Retail Hell (10 page)

“No clue. A cow?”

Jules smiled.“Shearling. Real shearling. From the skin of an unborn lamb. Obtained after a pregnant adult sheep has been slaughtered for meat or skin or died from a disease.”

Holy shit!
That’s
way
worse than bunnies and goats. I might throw up.

“But NEVER say that,” she warned, “It will turn customers off big-time. Always be casual and just say, ‘Oh it’s a type of leather.’”

“That’s so fucking disgusting. A baby lamb! All for a look!”

“Fashion can be cruel. Take a look at this GORGEOUS Isabella Fiore handbag,” Jules said, picking up a large burgundy bag with two short handles and a frame opening. “This is what we call a framed doctor’s satchel. Feel it. Simply gorgeous.”

From a distance it resembled an intricately detailed woven tapestry, but when I touched it, I felt little hairs in the swirling design.

The kind of little hairs found on the hide of a dead animal.

“I’m afraid to ask,” I said, wondering what poor mammal gave its life up to be a satchel.

“Read the tag,” she said, showing me the inside of a small folded card attached to the bag.

I read a short flowery story about how the handbag was Arthurian inspired, but it was the last sentence that grabbed me:
Handcrafted
Italian laser-cut calf.

Laser-cut calf.

Three words that should not be put together. “Omigod.”

Jules smirked. “You need me to tell you about it?”

My head filled with screaming calves being laser tattooed against their will.

“Sweet Jesus, no. That’s so gross.”

“Exactly, my friend. Not a pretty sight,” she replied, “Ignorance is bliss. That’s why you can never go wrong by saying Italian leather for just about anything.”

“Unless it’s a snake,” Marsha said, “Women hate snakes. Turn them all into handbags and shoes for all I care.”

“You got that fuckin’ right,” added Cammie, “Snakes creep the shit out of me.”

Once the ladies felt they’d covered everything, it was testing time. Cammie modeled a black, wrinkled, rounded, sack-looking Francisco Biasia on her shoulder and I had to figure out what it was.

After a few seconds I came up with, “Washed leather hobo.”

Jules gave thumbs up. “Now look closer. Add on the features.”

Cammie prominently displayed the zippered closure.

“Zip-top hobo?”

Marsha high-fived me. “You go, boy!”

“What else, Free? There’s more,” said Jules.

I noticed the shape of the Biasia was quite tall, very vertical.

“A north-south zip-top hobo?”

The girls cheered, but Jules pushed me further. “Now what’s on the front?”

Cammie ran her fingers over two mini pockets mounted on its face.

After a moment I nailed it:“Double pockets . . . north-south double-pocket zip-top hobo!”

You would have thought I’d just won
Jeopardy.
My triumph was applauded, followed by hugs all around. It was the first moment in the Handbag Jungle where I thought I could survive as a salesperson.

Marsha’s lavender fingernail pointed directly below the words north-south double-pocket zip-top hobo on the bag’s tag. “And don’t forget the name, hon. This one is Anastasia.”

I felt a scream coming on. No way in hell was I going to remember their birth names.

“Don’t worry about the stupid fucking names,” Cammie said. “We can’t remember most of them either. Usually they’re printed on the tags or we just look them up in the catalogs.”

“The catalogs?”

Marsha, Cammie, and Jules eyed each other, heads shaking in disbelief.

“Judy didn’t show you shit, did she?” said Cammie.

They led me into the Corral, where Jules pulled open a drawer jammed full of color catalogs: A treasure trove of dead animal hide information. “If you need names, colors, and prices, you’ll find them in here,” she said opening one and showing me a photograph of an Allure shearling bag. Underneath was everything a man selling handbags needed to know:
Mia. $1,765. Authentic Italian Shearling.
Large Cross-body Double-Pocket Drawstring Shoulder. Available
in Cocoa, Shell, and Onyx. Features include two roomy
outside pockets, a back zipper pocket, magnetic tab closure,
an internal zip pocket, and an open cell-phone pocket banded
in leather.
I couldn’t believe it. All the info was right there. Along with fucking pictures.

