Mr. MacCloud has just left for his dinner break, a faulty muffler on the store owner's Lincoln signaling his departure.   Cold coffee, in a mug on his desk, is giving off a smell like damp rot and I'm thinking of maybe dumping it, when Margaret humps into the office, half-bent: shaking out her feather duster, standing it upright in a wastebasket.  I'm standing at the counter crunching numbers on the antiquated adding machine.  Yawning, I pause to watch the feathers flutter like birds about to take flight.  Though the weather's stayed mild, the light is already changed to fall light.  Making the cramped messy office of the furniture store seem grayer, earlier.

Margaret kicks off her thick, white nurse-style shoes and gets comfortable in Mr. MacCloud's swivel chair — shoving the Columbus Day Sale tag out of the way, putting her legs up on papers cluttering the desk top.

"These old tired legs," she says.  A familiar refrain.

I smooth my ponytail saying, "I thought you took your nap already."    

"Too risky, honey."  She purses her lips, her brown face gnarled like a walnut.  "Those accountants been swarming this place all afternoon." 

Through clenched teeth I go: "Bzzzz."  

Margaret cracks-up laughing, pounding her chest where the green uniform is cut like a bib.  The day after she got married, at sixteen, she became housekeeper at MacCloud's Fine Furniture.  Thirty-eight years on the job!  Almost unthinkable.  I knead a tension point where pain is starting in my forehead, and pray to be anywhere but here when I reach her age. 

But Margaret seems okay with it.  She knows the ropes cold: such as when it's safe to go stretch out and take her nap on the wrought-iron couch with the plastic flowered cushions inside the vestibule of the ladies room.

I start pounding the adding machine again, trying to get Bill Treptower's special orders to jive.  To beef-up his commission, periodically he fudges the numbers.   

So when Margaret says, "How're you doin' honey?" we both know it isn't a real question.  I grunt making a face. 

"You know that pretty, puffy otto-man?" she says.  "That one near the top of the stairs?" 

When I hear ottoman like that, I picture a fat puffy guy named Otto — like that dough-faced guy caught masturbating back in dinettes.     

"I don't think so," I say. "Which one?"

"That nice round one with the looong silky fringe." 

Margaret's not giving up.  I'm chewing the edge of my pencil thinking that Treptower has gone over the line this time with his batch of special orders.  No way can I get this shit to work out.  The few I manage to push through the system, he gives me two percent of the fake money.  Overage he calls it, winking like we're Bonnie & Clyde.  Your breath smells terrible, I want to tell him.  I don't.  I'm getting divorced soon and need lots of extra money.       

Margaret is twirling her finger toward the ceiling.  "That salmon-colored puffy one up there.  It's going on the Columbus Day Sale — for sure it is.  I checked myself, personal, with Mr. Beverly."

At her mention of the assistant store manager, I get this crawly feeling up my back. 

She says, "He was makin' up them sale tags in the warehouse.  Forty-percent's what he told me.  That's less my employee ten.  Honey, I can get that otto-man for under fifty dollars."  

"What a steal."  Deciding that Treptower's special orders can wait I begin to massage my forehead, looking out over the counter at a sea of sofas.  "So where will you put it?" 

"Well, now..."  Margaret is off and flying — leading me through her house, room after room, detail after minuscule detail.  I'm a passive dog being pulled along by its snout.  I don't mind.  Even though I've heard it all a hundred times.  Actually I look forward to it, night after night, almost hungrily — the descriptions of her furniture and accessories, tumbling out in the soothing, rolling cadence of her speech.  My eyelids grow heavy.  I lean back against the counter.  And for a while, for as long as it takes Mr. MacCloud to finish his dinner, Margaret's aqua lamps and mauve-colored carpet and painted porcelain switch plates take me away from my troubles.       

"You enjoy this sorta house talk, dontcha honey?"  Using her feet to push against the desk she tilts back in Mr. MacCloud's chair.  "You being the store decorator, that is."

Store decorator?  How about lowly office worker.  "I used to be the store decorator," I say.  

If it comes out sounding bitter, I am bitter — bitter bitter bitter.  Leaning my elbows on the counter I stare out across the sales floor.  "Oh-my-god!"

