Demanding Flake; Matched Set

At work I run into a lot of different sorts. Today it was the Demanding Flake. L.M. came in and asked in her soft flaky voice about sheets without a pattern, just white, you know, with a little color on the edge. She fastened upon a white percale with a spring-green line of embroidery, a simple embellishment. She asked how much a set would cost, apparently not quick enough of wit to take the packages off the shelf by herself and look at the price labels.

What size? I asked? Queen, she said. I got down the flat queen sheet, and read the label to her - $144. She then said she needed pillowcases. I found a pair - $86 - and she said she needed three pairs. I gathered the three pairs, and she spread the packages out on the bed and looked at them. Then she turned to me, with her empty pale-blue eyes, and wisps of flyaway hair escaping her untidy ponytail, and said, in her feather of a voice,

"Add this up for me."

Not "Please add this up," or "What does this come to?" or "let me see, three times eighty-six, that's, hmm..." No. "Add this up for me." In her breathy, twitty voice, the voice of the Demanding Flake.

I bit my tongue, and added it up for her - $402, plus tax. She then said she'd have to think about it, and asked for the fitted sheet - a plain white, in king, but it had to be the same white as the top sheet. I found her a king fitted in the same white percale, and she looked at the green-striped flat sheet. "What size is this?"

I masked an indrawn breath of exasperation and showed her the label, because she apparently didn't know enough to move the stacked shams off the sheet and read it herself. "This is a flat queen," I said.

"I need a king," she answered, her inflection telling me that she thought I was a little bit slow. But she had told me she needed a queen. I had had to move several king sheets to get to the queen.

She didn't buy anything, of course. She had me set aside a couple of other things for her to come look at tomorrow. Glory be, I have tomorrow off!

********
L.M. is not the only Demanding Flake who pops in regularly to try our patience.  Ms. H. is another. My first encounter with her went as follows.

I answered the phone one morning to hear a breathy voice on the other end, most of the sentences inflected as questions, even when they were statements. "Hi, this is G. H. I was in last week and bought some shams? And now I want the other shams that go with them."

"Okay," I said. "Do you know the pattern name?"

"Well, they were a Kenzo...?"

I went to the clearance baskets, the only place where we had a few Kenzo-designed boudoir shams left - three or four very bold patterns, none of them at all attractive. "Okay, we have a few different patterns. Can you remember what they looked like?"

"Well, they were a kind of textile pattern...?"

I rolled my eyes, and looked around the store at the hundreds of "textile patterns". "Well, if you can remember the specific pattern name, that would be great."

"Well, they were a Kenzo...?"

"Okay, but Kenzo is the designer. There are several different patterns under the Kenzo design label."

"Well, I know Kenzo is a designer," she said, snotty and huffy. "I was in the trade for seventeen years."

"Okay," I said, seething. "many people don't realize that. But we do have a few Kenzo patterns, and if you can remember the pattern name, or something more specific about the pattern, I'll see if we have what you're looking for."

After a few more repetitions of the "It was a Kenzo" line, she finally remembered something about the pattern that allowed me to pick out the one she was looking for - a dreadful dark rusty-brown with pseudo-batik pattern in orange, pale blue and sickly pink designs, scattered in a sort of frenetic patchwork. Shockingly ugly, but it was just what she was after. I asked her how many she wanted.

"Oh, just one pair."

All that back-and-forth for one pair of $10 boudoir shams. My commission on that sale - five cents. Literally - one nickel. As a part-timer, I make one half of one percent commission. One nickel for my own out of that sale.

*******

There are the women in their 50s and 60s, and even in their 70s, with tummies bulging their shirts and white shins sticking out from trendy capris, white ankle socks, white sensible shoes and nearly identical short curled hairdos. I saw three women thus attired, in varying but similar pastel shades, slowly pacing up the street in perfect unison, right hands clutching Vera Bradley purses, in step as if their ankles were chained together.