ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

The move was long and arduous, as such endeavors tend to be. However, it was much helped by the presence of my boyfriend, his best friend, and his roommate, who moved us both out of the old apartment and into the new house, and of two other local Kansas City friends, who provided much-welcome relief by showing up to help unload in Kansas City. I won’t dwell on the experience except to say that we were very grateful for the help, and for the fact that it was only 75 degrees all day. The only casualty of the move so far appears to be our kitchen table, which disappoints me because it was our sole nice piece of furniture.

But SEST LAW VIZ as the French say.

Today my boyfriend and my roommate and I went out in search of new living room furniture, as our old stuff bit the big one some time ago, so to speak. We abandoned the old at the dumpster outside our old building yesterday, and a lucky thing it was, since we essentially stuffed the U-Haul truck to the gills. So we started out our search at Rhodes Furniture Outlet over in Olathe, which turned out to be the home of the world’s pushiest and most obnoxious salesperson, Danny. We had enough time to enter the store and walk about two feet before he teleported just to our right and after being told that we were going to look around a little while before we’d require a salesman, announced that ha ha, should we need anything, really, please just let him know, and not to talk to anyone but him, Danny. And by the way, his name was Danny. Ha, ha!

We edged away from Danny, who looked about thirty-eight and dangerously spastic, and began to browse the selection of living room sets. As soon as we found one that seemed reasonably priced enough to consider sitting on for a moment, there was Danny, wanting to know if we were interested enough to consider a purchase. Annoyed at the fact that we’d been on our own for only thirty seconds or so after having dismissed him, we told him politely that we didn’t know yet, since we’d HINT HINT only begun browsing just moments before. “Sure,” he said, grinning and chuckling riotously at nothing in particular. “Ha ha, just let me know if you see something you like! Make sure they know you talked to Danny!”

“Ha, ha!” he added helpfully.

We looked at perhaps three more sets with Danny aggressively stalking us at a distance of maybe ten feet, pretending to chat with other salespeople, and peeping at us to see if we might be nearing a decision. For a very short while we managed to shake him off, and had a quick look at some furniture we liked. However, we decided to duck back into the showroom to see if there was anything else. After a short walk, after which Danny picked up the trail again, we discovered a set that was on sale and didn’t seem too bad, except that it was sort of a weird maroon color, and included about 500 extremely ugly accent pillows. We sat down and began to evaluate its comfort in comparison to the other set we’d liked, when Danny approached again. “Ha ha, how do you like this one! I call this set the Starbucks set! Since it’s got all the bright colors, see?! Ha, ha! I like bright colors! You like colors? Ha, ha!”

I shit you not, he said this. No, really. He did.

We all glanced at each other, trying to determine whether he was just under the influence of serious amounts of cocaine, or if he was actually an animatronic puppet being piloted by a dozen spider monkeys in heat. We resumed our conversation about the furniture, hoping that our complete failure to acknowledge his presence or strange Starbucks speech would send him away. Instead, he began to try more frantically than ever to get our attention. Picking up the information pamphlet on the furniture set, he announced, “Ha ha, I bet you’re wondering why this set has so few pillows!” My roommate and I looked at him in confusion as he launched into an in-depth account of which pillows were missing from the display model. “So don’t worry about the pillows,” he finished. “Ha, ha!!”

“Actually, I don’t much like extra pillows on furniture. So they’d probably all be given to the Salvation Army anyhow,” I told him.

“HA HA HA you’re right!!” he exclaimed. “You can just put them on your BED OR SOMETHING!! HAHAHAHA!!!” He was the only one of us laughing, much like the token special kid who periodically cackles at jokes nobody else can hear. We began to feel very hostile.

After this it didn’t take long for our fight or flight to kick in, and after my boyfriend announced to me and my roommate that Danny would be forcefully body-checked if he approached us again, we determined that “flight” was the desirable option. Danny spotted us making for the door and before we could escape, sprinted after me with the intent of forcing me to write his name down. “Make sure you tell them you talked to Danny,” he stressed. “Go ahead, write my name down if you like.” It clearly wasn’t a request.

I scribbled his name on the back of a receipt in my purse, and we gratefully exited the building as Danny surveyed our departure with an apparently heavy heart. In retrospect, it would have been funny if I’d written “Ass-faced baboon” instead of “Danny” to see if it provoked a reaction, but I’m not sorry I did the latter. It might have pissed off the spider monkeys.