A Girl Named Luz, A Hippo Named Cyclopes

 

 

Two months earlier, I was peddling plush toys from a duffel bag. So

help me, we went door to door. We haggled local merchants, dogwalkers,

whoever was kind enough to lend an ear. I never had trouble

emptying my bag, but there were many casualties, as we said in the biz.

Most of the prospective peddlers went AWOL their first week, many the

first day. You needed a certain je ne sais quois to lug around a bag of

stuffed animals and get people to buy from you.

 

How in the world did I get hooked into the stuffed animal racket?

Wish I could say there was a better explanation, other than the truth,

which was I’d circled it in a newspaper ad, and, I might add, was duped.

I’ll get to that part later.

 

The advertisement offered the chance to make serious coin while

helping poor kids in third world countries. This piqued my curiosity.

When I’d gotten to the interview there were many shmoes like myself all

there for the very same reason, desperate to work. Meanwhile, the

interviewer assumed that the six other interviewees, and myself, were

engrossed by his slide presentation. We were ready to leap into action

and end global poverty and plunk down a first payment on a brand new

Audi.

 

By nature, I’m a healthy skeptic with a daub of naivety. Just as well

because if you look at this urban jungle too long you only see cracks in

the pavement and miss out on the little joys like the smell of hot pretzels,

being able to prop your feet on an empty subway seat, air vents blowing

up skirts, the well-placed billboard mustache.

 

Halfway through the slide presentation,four skedaddled. Now maybe

I was more desperate than the others, more gullible. It’s a shrink’s wet

dream to analyze my perceived enthusiasm, but I was there, ready and

willing to help my fellow man, so long as it involved a paycheck. The rest

of the altruism fit into my breast pocket. Competition was fierce. There

were the purse, belt, golf-shirt and gaudy tie vendors, not to mention the

kitsch photographers and curbside masseuses.

 

Our job was much more nomadic than the other street vendors, much

more akin to leafletters and ladies of the night. Not that I was an expert

regarding the latter, but I’ve, once or twice, followed a streetwalker, just

to ask a question or two. Nomads have always fascinated me, but I’ll be

honest the first few times I tailed a hooker were a bit scary. Imagine if I

got nabbed by an undercover cop. So far I’ve never been booked [get the

little pun] but I worry that my excuse, playing the curious urban

anthropologist, might not always pan out. A chatty hooker makes the

time fly by; some of them however, can be rather pushy if you’re not

there strictly for business.

 

They schooled me in the art of bilking money. The lucky apprentices

and myself grabbed our bags from the dispatcher in Greenpoint then

lugged it over to Midtown, where, since I was a greenhorn, a mentor

shadowed my every move till I was confident enough to shake people

down for whatever they would throw us, usually just to get us out of

their faces. By noon, I was the only sucker left.

 

Chalked it up as an experience and for the record my resume was

pitiful, filled with mime jobs in department stores spritzing new

fragrances and various pet and plant-sitting gigs. You can take the prick

out of a cactus but you can’t take the cactus out of the prick.

 

My forte was acquiring dead end jobs hardly a notch above what just

off-the-boat immigrants would do for a buck or Ivy Leaguers slumming

for a summer until they anchored themselves into their six-figure niche.

 

Ipso facto I dove into the stuffed animal business. This is when I met

Luz, though I was certain I’d seen her before. I was up to my armpits in

koalas and down to my last hippo, which some kid had plucked the eye

out of, don’t ask me how, so nobody wanted it. Luz had this enchanted

expression as if I were peddling the remains of a lost civilization instead

of stuffed animals. I busied myself pretending I didn’t see her, my heart

pounding Morse code double-time expanding my aura.

 

Nobody leveled me with such an undertow of ethereal charm.

Everything scrambled inside me when she pulled near. She examined my

merchandise of teddies, turtles, and then bent over to pick up an orange

octopus. Then she began to toy with its fuzzy tentacles. She stood up

joggling her purse strap back onto her shoulder to get a more holistic

view of my goods.

 

“You don’t have any pandas,” she said, petting the octopus’s nose.

 

“No, actually we don’t, but we have a heck of lot of koalas as you can

see.”

 

“No monkeys either.”

 

“Fresh out. If you were here three minutes ago, you could’ve had

yourself a marmoset. I’ll put one aside for you when I get the next batch.”

 

“That’s okay. I mean, I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”

 

“None at all. That’s my job.”

 

“Hiding stuffed animals from potential customers.”

 

“Making people happy.”

 

“It really isn’t for me. It’s for my niece.”

