“Are you sure Lisa’s there?” I ask Jörn
“I heard her talking in the background— he had his phone on speaker....”
“Oh. Hmmm.... What about the secret distillery basement?”
“No, she knows about it, she was talking about it the first day when she was here, you just don’t remember,” he says
“Oh. Right. I forgot....” but then I say, “what about the extra guest room down the hall that’s become the dumping zone?”
“She knows every room in the house, duva, remember she ordered all the furniture and planned and designed the color schemes and I’m sure she has all the specs still on her computer to refresh her memory.”
“Well, actually I was thinking about the closet.”
“The closet?”
“Well, the reason nobody likes that room is because it’s so ordinary looking and boring, which is the reason it’s become the dumping zone where all the junk gets tossed into, but —more to the point: the closet is possibly the worst feature. It reminds me of the closets of half a dozen dreary apartments I’ve lived at in Michigan.”
“It looks like what closets look like,” he banters not getting my point
“Yeah, it does so —yeah—it could be anywhere, anyone’s, right?”
“You suggest we do a zoom meeting in a closet?” he scoffs
“Do you have a better idea?”
“A closet? Duva—“
“Yes— look, I can say that it’s a promotional idea. Something we’ve come up with and are trying it out. Since Paulina wants to continue to be involved in the company—as you know—he wants to remain in charge of the website because that’s what he did before it changed hands to —you— I mean ‘Greta’— he seems unwilling to let Cabaret go, if you want my opinion— he’s going to be like a pimple on your ass, you know—and he’s extremely territorial, especially about making the decisions about what goes in the catalogue!”
“Why do you care? It doesn’t matter to me. I just need the front for storage space. Just let him, if he wants to do the work—“
“No, Jörn—you said— I mean— well you said because I used to run a boutique— well I just assumed you wanted my input.... and.... so.... you should know — um— that I placed this really big order and—well— Paulina was not exactly pleased that she—he—I mean— wasn’t consulted first.”
“You placed a big order?”
“It was when I was waiting last night, I got bored and.... so, anyway....”
“Hmm,” Jörn only says
“Are you mad? Was that wrong?”
“No—I ....what kind of order?” he asks
“It’s just —some idea I got for a new line that I told Paulina I wanted to call ‘Le chevalier’....“
“Hmm...” he says again and at first it is all he says. After a silent pause he asks,
“what kinds of clothes did you order?”
“Oh, well—you know.... shirts with a lot of ruffles.... like Oscar Wilde dandy clothes, you know, like those ‘poet shirts,’—some waist coats with velvet britches, long brocaded coats—like—kind of Louis XIV style but with a modern look.... I found this on a search I was doing because I was losing my mind watching the monitors for hours with nothing happening. These were cool, I thought, so, why not?— they’re all by an unknown designer— I mean, as I noticed the Cabaret catalogue only had femme fatale things mostly there’s a whole other genre that is being overlooked and I thought— well—and I was thinking ‘Elton’ wouldn’t be dressed in tights and stilettos, would he?”
He laughs,
“now I know why Paulina wants to see what you look like!”
As we are now sitting up in bed I watch his face carefully and becoming worried, I say,
“why—wh-what does—that mean exactly?”
“Never mind—let’s focus on the zoom meeting, we don’t have much time—we need to—well, besides having to throw our act together, I don’t know what we can do about you—and as you point out, the shipment that came will have more than enough for Greta —but we still have no idea where to do the zoom meeting....hmm, really ....le chevalier....?”
I try not to read too much into it,
“So, what about the closet?”
“What about the closet?”
“For the meeting.”
“You are seriously suggesting we do a zoom meeting in a closet?” he is not impressed
“Well, just listen a minute— we can throw some Christmas lights around it—I noticed that there were boxes of feather boas in the shipment that came, we hang some of them around with that fake leopard jacket I saw, hang one of those little black dresses with rhinestones that I saw was in there too and—set up some high heeled shoes on the shelf—you know, I think we had a lot of extra red Christmas lights, didn’t we? we could use those—I mean, it’s a small space but we can dress it up like a Cabaret and say we are working on a promotional campaign called ‘Party in My Closet’ for the obvious euphemism of the closet, but —it now it just occurred to me we can say it’s our way to do our part to ‘chase the Covid blues away’ since everyone is pretty much depressed and stuck in forms of isolation. Tell him we think it would be good to promote sales, say we were thinking to do a ‘party in my closet’ contest for customers and we thought it might work to boost morale —uhhh.... whatever— what the fuck,” I say because he’s laughing at me, “ok. Never mind, forget it. I know it’s stupid—sorry, it was just the first thing that popped into my head .... so.... maybe you have a better idea where to do a zoom call where Lisa doesn’t know.”
“Is this the window designer coming out in you?”
“Hey, I was good.”
He gets up suddenly and yanks me out of bed dragging me to his closet,
“Good or bad, I can’t think of anything better—and we’re out of time. We’re doing it.”
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