BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Lately my life's a sitcom. Last week, for example, a woman from my Cat Rescue group invites me to her Seinfeld Finale party. Everybody knows I'm a raging Seinfeld addict but her house smells like 21 cats live there--which they do. And she has the annoying habit of standing too close. I want to watch the show alone so I tell her my mother caught her hand in the disposal trying to rescue a cockroach and that Thursday's my night to sit with her at the hospital.

Thursday I hurry home and change into the outfit I always wear when Seinfeld comes on--a lime green turtleneck with spaghetti stains. I settle back with a pound of ribs, flip on the television and guess what. The cable's out. Again. And I can't pick up a thing out here in the boondocks.

"Mom," I say when she answers the phone. "Can I come over and watch Seinfeld? It's the last one." But she's planning to watch When Animals Attack. She wants to record the part where her dog Eddy mauls an appraiser at the convention center when Antiques Road Show was in town. My father thought it was the pit bull show--it's a long story.

"You didn't even come to Eddy's funeral," my mother says. "And you never hung the portrait we gave you of him. You don't appreciate a thing we give you."

Which is pretty much the truth. Last fall I had a garage sale and got rid of tons of junk that had been in the family for generations. I made about $75 and went to see George Jones at Billy Bob's.

Anyway I was desperate for a tv. Where do you go when you're desperate? The mall. I get there just before the stores close and hide in a dressing room till they lock up. Stretched out in front of a whole row of televisions, I eat about $400 worth of chocolate truffles and lose consciousness right before Seinfeld starts.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, the Cat Rescuers have moved their party to the hospital, to bring a little cheer to my injured mother and me. They search the hallways for us, and when they ask an aide with a unrecognizable foreign accent where my mother's room is, they believe she says, "She's a goner."

Appalled that my mother--the humanitarian--would suffer such a fate, they rush to my house where they are repulsed by the fly-covered remains of the ribs. Thinking I must be at the home of the deceased, they hurry to my mother's where they find her engrossed in When Animals Attack. They are there when the part about Eddy comes on.

As luck would have it, Eddy's victim is an appraiser from Sotheby's who is perusing a strangely familiar crocheted liquor bottle cover that looks like a poodle.

"Where did you get this?" the appraiser asks.

"At a garage sale, for 25 cents," says the poodle's owner.

"You'll be pleased to know this is an extremely rare piece," says the appraiser. "There is only one other like it in the world, in the Metropolitan museum. It came over on the Mayflower and would bring at auction somewhere in the range of $18,000 to $20,000." Suddenly Eddy bites the appraiser and runs off with his toupee.

"What's that goober doing with Aunt Pearl's poodle?" says my mother.

"I knew I should have bought it at Vicki Charmaine's garage sale," says my Cat Rescue friend.

"Who are you anyway?" says my mother. "Are you the one whose house smells like a cat box?"

"I suppose I am," says my friend. "Would you like some cats?"

"Maybe so. We could use them to train that pup of Eddy's."

In the morning, store employees find the televisions tuned to Martha Stewart and all the truffle wrappers. By then I've escaped by jumping through a plate glass window and am at the hospital getting stitches.

"Bet you sew up a lot dog bites," I say to the surgeon. "My mother's dog attacked a guy on tv last night."

"Sorry I missed it. Hey, speaking of television, could you believe Seinfeld?"