“Why didn’t Judy tell me about this?”

Cammie rolled her eyes. “Because she doesn’t like us showing them to customers.”

“Even though we all do it anyway,” said Marsha.

Jules nodded, adding, “They want us selling what’s on the floor. Not special ordering. And even though we do transfers, it saves the company money if you sell what’s in front of you.”

“Why didn’t you guys just show me the drawer?” I said, pulling out the Coach book and opening it to a full-page photo of an east-west single-pocket tote in purple signature jacquard.

“None of it would have made sense without a basic knowledge of handbags,” said Jules.

Cammie grinned. “Dude, you didn’t even know what a fucking satchel was.”

“And now you know what a double-pocket zip-top hobo is!” added Marsha, “You are no longer a newbie! You’re an official Hand-bag Connoisseur!”

Handbag Connoisseur.

Not exactly something I’d ever thought I’d become.

But what choice did I have at that point? It was a good thing I had Angels in the Handbag Jungle. Otherwise the $3,000 glazed anaconda-skin multipocket satchel named Brutus would have eaten me alive.

Instead I sold it to a woman after I told her it was this year’s It Bag on the Paris runways.

One afternoon, I happened to arrive in the parking structure at the same time as Marsha, who was my fellow closer for that day. We walked together, talking about everything from her cats to my screenwriting. Our lighthearted chitchat ended when we reached the brown door where Mount Fancy waited silently, ominously.

“Sweet mother of God, here we go,” sighed Marsha.

I entered the security code, waited for the click, and we both entered leg-lifting hell.

Then our jaws hit the floor.

I didn’t hold back. “What the fuck?”

The steel carpeted mountain had been transformed into a birthday party.

Apparently it was The Big Fancy’s fifty-second year in operation, and Suzy Davis-Satan had spared no expense in reminding us as we climbed. The entryway was awash in ugly yellow and purple balloons with green and white crepe-paper streamers strung everywhere. Suzy’s welcome sign had been replaced with an oversized cheesy party store Happy Birthday card. A huge yellow banner covered the Important People sign:
Happy 52nd Birthday, Big Fancy! We Rock!
The walls were painted a putrid pea green color, the very same color Linda Blair released all over the carpet in the first
Exorcist
, with party-themed yellow and purple signs:
What can you celebrate this week? Make
it a Big Birthday with Big Sales! Have a Cake Walk with Client
Capture!
The Headless Mannequins were swathed in cheap Happy Birthday wrapping paper and wore pointed yellow party hats where their heads should have been. And at the top of the mountain stood a giant fake cake with fake lavender frosting and a
52
on top.

As we climbed, I was dumbfounded by the amount of decorating work involved. “Seems like they went to a lot of trouble to do all of this. They could have spent the money installing an elevator.”

Marsha let out a cackle as we trudged up the third flight of stairs. “Hon, that will never happen. This company is too cheap to spend money on something to make our lives easier. It’s been this way ever since the store opened.”

“I just don’t understand it. How could they have designed an employee entrance full of stairs? Shouldn’t this be against the law? Why haven’t they been reported to OSHA?”

“Ha! OSHA! That’ll be the day. Did you know that nearly all The Big Fancy Stores have stairs in the employee entrances?”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope,” said Marsha gripping the handrail. “This store has the most. Almost all Big Fancies have them. It’s because of Mr. Lou.”

I figured she was talking about one of The Big Fancy’s executives. For some ridiculous reason they like to be called Mr. with their first name after it. Kinda creepy if you ask me.

“Who is Mr. Lou?”

“Hon, don’t you remember the training video?”

“I think I slept through most of it.”

“Freeman, he’s the founder of The Big Fancy.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah.”

On the fifth platform, we passed the birthday-paper-wrapped Headless Mannequins with their yellow party hat heads, and Marsha let out a gasp, “What the hell are they supposed to be?”

