The Perils of Market Week

Market Week at the Fashion Mart

A time to show,
A time to woo,
A time to blow,
A time to schmooze,
A time to sell...

The Anne-of-Green-Gabley yokels from the Maritimes.

The stiletto-heeled Quebecois boutique owners from la belle province.

The big-boned, fair-haired, donut-country gals from Eastern Ontari-ari-ario.

Easy marks, honest merchants bereft of guile. Little Red Riding Hoods ready with checkbooks in holsters for the schmatah coach robbers. But for Harry, Market Week was a drag; long hours, a blown weekend and a stingy "bonus" in lieu of commission.

"You know what it costs me to rent a double-booth in the Fashion Mart for Market Week?"

"Here he goes again," Harry thought, knowing that any answer he would give would be wrong.

"I dunno, Alvy. Fifty, sixty gees?"

"Is that what they taught you in acting school? No wonder 95% of actors are unemployed. Consider yourself lucky, Har-ri-son Staaarrr, even if you can't count to two."

"Is that a compliment or insult?"

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking...Anyhow if you want to be a putz, be a putz, but Market Week costs me an arm and a leg. Moving costs, extra sample sets, refreshments - over five hundred bucks in bagels, cream cheese and lox alone. Then there's pens...pens...We go through cases of pens...And entertainment -- strippers for the horn-dogs from the Beauce. And finally...need I even mention, the very substantial labour costs?"

Very substantial labor costs? Like the $250 "bonus" Harry made for working Sunday and week nights? Chump change compared to the business he generated. The previous season Harry wrote over eighty grand in business, almost all of it at full mark up. He was sick of it all, ready to move on. With his Seinfeld script almost finished, this would surely be his last Market Week. But there was that ridiculous game he had play to try to squeeze Alvy for a few extra shekels. Left to Alvy's goodwill, Harry would still be making making the same measly C-note he got for his first Market Week.

"I need more money, Alvy. You pay me bupkis compared to the business I write."

"Bupkis? You want to cover all my expenses? Every season you harass me for more. Gimme, gimme, gimme..."

"It's not a gimme, I'm underpaid."

"So you say. How much did you make acting this year?

"..."

What the fuck did that have to do with anything? Harry considered murdering Alvy. Really. A little poison in his matzoh ball soup would be easy. No one would ever suspect a thing. No one would care. Actually the unbridled joy of his passing would be hard to contain. Harry wondered if he'd be a pall bearer and if so, whether he would be able to keep a straight face. Not really nice, but there was always Yom Kippur to grovel for forgiveness.

"There is biblical precedent," Harry imagined pleading to The Almighty during the Kol Nidre service on Yom Kippur eve, all the while doing his best to avoid Iggy Potacker's pungent herring breath. (Every year, no matter how far in advance he would advise the synagogue's esteemed High Holiday Seating Chairman, Mort "Monkey Toes" Block, a man who allegedly could peel a banana with his toes, Harry would find himself seated next to Iggy Potackner, the breath-impaired fishmonger).

"Jacob's lads, Levi and Simeon slaughtered the whole town of Shechem to avenge for the rape of their sister, Dinah, and they snatched a by from the brimstone. True, a little tongue-lashing in pop's final blessing, but Levi's progeny snagged the the priesthood with all its great yichus, while Simeon still got to keep his tribe along with bragging rights to the popular but mindless children's game, "Simon Says."...And this example is but the tip of the iceberg. Let us not even mention our greatest prophet Moses, who, while breaking into the business, pummeled an Egyptian and then buried the dude in the sand. Should I continue, O Master of the Universe?"

"Okay, okay. What's with that look? You do a good job Harry, I'm bumping you up to a $300 bonus for Market Week."

Screw the extra fifty bucks, let's go with the murder behind Door Number 1.

At which point Harry would inevitably shrug and Alvy would inevitably pirouette towards the closest exit.

"Now I better go check to see if the samples are ready," Alvy said. "And don't forget to push that putana Pauline or she'll hang out under the table blowing guys all week."

