prescription!” and “How much do you think it would cost to replace your carpet? This badboy is going to save you thousands of dollars in the long run. Imagine never replacing your carpet ever again!”. I pulled pads. I lined them up in one corner of her living room. At first there were just a few, but I frantically cleaned and worked and sweat and pulled pads and soon there were over a hundred pads lined up on her floor. All of them covered in filth and dirt and grime and Cheetos dust and colorful candy shells and animal hair and people hair and pubic hair. Her eyes bulged and she nodded excitedly as I pulled pads and pulled pads. I put on the curtain attachment and pulled pads. I put on the electronics-safe attachments, running it over the TV and stereo and VCR and DVD player and pulled pads. I showed this woman once and for all that she hadn’t even begun to understand how fucking filthy she was.
When I’d finished I shut the machine off and fell onto the couch, drenched in sweat and I grinned ear to ear like I’d just had toe-tingling sex. “And it’ll save you on gym membership bills too.”
“My land,” she said, laughing. “I never knew there could be so much dirt just lying around here.
“There’s also an attachment that can steam your dresses, ma’am.”
“My Lord.”
“And you can flick a switch, turn it from suck to blow, and the Kirbson is powerful enough to be a leaf blower out in the yard.”
“I’ll be.”
“Wait until you see the best part,” I said.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” she said, and looked over at the rows upon rows of cleaning pads in the corner.
“Show me the way to the bedroom,” I winked.
Seconds later, we were in her bedroom. I hauled the Kirbson on top of the bed and unlatched a section of the base and took out the white pads I’d been using.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Well, Tabby. I’ve already cleaned your living room, and basically we’re done here. My demo’s done. But I just wanted to show you one more thing before I go. I just had to show you this.” I put the leftover white pads in my back pocket and I pulled out a stack of black pads from my attachment box. “These pads are exactly the same as the other pads I was using, except these are black. They’re going to let us see all of the dead skin cells in your mattress.”
Tabby started to get nervous, just like they told me she would. Most people do. The thought of a complete stranger coming into your home and pulling your dead skin cells out of your bed is not only disgusting, but also painfully embarrassing. She blubbered on about how we should just go back into the living room, and then I said,
“Did you know that a bed mattress gains up to three pounds a year? That’s right. Every year you own your mattress it gets three pounds heavier. How, you ask? From dead skin cells. See, mattresses are very porous, and while we’re sleeping we roll around and sweat and slough off old skin layers, just like snakes. And the skin sinks deep into our mattresses. Have you ever gone to move your mattress, and thought, ‘I swear to God., this thing gets heavier every time I lift it’? That’s not you imagining things, Tabby. That’s the truth. The average American keeps a mattress for ten years. That means, that by the time you throw out an old mattress for a new one, your mattress has gained thirty pounds!”
“For land sakes,” she cries.
“For land sakes,” I repeat.
Before she could say anything else, I flipped on the machine and started pulling pads of skin out of her mattress. Pad upon pad upon pad. The grey dusty stuff came up in handfuls. You could have made a brand new person out of the shit.
Back in the kitchen, we sat at the table and lit fresh cigarettes.
“Well,” she said as we took drags. “I think it’s Beer Thirty. You need one?”
“Absolutely,” I said. She grabbed us two cold cans of beer out of the fridge and opened them. Her thumb went a little too deep into mine and the dirty fingernail dipped itself into my beer a little, but I pretended not to notice. I took the beer and took a big pull off of it.
We sat back, smoking and drinking, and cooling off.
“That was certainly some show you put on,” she said. “You’re gonna make a wonderful salesman.”
“Hell” I said. “I ain’t no salesman. But I do like people. And I do like the product here. The Kirbson’s an amazing piece of machinery. They sell themselves.”
“It certainly is a nice one. How much are those anyway?”
I smiled. This was the tough part, and it took a special kind of approach.
“They’re nineteen ninety nine,” I said.
“Nineteen ninety nine? Like twenty bucks?”
“No, no. Sorry. They’re nineteen hundred ninety nine.”
“Two thousand dollars! My Lord!”
“I know. I know,” I said. “It’s a lot of money.”
“You damn right,” she said. “Our vacuum cost me a hundred bucks, and I thought twice before I bought that.”
“Yeah, well…” I rubbed the back of my sweaty neck. “The thing about the Kirbson is that you’ll never have to buy another vacuum again as long as you live. You can pass it on to your kids. And your kids kids. And you know about the warranty.”
“I know, but…”
“No, I know. It’s a lot. But it also does more than any machine you’ll ever see. I guarantee there isn’t another home cleaning system like this one. Plus, Kirbson is offering a promotion right now that could help you save a lot of money.”
“Unless they’re giving them away,” she smiled. “It’s just not gonna happen honey.
See, I don’t know if you can tell but we don’t make much money. I can’t work because of my back, and my husband works hard, but he doesn’t make much…”
“That’s totally understandable,” I said. “What if I told you that instead of two thousand dollars you’d be paying sixteen fifty? Would that make a difference?”
“Sweet heart,” she said. “To be honest with you, we can’t even afford the bills we got now. We got rent every month and the car payment. Plus all our credit cards, it’s just too much right now.”
“I know,” I said, but I wouldn’t budge. I didn’t care if she lived in a four room pigsty, with one income. I didn’t care if she was in debt up to her eyeballs. I was going to sell her this goddamn vacuum. “I know.”