“Party Animal Mannequins, I guess. I hope they don’t start dancing.”

“You got that right,” said Marsha as we lumbered up the sixth flight. “Anyway, Mr. Lou is an absolute pig. He was visiting the store once and came into the handbag department pretending to look for something for his wife. The scumbag asked me if I wanted to go to dinner in his hotel room. You believe that? Dinner in his hotel room! Sleazy sonofabitch! His wife had just given birth in Des Moines, to Mr. Michael.”

“CEO, President Mr. Michael?”

“That’s the one. I’m dating myself now,” she said, wheezing and white-knuckling the handrail.“His father, Mr. Lou, was a walking hardon. He had mistresses at all the stores. I could tell you stories. . . .”

When we got to the seventh platform, Marsha stopped for a moment to catch her breath before resuming.

“Are you okay, Marsha?”

“This is my bad spot. Two more flights. But I’m a tough old broad. I’ll make it.” Marsha steadied herself with the railing while trying to regain her composure. “All these damn stairs were Mr. Lou’s idea,” she gasped, “The bastard had builders install stairs in all the Big Fancy employee entrances because he felt the employees needed to get a little exercise each day before our shifts to work off our fat.”

“Work off your fat? No way!”

“Yes way, hon. His exact words at an employee meeting. I’m afraid so.”

“What an ass. It’s not like we can wear workout clothes and tennis shoes to work!”

Marsh wheezed as we started up the seventh flight. “Apparently, he wasn’t happy with the way many of The Big Fancy’s salespeople looked. He felt most were out of shape and needed to work off a few pounds. Mr. Lou was really into fitness, a big lover of Jack LaLanne. Before Mr. Lou dropped dead of a heart attack, he made his sons swear they would keep building Employee Entrance stairs. They built this store a short time later, and his sons wanted to pay tribute. Mr. Michael christened these very stairs Lou’s Big Workout.”

“What an evil bastard,” I said, panting like a golden retriever tired of fetching, “I’m surprised there isn’t a sign when you walk in that says LOU’S BIG WORKOUT!”

“Funny thing about that! There used to be one! Suzy didn’t like it. She felt it was too uninspiring so she replaced it with that fake feel-good- family-jewel garbage.”

“Does Mr. Michael do Lou’s Big Workout when he visits?”

“You kidding? That wussy? Comes in through the mall like all the other executives.”

“He should go up and down these godforsaken stairs a couple of times. See how he likes it.”

Marsha dragged herself up the eighth flight with a grunt.

“Darlin’, if I had the chance, I’d make that smug little prick carry me up on his back, and I’d use a riding crop on his ass the entire way.”

As Big Fancy Salespeople continued to exercise our allegedly out-of-shape bodies on Lou’s Big Workout, pulled muscles and cardiac arrests were not the only hazards we had to worry about on Mount Fancy.

There was the incessant danger of tumbling down it.

The possibility of broken bones or falling to our death was far greater. If you hit your head just right, the floor of the seventh platform could turn into a tunnel of white light.

I don’t think anybody ever died falling down Mount Fancy, but plenty of people took spills down the mountain. Marsha told me about Elsa, an older lady from Alterations, and Trina, a young twenty-something girl from Cosmetics. Apparently they toppled down the stairs within weeks of each other. The news of their falls traveled fast, but details were sketchy. Elsa and Trina took a dive down Mount Fancy and disappeared. That’s all anyone knew. They were never heard from again. I desperately wanted to know what happened to Elsa and Trina!

Did they end up wheelchair bound?

On life support?

Were they keeping quiet via their lawyers because of large medical settlements?

Not even Marsha could find out.

The medical claims on Mount Fancy must have been staggering. I can’t say I never thought about taking a nosedive off Mount Fancy and becoming a part of those staggering medical claims. But, while going out on workmen’s comp might sound like a perfect way to create a paid writer’s retreat to finish my Million-Dollar Screenplay, with my luck, my typing fingers would be the body parts to break, leaving my brain to sulk and lament.