Wedding Belles

"I'm going to show you something, Rita," Roy informed her. "Something you're not going to believe."

It had taken the salesman a quarter of an hour to convey the various parts of the Superlative up the steep front steps and into the house and another quarter hour to reassemble it -- big-handed and fumble-fingered, he kept dropping pieces and seemed to have difficulty discerning which tube went where and which attachment might fit what wand. Rita guessed his age to be nineteen or twenty. He was slight, stooped and his sallow face and what she could discern of his neck were peppered with red, angry-looking pimples separated by crater-like pock marks. The salesman's rumpled, ill-fitting brown suit was cheap and shiny ; his tie was a clip on, and the battered hushpuppies which peeked out from the salt-stained hems of his suit pants sported frayed laces. Roy was a mess. The vacuum cleaner, on the other hand, was an impressive piece of machinery.

Its sleek chrome canister was twice the size of a more mundane vacuum cleaner and gleamed in the dim light of the living room like a big bullet or the sort of bombs one drops from airplanes in movies. From it obtruded various tubes and hoses to which, Roy assured her, one affixed brushes, wands and a variety of other attachments intended to suck debris out of crevices, for example, or remove lint from the electric coils on the back of the refrigerator. "Twenty-one attachments in all," Roy had exulted. "Dirt can't hide from the Superlative!"

Rita sat slumped on the lumpy couch, eyeing the vacuum salesman. "What is it you're going to show me?" she asked.

Roy reached into a large portfolio and pulled out a poster-sized piece of paper. Depicted on it was a huge bug, with pincers, antennae, big, compound eyes and what could only be described as furry mandibles. It looked very fierce.

"This . . . this, Rita, is a dust mite!" Roy crowed. "This is what lives in your mattress!"

"That doesn't live in my mattress," Rita told him. "I would have noticed."

"Well, the image is magnified, of course," conceded Roy. "You can't see these things with the naked eye."

"So, what's the problem?" asked Rita.

"You want to sleep in a bed full of things that look like this?" Roy waved the picture at her, apparently incredulous.

"If I can't see them, why should it bother me what they look like?" Rita wanted to know.

"But there . . . there's your health to consider. These things get into your lungs."

"How much is the vacuum cleaner?" Rita asked wearily.

"And there's all the dog hairs," Roy soldiered on. "Your friend Cheryl was particularly concerned about the dog hairs. . . ."

"Did Cheryl buy a vacuum cleaner?"

"No. But. . . ."

"Roy," Rita insisted, " how much is the vacuum cleaner?"

"$2,100," Roy admitted. He held his hand up. "Oh, I know. I know. It's not cheap . . . but can you set a price on your wellbeing?"

"Yes," said Rita. "And it would be a lot lower than $2,100. I'm sorry, Roy, but no." Rita stood and waved Roy towards the door.

"No?" Roy echoed. He looked at her quizzically, his head cocked to one side, his watery eyes beseeching.

"No sale," Rita clarified. "I can't afford this vacuum cleaner and, what's more, I don't want it. You've had your demo. Now, please, get this thing out of here."

"Can't I at least clean your couch?" Roy pleaded.

"No," Rita decided. "I like dog hair. It's all I have left of poor Digger, when I think about it." Suddenly she felt glum, as though felt had been wrapped around her heart and pulled tight.

"What about your carpet?"

"Roy!" Rita insisted.

 

 

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2008/Melissa Hardy