To the left of the sofas, where about a dozen naugahyde recliner chairs form a sloppy rectangle, someone has made the decision to place a toss pillow on each recliner — bright sleazy-looking pillows made of some cheap sateen.  

Pointing I say, "What's with the toss pillows on the recliners?"       "That was Mrs. Davidow, honey.  She done that.  I was against them pillows."  Margaret is brushing dandruff off the shoulders of her uniform.  "Mr. MacCloud, he let her anyway."

And I'm thinking: Mrs. Davidow Mrs. Davidow.  The only person in the entire sales organization, besides Mr. MacCloud and Mr. Beverly, to go by a last name.  What chutzpa! — to quote Lou Rice who was top salesman three years running and says repeatedly: I don't like that woman.  Of course Lou steals like crazy from all the other salesmen — hitting on their customers on their days off; and while they're at lunch and dinner — which I've never seen him take even once. 

"Mrs. Davidow!"  I spit her name into the air. 

At fifty-something, you would think she'd be well past the linen Eloise dresses with sailor collars, the patent-leather T-strap flats.

Margaret bobs her head.  "That's right, honey, I saw for myself.  It was her with them pillows."

"At least pick pillows that go!"  I say, tossing my pencil across the counter.  "Something in a plaid or checks.  Even a crewel-stitch pattern, for chrissakes.  Something that goes with vinyl!"  Vinyl comes out harsh-sounding like vile.  I feel harsh.  I am powerless to do anything about those pillows.  And it feels terrible.      

I grab one of Treptower's special orders out of the bin, waving it wildly.  "The woman doesn't know what she's doing.  Sateen pillows on recliners.  It's totally gross."

Margaret glances at the clock then takes her feet off Mr. MacCloud's desk.  "I can't stand to dust them things anymore.  I can't stand to look at them pillows."   

"Well who could!" 

Last spring, around late May, just before the big Memorial Day Sale, Mr. MacCloud began introducing her around the store as the new decorator.  She said to me:  "Nice to meet you Cara — I'm Mrs. Davidow." 

Letting me know she expected to be called Mrs. Davidow!    You've got my fucking job, lady, I wanted to scream.  But Mr. MacCloud just stood there with his make-believe happy face — like when he calls us a family during sales meetings — all beamed up with the recessed lights bouncing off his high shiny forehead.  So there was really nothing I could do.  Nothing.  I had screwed-up.  Royally.  She's the new decorator.  Girlish Mrs. Davidow.  I try staying clear of her, ducking out to the ladies room when she clip-clops over to the counter to check her orders.  I think she's amused by what's happened; I think she looks down her nose at me.

The truth being that I never meant to start anything with anyone.  Least of all with Mr. Beverly.  He'd always kind of grossed-me-out, the way he smells of gasoline from riding his motorcycle to and from work; then there's all that tinkering with it in the warehouse.  Then there's the matter of his cheap blue suits, and polyester shirts that his wife doesn't believe need ironing.  Ten black crescents of imbedded grease for fingernails — not much to brag about, either, in a man.

Parked on the edge of his beat-up desk in the warehouse, that day, he was squinting and sort of studying those black fingernails, while I stood opposite him asking what we should do about all that hot-pink furniture piled at the far end — stuff Mrs. Kengle special ordered; specifically against my advice as store decorator. Then  deciding she didn't care for hot-pink and sending everything back! 

The warehouse felt like a tomb.  Just Mr. Beverly, and his desk, and a lot of unwanted, broken, half-used furniture.  Hot pink Mr. Beverly repeated really squeezing juice out of those two words.  He stared at me, hard and low.  I got that Jello feeling.  Next thing, we were squeezed in between the area rugs — a line of them hanging from the ceiling by a chain-pulley.  My skirt yanked up practically over my head.     

Bert Beverly may be assistant store manager but he's hillbilly  through and through — a transplant out of some hickville spot in southern Jersey.  Possibly Pine Barrens.  We never got around to discussing the particulars of our lives.  Never got past the quick, sweaty sex — that once got started seemed horribly inevitable.  