Harry chose the sigh behind Door Number 2 and prorogued his bloodthirst by adding "Murder Alvy" to his to-do list...Then he thought of his assistant, Pauline Edouardo, the accomplished harpy on the prowl, and sighed again.

"..."

It was amazing how far chutzpah, designer clothes, a coiffed hairdo, blond streaks, manicured nails and a come-hither look could take a woman and Pauline was the proof. She looked at least seven years older than her 36 years with her perpetually tanned alligator hide, deep eye-pouches (masked by gaudy glasses), and long teeth discolored from smoking. Her plump, super-sized lips were her saving grace.

Harry was baffled by her success with men; what he didn't know was that her modus operandi was flawless. Hang out at breakfast and weekends at the Duc de Lorraine cafe on Cote des Neiges. Flirt, flatter and ingratiate herself with every rich Jewish sucker she could find - divorced or married. That's how she met Stan Yuck. Do the same thing week nights downtown at Chez Alexandre with her equally predatory divorced girlfriends. That's how she met "Dudas" Dubrofsky.

And could she talk, one of those people who tell their  whole life story the first time they meet someone. Harry had heard it ad nauseum during the six months since Alvy had hired her to help out in the showroom:

She was married for five years to Arno Edouardo, an ethically psychopathic Corsican antique dealer with impeccable taste, magnetic charm and lots of cash. Anyone who did business with him ultimately got screwed, but few caught on. If they were fools enough to pay $34,000 for a pair of Louis XlV chairs that Arno picked up in a Paris flea market for $250, then that was their problem. If some gullible stooge dropped their asking price on their Westmount home by 30% because they  bought into Arno's forged inspection report stating that the house was sinking into oblivion, then so be it. No one was forced to sell anything.

Not that any of this bothered Pauline. In fact, she admired Arno's cunning ways. Life was about fucking with people and coming out on top.  And so she was willing to overlook all his affairs, the ones with her friends, the tryst with her cousin, the groping of her aunt. Arno brought home the bacon, decked her out in (hot) diamonds and gave her social status. Everyone wants to hang with successful crooks. (When they get caught, that's another story). In any case, life was almost beautiful. If Arno slapped her around once in a while, that was the price Pauline would have to pay.

Until the day Arno had one affair and one shady sale too many. This time he sold a faux Persian rug for $10,000 (manufactured in India, evaluated at $600), to a female body builder he'd been seeing. After she received the true evaluation of the rug, Miss Muscles had her own plan. That night while Arno was working his electric tongue on her G-spot, she clamped her legs with such brute force around the brazen bush pilot's neck, that it snapped like a breadstick, killing him instantaneously. Then she had a multiple orgasm.

Fortunately for Miss Muscles, the death was ruled accidental and she even got her ten grand back.

Fortunately for Pauline, she lucked into a clean exit from an abusive marriage and into a goldmine when Arno's estate was settled: two point seven million in cash, a couple of buildings and a house in Westmount. Life was beautiful.

And it got even better. Pauline's widowed mother, who was actually a lovely lady, moved in with her to take care of the two kids and thus began a new Pauline money man manhunt. Her first coup was nabbing Dudas Dubrofsky, a rugged defenseman for the Montreal Canadians and the first Jew to ever play for the team. She caught him at a vulnerable time, after he caught his wife in bed with the team doctor. Pauline and Dudas dated for over a year until he got cut by the Canadians, but finally got accepted into dentistry school. Enough reason for Pauline to dump him because,"Dentists are cheap." Then she wanted another place to go and got a part-time job in the showroom at Shugar Belt.

Less than a month after the trade, Pauline scored again, nailing Stan Yuck, owner of Canada's largest underwear manufacturer, Yuck Undergarments, and also a divorcee recovering from a bout of prostrate cancer. Pauline sucked him back to old form and therein lay the secret to her success with men, specifically fellatio-deprived-and-depraved Jewish men, of whom there were many. But the Stan romance ended rather eponymously when Pauline inadvertently poked a French-manicured nail into a yucky patch of poop sheared in his underwear. And that meant that Pauline was on the prowl again.