(taken from the novel Iconic Reflections: Adventures in the Land of Staplehorn)

 

- 2 -

A Spurious Store

ne bag of peanuts,” said Sally Watermark.  “That’ll be fifty cents, please.”

 

Eagerly, the Customer held a one dollar bill out to Sally, and she took it from him and turned to her left to face her rusty cash register, afterwards opening said register to start getting out the change.

As for the customer, he spent the wait for his change by studying the soon-to-be-his bag of peanuts.  This sat forlornly upon the splintery, sea-green-painted counter top.  Sporadic blotches of what looked like either coffee or mud stains gave the paper bag a marbled appearance, and on the front side of it, clumsily marked by hand with black paint, were the words “flotsam peanuts”.

Practically, Sally knocked the drawer shut and gave the customer a quarter, two dimes, and a nickel.

“Thanks, miss,” the customer said.  “I’m sure they’ll be powerful tasty.”

At this, Sally’s eyes dropped down to the bag.  Then the right corner of her mouth sunk towards her neck, as if a fishhook had suddenly snagged it.

Tasty?  she thought.  No, no, no, no, no.  “Tasty” ain’t the right word.  It ain’t the right word at all.  Regular peanuts are “tasty.”  These peanuts are flotsam peanuts.  Flotsam peanuts are like wax fruit.  They’re just there for show — you ain’t supposed to actually eat ’em!

Looking back up at the customer, Sally forced a smile.  Then she tipped her newspaper hat to him and said, “Have a nice day, sir.”

“You too,” the customer replied, taking the bag and leaving.

Ding-ding!  Ding-ding! went the bell above the door.

Sally wondered what the customer would do when he realized that the peanut shells in his bag were empty, that she, Sally, had gathered up thousands of bits and pieces of broken peanut shells and painstakingly glued them all back together.  Would he return and demand a refund, or would he let it go?

“Aw, who cares?” Sally said apathetically.  She’d had customers complain about her merchandise before, and she knew exactly what to do if that happened again today. With matchless professionalism, she’d come out from behind the counter, grab hold of the customer’s arm with her malformed poster board fingers, lead him to the wall at the opposite end of the store, then point to a sign that was nailed to said wall.  The sign, something she’d copied out of the city library’s dictionary onto an old, yellow, careworn sheet of paper — the other side of the sheet of paper had an obsolete city notice printed onto it; appropriately, the Planning and Zoning Commissioner had been all set to throw the sheet away until Sally had implored him to let her have it — and hung up in a frame she’d fished out of a garbage can, read:

 

flot ♦ sam\` flät-s∂m\n.

2b: miscellaneous, unimportant material; refuse.

 

“Aloud, please,” she’d say.  If, however, the man was illiterate (something that was quite common in Sepia), she’d read the sign to him.  In any case, once the sign had been read, Sally would say, “Sorry you ain’t happy with what you bought here today, but Dazzling Winks don’t give out refunds.  It ain’t part of our policy.  Come again, sir.”

Around that point, the man would probably laugh.  Customers usually did.  Sally was only nine years old, after all, and there was something inherently amusing about someone that young running a store — let alone running it with out-and-out sincerity.

Sally’s response?  She’d scowl or sputter or shake her head.  She was rescuing garbage from trash cans and the dump and circulating it back into society, and she took that task dead seriously.  “It’s the same thing the scientists done by making me,” she often said.  “They could’ve just let all that garbage go to waste, but they didn’t.  They put it to good use.  That’s what I’m trying to do with my store.”

Sally sashayed over to the right end of the counter and resumed the activity she’d been engaged in before the customer had entered the store.  In front of her, now, was a black umbrella, a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, and a stack of 4” x 4” sheets of fabric.  The umbrella had a number of holes in it, defects that Sally was devotedly mending with the sheets of fabric.

“Lemme see here,” she prattled, drumming her fingers against the side of her face, which was actually just a white paper sack turned upside down.  Then, after studying the shape of one of the umbrella’s holes for a minute, she took a swatch of denim from the stack and, using the scissors, cut the swatch into the same shape as the hole, only slightly larger.  That done, she licked her lips with excitement, set the scissors back down, picked up the needle and thread, and, very carefully, sewed the denim over the hole.

Once the swatch was secure, Sally sewed some paisley silk over another hole, then some pinstriped polyester over another.

“Whoo-wee, Watermark!” she exclaimed.  “I do believe you get better at sewing with every hole you fix!”

With that, she picked up a swatch of charcoal gray flannel, placed it over a random hole, and, as before, started to stitch away … .

Ding-ding! Ding-ding! she heard the bell above the door go a short while later.  Frustrated — she’d only had time to get about half of the swatch of flannel sewn on at that point — she set her supplies down and looked up at the door with her big blue eyes, the realist in her fully expecting to see her last customer and hear him say, “I want my money back, miss!  These peanuts ain’t real!  The shells don’t got nothing in ’em!”

When Sally looked up, though, she saw, not the customer, but an origami man wearing an oversize firefighter helmet — Peter Placket.

Sally got a look on her face that radiated bliss.  Aside from herself, she’d never seen a person made from paper before.  “Well, I’ll be!” she said, coming out from behind the counter, jumping into what can only be described as a “ta-da! stance” — the action nearly caused her flimsy, poster board legs to collapse and did cause the shredded paper her head and pattern-paper dress were stuffed with to make little swishing sounds — then indicating herself and Peter with her index finger.  “Hey, mister, we’re twins!”

Horrified, Peter let his mouth hang slack and clutched his table-flat chest with his skeletal hand.  “Twins?” he said, as if the very sound of the word repulsed him.  “That, madam, is an insult!  You have some nerve comparing yourself to me!”

“Huh?”

Pompously, Peter clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace.  “I am made from the finest, most expensive paper in the kingdom; you, as far as I can tell, are made from scraps of used paper.  My construction is elegant and precise; yours is clumsy and slapdash.  I am a work of art; you are an eyesore.”

Glowering at Peter, Sally put her hands on her hips.  “Is that right?”

“It is,” Peter pledged to her with a nod.  “However,” he added, “I dare say that I might resemble you somewhat if I fell into a puddle of mud and street gangs then defaced my entire body with graffiti.”

“Well, at least I ain’t naked!”

“Neither am I, you dolt!  I’m origami.  There’s a difference.  I say!  Do you mind if I have a look around?”

Sally shook her head, causing the long, narrow strips of paper she called hair to whip forward and gently swat her in the face.

“Purely out of curiosity, you understand,” Peter made clear.  “I doubt that there’s anything here I should actually wish to purchase.”

“Have at it.”