With her hand on the desk for balance Margaret is stepping into her thick shoes.  She grabs the feather duster, makes a stab at swiping the top of the low file cabinet as Mr. MacCloud bustles in: all smiles, all business.  Immediately wanting to know how much in sales during the short span of dead time that he's been gone.  I almost say: most people are at home enjoying a leisurely dinner.  Instead I slide my in-box to hide Treptower's special orders and smile brightly.  “Bud Schuster sold a pair of Stiffel lamps.”                                          

“Cara mia.”  Mr. MacCloud says this softly, his pet name for me — but now always with a kind of dread mixed with sadness. 

Under my breath I groan and lower my eyes.  Knowing what he's thinking.  That I've disappointed him.  Defiled myself.  Ruined my marriage.  Brought shame to MacCloud's Fine Furniture, to our little family of employees.  But most of all, deep down, Mr. MacCloud wishes it had been he — not Mr. Beverly.

Of course, he has never said so.  But I can tell.  Just by the way he gets stirred up, coughing violently, when I bend over to file paperwork — deliberately pushing out my ass in his direction.  Mr. MacCloud just happens to be loaded.  If he'd been the father, I might have been able to keep my baby and live in a nice apartment too.  My new place is a hovel.  Curry, from the former tenant, has infiltrated the plaster.  The other night I dreamt of lamb eyes floating in my bath water.  Right from the beginning Mr. Beverly made things quite clear:  "I don't have two nickels to rub together," he said.

My then husband, Don, safe within his vasectomy.  What luck.  I started getting fat pretty fast.  My poor baby had no hiding place.  Don figured things out quick and told me to leave.  Customers starting offering congratulations when I'd pay them a visit to measure for draperies then end up puking in their powder room.  A confusing time.

Margaret wanders out of the office.  Rolling up his shirt sleeves Mr. MacCloud sits down at his desk.  Treptower has come back from his dinner, too; from behind the counter I can see him pacing the store.  Stopping between two Bombe chests he signals me.  He must have drunk a couple of martinis because his pocked reddish face is boiling.  I pretend not to notice him.  This only drives him more insane, makes him look redder.  I'm rather enjoying it; aware that his wife hates him too.  A rumor going around the store is that she's been crushing Valium into his mashed potatoes, disguising its bitter taste with paprika and sour cream.  She's Hungarian.  During the time I was packing my things to leave Don, I thought of poisoning him for the insurance money but couldn't come up with a rational food plan.  I've no specific ethnicity; nothing spicy to cover my tracks.        

Treptower raises one arm.  Is he about to salute me or give me the finger?  I laugh, turning away from the counter, sitting down at my small metal desk. 

"Aren't we the happy camper tonight," says Mr. MacCloud, peering over the top of his half-glasses.    

Why must everyone look at me?  I shiver, touching my nose — it feels greasy.  I shrug, saying, "Why shouldn't I be happy?"

Mr. MacCloud nods and gets busy again.  I wipe my nose on the cuff of my sweater then pat my stomach.  Flat once more under tight jeans. 

"Was it your idea or Mrs. MacCloud's to have five kids?"  Right  away I’m sorry I asked because he looks uncomfortable.                         

Clearing his throat, he says, "Cara mia, it was God's idea.  Children are always God's idea."

"Oh.  Right.  God." 

I pick off some wool that's balling on the elbows of my sweater; all my sweaters are getting ruined from rubbing against the desk.  And I'm thinking:  What about love?  All that sex, there had to be some love, there, too.  Right? 

I add this new wool to a growing pile of other pickings, from other sweaters, that I'm keeping on my desk blotter.  I have no idea why.  Chartreuse is tonight's contribution.  Last night was orange.  Under that, there's butter yellow, then black, gold, ruby red, rust with a twist of brown.  At the very bottom of the pile of yarn is pink.  Pale, pale pink.  Like curtains you'd put up in a girl baby's room. 

I tap the pile with my finger.  It's soft, and growing.  When they tore my baby out of me, I heard some nurse say:  It's a girl. 

Mr. MacCloud huffs a little getting out of his chair.  "What made you ask about my kids?"

"I don't know," I say, telling another lie.