I see you're not wearing any pants, said the pants salesman.
Yes, you would notice something like that, I replied.
I would, and why is that? he asked.
Because you're a pants salesman, I said.
I'm often good at stating the obvious. Yesterday, I remarked that I was breathing. Truth has marked me as its curator. We stared at each other for about two hours. Four days and two hours, actually, for those counting, like my boss, who probably wondered why I didn't come back to fill my shift at the glass-eyeball factory. I don't work with the eyeballs, but in the adjacent coffee shop next door, beside the factory, where people go for hot chocolate, and sometimes coffee. I need a holiday.
So, you're going to purchase some pants? he asked, hopefully. I could see that my decision mattered strongly to him. He seemed like a nice man. He smiled when he talked to reveal the cutest crinkles to crease the corners of his eyes, which were not glass, but the real, honest thing; retinas, lenses, and tiny projectors that were showing film strips he probably didn't intend for anybody but his psychiatrist to see. I saw a psychiatrist once, after I hit my seventh water-buffalo with my roommate's stolen Buick. I was young. Young and seriously drunk. On alcohol, and heady abstract poetry.
I found myself wondering if he needed the sale to support a family, either of humans, or flamingo lawn ornaments. I watched as he smoked a cigarette and casually devoured the filter, like it was already his lunch break. Employees will take such liberties when the security cameras have been disabled. Again, his family: did he have any children? Did they wear toupees and dream about careers in the concord grape jelly industry, working industriously up to orange marmalade? Foolish cretins, their aptitude tests would guide them otherwise, towards replicating immovable objects at parties, or selling pants like their father.
I decided to take pity on him, and splurge, rather than saving my recent allowance for a new toboggan, the one with the AM/FM cassette in the dash. I would have other birthdays, I surmised, and my roommate still owed me big-time for the water-buffalo head I had stuffed with shredded gym socks for his second-honeymoon with that really hot chick who impressed me by always remembering to use a spoon when eating her cereal. Such culinary diligence, combined with my roommate's amazing ability to call every refrigerator he saw by its surname, was a strike-anywhere match, and thus the gift of slightly dented water-buffalo cranium hung above his toilet, wearing a miner's helmet.
Wonderful! exclaimed the salesman. I knew you were the sort to abide pants. Your cuticles are so clearly manicured, and your eyebrows are carefully applied with brown marker, that I could never deny you as an adherent to the latest trends, styles and even the occasional fad. Now then, he added, plump with pride, let's talk pleats.
I momentarily stopped fiddling with my genitals and stared anew at my possessing advocate, his right arm now hidden beneath layers of khaki, chino, and cuff. Suddenly and without warning, we were about to enter into a realm of frank-decision and abrupt honesty, where the subtle dance of clumsy commerce would commence on a slanted floor under tragic fluorescent lights. How many pleats would he recommend? The measure of this man's expertise was in how carefully he read my tastes.
To be continued...
Will the main character buy a pair of jeans, instead?
Will the salesman reveal that he is illiterate despite carrying around the Book of Mormon?
Will the Book of Mormon he's carrying with him be revealed to be a coloring-book of Bob Dylan's 1974 Rolling Thunder Revue?
When is dinner?
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