Market Week

CLOSE UP OF HARRY:

THE BACKGROUND IS BLACK. IT SEEMS LIKE HARRY'S HEAD IS FLOATING IN THE DARKNESS. HIS FACE IS PAINTED IN WHITE WITH BLACK STRIPES ON THE CHEEKS. THERE IS A GOLD RING IN HIS NOSE:

"The horrors, the horrors that I've seen.  The honest merchants bereft of guile, easy marks for the schmatologist wolves. Little Red Riding Hoods with checkbooks in their baskets knocking on grandma's door. I've seen them all. The Anne-of-Green-Gables bo-tique owners from the Maritimes writing checks for merchandise that never gets shipped. The fair-haired, double-chinned Ontario innocents clad in floral-patterned polyester sweaters, OD'ing on bagels and lox. The stiletto-heeled fashionistas with fuschia-streaked hair from la belle province getting banged in shag-carpeted motel rooms on cum-stained sheets by grunting, toupéed, lingerie jobbers high on Diet Coke and smoked meat, farting while they fuck. Do not judge these schmata barbarians, for they are pure. They take the money and run, no regrets. If I had half the heart of those goniffs, half the heart, half the gumption of those sales reps living in their perfect immoral vacuums then I too would be at peace, at one with the universe. Do not judge them I say, for they are pure and I am but another Market Week whore masquerading behind this painted face ."

FADE OUT:

"Alvy, I need more money to work the show."

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

Not my fucking problem "I dunno, Alvy. Ten bucks?"

"Putz.Ten bucks he says."

A putz who did your wife. "And can you stop with the putz, please."

"Okay, smart ass. Do you have any idea what Market Week costs me? Between moving costs, extra sample sets, refreshments...A fucking fortune..."

Alvy placed three boxes from Delly Guys on the booth counter. He opened a box, pulled out a poppy seed bagel and ripped off a piece.

"Five hundred bucks just in bagels, cream cheese and lox," he said while chewing on a bagel. Poppy seeds rained down on his yellow silk shirt. Alvy pulled out the plastic container of pickles and another one with potato salad. He opened the pickle container, fished out a spear and guided it into his mouth. "Mmm, good...And then there's pickles...they're not cheap, you know?" Alvy eyed the tub of potato salad peeled off the lid, plunged in a couple of wet briny fingers, scooped out some potato salad and stuffed it into his masticating mouth.

"Mmm," he grunted."Good," he gulped and took a deep breath. "Y'know, good potato salad's not cheap! Add it up and..."

"...You've got some potato salad on your nose, Alvy."

Alvy wiped it off with his sleeve and scowled.

"And poppy seeds in between your front teeth."

Alvy picked them out with a business card and said,"And then there's your substantial bonus."

"Bonus? More like salary, Alvy. Small salary; two hundred bucks to work the show over a whole weekend? That's bupkis compared to the business I write."

"Bupkis? You want to cover all my expenses? You're never satisfied with anything. It's always, 'Gimme, gimme, gimme.' You get an extra two hundred bucks for working the show. What more do you want next, my wife?"

Harry's face turned red and the words, any words wouldn't come out. "..."

"You s.o.b Harry, you'd probably do her if you had the chance."

"?" Well...yeah, but at least I feel awful that I don't feel awful about it. Won't let it happen again, even though she called me the other day. Don't need this kind of headache. Mental note: Grovel for forgiveness in synagogue on Yom Kippur. Get my name inscribed in the Book of Life. If not...well, I guess I won't have anything to worry about."

"Okay, okay. What's with that look? You do a good job Harry, I'm bumping up your Market Week bonus to $250."

"Stop with the bonus. It's more like overtime pay." Enough. Alvy pirouetted towards the exit. Harry shrugged his shoulders. An extra fifty bucks. Fifty lousy bucks.

"Gonna check to see if the samples are ready," Alvy said. "And make sure that Pauline is out there selling, not yapping. The broad has chronic diarrhea of the mouth"

and blond streaks, designer clothes, with chutzpah to burn. No beaut, that Pauline if you looked closely, if you looked at all. A harpy with alligator hide, pouchy eyes and tobacco-stained teeth. And some big mouth! She never shut up, especially when the subject was herself. Pauline told her life story to any poor sap who'd listen, like Harry.

"Me, I was married for five years to Arnaud Edouardo. He was a lying bastard, a Corsican antique dealer, but he had impeccable taste and mon dieu, was he charming when it suited him. And full of money, he worshiped money. Of course he screwed anyone who did business with him and usually got away with it. Once he sold a pair of Louis XlV for $34,000 that he bought in a Paris flea market for $250. And when he bought our first house in Westmount, he forged the inspection report so he could bargain down the price another $200,000." Yadda, yadda, yadda. Arnaud, Arnaud, Arnaud.

"Arnaud was a great businessman...although he screwed almost everyone. He was always screwing somebody, in business, in bed or even on the kitchen counter. That was his game. He even screwed my cousin Sylvie the manicurist and my Aunt Lisette. Such a dog that Arnaud..."

"Okay, Pauline. It's enough already," Harry said. "Let's focus on selling the customer."

But a half hour later Pauline pointed to the five carat diamond ring on her finger. "Arnaud bought me this for my thirty-fifth birthday. Five carats and pure...Also a little hot. His little brother Napoleon, was a fence."

"I don't care, Pauline." But Harry did care, he loved the stories. So he faked annoyance and listened intentively with each coffee they shared in between customers.

"But one day Arnaud screwed the wrong customer when he sold a fake Persian rug worth $600 for $12,000 to a female body-builder he'd been fucking. She found this out while he eating her pussy. Arnaud, the putz,  left the original invoice lying around. The body-builder got so mad that she clamped her legs around his neck so hard that it snapped like a bread-stick, killing him on the spot. Then she had a multiple orgasm. She told me this herself and I felt nothing. He deserved it."

"She told you this and you were okay with it? You didn't go the police? Someone who was screwed your husband and then killed him."

"She said it was an accident, he licked her G-spot and she just lost control. It was just an accident."

"Just an accident?"

"Even the coroner said so. The truth is, she really did me a favor, he was such a bad person. I even gave her back the twelve grand that Arnaud took from her for the rug. Why not? I could afford to. In his will Arnaud left me two point seven million in cash, a strip mall and the house in Westmount.  Life was better without him."

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

"...then one night at Chez Alexandre I met"Dudas" Dubrofsky, you know, the big defenseman for the Montreal Canadiens and a Jew. He had just left his wife after he caught her in bed with the team doctor. I dated Dudas for over a year, he was a great guy. Then he got cut by the Canadiens and went into dentistry, his real dream. But dentists are cheap, so I dropped him."

"Sweet girl."

"But at least I met Alvy through Dudas and when I wanted to get back to work, Alvy offered me a job here  at Shugar Belt."

"Which brings us here."

"And I need a new boyfriend, Harry."