Friday, March 25, 2005
The Bottom Line
I’m marking time at a shoe store off Union Square, the most consistently exclusive shopping district in town. Kel is getting sturdy waterproof street hikers for work; I’m waiting for whatever comes next. The shop is attractively laid out on two levels; we’re upstairs, and we are not alone.
A few rows of low shelves separate me from a couple of older people. “Older,” here, means that they’re not just older than I am or than most people out and about seem to be this day - they are of an earlier era, each of them an image of well-worn maturity; “a couple of,” here, means that they are not a couple, per se, but rather are two individuals, thrust together by the vagaries of commerce. She is there, as it happens, to buy shoes, and he is there to sell them to her.
What I recall of their clothes is significant more for vagueness than substance - few details remain in my mind. They’re both conservatively dressed in (for her) a dark pleated skirt past the knees and a plain blouse of good fabric and stodgy color; and (for him) dark slacks, a moderately interesting rust-colored business shirt, and an unpatterened necktie. Both wear eyeglasses (unfashionable, dark, heavy frames), and each one’s hair, once jet black, is shot with grey. It’s easy for me to guess wrong, but from their accents I’d say that he (with his crisp, rapidfire speech) is Filipino, and she (with her melodious range of intonations and intense emotional palette) is Chinese.
He’s slim, worn like an old cane, and clearly well-trained: he knows the stock, of course, but he knows customer service too. Union Square means serious customer service, and he takes his job seriously. She, on the other hand, seems intent on putting him through his paces. Short and heavyset, she’s barking orders at him - what she wants to see next, what size ranges, the heel size and shape.... he fits a mule onto her pudgy foot; she looks skeptically at it as if she had just discovered mold growing on her instep.
“I don’t like brown,” she grumbles.
Deferentially he reassures her: “It’s a lovely color on you, and very current in today’s lines...”
“Is this brown? Tan? What color is this, anyway?,” she queries impatiently.
Ever patient, even longsuffering: “Taupe,” he replies.
“What?!! Dope? You calling me a dope?”
“No no no madam, t-aupe. With a T. Like tuchas.”
I gasp inwardly at his use of this ethnic crudity. She cuts her eyes at him and inclines her head for a moment as if a storm were gathering and about to be unleashed on him; then she nods curtly and looks down again at the shoes. Tuchas, she seems to understand perfectly - and not only to understand but also to welcome with easy familiarity, this word from a culture to which I would not have thought either of them would have been significantly exposed. It left me wondering how yiddish turned out to be the lingua franca of pacrim Sanfran. Regardless, the fact is unassailable: the tuchas has landed - and at the international terminal, no less.
