Stanley Elkin - The Dick Gibson Show

BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: “One day—”

BERNIE PERK: Yes, that’s right. One day a woman came into my drugstore I’d never seen before. She was pretty, in her early or middle twenties perhaps, but very small. Not just short — though she was, extremely short; she couldn’t have been much more than five feet — but small. Dainty, you know? Maybe she wore a size six dress. I don’t know sizes. She could probably buy her clothes in the same department school girls do. What do they call that? Junior Miss? Anyway, she was very delicate. Tinier than Mary Odata. A nice face, sweet, a little old-fashioned perhaps, the sort of face you see in an old sepia photograph of your grandmother’s sister that died. A very pretty little woman.

I saw her looking around, going up and down the aisles. Every once in a while she would stoop down to peer in a low shelf. I have these big round mirrors in the corners to spy on shoplifters. I watched her in the mirrors. If I lost her in one mirror I picked her up again in another. A little doll going up and down the aisles in the convex glass.

I knew what was up. A woman knows where things are. It’s an instinct. Have you ever seen them in a supermarket? They understand how it’s organized. It has nothing to do with the fact that they shop more than men. A man goes into a grocery, he has to ask where the bread is. Not a woman: she knows where it’s supposed to be. Well, this woman is obviously confused. She’s looking for something which she knows is always in one place, whatever store she goes into. So I knew what was up: she was looking for the sanitary napkins.

Most places they keep them on the open shelves to spare the ladies embarrassment. I don’t spare anyone anything. I keep them behind the counter with me. I want to know what’s going on with their periods. They have to ask.

Finally she came over to me. “I don’t see the Kotex,” she says.

“This is the Kotex department,” I say, and reach under the counter for a box. “Will there be anything else? We have a terrific buy on Midol this week. Or some girls prefer the formula in this. I’ve been getting good reports; they tell me it’s very effective against cramps.” I hand her a tin of Monthleaze. “How are you fixed for breath sweetener?” I push a tube of Sour-Off across the counter to her.

She ignores my suggestions but picks up the box of Kotex and looks at it. “This is Junior,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I give her Regular.

“Don’t you have Super?”

“I thought this was for you,” I tell her, and give her the size she asks for.

A month later she came in again. “Super Kotex,” she said. I give her the box and don’t see her again for another month. This time when she comes in I hand her the Super and start to ring up the sale.

“I’d better take the tampon kind too,” she says. She examines the box I give her. “Is there anything larger than this?”

“This is the biggest,” I say, swallowing hard.

“All right.”

“Tell me,” I say, “are these for you?”

She blushes and doesn’t answer.

I hadn’t dared to think about it, though it had crossed my mind. Now I could think of nothing else. I forgot about the others. This girl inflamed me. Bernie burns. It was astonishing — a girl so small. My life centered on her center, on the prodigious size of her female parts.

BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Say “cunt.”

DICK GIBSON: Wait a minute—

BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: It’s all right. Say “cunt.”

BERNIE PERK: … Cunt. The size of her cunt. The disproportion was astonishing to me. Kotex and Tampax. For all I knew, she used the Kotex inside. I did know it. I conceived of her smallness now as the result of her largeness. It was as if her largeness there sapped size from the rest of her body, or that by some incredible compensation her petiteness lent dimension elsewhere. I don’t know. It was all I could think of. Bernie burns.

I had to know about her, at least find out who she was, whether she was married. I tried to recall if I had seen a wedding band, but who could think of fingers, who could think of hands? Bernie burns. Perk percolates.

That night I counted ahead twenty-eight days to figure when I might expect her again. The date fell on September 9, 1956.

She didn’t come — not then, not the next month.

Then, one afternoon, I saw her in the street. It was just after Thanksgiving, four or five days before her next period. I raised my hat. “Did you have a pleasant holiday?” I asked. My face was familiar to her but she couldn’t place me. I counted on this.

“So so.” The little darling didn’t want to embarrass me.

“I thought you might be going away for Thanksgiving,” I said.

She looked puzzled but still wanted to be polite. “My roommate went home but I stayed on in Hartford,” she said. “Actually she invited me to go with her but my boss wouldn’t give me Friday off.”

Ah. I thought, she has a roommate, she’s a working girl. Good.

“I’m very sorry,” I said, “but I find myself in a very embarrassing position. I don’t seem to be able to remember your name.”

“Oh,” she said, and laughed, “I can’t remember yours either. I know we’ve seen each other.”

“I’m Bernie Perk.”

“Yes. Of course. I’m Bea Dellaspero. I still don’t—”

“I don’t either. You see what happens? Here we are, two old friends and neither of us can— Wait a minute. I think I’ve got it. I’ve seen you in my store. I’m the druggist — Perk’s Drugs on Mutual.”

“Oh.” She must have remembered our last conversation for she became very quiet. We were standing outside a coffee shop, and when I invited her to have a cup with me she said she had to be going and hurried off.

Her number was in the phone book, and I called right from the coffee shop. If only her roommate’s in, I thought, crossing my fingers for luck.

“Where’s Bea? Is Bea there?”

“No.”

“Christ,” I said. “What’s her number at work? I’ve got to get her.”

I called the number the roommate gave me; it was a big insurance company. I told them I was doing a credit check on Bea Dellaspero and they connected me to personnel. Personnel was nice as pie. Bea was twenty-four years old, a typist in the claims department and a good credit risk.

It was something, but I couldn’t live on it. I had to get her to return to the store.

I conceived the idea of running a sale especially for Bea. My printer set up a sample handbill. Across the bottom I had him put in half a dozen simple coupons, with blank spaces where she could write in the names of the products she wanted to exchange them for. She could choose from a list of twenty items, on which I gave about a 90 percent discount. I sent the flier in an envelope to Bea’s address.

Normally I’m closed on Sunday, but that was the day I set aside for Bea’s sale. I opened up at ten o’clock, and I didn’t have to wait more than an hour. When she came in holding the pink flier we were alone in the store.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Fine, thank you.” She was still uneasy about me. “I got your advertisement.”

“I see it in your hand.”

“Oh. Yes.”

She went around the store picking up the items she wanted and brought them to the counter. When she gave me her coupons, I saw that she’d chosen products relating to a woman’s periods or to feminine hygiene. She’d had to: I’d rigged the list with men’s shaving equipment, pipe accessories, athletic supporters — things like that.

“What size would these be, madam?”

“Super.”

“Beg pardon, I didn’t hear you.”