Avon Cinderella

A month ago a man called me. I need foot cream, he said. Lots of it. Different kinds, too. Can you bring some samples? A lot of samples! I need around a hundred.

"A hundred samples of foot cream? One-zero-zero? Foot cream?" Man, this must be a kook, I thought, even though his voice held steady, sounded flat, respectable.

"Yes. I understand this is a large number, so I would be happy to pay for the samples." He breathed deep into the phone, and I flinched as if someone blew air straight into my ear.

"Um. Ok. I'll be over at ten." I didn't have a hundred foot cream samples. I didn't even have one foot cream sample. I only had a demo tube of the Avon Cracked Heel Relief Cream and a hundred brochures, so I stuck the tube in my backpack along with a few brochures and some of the men's product samples and hit the road.

Foot Man lives on a street I blanket with brochures every campaign. His house looks like every other house - all white stucco and red tile roof and short dry grass a Latino landscaper massages to life once a week. I walked to his house, my backpack swaying in time with my hips, and wondered why a middle-aged sounding man would need a hundred foot cream samples. I decided he must be an endurance runner, one of those guys who runs the length of Death Valley in late July, his feet holding a million blisters from the radiated heat of the road. Or he owns a nail salon! That must be it! His employees need those convenient tiny samples to pamper the soft feet of bored suburban mothers.

I rang his doorbell but I didn't hear the reverberation of digital tones, so I lifted the brass knocker and let it fall. I glanced at his porch. A twisted iron chair held a basket of wooden apples. Small painted tiles circled the door, a mermaid, a sea serpent, an ocean wave.

"Hello?" A man's voice echoed behind the mahogany door. I could feel his eyes pressed against the peephole.

"It's me. Birdie. The Avon Lady." I shucked off my backpack and held it up with a smile. "I have a demonstration foot product to show you."

Foot Man opened the door. I saw his nose first, then a rugged chin, a lone black shoe, his body moved sideways, a homeboy sidewinder, he slinked the door open, and wow. Wow. Curvy black hair fell into brown eyes, beautiful eyes, but I wasn't looking at his eyes. He wore no shirt, just drawstring linen pants the color of ripe eggplant, soft leather black driving moccasins. The hair on his chest trailed to his bellybutton, and his muscles rose and fell as he closed the door behind me and motioned me inside. He smelled like expensive after-shave and some kind of spicy shower soap. Combine Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, High Jackman, Viggo Mortenson and all hot celebrity men wild and wonderful and add a dash of local homegrown cute and you've got Foot Man. Actually he was a hundred times cuter than that. Times a million.

I think I floated inside his house. I think I tripped into his steel and glass coffee table, dropped my backpack on my toes. I think I stuttered as I thanked him for the Avon call, as I unzipped my bag to get the foot cream. I don't really remember, only recall the way my cheeks translated my emotional thermometer.

I took a seat at next to him on a brown leather couch. Foot Man took the demonstration cream tube from my hand, opened the top, took its scent in deep breaths, squeezed a generous dollop in his hands, and he began to rub it back and forth between his palms.

"I need a foot to properly sample the product. Would you mind if I apply it to your feet?"

I tried to speak, started mumbling that I didn't have all the samples he requested, just this lone tube of heel relief, but my words sounded pickled and sliced. I giggled, kicked off a flip-flop and lifted my leg.

He rubbed the cream into my foot. He obviously did this before, knew how to apply just enough pressure to keep the tickle reflex at bay. He kept kneading even after the cream vanished inside my pores, kept a rhythm of push and pull and I realized my eyes were closed. I opened them to see his eyes closed, too, in some kind of strange earthy rapture.

"Um, sir? Excuse me, sir? I think the cream is gone." I didn't know what to say, kept giggling, pulled my leg back to my own space, and Foot Man snapped his eyes open and inhaled.

"Let me try that again, if you don't mind. I need to get your other foot." He sounded like rumpled blankets and candles and Egyptian musk. He sounded like full-on midnight sex. I saw a bead of sweat grow under his neck, saw him shift his body, his legs, saw something I really didn't want to see rising from the eggplant depths of his lap.

"Oh! I think I left my stove going! Here! Just keep the cream! Good bye!"

I grabbed my pack, shot up from the couch, strode fast for the door, yanked it open, felt brochures and men's samples falling to the ground behind me, didn't care, just kept moving, walking, running, sprinting home, didn't notice the flip-flop I left laying on his floor.