 

“All the same.”

 

She discovered the tag on the octopus’s bottom and proceeded to

scrunch her brows. The folds on her forehead like little ripples in a pond.

She nodded to herself then held the tag out.

 

“So is this true? The money goes to the children in Somalia?”

 

“I’m sorry about that,” I said, biting off the tag.

 

Then crumpled it up and tossed it into the sewer behind the curb.

 

“So you’re a crook.”

 

“No, not at all I swear I just found out about that the other day. I’ve

gone completely solo, I don’t even work for that organization anymore.”

 

“It would be a travesty.”

 

“I’m well aware, but hey, please have it. Your niece shouldn’t have to

suffer from the slings and arrows of outrageous hoopla.”

 

“No, she shouldn’t.”

 

“She’ll love it, a gift from me to her.”

 

“She’s not supposed to take gifts from strangers.”

 

“Well then, you’re the ombudsman. You’re not a stranger, you’re her

aunt. Technically, she’s going to take the octopus from you so that’s okay,

all you really have do is accept it from me. I’m sure you can handle that.

Call it my jab at goodwill.”

 

She hugged it close to her chest.

 

“I couldn’t. How much is it?”

 

“Either that one or Cyclops the hippo.”

 

“What happened to him?”

 

“It’s a rough business finding these orphans a proper home. I think I

have an eye patch somewhere.”

 

It was a while before she returned. Nonetheless, as promised, I’d kept

a marmoset aside for her, casting off many pushy people desperate for

stuffed monkeys. Call me a closet romantic, but I was sure she’d be back.

After all, I’d felt the ground tilt below my feet when we met.

 

When she returned she refused the monkey, opting for a green

panther. It was this second time that we had what I’d like to consider

more meaningful banter, though I still knew hardly anything about her

except for her name, her affinity for stuffed animals and that she had

three dozen pairs of flip flops. I’d managed to find out she was planning

on doing a documentary on Luddites. I nodded, more so in acknowledgement
that such old-fashioned thinking could survive in this day and age, though I
did find her topic fascinating. There was a brief moment, in which I got the
feeling she was sorry she had mentioned anything. Then it occurred to me
that perhaps, she had broken the sacred anthropological tenet not to inform
a potential informant. I didn’t take it so badly it just never dawned on me
somebody might see me as the kind of guy who’d thumb his nose at progress.

 

I was somewhat hesitant about broaching the subject of my halfbaked

thesis with her, but somehow she squeaked it out of me. She also

had an interesting suggestion to motivate my progress.

 

“Don’t get me wrong you have a certain knack for stuffed animals,”

Luz said, “But I can see you selling books?”

 

“Books?” I repeated.

 

“Well, how many interesting conversations can you scrounge up

pawning off pandas?”

 

“I met you.”

 

“That’s true, but couldn’t you turn your table into something more

productive. Maybe you can study the buying habits of your customers.

Wouldn’t that be an interesting slant for your thesis? Actually, I guess

you could do a comparison. Sell stuffed animals, books, bootleg videos.

Mix it up.”

 

“You might just have something there. That would probably make

the most sense, applying my job to my thesis, but the thing is I have a

certain reason for doing my topic.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Maybe it’s a bit stupid for me to fix on this topic now since I have

been bouncing around for way too long, but I’m trying to find out

something about myself. See, I pick up and drop things so much that I

never really build a suitable layer of integrity. Call me nuts, but I feel that

the thesis I work on needs to be on a topic I have absolutely no interest in,

but if I can somehow tie the knot on it, it just might give me the boost I

need.”

 

“Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

 

“Your idea is great and I probably would love to do it, but the way I

am I probably would change my mind halfway through and pick up a

new topic. I’m a mess.”

 

“No, I don’t think it’s that, but you need to have a little more

confidence in yourself. I think you’re going to do big things someday.

This documentary I’m working on could be a bit tedious so you’re

probably better off doing your own thing.”

 

I felt really crappy about opening myself up to her. She rattled my

sense of stasis. I so enjoyed talking with her. I wanted to be a part of

something, anything with her. I would have actually paid her to be a part

of the documentary, but I couldn’t keep from stuffing my foot in my

mouth. I was infatuated with the arc of her smile and the way she tilted

her chin listening to me. As far as I was concerned, it was only the two of

us there even though crowds of people hurried this way and that, taxis

whizzed by. Once in a while, I shed a glance at the passing city. My eyes

needed a break because I had a tendency to stare too hard. I didn’t want

her to think I was a freak.