Allicat

It looked like something a magician might use to convert a white rabbit into something more worthy of attention. If there was an animal of some kind beneath the drapery, it betrayed nothing of itself. It made no sound and emitted no odor.

The salesman snatched a handful of brochures from a plastic wall mount. He turned away from his customer and began to shuffle through them, searching for the least absurd.

Poman broke the nervous silence. "Last night, my home was robbed for the third time in as many months."

The salesman stopped shuffling and grinned to himself as he placed the booklets back into their wall mounts. This was going to be too easy, he thought.

"It makes a guy feel helpless," Poman continued.

The salesman turned toward his customer and glowered at him with a time-tested affect consisting of both empathy and indignation. "You and I are going to make sure that doesn’t happen again, Mister Poman."

The salesman strode into the highlighted area of the floor as he smoothed his red and gold-striped tie. Almost lovingly, he suspended his other hand gracefully over the upper corner of the covered box. This was his favorite part of the show. Always, at this stage of the presentation, when the customer was numb with anticipation, the salesman would poach a moment to appreciate himself. He considered the delays to be valuable services to the customers as well. It enhanced the intensity of their experiences and, in his estimation, the shows were of even greater benefit to them than the relatively anti-climactic transfers of ownership that inevitably followed.

Yesterday, before he sold a pair of animals to the fat woman with a chauffer, he thought about himself with the receptionist. She had begun to flirt with him on Monday, about twenty minutes after the store manager announced that he had consummated the most sales during the previous month. She had been experiencing "intimacy issues," as she referred to her domestic problems, with her "grease-monkey," as the salesman referred to her husband. She was ripe, he told himself.

The truth of the matter was that the receptionist and her husband had worked things out. She was truly happy for the first time in ages. But the salesman had absorbed her new-found bliss like a ratty, soiled sponge. He had twisted and squeezed it until looked to him more like loneliness and lust as it drained away.

Today, he thought about himself and his wife. She had been out there somewhere for two months, trying to make it on her own. She had called him last night, though, and begged him to take her back. He told her about all the money he had been making since he started selling the Allicats. She told him that she had been seeing someone else. She was just playing a game, he thought. She said she would end it and come back to him tonight. He decided to be big about it, to let her retain at least some of her pride. He told her that he would try to be at the office later tonight, if she wanted to stop by and talk about it. He would consider allowing her to come home-if she apologized long and hard enough. The salesman grinned and thought about his receptionist too.

The truth of the matter was that he had been the one doing all the begging-ever since she had dragged her not-too-dusty suitcase out from under the marital bed. She couldn’t care less about the money. She had discovered that she still cared about him. The salesman loved her too-as much as he could-more than himself, certainly.