We put out our cigarettes and finished our beers.
“Listen,” she said. “Why don’t you stay for one more beer? We’ll talk a little. You can soak up this AC before you go back out there.”
“I won’t argue with you,” I smiled.
It was then that my cell phone rang. It was my team leader. He called just like he was supposed to. He was trying to help me close the deal. Tabby brought us the beers, and I stood up and started pacing as I talked:
“Hey Sonny…No, we’re fine here. I just finished the demo and I’m sitting here with Tabby, and we’re just talking about payment options…(I winked to Tabby to show her that I wasn’t pressuring her and that I was saying all this to my boss to keep him happy)… Well, Sonny…the thing is that they are a little tight for money right now…Yeah. Yeah. No, I told her about the special promotion right now…No. No, I told her sixteen fifty…No, sixteen…What?...Now wait a minute Sonny, don’t get mad at me. Sixteen fifty is reasonable, and Tabby here really wants one. She just can’t afford two thousand dollars!...I’m sorry Sonny, I’ve already promised her the price, I can’t take it back…(The truth is Sonny hadn’t said a word yet. I was talking to myself. The whole time, Sonny was just sitting on the other end chuckling)…Listen, Sonny. I respect you…Yes, sir…but I’m not gonna go back on my word here…Okay…Well I don’t give a damn if it comes out of my commission…That’s fine…Okay…I got it…Listen, Sonny. I’m still with the client now. I’ll call you back when I’m done…Yup…Yup…No…Okay, I’ll call you back. Bye.”
“Did I get you in trouble, sweet heart?” she asked.
“No, no. He’s just got his head up his ass.” I smiled. “Two thousand dollars is just too much, you know. And I know for a fact what I can discount you and what I can’t. And sixteen fifty is fine.”
She gave me an awkward smile and looked down to the floor.
“Anyway,” I said. “I know you guys can’t really afford one of these vacuums, and I’m gonna get out of your hair in a minute, but I’m obligated by my boss to give you one final offer.
“Okay,” she said.
I took a pen from the table like they trained me to do, and I grabbed a used index card, flipped it over and began scribbling. I wrote down the new offer. I slipped the card over to her. She looked at it for a long time. I didn’t say a word. I just smoked and smoked while she looked and smoked. I stared at her, waited for her to look up. I waited to give her the look of her sweet, sweet grandson who needed grandma’s help just this one time. I waited to give her the look of a lover, the look of smoke and sex. I waited to give her the look of a man who was destroyed and who needed a new momma. Any kind of look at all. She stared at the card. It could have been five minutes. It could have been thirty. I don’t know.
But then she looked up at me in tears. Her hand shook, and the index card shook. She looked right through me as I tried to give her my looks. Sex. Pity. Sorrow. Sex. Pity. Sorrow. Tears welled up in her eyes and she cracked open her lips. A bubble formed and popped there as I sat frozen and stared at her mouth. There was an expression of defeat in her eyes, and I thought for a second, ‘Oh, Christ. I’ve sold her.’ For a second, I hoped I hadn’t.
It was then that her husband bounded through the door. “Hey, baby!” he bellowed, before he saw us sitting at his table. “Oh. Hello,” he said, presumably to me. I didn’t break my stare, but my eyes were welling up too and I didn’t know how much longer I could go on looking at this woman. Tabby didn’t look up at her husband; she stayed locked on me and the room was silent again as quickly as it had gotten loud.
“Henry,” she said.
“Yes?” I said.
Silence again, and I knew she had come to a decision. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the husband moving away and off to the bathroom. The door shut behind him.
“Henry.”
“Yes?”
Her mouth shook, and the tears could no longer build up in her eyes. They poured out over her wrinkled face, and disappeared into the deep crevices. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But we just can’t afford it. You’re such a sweet boy, and I want to help you out, but I just can’t.” I said nothing. I broke my eye contact and stood.
The demo was over, and I’d done my best, and the husband was home, and she said no, and it was over. There was nothing else to say. I took apart the machine and packed up the accessories.
“Please don’t be upset,” she said. “You did a really great job.”
“Thanks,” I said. “…for your hospitality. And for the beers.”
She smiled without saying anything. I grabbed up my things, and walked towards the door. I couldn’t tell how guilty I wanted her to feel.
“Wait,” she said. “Do you want to meet my husband? Maybe you could stay for dinner. Bill makes great ribs.” She was frantic to make me happy.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ve got to get going.”
“Well, thanks for the brand new living room!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Have a nice night.”
I closed the door behind me. Outside, it was hotter than it had been before, and I could feel my skin defrosting from the time spent inside. There would be another few seconds before I started sweating. I walked down to the street and sat on the curb.
The hot cement burned through my khaki pants, and I squinted in the bright afternoon might. I waited. As I waited for the van to come for me, I suddenly became aware of what sounded like sobbing behind me. I turned to Tabby’s house and saw the couple’s silhouettes in the window. Her head was deep in his chest and she was crying loud enough for me to hear. She was crushed. Bill, much taller than Tabby, rubbed her back softly and rhythmically. His head rested gently on hers. His thick, beautiful arms, did everything they could to comfort his short, frail wife. I couldn’t tell what he said to her, but he was whispering to her. His lips just inches away from her ear. She was slowly calming down. She looked up at him and they kissed. I reached into my pocket, and pulled out my phone. It would be a while before Sonny came back for me.